Chapter 7
I’d never actually seen anyone flee before. But that’s what Guy did. And to their credit, Simon and Riz stood in as he hot-footed it off with his campaign team to take the barrage of questions from the reporters.
Riz did his best, but there was no way he could handle that.
His own campaign manager came over to shut it down as quickly as she could.
A particularly eager journalist tried to shove a mic in Riz’s face and found a red-haired Scotsman less than politely removing it from their hand and handing it to a cameraman with a deep growl.
It was the most menacing act I’d ever seen, and the reporter shrank back like they’d seen their own death.
“We should leave. Boys! Home! Now!” Nigella called before I even had a chance to answer.
Archie and Luca knew when to whine and when to do exactly what their mother ordered. They raced after her. It was only when I felt myself being dragged along that I realised I was still being held by one of them.
Kenny bounded along beside us with a confused look on his face as we left the melee.
“I need to get to Lady F and try and do some damage control,” Nigella said as we ran to her house. “Christ, this is bad. She can’t find out about this kind of thing from the papers. Guy will need all the help he can get.”
Nigella had worked in PR for a large chunk of her pre-twins career and probably knew what she was talking about.
We reached her gate. “What can I do?” I asked. I could help. I had no idea how. Make tea?
Nigella’s eyebrows raised. “Oh, Arden. Darling. No, you need to get the hell out of dodge. Like, now.”
“What?” I was confused. No one even knew I’d been asked out by Guy …
Nigella saw my expression and took her phone out again and scrolled down, hiding the screen from the prying eyes of children.
There wasn’t one photo of Guy but dozens.
And he wasn’t alone. She scrolled down to an image and held it up for me to see.
In the photo, a handsome young Guy was naked, looking at the camera, with a …
oh shit … an even more handsome and young man next to him.
Also fully naked. His dark brown hair and square jaw accentuated in the soft light. Tarquin.
“Those reporters are about to click who that is and beat a path to your door. If I were you, I’d get out of the village tonight. Do you have somewhere you can go? If not, I have a friend with a house near the coast, I can see if she—”
“I have somewhere I can go.” To hide.
“This is a dream come true for tabloids, Arden. This is going to be a shitstorm. You need to keep your head down and disappear until it’s all over.
Do not say a word unless I tell you to, okay?
I’ve dealt with this stuff before. I beg you, disappear off to a hotel or to France or somewhere – stay out of London – and wait until it’s all blown over.
I’ll keep you updated.” With that, she hugged me tight, then hurried inside with the boys, already calling someone on her phone.
I looked around in a daze. I didn’t know what was happening.
A whine alerted me to Kenny. He was staring up at me with what was probably hunger, but right now it felt like concern. “C’mon, lad, we need to get home,” I said.
Ten minutes later, I slammed the door to the cottage and let Kenny run off for some food. I stood in shock. What the hell had just happened? What do I do? Should I run like Nigella said to?
Yes. Yes, that made perfect sense. But where? I couldn’t go to a hotel. I couldn’t leave Kenny in some kennel, and so few places took dogs. Oh, God, and the cats. Where would I put them? Fuck. The only place I could think of was Verity’s. But Nigella said stay out of London.
Oh.
I rang her as I ran upstairs and began throwing things in a bag.
“My love, I’m watching the EastEnders omnibus, so make it snappy.”
“Need to stay in your Surrey house. Is there a key?”
“Aha! Knew you’d come around and wanna flee murder village—”
“Verity, is there a key?!” I shouted.
“Alright, Ar—”
“No, it’s not alright,” I said, panicking. “Look, in about half an hour, or an hour, there’s gonna be a news story that breaks. It’s … it’s not good.”
There was a pause. I heard the distinct sound of a wine glass being put down.
“Do I want to know what you did?”
“I didn’t do anything, it’s … it’s a Tarquin thing. It’s starting all over again. There’s gonna be a field day.”
I needed her to not make a “good for sales” joke right now. I really needed her not to.
She came through. My best friend in the whole world.
“Okay, babes, I can meet you tonight. I’ll change and make my way over there.
I’ll try and get to the house for” – she paused, I assumed doing some mental calculations on traffic and distance and how sober she was – “10 p.m. probably? I’ll wait there for you. ”
“Thank you, Vee.” I was so relieved I almost cried. “Sorry about yelling. I’ll explain it all when I get there.”
I hung up before anything else could be said and threw a few more T-shirts in a bag, and tried to concentrate. What else? Pants, laptop, toothbrush, chargers … shit, where was the cats’ carrier case? How was I gonna get Kenny to stay still in a car for two hours?
The panic was on me in waves. I was sweating buckets. I felt sick. So, I did the only thing I could do – I made it worse.
I took out my phone and opened the email. The address was truth4you@ and the title: Guy Frobisher TRUTH. Christ.
There must be forty-odd photos, and I waited for them to load. They were taken on a digital camera – the date was emblazoned in orange in the bottom right-hand corner, like it was on a million photos from that era.
7 Nov 2002. Guy and Tarquin would have been twenty-ish, in their second year at Oxford.
I knew they’d gone to different schools.
Tarquin went to Stowe, Guy to Harrow, but they had vaguely known each other through loose acquaintances and sporting events during their teens.
They’d been mates from day one at Oxford, in the same college, the same floor of their halls, doing the same degree.
Both applying to be on the same sports teams.
Tarquin came out straight away – he’d already been open about his sexuality in school, whereas Guy had only taken tentative steps out of the closet and hung back in case of repercussions.
Tarquin told me all this one night during pillow talk.
They’d dated very briefly in their first few weeks of knowing one another and discovered there was zero romantic spark between them, but they were happy to be mates.
“We hooked up a few more times through uni and in our twenties,” Tarquin had explained in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Does that bother you?” It hadn’t at the time.
I scrolled through. The photos were … well, they didn’t leave much to the imagination.
Guy naked on a bed, his erection cupped in his hand, and several more photos of other acts, which Guy had clearly enjoyed to their inevitable climaxes.
There was a whole show here.
I zoomed in on one of the final photos. It was Tarquin, lying on the bed on his stomach, naked, his legs bent at the knee with his feet swinging.
He casually smoked a spliff and grinned at Guy taking the photo.
My last shred of hope disappeared. There was no chance they had been faked – the small mole in the centre of Tarquin’s arse cheek was there.
The patch of hair on the back of his right thigh that grew out in a different angle to the rest of his leg hair because of some old scar underneath.
If there was one thing that I knew well, it was Tarquin Scott’s naked body.
I recognised those marks. Seeing him in Speedos would let you know about the scar, but you’d have to have seen him naked to know to add a small mole on his right bum cheek if you wanted to fake this with Photoshop.
Not to mention Tarquin’s dick looked exactly as I remembered from my many, many, intimate acquaintances with it. These photos were real.
I breathed out deeply. In theory, it was two lads who’d, as horny not-quite-still-teenagers, taken some dirty photos when they were at uni.
It meant nothing. But of course, these two faces had been splashed over every newspaper for the past three months.
The man whose best friend had murdered his cousin.
The culprit in the millionaire murder. The soon-to-be MP and his murderous pal.
And now they had the gay sex angle. And tabloids only loved gay sex when it was licentious and tawdry.
Pull yourself together, Arden, I thought.
I cleared my throat as if I was about to speak, but nothing came out.
I put my phone away and took another deep, steadying breath.
This was not the end of the world. I wasn’t even in the photos.
They would have to recognise who the person with Guy was.
Then they would have to care enough to go and find that man’s ex-boyfriend.
That guy who was awaiting trial for murder.
And his ex, who was a famous novelist with a big grinning picture on my Wikipedia profile.
Shit. Okay, get packing.
Twenty minutes later, I emerged from the house with Kenny’s things.
The cats were in the car already, hissing and spitting their way to an early death at the indignity of being put in their carry case.
There were a couple of bags of clothes, a laptop, and some snacks.
Beside them was a huge pile of dog food and assorted toys.
The house was locked up. Now it was a case of driving over a hundred miles with a dog who could barely sit still for ten seconds.
It was almost certain to end with me driving us into the back of a truck while I yelled at Kenny to stop trying to chew the gearstick.