Chapter 60
Cal
You know in movies, when a news story hits and they do a cheesy montage of all the headlines whirling into focus and building on top of each other like a giant fucking sloppy headline pie that makes your head spin?
That’s how I feel as I monitor the news sites and social media after the Paradise trailer drops. Aida’s explained to me that the coverage will come in waves of initial knee-jerk reactions and lengthier, more thoughtful op-eds.
Today, we can expect the coarsest, most reductionist knee-jerk reactions in the shape of tweets and headlines on news sites.
Tomorrow, we’ll probably make the front pages, and we should see more opinion pieces popping up.
Then, over the next few weeks, and especially once our show airs, the newspaper coverage will filter down to women’s magazines.
A similar trend should roll out on television, too: headlines today as news outlets pick up the story, followed by the likely dissection of Aida’s personal life on this week’s morning shows and eventually her appearance on chat shows.
Her publicist, Mara, has her confirmed for Gordon Kay, which is pretty fucking epic from where I’m sitting.
Gordon’s chat show hosts the biggest celebrities from both sides of the Atlantic.
Every news outlet I click on has the trailer playing in a pop-up box, which seems pretty good publicity from where I’m sitting. Seeing it play on every site from Sky News to the Daily Mirror is messing with my brain.
Just when I think I’m nailing my audition process to be with her properly, it hits me over and over like a sledgehammer: This is Aida Fucking Russell we’re talking about.
Her face is on every news site in the country.
I mean, so is mine, but that’s irrelevant.
It’s her they all care about. Her whose life makes national news.
I let the trailer play on mute, over and over, washing over me.
I’ve seen it before, several times, but watching it on the BBC News homepage is a different ball game.
Aida’s face is one almost every adult in Britain knows, and here it stares back at me, beautiful and sexy and authoritative as her red mouth moves silently. Beguilingly.
There she is walking over the Millennium Bridge, the camera behind her, giving every perv in the country a killer shot of her cracking arse in a figure-hugging scarlet dress.
And here’s a wide shot of her talking to Simone in our usual suite at the Lanesborough.
She’s gesticulating forcefully. Her body language is as compelling as it is every week on Centre Stage.
The subtitle says Enough is enough. Let’s stop this ridiculous, and extremely convenient, collective pretence that women over the age of forty aren’t sexual beings.
I’m going to show you all that women my age think about sex as much as the rest of you, and that we want a damn sight more than a quickie in bed with the lights off.
That’s my girl. No lights off for her—that would be a crying shame. The weirdest surge of pride and gratitude and jealousy swirls in the pit of my stomach. She’s public property, and everyone with a dick will be wanking off when they see this side of her.
But I’m the only one who gets to do the honours.
That’s what’s important. That’s what I’ve got to remember.
Still, it’s hard to quash this panicky FOMO-type anxiety.
I wish I was by her side today—it feels wrong not to be—but Simone was intent on sweeping her off for lunch at Scott’s, both to celebrate the release and to keep her mind off the headlines. Then she’ll be with her boys.
I’m nowhere in the picture today. I scratch frustratedly at the tiny fragment of loose lacquer on my desk.
At least the rest of my team have abandoned all pretence of working, too, and are avidly scouring social media as we sit in our horseshoe-shaped configuration.
Rafe’s ostensibly at Cerulean today but is more likely skulking around Belle’s gallery.
He can’t leave that poor girl alone. But Gen, Zach and Maddy are as enthralled as I am.
‘How are the headlines looking?’ Gen asks.
‘BBC’s keeping it fairly vanilla,’ I say. ‘Aida Russell Partners with London Sex Club in her Search for Paradise. Let’s see… The Mail’s gone full prude—Russell Sinks to her Husband’s Level. Jesus Christ, what a bunch of twats.’
‘He’s her ex-husband, you pathetic wankers,’ Gen says. ‘Get your fucking facts right.’
‘Exactly. And a grown woman going after her own pleasure is obviously the exact same “level” as a husband cheating on his wife with his subordinates—fucking infuriating.’ I hit return on my keyboard more viciously than I need to in order to make my point.
‘I don’t know how she deals with this shit. ’
‘Because she’s an evolved human being who’s well versed in this game,’ Gen replies smoothly, ‘and she knows that pursuing her own happiness and blowing this debate wide open in a way that may benefit millions of women is far more important than giving a single fuck what the self-righteous white male pricks who run our national media may think.’
I blink and fight the impulse to stride over to Gen’s desk and plant a smacker on her lips because Christ, I love this woman.
‘What she said,’ I say lamely instead, allowing myself to be mildly distracted by my own grinning face flashing up on the trailer. Fuck, they’ve lit me well.
A soft laugh from Zach tells me I’m not the only one Gen impresses on a daily basis.
‘Twitter is the slimy shit-show you’d expect,’ Maddy says now.
‘Bloody hell, they’ve all come out to play.
If I had to make a pie chart, I’d say…’ She pauses.
‘Let’s see. Twenty percent women coming out in, like, crazy support of Aida.
Forty percent men saying she’s an old slut and the BBC should fire her.
Forty percent men saying they’d do—ew—lots of things to her now they know how up for it she is, and probably another ten to twenty percent women saying Cal’s really hot and Aida’s way too old for him. ’
The blood rises to my face. I want to take on each and every one of these creeps and slut shamers and the toxic fucking women who don’t know how to support other women.
‘Um, that’s over a hundred percent all in, sweetheart,’ Zach tells her. Wow, he’s a braver man than me.
Maddy rises slowly from her chair. ‘I’m sorry, what did you just say, Spreadsheet?’
I glance over. His face is a picture.
‘Um, nothing, sweetheart.’
‘Glad to hear it. Because if you want even the remotest chance of being blown again in your sad, miserable life, you do not attempt to maths-shame me. Got it?’
I swallow a smirk as I cast my eyes back to the trailer on my screen.
Aida’s talking again. I hit pause and linger on the sight of her dark, gleaming eyes.
On the line of her bare throat. She is so fucking alluring.
The camera loves her, but I have the privilege of knowing that what it sees doesn’t come close to the truth of how captivating she is in the flesh.
‘I asked her to be my girlfriend,’ I say.
Maddy stops her evisceration of Zach and turns to gape at me.
‘Aida?’
‘Yeah.’
She lets out an excited little squeal.
‘What did she say?’ Gen wants to know.
‘She’s thinking about it.’ The admission hurts. I glance back down at the paused video. I feel exactly like I did before I met her, like a schoolboy with a crush on his most incredible teacher. She’s so out of my league it’s not funny.
‘It’s high stakes for her,’ Zach says softly. He’d know, even if he doesn’t share Aida’s celebrity. He has kids, and I know the emotional toll it took on him as he prepared to bring Maddy into his daughters’ lives in a formal sense.
‘I know,’ I mutter.
‘Zach’s right,’ Gen says. ‘All this—it’s a lot. And I know for a fact she hasn’t gone into this project looking for a relationship.’
‘I know,’ I say again.
‘I also know,’ Gen continues carefully, like she’s choosing her words, ‘that what she’s had with you has meant an enormous amount to her.
You’ve given her a wonderful gift, Cal. And I definitely got the impression, last time I chatted with her, that what she feels for you goes beyond the physical, but it’s going to be an adjustment for her. She’s having a hell of a year.’
I believe Gen. I believe Aida has feelings for me. That face of hers gives her away every time.
‘Maybe actions speak louder than words in this case,’ Maddy suggests.
‘Maybe being there for her right now is what she really needs. Help her get through this mayhem, you know? She’s really cool, and I know she’s a badass at this, but it can’t be easy, reading this stuff about yourself.
Maybe just act like a boyfriend rather than badgering her to put a label on it. ’
It’s so similar to what Aida told me she needed the other morning that it gives me pause, and not for the first time I’m struck with gratitude for the amazing women who surround me.
Mads is right, of course, and it’s what I’ve already decided for myself. I’m going to be there for her so fully it’s not funny.