Chapter Thirteen #2
I looked towards the door to her en suite, an orangey glow under it suggested a light had been left on in there.
I scuttled forwards towards the end of her bed, and a less vulnerable vantage point.
A shadow moved across the spool of light under the door, and the floor creaked again.
The Mandy-shaped mass in the bed stirred and rolled over.
I froze, holding my breath. I could hear my heart thudding in my chest, it was beating heavily and more quickly with each second. Someone was in the bathroom.
A moment later, the door opened a little, and I glimpsed a shadowy shape. It was tall, muscular, definitely human. And definitely not Mandy. Could it be Jose? But I thought he was away. Who could be in Mandy’s bathroom?
My next thought was of an intruder. I’d heard of this happening in celebrity houses – a criminal climbs in through an open bathroom window, grabs whatever valuables are on show, and gets out again.
My heart continued to pound as I slunk back, crouching close to the floor at the end of her bed, my body tight. I bowed my head, eyes fixed to the floor, desperate to keep myself hidden so whoever was there wouldn’t see me.
The intruder kept moving very slowly. The bathroom door opened a little wider, and a quick glance up revealed the figure was wearing nothing but tight black Calvin Klein boxer shorts.
I could see now they were holding an iPhone and using the torch for light.
They were illuminated for a split second, before the light was extinguished.
My gaze wandered up, it was impossible not to notice their perfectly defined body, tanned skin, and a large bulge in the tight underpants.
The darkness moulded them into a rough form again.
But in that split second of light, there was no mistaking it.
There weren’t many people on the planet with a physique as perfect as his. It was Jimi.
What is Jimi doing in Mandy’s bedroom, half naked, while she is asleep in bed?
A moan came from the bed, Mandy was stirring. She turned over in her sleep and called out, ‘Baby, are you back?’ Her voice was muffled, sleepy.
Jimi didn’t reply.
She rolled over again, nestling into her duvet, and purred something indistinguishable in the other direction.
I froze again, afraid to move a muscle, too scared to breathe.
Did Mandy just call Jimi ‘baby’? This wasn’t the way she normally referred to him. A panic set in. I knew I had to get out of here. Fast.
If I have just uncovered what I think I’ve uncovered, there is no question that I am done for.
But getting out was not so easy. In one direction was the bathroom, in the other was a sleeping Mandy, and I was metres away from the safety of the bedroom door through which I had entered.
Any chance of finding the earrings in the darkness, with two people to avoid, was feeling more and more hopeless.
I was berating myself for thinking this was a good idea in the first place.
Jimi hadn’t moved since Mandy called out.
He definitely wasn’t hurrying to get back into bed with her.
When the room fell quiet for a few seconds, he began moving again, very slowly.
I watched from my position on the floor as he carefully closed the en suite door and padded across the carpet.
A floorboard creaked again, more loudly.
The hairs on my arms stood on end. Jimi froze like a statue.
The sound made Mandy jerk awake, she appeared to sit up briefly.
‘Is it the morning?’ she muttered drowsily.
Jimi stealthily, silently, dropped down to the floor, like a ninja. Now he was just a few feet away from me, around the other side of the bed. It seemed that Jimi didn’t want Mandy to know he was in her room either. I could hear him breathing, he was so close. Shit. Now what am I going to do?
We both waited. As I listened to his every breath, I tried to hold the air within my lungs so he wouldn’t notice me. He began moving again. I stayed still, aware that I didn’t want to give Jimi the shock of his life, only to have him scream and wake Mandy for sure. How would we explain that ?
I tucked myself in close to the bed, just as Jimi’s face appeared around the corner. Suddenly we were nose to nose. His eyes widened as he took me in. ‘Fuck! Amber!’ he whispered.
‘Shhh!’ I raised my finger to my lips.
‘What are you doing in here?’ he breathed.
‘What are you doing here?’ I spoke, no louder than a whisper.
Both of us were equally stunned, yet united in our determination not to wake up Mandy.
‘Are you having an affair?’ I whispered, accusatorily, aghast at the words coming out of my mouth.
‘Of course not!’ he said, as if I had asked the most ridiculous question in the world. He glanced over his shoulder, as we both heard Mandy sigh. ‘Let’s talk about this outside!’
In a kind of haphazard bear crawl race, we both made it back to the door and into the hallway in seconds. I very quietly closed the bedroom door behind us. Hearts beating fast, all we could do was pray she hadn’t heard anything.
‘Amber, what the actual fuck?’ Jimi was looking at me as if I had done something wrong, when he was the one in his underpants in Mandy’s bathroom.
How is he going to explain himself? I felt incredulous that he could be looking so accusingly at me.
‘I was getting something!’ I said, trying to get my breath back. ‘Some earrings as it happens. Expensive diamond ones which need returning. And which I didn’t manage to get – thanks to you. Anyway, I’m not the one who was practically naked in her bathroom!’
Jimi paused for a moment. He looked around to check we weren’t being overheard. We both knew by now that Philippa had a way of covertly appearing whenever an important conversation was taking place.
‘Come with me.’
We went into his bedroom, which was at the end of the same corridor as Mandy’s.
It was a lot smaller though, just a double bed, with a wardrobe and a chest of drawers.
A rack of dumbbells stood in a corner and an exercise mat was laid out on the floor.
It smelt vaguely of ripe exercise clothes and his zesty aftershave.
‘I know how this looks,’ Jimi continued. ‘But I was just going to bed when I had a horrible realisation. I didn’t even have a chance to get dressed – I guessed I’d be in and out of there quickly, so I took my chance.’ He stopped.
‘Took your chance to do what?’ I asked.
‘Drugs,’ he said. My eyes widened. ‘Magic mushrooms, to be precise. Not a huge amount, but enough.’
‘What do you mean enough?’ I asked fearfully.
‘I gave Mandy some mushroom powder to make into a tea, to keep her anxiety at bay; help with focus. She needed that ahead of the shoot. I’ve been using it for years – you simply drink it – sometimes I pimp it up with a load of nutrients, it’s legal and really helpful. But—’
‘But?’
‘But I gave her the wrong kind – a friend had sent me some of the illegal stuff from California, pure powder. You can get it on the black market and it’s legal in some states of America.
I use it occasionally for a bit of fun when I’m going out.
Anyway, I accidentally gave Mandy the wrong stuff this morning and I needed to get it out of her bathroom before she took anymore. ’
My jaw fell open as Jimi was telling me this. ‘So Mandy was basically microdosing magic mushrooms on the shoot today?’ I asked.
Jimi nodded remorsefully.
I shook my head. ‘Shit, that’s bad.’
‘I know it’s fucking bad! Why do you think I was trying to remove all the evidence?
Anyway, it’s fine, she’s breathing, she was already back to her old snappy self at dinner, and she will have slept if off by now anyway, she’s been out since seven o’clock.
I got the rest from the bathroom, and judging by what’s left, she didn’t take too much. ’
‘What effect will it have had on her?’ I asked gravely, having never taken magic mushrooms before.
‘Nothing major, just the giggling earlier, the sensory reaction to her environment, like colours becoming much more vibrant, surfaces pleasing to touch, a greater appreciation of words and music. Psilocybin can help rewire the mind – opening it up to allow new thoughts and creativity. The trip only lasts a matter of hours.’
‘Oh great, so you’re telling me she was tripping when she decided to go along with my suggestions for the photoshoot?’ I said bashfully. ‘I thought she actually seemed to be listening.’
‘Hopefully it made her more willing to try something new,’ he offered.
‘It gave me a heart attack when I realised though. I didn’t want to risk her enjoying that feeling so much she’d reach for the rest. So now you can understand why I leapt out of bed and went to get it back. You’d have done the same.’
I believed Jimi. He looked panicked, and it seemed far too elaborate a story to have made up on the spot if he was covering up for having an affair with Mandy. Although the fact they had been out together early in the morning now occurred to me as slightly suspicious too.
‘You spend a lot of time together though – she confides in you, doesn’t she?’ I asked.
‘Listen, Mandy and Jose have got all sorts going on at the moment, as you may have realised.’
‘I know she’s wanting to get pregnant,’ I admitted.
‘It’s more than that – she’s obsessed with it. She even asked me if I would consider being a sperm donor for a baby. That’s where we were this morning, she had me meet a doctor friend she’s been talking to.’
He exhaled quietly through his mouth. ‘She doesn’t want Jose to know, it’s kind of … personal for him.’
‘Oh.’ I sighed.
‘There’s no way he can father a child naturally,’ he whispered sadly. ‘They’ve tried everything. And with her endometriosis, it’s been a difficult time.’
‘That’s really sad news,’ I said. ‘It must be hard for them to figure out what to do. She opened up to me a bit about this in the cryotherapy chamber yesterday.’
‘You too?’ He smirked. ‘That’s her favourite place to corner people. Mands first asked me about being a sperm donor in there. She knows it’s hard to say no when you’re trying to stop your blood from turning into a slushy.’
‘So, are you going to do it?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he replied firmly. ‘I couldn’t do that without wanting to be the legal father.
She was requesting I would hand over all my rights.
My name wouldn’t be on the birth certificates, no say in how the baby is brought up.
Seeing a baby every day and knowing you’re the dad but not being able to act it?
’ Tears glistened in his eyes. ‘I couldn’t do it. Even for my brother.’
I pondered this thought. ‘It’s a massive thing to ask of someone. I’m sure she understood.’
‘I think she has a few, how should I put it, irons in the fire when it comes to that. Anyway,’ he continued, ‘she took it well enough, and I gave her the mushroom powder soon after, to help take the edge off. Only it was the wrong one.’
I shook my head, realising that my mouth had dropped open in a very obvious way somewhere in the middle of this conversation.
‘It’s no wonder she was so open yesterday,’ Jimi continued. ‘The drugs helped. Are you okay, Amber?’ He turned to me.
I nodded, taking in what he had told me. As someone who had never touched drugs, it was a lot.
‘Don’t be freaked out, everyone’s doing them,’ Jimi reassured me. ‘From bored housewives, to high-flying founders of multimillion-dollar companies, to Silicon Valley executives – it’s the new alcohol or cocaine. But needless to say, this is all top secret.’
‘Does Blair know?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Just call me Fort Knox,’ I said, drawing an imaginary zipper across my lips.
‘Hopefully she’ll be sleeping it all off in there anyway,’ he added.
‘I kind of liked the relaxed version of Mandy – more than the one who lost it at dinner,’ I responded.
Jimi smiled. ‘Thank God it only made her more relaxed.’
‘Isn’t Mandy fiercely anti-drugs?’ I asked.
He nodded slowly. ‘And if Jose had been here, or if Julie-Ann had noticed anything, it could have been horrible. But it’s done, she doesn’t need to know about it. No one does. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ I said solemnly.
‘I only told you because you were about to jump to an even worse assumption.’
‘In return for keeping this secret, can you help me get the earrings back?’ I asked, remembering that it was now about twenty minutes until the security guard would be here. ‘If I don’t have them packaged up and ready to go, then I will be in big, big trouble.’
‘Fine,’ he said, ‘you go in, and I’ll put some clothes on and keep guard by the door. If she wakes, I’ll think of something. But after the day she’s had, I’m pretty sure we’re safe.’
We walked back towards Mandy’s bedroom door, and like trained marksmen, I opened it slightly and Jimi covered my back.
There was still a Mandy-shaped lump in the middle of the bed, so I skirted around the edge of the room, keeping within the shadows, with more certainty about where I was headed this time.
I used the torch on my iPhone to briefly light up the surface of her dressing table, and to my relief the earrings were right there, along with several other pieces of jewellery we had used on the shoot.
I scooped it all up carefully and placed the expensive, twinkling bundle of jewels into the roomy central pocket of my onesie, as Mandy continued to sleep like a baby.
Before leaving the room, I stole a look at her fast asleep.
Her big, glossy hair, still perfectly curled from the shoot, was splayed out on the pillow.
She looked so peaceful and beautiful, like a sleeping Grecian goddess.
I felt a sort-of fondness for her and everything she was going through.
I could forgive her mood swings earlier, now I knew the full backstory.
I hope your wish comes true, Mandy , I whispered internally.