MARCH 1998
MY HANDS WERE STILL SHAKING AS I TRIED PUNCHING the buttons of my phone.
Ruchi was finally on speed dial. But my fingers kept slipping even though they were dry.
The blood, as far as I was aware, was confined to my shoulder where it was slowly clotting.
The seatbelt had cut in, but not deep as it held me in place.
“Nadine,” she answered, relieved. “I’ve been trying to get through to you all night. Are you—”
“I did something stupid,” I said quickly, biting back tears.
And in that moment I realized how dependent I was on the people around me, like maybe becoming famous was not merely a means to get a great many people to care about me but a way to get a select few to look after me.
It did not bother me that they were paid.
That I was a job they likely complained about over drinks or dreamed of resigning.
I had simply raised myself, chased my own ambition, and wanted to finally rest, to leave my life and my success in the hands of others.
And right now I wanted Ruchi like a mother, to tell me everything would be alright.
“I totaled my car, just off Malibu Canyon, and I—”
“What? Are you okay?”
“No.”
And then I started crying.
It all crashed over me: Gilded and the way they’d used me turning it down in their promotion, Harper and that damn nomination—not to mention her smug brags at every opportunity, the night spent watching the ceremony alone until I’d broke and reached out for help, realizing as I did that there were shockingly few people to turn to and, also, potentially a concussion from my head slamming into the airbag.
“Nadine, Nadine,” Ruchi said sternly, in the sort of way that made clear how long she’d been repeating it. “I need you to answer my questions. Do you have a head injury?”
“Maybe. I hit the airbag pretty hard but … no, I don’t think so.”
“Are you under the influence?”
“No, god, this is so stupid,” I sniffed through my tears. “I was driving to Ivan’s in Malibu, and I got lost, and I was distracted because of … well …”
“Harper,” she said softly.
“Always.” I winced against my own words. “God, it’s always Harper. But yes, and I wasn’t as focused as I should be, and something ran across the road. I don’t even know what. But I swerved and crashed into the mountainside.”
She fell silent, and I knew she was thinking what I was: I was lucky it wasn’t worse, a road like that with steep drops on either side. And here I was, making this call.
“I’ve got a hospital dispatch on my landline. Private. Discreet. They’re sending an ambulance along that road—do you know where exactly you are?”
I worked with her, trying to pinpoint my location, trying to steer clear of the drivers who slowed to ask if I needed help, putting on an American accent and telling them it was all in hand and hoping in the dark they didn’t recognize me.
And then she added, “Nadine, this is going to get out. Especially with it happening the night of Harper’s Oscar win. If we’re lucky, it’ll be too late for the papers to get it for tomorrow. But we need to angle this into an accident.”
“It was an accident.”
“And that’s not a very good story. So that’s not the one they’re going to go with.”
———
We did not get lucky. Apparently one of those passersby had indeed recognized me.
The paparazzi got there before the ambulance did.
Before Ivan did, who Ruchi had called the moment she got off the phone with the hospital.
That is the power of the press—they transcend the limits of decent people, like physical distance.
They formed their huddle around me, flashing pictures like I was an animal in a zoo.
I tried laughing, even though I was still choked with tears. Even though my shirt was now damp with blood—though surely that was reminiscent of Adeline enough to be titillating on its own. “Just visiting a friend and swerved to avoid hitting a deer.”
None of them asked if I was okay, if I needed help, or if an ambulance was on its way. Just yelled about Harper—her win, the role itself, what it had done to me. And I stood there, bleeding and tear-stained, as their cacophony formed: “Harper, Harper, Harper.”
The ambulance arrived a few moments later and hauled me to the hospital where Ivan met me, running into the room with haste I’d never seen, his new girlfriend, Annabelle St. Clair, a step behind.
I’d been skeptical when Ivan had first told me—he was art, graft, and dedication, and the St. Clairs were an American dynasty, the sort of wealth that couldn’t even be traced to a singular source.
This was my first time meeting her—and I appreciated the way she pretended it was all normal.
She had a way of forcing calm into the world.
She almost made me feel like that evening hadn’t happened.
But it had.
And for all that year spent honing my rich, polished sheen—the veneer cracked beneath the headlines that followed.
None of them came outright and said it: that I was drunk, maybe high.
But they highlighted Harper’s Oscar win in the articles, let people think maybe it was retaliation.
Maybe I’d acted out, done it on purpose to get attention back on me.
Or maybe I’d had a full-scale breakdown, gone on a bender, and smashed my car into the side of the road.
It didn’t matter that the hospital tests proved I was sober.
They rifled through my garbage and printed pictures of the two bottles of Chateauneuf-du-Pape (a boozy afternoon for Lana’s birthday and frankly considered a warm-up back in Yorkshire).
They’d follow my car, pinning me in and yelling from the window so that all I could think of as I struggled to get back behind that wheel was the sudden swerve and its aftermath.
At a lunch with Sabine, the press began hounding me so badly she’d thrown her scarf over me and began shouting at them all to “leave the poor girl alone, you blasted leeches!”
“We need to lean toward pity,” Ruchi decided. “Don’t answer when they ask you, just look shaken and scared.”
“I am shaken and scared.”
“Perfect.”
Even Harper believed it. She phoned me a few days later. “I wanted to come around, but I don’t imagine that’s useful for either of us right now,” she said. “So, is it true you drove yourself into a mountain out of jealousy?”
“No,” I snapped “I was visiting a friend and got into an accident.”
“You’re not hurt, are you?”
“Don’t act like you fucking care.”
“I do care,” she said, but before I could wonder if she meant it, she added: “I’d really like to brag about my Oscar now, and I hardly want to be insensitive about it.”
———
The truth is I was furious. My strategy had always been to simply achieve more than Harper and rise above her drama. But she’d overtaken me, leaped straight ahead, and so … what? I couldn’t even sink to her level because she was floating above me now.
Harper had waltzed on in and won a goddamn Oscar with her first film role—which was exactly what she always did: made the things I’d worked so hard for look easy.
So if my strategy didn’t work, I’d take hers.
1998 was a string of snide comments, planted rumors, and deliberate provocations. We kept our ear to the ground—Lana and the other assistants, Ruchi and her press contacts, and Sabine starting every lunch with “Nadine, dear, I heard something delicious.”
But I was also facing the talons of the press like never before.
I’d begun sleeping with the composer from Leave a Light On, which would have been fine if I hadn’t also begun to develop feelings.
But the paparazzi set themselves up outside any hotel I stayed in and sometimes lingered in wait outside of my home.
If we went out, they followed. And when they suspected we were dating, they started writing the nastiest pieces about why “hot” women date “ugly” men and whether our relationship was further evidence of the psychotic break I was so apparently having.
So he ended things.
Then Ruchi phoned, said she’d found out who had been feeding the press information about the two of us: Sabine Verrier.
I shouldn’t be surprised. It was only ever supposed to be mutually beneficial, but after two years, I’d considered her a friend.
Or, at least, she was the closest I’d come to making one since Ivan.
If I was shutting people out before, I was firmly and decisively bolting the doors now.
No further relationships, just the occasional one-night stand (and then not even that, just my own wandering fingers and a very good showerhead).
No friendships—just alliances. No more snippets of myself revealed through the facade, instead the performance was so solidified even I wasn’t sure who I was behind it anymore.
And with nothing else to focus on, I had Harper.
My highlights of that year were minimal.
In an interview on MTV, Harper called me two-faced.
Amos was delighted. The Met Gala theme that year was cubism.
Few went as all out for the themes back then—but we did.
A split look, asymmetrical and blown out of proportion.
The dress was exceptional—not merely in its design but its construction.
Amos had to build a frame to keep it from shifting when one side was so much heavier.
My makeup and hair embraced eccentricity too.
So there I was, half art, half costume, wholly divine. Two-faced, with my two different looks.
We made history that night. Photographers turned away from Hollywood greats to take pictures of me. It even landed me a whole shoot with Vogue, inspired by the look.
My other highlight was, of course, the premiere of Maldon.
It was wonderful. The adoring fans, my heartfelt reunion with Sasha (though even she was kept firmly at a distance, only ever finding her in a crowd full of people and pivoting conversation whenever it veered personal).
We watched the film for the first time in the theater, and I got chills at how truly brilliant it all was.
It was a movie about war that drilled into futility, into human hope and love and tenderness.
I didn’t think I could be happier than when I was sitting, watching it unfurl before me.
I could. And I didn’t have to wait long to realize to what heights my happiness could peak.
And just how far from it I could fall.