FEBRUARY 2003
I FLEW BACK TO LA THE EVENING AFTER THE OSCAR nominations landed. I twitched with every step through the airport, convinced someone was going to tackle me to the ground and keep me from leaving. When I landed, I jumped in a cab straight to Ivan’s.
“Nadine? What are you—”
“I’m worried I’m going to relapse.”
He didn’t even hesitate. “The spare room is all yours.”
Ivan and Annabelle’s life of domestic bliss was so far from what I left behind—pancakes on the deck, reading side-by-side in the evening and wrapped up in pressed-linen sheets by ten.
But it didn’t make me relax—just made me angsty.
Like they didn’t know just what sort of monster lurked in their home. Dreadbase II live in Malibu.
Besides, my life hurriedly resumed. We were, after all, in the middle of awards season, and the Oscar nomination had delivered a barrage of press conferences, fittings, parties, and tours. And it was that—the business, the distraction—that made me feel I might survive it all.
I followed Harper more obsessively than I ever had before, scouring every magazine and newspaper for any mention of her and even getting the British ones shipped over.
Her and Joel were arguing. She had been spotted crying with Kayla Alexander at lunch in Henley. She had gone to get coffee without even putting makeup on (a true cry for help).
But everything felt so distant, my fear slowly abating. So after a few days, I moved back home, half-convinced I might be able to leave it all behind and discard of our criminality like a poor film script or a turned-down part.
But Harper was the crime incarnate, and she came to my door only days later.
She had to wait for my front gate to open and allow her through, but she still managed to screech to a halt in my drive. Then she started screaming.
“You fucking bitch! You awful, meddling whore,” and the like.
I rushed to the door, glancing out at the singular photographer snapping away through my slowly closing gates.
“Harper,” I said calmly. “Do come in, let’s not cause a scene.”
She stormed through and slowed to her regular strut past the view of the camera lens. Her foundation was thicker than normal, covering the scratch that Joel had made. Calmly, she placed the leather handbag she carried on the table. “Your money, as requested.”
“Thank you.”
She turned to me then, and we faced each other, and I did not know what to say. For days I had wanted her, like my guilt and grief might be lessened by a reflection of it in her. But now that she was here it all felt too enormous to begin to get to.
“All according to the plan?” I finally asked.
She nodded quickly. “Had to delay the supposed argument given it didn’t hit headlines until the following day.
Leaked a story about it to the papers too, pretended to be a dog walker who’d passed my house and overheard.
Otherwise yes. Everything is cinders, including my marriage.
I’m here because my husband abandoned me without even leaving a note. What a bastard.”
“Right.”
She was doing that thing again, where she rambled when nervous. Was it me or the situation? Or both? I was probably as synonymous to her of the events of that evening as she was to me.
“And … you?” she asked.
“All fine.”
She smiled. Of course she did. “You’re probably loving it, lording this over me.”
“Sure.”
“Go on, what is it you want? Some last-minute win before I snatch an Oscar from you? Shall I get on my knees and thank you profusely?”
I’d toyed with the idea a number of times, but right now it made my stomach churn. The last thing I needed was her humiliation.
“No. I’m not that sadistic.”
She quirked a brow. “Well, someone had to push you into going to rehab. I didn’t imagine a gentle word or a scolding get your shit together from me would have been persuasive.
I tried bringing you food and getting your team’s attention, but in the end I had to rile you into getting help. It worked didn’t it?”
I scoffed—but something in my chest felt lighter at the turn. This was familiar ground. This bickering was a life raft to cling to. “You want me to believe you had my best interests at heart?”
“No, darling, mine. I saw you slipping away from me and, well, what am I without you?”
My jaw tensed. I couldn’t do this. Not again. “Didn’t stop you leaking the pictures,” I said, refusing to cave to her flippancy.
“Well, if I didn’t you wouldn’t have taken any of my threats seriously, would you? Besides, you’re the one who escalated all this.”
“Excuse me?”
“I was petty, surface level. You wanted guts.”
I took a strangled breath. “I’m not doing this with you.”
“No? Okay then. I should go.”
No. I didn’t want her to go. I wanted to look at her and see the things I was ignoring. She looked gaunt, her hair limp. Her jeans were so low I could make out the V of her hips, her top ripped and tied into a knot above her navel like it might distract from how tired she looked.
“Are you sleeping?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “But I suppose that’s to be expected.”
She turned toward the door.
“I didn’t,” I called, then cursed myself, because it sounded so damn desperate. I swallowed and started again at a more even volume. “I didn’t sleep with Caleb.”
She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t keep walking either.
“Just … so you know.”
She looked over her shoulder with that statement Harper hair toss and I thought, We have hope. We can make it through this.
We will be ourselves again.
“Why would I care?” she asked.
Because it didn’t really sound like it was Caleb you were upset about when I proposed that I might. Because maybe it mattered to you, who I slept with. Who I didn’t. And that mattered enough to me not to do it, so I—
Harper stepped out the door.
I listened as her car sounded on the drive. I couldn’t move again until all sound of her, all trace, had vanished.
Joel Ingram Reportedly Leaves Wife Harper Moore After Fight over Her Rivalry with Nadine Heywood
Joel Ingram “cheated on wife throughout their marriage” as More Women Come Forward Claiming to Have Had Relations with the England Soccer Player
“He told me I was the only one,” Says Model Kasia Bartosz, Who Names Joel Ingram as the Father of Her Unborn Baby
“He abandoned us both and we refuse to tear each other apart when the full fault lies with Joel,” Says Harper Moore, as She and Kasia Bartosz Are Seen Dining Together on the Hollywood Strip
“You’re friends with her now?” I asked when I saw Harper next. I’d driven to her house—she was in the Palisades now, only fifteen minutes from me. It was reassuringly close, especially now. The only time her hands ceased wringing together was when they were reaching for her glass of wine.
There were two ways this would proceed: Through, with time and years to put everything to rest. And out: to go to the police and give ourselves up.
I knew I couldn’t do anything about it if Harper cracked and chose the latter, but our proximity to each other gave me the illusion that I could.
Like I might get here in time to press the phone hook before she could finish dialing.
She was in a gated community, which saved me having to perform some dramatic monologue of seething hate before I could enter. For all anyone knew, I was here to visit one of the other celebrities behind its walls.
“She contacted me demanding to know where he was and what we’d said,” Harper said.
“I claimed I didn’t have a clue who she was.
Then all the other girls started to come forward, I phoned her, and we went from there.
I’m going to pay her the child support she won’t get from Joel, she’ll get more of a publicity boost being friends with me than as one of Joel’s many flings, and making him look like an asshole validates the story that he skipped out on us all and ran away. ”
I nodded—it was as good an idea as any.
“The tide’s going to turn,” Harper said, tapping nervously at her glass.
“Yes, I think it probably is.”
She took a shaky breath. “Do you want scotch?”
“Scotch?” I blinked at her.
She nodded and climbed to her feet. “Joel had a collection. Would never let me touch it. But …”
“Yes,” I said. “Let’s crack that open.”
Harper’s home was tiered, and she led me up to the very top, where a singular room sat, the entire wall glass that could be pushed aside to access the terrace perched on the roof of the floor below.
I tried not to look at what was obviously her bedroom—the messy sheets, the clothes strewn about, the jar of sleeping pills on the side. It was too intimate a glimpse of her.
But we went onto the terrace, and we sat beside each other on the huge daybed, the artificial fire pit burning, and watched the gently crashing ocean waves, the stars shining dimly above.
The scotch was oaky and smooth. You had to drink it slowly. You had to savor every last drop.
“Do you ever wonder what happened to everyone else from CADS?” Harper asked.
I shrugged. “I only really spoke to Ivan—and I was just staying with him. I didn’t want to be alone after … everything.”
“No,” she said quietly. “Me neither.”
I knew what she really meant—because I’d still felt alone at Ivan’s. It was here that I didn’t. With someone who understood.
(Whatever else I’d ever felt in Harper’s presence, it was always, inarguably understood. She had dissected me well enough to know the bones of me.)
“He’s getting married next year.”
“Well, best of luck to him,” she laughed, pouring more scotch into our glasses.
“Ruben Porter and Eric Mwangi are still on the circuit. Mwangi’s huge on the West End and Porter’s in anything the BBC throw at him.”
“I heard Flora McCarthy is a Playboy bunny now.”
It took me a moment before I remembered the quiet girl in our Blood Wedding ensemble. “No!” I gasped.
So we reminisced and we drank and we watched the waves roll in the dark.
Harper leaned back against the headrest, so close I could smell the scotch on her. I must have smelled the same. We had to be indistinguishable.