Chapter Five Netta
Chapter Five
NETTA
It wasn’t until Wednesday evening that Netta was home alone again, and the notebook hiding under the floorboards had been burning a hole in her brain the entire time; she’d been dying to pull it out and investigate.
Now, with the house finally empty and quiet—Pete at someone-from-work’s birthday drinks—she lifted the notebook from its hiding place for a second time, brushing a new film of dust from the cover.
She took the notebook to her bed and sat cross-legged on the doona.
DO NOT READ was emblazoned across the front, partially obscured by a length of red twine wrapped around the cover to keep it closed.
To keep it private. It wasn’t Pete’s handwriting, so she was sure it wasn’t his, and it looked far too old to belong to either of his kids.
It was probably nothing, she realised. She’d built the notebook up in her head since Saturday and was about to have her bubble unceremoniously popped.
Still, she set it down in front of her with a thrill of about-to-be-satisfied curiosity, her fingers suspended in a twitchy hover above the cover, held back only by her overachieving guilty conscience.
Reading someone’s journal was the ultimate invasion of privacy, and Netta knew all too well how it felt to have one’s privacy invaded.
But the book looked ancient. There was a statute of limitations on these things, wasn’t there?
She shoved her hands between her thighs and the bed and bounced her knees up and down.
‘Ah, what could it hurt?’ she said, releasing a breath and her hands. Quickly, before her conscience could pull rank, she flipped the cover open to read the inscription.
This journal belongs to Morrison Maplestone, 1994.
‘Surely not.’
Netta ran her fingers over the scratchy handwriting.
Morrison Maplestone wasn’t exactly a common name, and the Morrison Maplestone was famous.
Like, really famous. She leaned over to grab her phone from the bedside table and typed the name into Google.
Web pages, articles and photos flooded the screen.
She clicked on the Wikipedia link. The page generously informed her that Morrison ‘Mo’ Maplestone was forty-one and while he was Australian, he’d called England home since his early twenties.
Netta did a quick calculation. If he was forty-one now, he would’ve been eleven in 1994.
If it really was his diary, it meant it wasn’t much of a stretch to assume he’d once lived in Pete’s house.
Holy. Shit.
Netta closed the book and pushed it out of reach, her curiosity still outmatched by her integrity.
Just. She went back to the Wiki page to see if it held any clues about where he’d spent his childhood, but it focused on his music career and speculations about his private life, which, much to the media’s dismay, he’d been successful in keeping quiet for as long as he’d been famous.
He’d never had a public relationship and despite being notorious for being seen with models, the only person he’d ever taken as his date to an award ceremony was his younger brother.
This, of course, had only fuelled his unholy sex appeal, because who doesn’t love a mysterious, tattooed singer who’s also a devoted big brother and writes lyrics that simultaneously tear your heart out and rip your knickers off?
Netta picked up the book and cradled it in her hands, turning it over a few times.
She was, admittedly, tempted. Very. Surely it was only the scribbles of a little boy, nothing that would need to be secret now, thirty years later, when he was objectively one of the most famous people in the world.
He’d dropped off the radar a bit lately though, Netta noted, tapping the book on the doona.
There hadn’t been any new Morrison Maplestone songs flogged to death on commercial radio for a couple of years at least. Still, this little book could potentially reveal personal information about him—a commodity he’d always kept in very short supply.
And that probably meant it would be worth a fortune.
Not that she would ever—No. She would never.
Netta released a captive breath and rubbed her palm over the cover.
Her watch caught her eye—she was due at Freya’s house soon for wing-woman duty.
She tightly rewound the twine, scooched off the bed and went to the wardrobe, stashing the book behind some jumpers, safely hidden until she figured out what to do with it.
***
‘I’m sorry, what now?’ Freya’s eyes were saucers. ‘Can you repeat that, please? Because it sounded like you just said you’d found Morrison Maplestone’s diary hidden under a fucking floorboard in your house.’
‘You heard right,’ said Netta.
‘Oh. My. God,’ exhaled Freya, leaning back heavily in her chair.
‘It has to be his, right? I mean, what are the chances of there being two Morrison Maplestones?’
‘Slim to none, I’d say,’ said Freya. ‘What did old Petey boy have to say about it?’
Netta paused. ‘I haven’t told him yet,’ she said. ‘I only just found out whose it was before I came here, and he was out.’
Freya pushed her empty bowl away, her eyes lit with excitement. ‘Did you read it? Please tell me you read it.’
Netta’s silence was punctuated by the crackle of the baby monitor and the steady drip of the kitchen tap. She shook her head.
‘Are you kidding me?’ Freya hissed. ‘Why not?’
‘Because it said “do not read” in big letters on the front! I just felt like it’d be a shitty thing to do.’
‘Netta, he’s a grown man now. Whatever he didn’t want anyone to read about when he was a kid would be a weak trickle of piss in the ocean compared to what he gets up to these days. He’s not going to care. He’s Morrison Maplestone!’
‘Exactly! Morrison Maplestone. The guy nobody knows anything about. He’s not even on social media! And you’ve seen how much of a grumpy bastard he can be in interviews. I don’t think he’s the sort of guy who’d take having his diary read lightly.’
‘It’s not like you’d have to tell him you’d read it,’ said Freya. ‘There’s also a pretty major ker-ching factor to consider here. Do you have any idea how much you could sell that thing for? It’d be worth a mint!’
Netta fixed her friend with a weary expression. ‘Freya, I’m not going to sell a kid’s private diary. That would be pretty low.’
‘What are you going to do with it then?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t worked that out yet. I guess I should try to give it back somehow?’
A smile crept across Freya’s face. ‘I could try and get the details of his manager.’
Netta leaned back in her chair and surveyed her friend over the table full of the kids’ stuff they hadn’t had the energy to clear away once they’d finally gotten them all to sleep. ‘Really? You in with the A-list now, are you?’
‘Ha ha.’ Freya straightened her pasta sauce–stained top over her now forever-rounded belly. ‘I may not look like someone with connections these days, but I know people who know people, if you get what I’m saying,’ she said, raising her eyebrows.
‘Who?’
‘Remember that guy I dated just before I met Matt?’
Netta wrinkled her nose. ‘The sound engineer with the tattoo on his head?’
‘Yeah, Wes. Turns out he’s working with some pretty big bands these days,’ said Freya. ‘I could ask him if he knows how we could find out.’
‘You sure you want to reconnect with that drip?’ said Netta. ‘Didn’t he wee all over your doormat when you broke up with him?’
‘Yeah, he did. But that was ten years ago. I’m sure he’s matured a bit by now.’
Netta’s eyebrows arched. ‘You’d hope.’
‘Should we see if we can find him on Facebook?’
Netta had seen that look on her friend’s face enough times to know that the train had already left the station and there was no way of stopping it.
Either Freya would do it now, while Netta was at least present to vet the message, or she would do it later—unsupervised—and that, Netta knew from experience, would be the less ideal of the two options.
‘Go on,’ she said.
Freya lunged for her phone and tapped Wes’s name into Facebook, turning the phone to show Netta.
‘Well, what do you know?’ said Netta, squinting at his profile picture. ‘The twit lives.’
Freya opened up a new message. ‘Okay, ready. What should I say?’
After numerous drafts, they settled on: Hi Wes, long time no speak. Just wondering if you know how I can get my hands on the name of Morrison Maplestone’s manager—long story.
Freya placed the phone on the table. ‘And now, we wait,’ she said gravely.
PING!
‘Or maybe we don’t!’ She swiped the phone back and rolled her eyes as she read the message. ‘He said we should try googling it, babe.’
‘So still a dickhead, then?’
‘Well, you know what Confucius said. Once a dickhead, always a dickhead.’ Within seconds, Freya triumphantly slid her phone across the table to Netta. ‘No need to thank me.’
‘Rhona van der Wilden,’ read Netta.
‘Her email address is there too. We could email her right now!’ Freya looked wildly hopeful. ‘Can we?’
‘No, not tonight. I need to think about it. To be honest, given my experience with celebrities, I kind of wish I’d never found the diary in the first place. I don’t want to dip even the tip of a toenail back into that world again.’
Freya’s gaze softened. ‘Not celebrities,’ she said. ‘Celebrity. Singular. You can’t tar them all with the same brush as Mitch. And anyway, that slug wasn’t an arsehole because he was a celebrity, Netta. He was an arsehole because he was an amoral waste of space.’
Mitch. Mitch Carlton. One-time actor, ex-host of talent show Britain’s Brightest Star, and a household name in the UK.
Years ago, he’d also been Netta’s boss when she’d lived in London.
Just the sound of his name was enough to make her skin prickle with shame.
The almost twenty years since she’d last seen him had done nothing to dampen his effect on her.
If anything, they’d magnified it into something that she had to wilfully keep buried to save herself from being consumed by the humiliation of it all.
The affair had been the biggest judgement fail of Netta’s life.
The tabloids had eaten it up and had made her life hell in the aftermath.
She’d paid for her mistake. Double. And then some.
She’d fled London knowing she could never return.
Netta unwound her arms from her body, releasing them from the protective posture they’d instinctively taken at the mention of Mitch.
‘Yeah, well … I think maybe I should head home now anyway.’ She pushed her chair out and stood.
‘It’s getting late and Pete wants to go out for breakfast before work tomorrow. ’
Netta gathered her handbag and keys from the crowded bench, silently berating herself for wondering why Pete was laying the nice-guy stuff on so thick lately.
He hadn’t even taken her out to celebrate their last anniversary so this just-because breakfast date felt distinctly out of character, and he’d been unusually attentive since the weekend.
But, Netta conceded, the days since the toilet sex had felt a bit off kilter, and he’d obviously sensed it too.
It was sweet of him to be trying to get things back on track.
‘Oh, I remember doing lovely things like that,’ said Freya wistfully, walking her out.
‘I suggest getting as much café avo on toast in as possible before you have kids, Netts. Last time we attempted it was about a year ago and never again, I swear. We felt so bad about what Kit did to that high chair.’
Netta hugged her friend as they reached the front door. ‘Hopefully I can trust Pete not to shit himself at the table.’
‘Please. I wish Pete would do something that interesting,’ said Freya, laughing. ‘He’s more likely to lodge a formal complaint that there wasn’t enough fibre in his bircher.’
Netta pressed her lips together and snorted. ‘Be nice, Frey.’
‘I am nice. And Pete’s nice too. He’s just also a boring old fart sometimes.
’ She winced when she saw Netta’s reaction.
‘I know he’s a good guy,’ she said, reaching out to squeeze her friend’s arm.
‘And he loves you, which means he’s also very clever and has impeccable taste.
I’m just still in the stink with him about making you leave Matt’s fortieth early. ’
‘Yeah, me too,’ Netta admitted. Matt was Freya’s husband, and his birthday party two years ago had been the first time Freya had had a kid-free weekend in forever.
She and Netta had planned to have a Very Big Night to celebrate, but Pete had dragged Netta home just as the second round of shots had come out.
‘Anyway, bygones,’ said Freya, holding the door open. ‘Let me know when you email Rhona. I need the excitement.’
Netta settled into the silence of her car, clicked her seatbelt on and waved as Freya closed the door to her joyous, exhausting life.
Freya wasn’t wrong. Pete could be a bit beige at times.
But Netta knew him on a level Freya didn’t.
He could also be funny and charming. He took charge when Netta wanted him to.
He was the one who could tell the waiter there was a hair in her pasta or the mechanic that he was taking the piss with his fees.
He was a fixer. A safe harbour. An anchor when things were rough and, hopefully, the father of her future baby.
A baby that, fingers crossed, might already be growing inside her.
She started the engine and idled for a moment while she rummaged around in her handbag to double check she hadn’t left her phone on Freya’s kitchen bench.
Finding it, she pulled it out and considered her options.
It had felt good to tell Freya about the diary, but the initial excitement of finding it had morphed into an unsettling feeling in the pit of her stomach.
The thought of opening the door to the celebrity world again made Netta genuinely nauseous.
The Mitch thing had put her off that whole scene for life, but at the same time, none of that was Morrison Maplestone’s fault.
She would email Rhona van der Wilden, post the notebook back, and never think about it again.
She unlocked her phone, tapped into Gmail and began to type.