Famous Once (Italian #1)

Chapter One 2025

Chapter One

But Astrid doesn’t want to talk to them.

Mum, I know you hate revisiting the past, but there’s a fascinating podcast about the retrospective and Dad’s career that I’d love to get your thoughts on. Will you have a listen?

Astrid finishes the tea wondering why everyone is so interested in the past. There was so much wildness, but so much that went wrong, so many lives lost too soon; what good will it do to revisit?

She takes the cup over to the sink to rinse before grabbing her car keys.

She’s off to the garden center to replace the basil in her kitchen, then to the supermarket.

It’s lucky, she thinks, as she climbs in the car and connects her iPhone to Bluetooth to listen to the podcast, that Zara has gotten in touch with her at all.

Their relationship has long been tempestuous, and Zara has withdrawn more and more.

Now, Astrid is lucky if she gets a text on Mother’s Day or her birthday.

It was different once. She and Callum were the perfect rock star couple, feted and adored, so completely in love with one another—they were the example of how it could be.

Their towheaded, adorable little girl, Zara, had finally brought her the joy and peace she had always dreamed of.

Astrid was, she felt, born to be a mother, and so it seemed.

Callum was the world-famous, adored rock star; she, his former-model wife, who had become the quintessential earth mother.

At Latchkey Farm, their sprawling country estate, she taught Zara how to grow their own vegetables, how to gather eggs from the chickens, how to dance in puddles in the rain.

It was idyllic, and she thought it would go on forever.

Until Lily Morehouse died, and the mysterious circumstances, which have remained a mystery to this day, changed everything.

Maybe, thinks Astrid, as she listens to the podcast hosts introduce themselves, this reaching out is a sign. Maybe it’s the beginning of healing. Maybe there is hope for her and Zara after all.

As Astrid listens, she finds herself surprised at how many memories—good memories—this podcast brings back.

The day she, Angie Best, and Britt Ekland gate-crashed Ascot and stole all the headlines.

The tours when Zara was little, portable, happy to dance on her chubby little legs on the side of the stage, delighting the audience.

Callum is interviewed, asked about the tapes. Oh, the famous tapes! Callum did nothing without recording it on the reel-to-reel he took everywhere. He recorded love letters to Astrid when he was on tour, telling her everything—his thoughts, his fears, his dreams.

Astrid hasn’t listened to them in a long time. It’s likely that she’s never listened to all of them. Callum sent so many, so often, his way, perhaps, of easing his guilt when he was on tour without his family, getting up to no good, and she would often just toss them into a box.

She hasn’t thought about the tapes in years. It brings back too much pain. She still has them, of course, but they are safely hidden upstairs, in a place no one can find them. She could never get rid of them—they contain all her history, all the stories.

The podcast host’s voice chips into her thoughts.

“Can we talk about Lily Morehouse? It’s the fortieth anniversary of her tragic drowning this year, and of course, you were there, with your wife, Astrid Lane.

Have you thought about that night much over the years, and can you tell us what you remember? ”

Callum lets out a laugh, a laugh so familiar to Astrid, listening in the car, she almost wants to weep.

“I can barely remember what day it is today, let alone what happened forty years ago, and Astrid was pregnant, and took to her bed for most of her pregnancy. I think she had what used to be called the vapors.” His voice becomes serious.

“But of course it was a terrible tragedy. A terrible loss.”

Astrid switches the podcast off. She can’t listen anymore, doesn’t want to dredge all this up.

She relishes finally having a private life, although it will never be fully private, not when she was once so beautiful, so famous, had such a public, glamorous life.

A life that everyone wanted, even when it was peppered by terrible things, tragedies, loss.

Now she is embarrassed when people recognize her, as still happens from time to time, as happened earlier today, at the luncheon party she was catering in Cobham.

A young married couple with adorable children threw a garden party, spending a shocking amount of money on the tent, the flowers, the entertainers.

And happily for Astrid, the catering. She wishes she’d charged them more.

She may be a great cook, but she was never a good businesswoman, always trusted the men in her life to take care of that side of things.

The party was lovely, much like the parties they threw when they were first married, when Zara was tiny. Friends gathered around on the floor cushions, a joint being passed around, happy, warm, lovely.

It changed after Lily Morehouse’s death, she remembers.

No one cared about anything anymore because the worst that could happen had already happened, and life didn’t feel precious—why not drown yourself in whatever you could find to numb the pain?

In their huge golden-stone stately home, lines of cocaine were laid out on the smoked-glass coffee tables, magic mushrooms and LSD freely available to all.

It wasn’t unusual for the nights to end with naked bodies writhing around the sunken conversation pit.

Nothing was unusual back then. Everything was experimental, and new. Sex, drugs, rock and roll.

Astrid shakes her head to dislodge the memories as she pulls up outside the garden center. An hour later, back home, she makes her way up the garden path.

Coming home to a dark, empty house never gets easier.

She will never not miss those early days: a house filled with love, the patter of Zara’s feet, friends coming and going, something delicious on the stove, a bottle of wine at the ready, Callum and a friend or eight sitting around strumming something on guitars.

Those were her happiest days. She felt settled, and safe.

The fame was fun, but better was the security of being loved by Callum Blake.

The flashbulbs and parties, the tours and television shows were exhilarating, but her favorite times were at home, when Zara was small, when instead of being a rock star’s wife she got to practice quiet domesticity.

She unloads the plants, the Tupperware left over from the party, and takes them into the pantry off the kitchen, where she stacks everything carefully on the shelves, slipping her shoes off and padding around in bare feet.

A hot bubble bath is called for tonight.

With candles. And a glass of her favorite rosé.

Upstairs the lamps fill the rooms with a warm glow, hiding the cracks and the stain in the ceiling from the leak three years ago.

A new roof is needed, but she can’t afford it.

The cottage may be tiny, but it is perfectly Astrid, perfectly beautiful, perfectly cozy.

The peach, retro, chintzy fabric on the curtains and slipper chair, the all-white bed piled high with down pillows, the simple Moroccan Beni rug on the floor.

Too feminine for a man. Perhaps, she muses occasionally, that’s why she hasn’t had a man for ten years.

But would she even want one now? Someone to tell her the fabric is too feminine, or the sofa too large, or Astrid too much?

Even when it was hard, even when she knew she was being diminished, Astrid reluctantly acknowledges how much she liked being married. It made her feel whole.

She lies back in the bubbles and sips the wine, feeling all the tension of the day release.

Given that the podcast started taking her down memory lane, it’s hard not to keep going, but this time she will only allow the good memories in.

She wipes her hands dry and uses her phone to turn on Callum Blake’s biggest song, “No Woman like You.” It was written for her, at the height of their love story, when she was convinced that there had never been, nor ever would be, a love like theirs.

Maybe I won’t have to take a sleeping pill tonight, she thinks. She has been thinking about weaning herself off them for years, but menopause seems to have entirely killed her ability to sleep, and she has not slept without a pill for decades.

Or maybe not tonight, she thinks. Maybe tomorrow I can give up the pills.

The daylight wakes Astrid up. Her body is aching, every muscle feeling the pain of the party yesterday, the hours on her feet, the coordination of all the servers, the having to be “on,” to be the one in charge.

It is more tiring having to be a caterer extraordinaire, rather than Astrid Lane, supermodel, although she recognizes that most of her business is still, stunningly, because of who she once was.

“My father is such a huge fan,” whispered the hostess yesterday. “Would you mind saying hello to him? He used to have your poster on his wall.” Astrid went over, was gracious as the father stammered, agreed to the obligatory selfie.

This morning she feels groggy, but this is not unusual. The pills make her sleep, but rarely make her feel rested. It takes at least an hour, with two strong cups of coffee, to make her feel vaguely normal at the start of every day.

She walks downstairs with the strangest sensation that something is off. It must be the pill. Or age. Something doesn’t feel quite right, but she cannot put a finger on it.

In the kitchen, Astrid pours steel-cut oats into a small saucepan and jiggles the knob on the stove.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Jiggling usually works eventually, as it does today.

She needs a new roof, and a new stove. And a new boiler, and probably a new car. None of which she can afford.

As the oats soak up the almond milk, she drinks her coffee and scrolls through her phone, first to emails—a gracious one from yesterday’s clients thanking her for a perfect day—then to the news and gossip websites.

“Callum Blake Finally Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,” shouts the headline.

He looks craggy and old, but also smug and satisfied.

Why shouldn’t he? she thinks bitterly. He ensured she got nothing when they split up, his manager, Victor Roth, having had him carefully manipulate her so she wouldn’t get a penny.

There is his latest wife, barely thirty, cradling their new baby.

Astrid feels sick as the coffee turns sour in her mouth.

She rarely thinks about Callum anymore. When she finally left him, she walked away with her clothes, her jewelry, and the tapes.

This retrospective, and all the attention around it, is stirring up too much, she thinks, deleting the podcast from her phone.

She doesn’t need to listen to the rest, still unsure as to whether or not it should be stirred up.

It might not be such a good day after all.