Adele Parks - Love Lies

‘This isn’t a fucking joke, Scott.’ He’s a total guttersnipe when he’s under pressure. ‘Do you know how much bloody money is riding on this? Besides the cost of the wedding – a limitless, dazzling exhibition, a multi-million-pound trifle – there’s all the money we stand to lose if Wedding Album sinks. How could you have been so fucking stupid?’ Neither of us actually expects me to respond to that, so he just carries on. ‘Well, we’ll get her posh mate in. What’s her name?’

‘Lisa.’

‘Yeah, Lisa, she seems a bright girl, she’ll point out what side Fern’s bread is buttered. She’ll talk Fern into going ahead. She likes nice handbags. And Colleen and Saadi, they can have a word too. Do you think between them they might be able to persuade her to go through with the wedding?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t?’ Mark was grey before; now he’s so pale he’s practically transparent.

‘I think I have to go to her. I have to be honest.’

‘We are dependent on you being honest?’

‘It’s our only hope.’

‘Well, it’s like I said then. We’re fucked.’

70. Fern

I tell Ben to get out of my room. I don’t expect to sleep, but I need some time to think. My body is aching with tiredness and so, despite my squeamishness about lying on the scene of their treachery, I flop on to my bed. What to do? What to do?

Scott has the decency to look terrible when he turns up in my room. I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to see him. I can’t imagine a time when I gaped at his image on a calendar, let alone ogled him in the flesh. I wonder whether he’s going to tell me to leave the wedding dress in my closet because he’s coming out of his. After one sneaky glance at him, to check he looks genuinely remorseful, I stare at the ceiling. He sits down on the end of the bed, leans forward and lets his head fall, like a tonne weight, into his hands.

‘Have I a hope of getting back in your heart?’ he asks.

I think about what he’s just said. It sounds oddly familiar and I can’t help but worry whether it’s a lyric from one of his songs, or, worse – someone else’s song. I don’t answer. He moves up the bed towards me. Gently he places his arms around me and I’m so in need of comfort that I allow myself to sink into his chest and start to cry. He rocks me backwards and forwards, patiently waiting for my tears to subside. He thinks it’s the least he can do

He whispers, ‘I can’t love you any more than I do right now.’

And that might be true. But it’s not the comfort he wants it to be.

He says he’s sorry. He says it over and over again. He says it so often his voice is hoarse. He hums his songs to me. He kisses my tears away as they fall down my cheek. He asks how he can make it up to me and in the end I start to feel bad about allowing him to shoulder all the blame for my sadness. He talks about his inadequacies and frailties; he reminds me that he warned me he was weak and stupid, he warned me weeks ago.

‘You didn’t tell me I was part of your plan to conquer America,’ I point out.

‘Don’t be like that. Don’t think of it like that. Don’t think of it,’ he pleads. ‘You understand. You understand me.’

‘Maybe,’ I mutter. And maybe I do. Maybe I understand how you can want something so, so much that you fail to notice the consequences it might have on the people around you. Because isn’t that what I did when I backed Adam into a corner with that damned ultimatum?

‘Don’t go, Fern, don’t leave me on my own,’ he begs.

‘You won’t be on your own, Scott, you’ll be with this ocean of people who wash up every morning. You’ll be with Ben,’ I point out.

‘Ben,’ he mutters. He rolls my friend’s name on his tongue like a delicious sweet. I glance up at Scott and I

Somehow we wiggle about and I find that he’s no longer holding me, I am holding him now. His head is resting on my lap and, as I stroke his hair, it’s easy to forget that he was unfaithful to me, on this very bed, just hours ago. It’s possible to overlook the fact that he’s a mega pop star who needs me to launch his career here in the States. It’s almost feasible to submerge all recollection of the fact that I too have been unfaithful tonight; I begged Adam to take me back. To take me.

I remember being out-of-this-world giddy and irreparably starstruck by Scottie Taylor when we first met, but now I see him for what he is. When he’s lying with his head on my thighs, all I see is a man. A man who is actually a bit boy-like. I try to remember everything we have talked about in the last six weeks. I remember how he described his ambitions and his addictions. He warned me. And I remember that he’s given me the ride of my life, although not quite the ride I was expecting – but at least he wanted me to hitch along. I remember moments when he trusted me, defended me and, right at the beginning, spent lots of time with me. True, we don’t play cards much now, but then I think I know all there is to know about hearts versus diamonds and clubs versus spades. On Santa Monica beach and at the premiere we had a blast.

I think maybe we might manage. There’s enough affection to see us through and although this isn’t exactly the fairytale ending I was hoping for, I could do worse than

‘It’s not exactly like I’ve been unfaithful,’ he points out carefully. ‘You and I haven’t actually had sex yet and tomorrow, after the wedding, we will and it’ll be like starting again.’

‘Ben thinks you are only marrying me as a PR stunt. Is that true?’

‘This is why I like you, Fern. Other women wouldn’t care. They’d take me any old way,’ he replies, neatly sidestepping the issue.

I force the point by remaining silent; after what seems like a millennium he admits, ‘It’s part of the reason I wanted to marry you but I could have married anyone. You are a gorgeous girl from a flower shop, but I’m always going to be meeting gorgeous girls from flower shops or clothes shops or some sort of bloody shop – I chose you.’

It is some reassurance, yet we are not in the clear. ‘Ben thinks you’re gay.’

Scott sits up, puts his hand up and cups my chin. ‘Honestly, I don’t know whether I’m gay or straight.’

And I see it there with absolute certainty – he’s telling me the truth. We might not be one another’s first choice but, miles away from where we both started, we certainly seem like we’re all we’ve got. He wants a home, he wants a family, he says that hasn’t changed. Weeks ago, I gave up on Adam. I threw him away. I can’t risk making the same mistake twice.

An orange glow is squelching into my bedroom, the sun is getting up. It’s my wedding day. Or is it? I’m too

‘I don’t really care. I just want you to be faithful. Mine. Just mine,’ I admit.

‘Really?’ He looks surprised.

‘Forget the labels. Gay, or straight, or bi, or experimental.’ I offer a minute smile. ‘Or, if you must wear a label, wear one saying “Happy”.’

He smiles. It’s his slow, irresistibly sexy smile. ‘What’s yours say?’ he asks. ‘Doc?’

I sigh and tell myself I’m doing the right thing. ‘I don’t mind as long as it doesn’t say Dopey.’

71. Fern

Scott falls asleep on my lap. Before I know it my entire room is bathed in bright light and birds are singing outside my window. As I haven’t managed a wink of sleep, my eyes sting and my head is pounding, the birds’ gleeful twittering sounds like nails scraping down a blackboard. At six Scott slips away and at six thirty Colleen raps on my bedroom door and bursts in. My personal trainer is with her too.

‘You look terrible,’ says Colleen. ‘I don’t suppose you got any sleep last night – too excited, huh?’