Dark Angel 03: Broken Dream (13 page)

‘Yeah, I heard about the Jack Kane connection.’ Holly admitted to teeth-gnashing envy. ‘What I’d give to have been there,’ she sighed.

‘It was out of this world,’ Macy admitted. Next to larger-than-life Holly on the sofa, she seemed smaller and quieter. She’d taken out her nose and eyebrow studs and some of her ear decoration too, though her cropped red hair still sang loud. ‘I’ve loved Jack ever since I was a little kid, went to all his movies, had posters on my wall. He’s been my idol.’

I noticed she missed out the part about the world’s top movie star falling down drunk at the wrap party and all the other smutty details.

‘And now you’re there in the heart of things, mixing with the slebs.’ Sighing extravagantly, Holly sprang up and grabbed me with both hands. She swung me on to my feet then backed me up against the tall Christmas tree by the window. ‘You totally have to get Jack’s autograph for me, and Natalia Linton’s too. When do you go to Mayfield?’

‘Tonight. We’re all invited – me, Macy and Orlando.’ The additional invite had come through from Charlie on Macy’s phone;
Get O to drive u and T to Mayfield for 6pm
, he’d texted early this morning.

‘Cool. So any one of you can get me the autographs, OK. Or hey, how about this?’ Holly’s eyes lit up with what she thought was a great idea. ‘What do you say Grace and I tag along too? Then I can meet Jack in person and get him to sign his name in person.’

‘No way.’ Macy was grinning but her negative carried a lot of force. ‘I don’t think that would work.’

‘It wouldn’t,’ I agreed. ‘Security is tight, especially around the kids.’

Stepping back, Holly brushed against the silver baubles on the tree. ‘And you, Tania – you’re telling me this and you’re my best buddy,’ she accused, hanging her head in OTT disappointment.

‘So – Orlando?’ Grace stepped in with a change of topic. She dragged my attention where I still didn’t want it to go.

‘We’re not good,’ I admitted. ‘But I’m hoping now we’re back home things will get better.’ The words were bland but the feelings behind them were chaotic. I was pained by the memory of how we’d driven home from the airport in silence, how he’d landed the briefest of cold kisses on my cheek when he dropped me and Macy off on Becker Hill. Then when I’d called him this morning his phone had gone on to voicemail. All of these things settled heavily on me and seemed to bruise my heart.

I remembered how I’d lain awake all night, reliving recent days with the name Gwen constantly on my lips and the picture of the two of them together at the party at the forefront of my mind – her heart-shaped face and golden curls, his smitten, lovelorn look. ‘How can he do this to me?’ I’d asked myself from that lonely place.

And I’d got out of bed and gone to the window, searched for hope among the stars.

‘How can it be not good between you and Orlando?’ Holly gasped. ‘You two have been so through much together – you’re rock solid.’

‘I guess that’s the problem. Orlando thinks I’ve dragged him through too many dramas and crises. Now he wants us to be – how did he put it? – “ordinary”.’

‘But you don’t bring it on deliberately – it’s the way your brain is wired.’ Gentle Grace put my case. ‘You can’t help being psychic. Orlando knows that.’

‘I thought he did. But in New York it was different.’

‘You had more … episodes?’ Afraid to mention the dark angel word, Grace hesitated and glanced in Macy’s direction.

‘It’s cool – Macy knows,’ I said. ‘She believes in messages from the spirit world.’

‘Totally,’ Macy confirmed. ‘I’m in contact with my mom, but my psychic ability is nothing like as highly developed as Tania’s. She obviously has a special gift. I’m jealous.’

‘So how was it different in New York?’ Holly followed the serious turn in the conversation, drawing me back to the sofa and sitting me down.

‘I can’t tell you exactly, but somehow Orlando wasn’t there for me.’

‘Right from the start – as soon as you got there?’ Grace asked.

‘No, in the beginning we were good.’ Starry-night good.

‘So when did it change?’

‘When we got separated in Central Park and I was mugged. It’s OK, I wasn’t injured,’ I said quickly as Holly and Grace gasped. ‘I didn’t even report it to the cops at first. But I had that feeling – you know, the nightmare stuff where everything shifts and I’m in the middle of something really weird? And at first Orlando was – well, he was Orlando. He understood. He fixed things for me.’

‘Then next day the same guy stalked her in a car park.’ Macy cut in hurriedly. ‘This time I was there with her so I took her to the cops.’

‘Yet when I tried to talk to Orlando, he blocked me. He really didn’t want to know.’

‘That’s so not like him!’ Holly protested.

‘No, but that’s how it stayed for the rest of our time in the city.’ I faltered, then decided to come out with the whole truth. ‘It turns out, the stalker wasn’t who he seemed; he was sent from the dark side.’

Quickly my words took effect. Grace had been there, and so had Holly. They both had direct and terrifying experience of the dark angels’ power. ‘Did he hurt you? Are you OK?’ they asked breathlessly.

‘Physically, yeah. Emotionally, no; I’m a mess.’

‘So why is Orlando acting this way?’ Holly was up from her seat again and pacing the room. ‘He should be with you, taking care of you.’

‘He has other things on his mind.’

‘Gwen.’ Grace guessed from our recent exchange of texts.

‘No! I’m not hearing this right. Orlando can’t have left you to be with another girl.’ At first Holly refused to believe it. Then she dragged everything out of me – exactly who Gwen was and how she first got Orlando’s attention, every detail of the way she looked and acted. ‘And has anything, you know – actually happened?’ she asked at the end of the interrogation.

‘No.’ Macy jumped in before me.

All eyes turned to her, the girl with the blazing hair and thickly mascaraed lashes. ‘How come you know the answer?’ Holly asked.

Macy blushed and shifted awkwardly in her chair. ‘Charlie told me,’ she mumbled. ‘I talked with him earlier.’

‘Who’s Charlie? What did he say?’ Holly demanded.

Long story, Macy said, but it turned out Natalia had explained to Charlie the problem I was having with his sister, as she’d promised me she would. Charlie had talked to Gwen, told her to back off from Orlando. She’d sworn that nothing was going on between them. Charlie had said back off anyway if she wanted to keep her job – all this within the space of twenty-four hours.

‘But really, nothing happened between Gwen and Orlando,’ Macy insisted.

‘Are you sure?’ Grace pressed.

‘One hundred per cent. Grace swore on her life.’

‘Which makes me look totally pathetic and stupid,’ I mumbled after a long, uneasy pause. I hung my head, blocking out three concerned faces, glimpsing out of the corner of my eye the shimmering decorations on the tree and the tiny angel with silver gossamer wings perched precariously on the top.

‘Skiing is good in Mayfield,’ Dad told me over lunch.

Mom wasn’t there; she was in Beijing for three days – her last job before her Christmas break. It was only a couple of months since she’d been treated for blood clots in the brain, yet here she was back at work full-time, busy finding office premises for multinational companies.

‘Plenty snow,’ he said in his American–Romanian way – deep, deep voice, articles and prepositions pared back to the minimum.

‘Cool,’ I said, pushing my food around the plate.

‘So smile. Feel happy.’

‘We won’t be skiing,’ I pointed out. ‘We’ll only be visiting. Natalia has asked me to babysit Adam. Macy and I will get to edit the rushes.’

‘Big star friends. You see filming. All good.’

Standing up from the kitchen table, I told him I’d better look for Macy. ‘She went out for a walk, but that was over an hour ago.’

Dad looked up at me, fork in hand. ‘Cool hair,’ he commented.

‘You mean Macy? Yeah, cool.’ It was odd for Dad to focus on the superficial. Usually he’d go deeper than that, but with Macy it was hair.

‘Lonely since Mom died?’ He’d heard her story late last night – the cancer diagnosis, the failed treatments. Macy had given him the facts in a brisk, non-self-pitying way and he’d empathized, told her she was welcome to stay in Bitterroot for as long as she liked. ‘But lucky she has money,’ he added – still focused on the superficial, notice.

‘Yeah, if you can call it in any way lucky to have no dad and then lose your mom before you reach twenty.’

‘I hear you.’ Like me, Dad was stirring his food round his plate. ‘You have soft heart, Tania.’

‘You too.’ I squeezed his shoulder as I passed by, grabbed my jacket from its hook and headed off to find our guest.

Orlando picked up Macy and me at five p.m. and drove us to the Carlsbad Lodge in his dad’s grey truck. She sat up front with him; I was in the back. She chatted about the scenery. I stayed silent.

‘I can’t wait to see Charlie,’ she burbled. ‘Tomorrow he’s promised to show me the old silver mine and some of the other locations they’ve chosen for the siege scenes. Tonight he’ll take me to cocktail hour, introduce me to his buddies. It’s going to be a cool evening.’

It was a long hour’s drive, that’s all I can say.

Meanwhile, here’s my mini-travelogue about Mayfield: like its famous neighbour Aspen, the town grew up during the Colorado silver boom way back in the 1870s. Those tough old miners fought off the Ute Indians and stuck around right through the eighties and into the nineties. They set up a lumber company, built a bank, a theatre and a hospital. The lucky ones grew rich and constructed lavish houses in the foothills of the Carlsbad Range. But by 1895 it was all over. Boom and bust.

So what did they do with those big old buildings? Well, what did they have plenty of in Mayfield when the silver ran out? They had snow and not much else. What can you do with snow? You can ski on it. You can get through the entire twentieth century by attracting wealthy celebs who long for time out of the rat race – actors, silicone valley billionaires, supermodels, rock stars. They buy up the old lodges as second homes. You open up high-end restaurants and designer boutiques – Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton. You ooze class and keep out ordinary joes. That’s the whole story of Mayfield.

Oh, except that it sits on White Rapids Creek, a tributary of the Colorado River, and is surrounded by mountains and wilderness areas, and in December the temperature never rises above freezing point.

End of history lesson. End of sixty minutes listening to Macy chitchat about everything from the amazing colour of Charlie’s eyes (hazel but when you got close you saw that they were flecked with green) to the cost of Chanel perfumes at JFK duty-free.

Eventually the Carlsbad Lodge came in sight, sitting at the base of the mountain backed by a semicircle of tall redwoods. It was a four-storey building, probably started in silver mining days and extended in the same lodge style over the next hundred years. I counted at least twenty gables on the snow-covered roof, each one twinkling with strings of festive lights, while the path to the main entrance was lined with five-metre-high snow-laden trees, also twinkling and shimmering in the early evening dusk. Think Disney World at Christmas to get the impression I’m aiming for.

Orlando had hardly pulled into the main parking lot before Macy leaped out of the car and ran off to look for Charlie. I saw her disappear between the Christmas tree sentries through sliding glass doors dressed in a red micro skirt and black tights, with heeled ankle boots decorated with silver studs and chains that jingled as she ran.

‘Jeez.’ Orlando gave a sigh.

‘I know. She can be a little too much.’

‘You invited her,’ he reminded me, getting out of the car and slamming the door.

I followed him out of the truck, stopped him in the parking lot as he headed towards the hotel. I’d put up with a lot from him over the past few days, I realized. I’d fallen into serious self-doubt, but his last small piece of bad behaviour against Macy was what tipped me over the edge.

‘Orlando, what got into you?’ I demanded, my breath turning to mist in the sub-zero temperature.

‘Nothing.’ He tried to push by but I blocked his way.

‘Talk to me,’ I cried. ‘Why are you so mean to everyone? What happened?’

‘Nothing,’ he said again.

‘It’s like you’re a different person. You’re not the gentle, lovely, loyal guy I know, the one who told me he loved me and would always be with me, no matter what.’

It was as if I’d hit him, the way he recoiled. He took two steps back, his features contorted into a dark frown. Then he shook his head. ‘I’m the same,’ he muttered. ‘All I’m saying is, it’s time for us to move on.’

‘“Us”?’ I echoed. ‘Right now I’m starting to feel like there is no “us”. You’ve turned your back on me and walked away.’

‘No.’ He looked into my eyes and drew a deep breath.

‘Yes!’ At last I had his full attention. ‘You say you love me and you know I love you, will always love you no matter what. But if this really is too much for you,’ I said, waving my hand towards the night sky to show that I was talking about cosmic conflict, ‘I will understand. I won’t blame you if you’re honest with me and tell me that’s why you have to back off.’

My words sank in. I saw a mixture of emotions flicker across his beautiful face – guilt maybe, confusion for sure, and all kinds of pain. Tears filled his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured, reaching out and taking my hand.

‘No, don’t be. It was always going to reach the point where it was too much to expect – that you’d be there with me every time this nightmare came back. Don’t feel bad.’ Now I was crying. ‘I’ll try to get through this alone. But, Orlando, when it’s all over, when I finally get my dark angel to quit and I have my life back, I just hope and pray you’re still there waiting for me.’

He gazed at me for what felt like for ever, his eyes clouded and unsure. ‘You don’t know how sorry,’ he said. Then he let go of my hand and, without once looking back, he strode across the parking lot into the hotel.

The first thing Natalia did when I visited her in her premier suite was to show me a video of the kids skiing.