Exposure (12 page)

At first I thought the letter was a
response to one of the job applications I’d made. I was used to not hearing
anything if I’d been unsuccessful, so I hoped receiving something meant good
news.

Nathan had gone off that day to some
supermarket opening or other Paula had arranged for him up North. He’d kissed
me goodbye as if we hadn’t had any harsh words the night before. I hoped the
letter would be something positive I could tell him about when he got back. A
fresh start for us.

But the envelope held nothing of the sort.
It was a single sheet of paper with a disk. I recoiled in horror and shock as I
saw the words spelled out in cut out letters from newspapers and magazines like
the worse crime novel cliché.

THINK THE PICTURES WERE BAD? WATCH THE MOVIE.

My heart lurched. What did it mean, a
movie? I wanted to look at the disk, and I didn’t dare, terrified by what I
might see. What could be on it? Had we been filmed on our honeymoon on the
beach or deck area? Had someone been videoing us any one of those times we’d
risked being caught before Nathan was famous?

And I couldn’t prevent the most unwelcome
thought of all creeping into my brain and taking root. Was it Nathan with
someone else, one of those actresses he swore he didn’t find attractive? I
thought I knew him well enough that it wouldn’t be that but weren’t wives
always the last to know? And we hadn’t been getting along well lately. He was
always away. The seeds of doubt were there.

Did I dare call him? I looked at my watch.
Where would he be? I had no idea what his schedule was that day. I called him
anyway. I couldn’t rest and wait for him to call. I wanted to hear his
reaction, yet I feared it too.

“Someone sent a video.”

“A video?”

“With a note: ‘Think the pictures were bad,
watch the movie’.”

“Oh fuck, what’s on the video?”

“I haven’t dared look. Can you come home? I
can’t handle this on my own.”

“I’ll be back tomorrow, babes. Can you hang
in there until then? Fuck, this could be bad. I don’t need a porno of us out
there right now. I’m auditioning for that blockbuster kid’s movie next week.
Paula is going to go nuts.”

I ended the call pretty soon after that.
Was that all he cared about, his movies? It didn’t seem to matter to him how
this affected me. Part of me was glad he hadn’t seemed worried about my
reaction. At least, it couldn’t be anyone else on that video. Another part of
me was terrified it meant it was me on there.

I paced around the house unable to settle.
Finally, I gave in. I had to see what was on that disk. But the moment I
slotted it into my laptop, I regretted it.

The movie was grainy, like the picture in
the newspaper had been, but it was clear enough for anyone to make out what we
were doing, right from arriving in that clearing on our wedding night to the
naked kiss that had appeared in the papers. Everything was on it. Everything we
said. Everything we did. Including me taking Nathan in my mouth, the sounds we
made as I sucked him, and him entering me from behind, ramming into me and my pleasure
in it, my orgasm and his.

I ran from the computer and threw up in the
bathroom. This was so much worse than anything that had happened up to that
moment. I wiped my mouth and looked at myself in the mirror as if I could
hardly believe it was the same woman as the one in the video. I looked like a
mess, a pale ghost of who I had been on my wedding morning.

My thoughts turned to who made that disk
and what they would do with it. The note had a threatening edge. Whoever had
sent that meant to scare us.

I tried to contact Nathan again, but my
call went to voicemail. I didn’t know what to do. What could I do? Nothing. I
was powerless to do anything. Who hated us so much that they wanted to frighten
us like that? I had no clue. Nathan was so well-known it could be anyone. Or
maybe it was someone who hated me. Who? I looked at the disk again, fast
forwarding it to the end. Was the picture a frame from the video? I didn’t
think so, but I couldn’t be sure. The photo and video seemed to have been shot
from a different angle.

Nathan called me back.

“The video is of our wedding night. The
whole thing in the woods.”

“Fuck. That’s not going to go down well
with the movie producers next week. Goddamn it. You okay, Mel?”

“Not really. I feel sick all the time
thinking about it.”

“I’ll be home tomorrow. Try not to worry.”

I would have liked him to come straight
back home, but he had other fish to fry—more publicity arranged by Paula in
Yorkshire because he was in the north anyway. Couldn’t he have cancelled for
once because I needed him at home? He hadn’t even considered it for a moment.
His work was all consuming. I had no work to take my mind off anything.

I tortured myself with the video again.
Someone had watched as we did those things and filmed everything we did. It was
worse the second time I watched. I was begging Nathan to fuck me on there.
Actually begging for it. I threw up again. I tossed and turned the whole night
long. I didn’t think I slept a wink, and I couldn’t eat. I had no appetite at
all.

When Nathan arrived back, he took me in his
arms and held me a long time.

“Sorry I wasn’t here,” he said. “I don’t
have anything scheduled for the next couple of days though. You look like
death.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“I’d better watch that video.”

I couldn’t watch it again. I nuzzled into
Nathan on the couch as he played it on the laptop.

I could tell the worst bits from the sound
track and by the sharp intake of breath that came from him every now and then.

“Fuck!” he said. “Just as well that’s not
out there. Who do you think took it? If we can find out, we can make sure it
doesn’t get out.”

“I have no idea. Could it have been one of
the staff? Did anyone see us slip out?”

“I didn’t think so, but we’d had a lot of
champagne. Maybe we weren’t as careful as we thought we were being.”

The mail came then. And along with it
another envelope. My heart thudded. The message was in the same format as the
first—a scruffy sheet of lined paper and cut out letters.

DID YOU LIKE IT? I THINK IT DESERVES A WIDER AUDIENCE, DON’T YOU?

When the second note came, I was more
scared than ever. It was as if someone was playing with us. What were they
going to do with it? My blood ran cold. Maybe they intended to blackmail us.
Was that what this was all about?

“What are we going to do?” I said.

“Unless we know who it is I don’t think we
can do anything. I’ll call the police. They can investigate.”

“The police? I’m not sure I can stand that.
I can just imagine them all standing there, watching me, leering at the video.
Whoever made it hasn’t done anything with it yet. Have they even committed a
crime?”

“The privacy laws are a fucking mess here.
We’d have to consult a lawyer.”

“Oh God, the lawyer will see it too.”

The thing that made me more upset than
anything was that someone hated us enough to do this. Maybe it was someone who
didn’t even know us, someone who just made assumptions about who we were and
that we deserved this kind of treatment. I hoped it was that because it was
even worse if someone we knew hated us enough to do that.

No matter which way we looked at it,
someone who knew our address and had access to the wedding venue was involved.
And that pretty much counted out a whole slew of possibilities. Our address was
common knowledge in Oxford with all the paparazzi who had hung out outside our
door, but the wedding venue was more exclusive. We’d had security keeping
people out. There had been no breaches through that as far as we knew.

Despite his initial horror when he first
saw it, Nathan had become philosophical about the whole thing by the time we
went to bed. It was just like him to take things in his stride. I knew I wouldn’t
sleep.

“We should just let it go,” he said. “We
don’t look that bad in the video. We’re married. We’re not murdering children
or anything. It’s just sex, and we’re pretty hot in it.”

“You look pretty hot you mean.”

Everyone would just think he was up to his
usual playboy antics. It was me who looked like a whore in it. I could imagine
my mother’s face if this got out. She had been bad enough with the photographs
and that was nothing more than a kiss.

***

In the end, it turned out I was right to
worry, and we might as well have contacted the police and a lawyer, because
after that day, pretty much every lawyer and policeman in the country could watch
the whole thing for themselves whether they were involved in the case or not.

The video was leaked onto social media
early that morning while I was tossing and turning in the night, Nathan
sleeping like a baby at my side. Hashtag
#NathanWaite
was trending
everywhere by the time I dragged myself out of bed and Paula called.

That video was everywhere, suitably
censored on some websites, but even then there wasn’t much left to the
imagination. Those in the know, which was pretty much anyone who could use a
computer, could find the uncensored version with a few keystrokes.

The whole story and stills from the video,
with some parts blanked out, appeared in the
Globe
. My parents who had
never had a social media account in their lives would know all about it now.
Our haters must have sold the rights. The story had gone into print before the
video was posted.

A swarm of paparazzi surrounded the house
again. We couldn’t go out. I didn’t even dare go into the rooms that faced the
street once I saw they were there.

The mail arrived with another message.

YOU GOT WHAT YOU ASKED FOR

“How did I ask for this?” I asked Nathan.
“I never wanted to be famous.”

“I know, babes. I’m sorry. I don’t need
this kind of thing either.” He held me tight. “Are you sorry you married me?”

“No. Just sorry this happened.”

Paula and the publicity people spent hours
on the phone in conference with Nathan planning what to do about the leak,
working out how to make the most of it. They thought a children’s movie wasn’t
the best thing for Nathan under the circumstances, but I could see they were
going to milk the situation for all it was worth, putting him forward for more
adult-oriented movies. Invitations came in thick and fast for interviews. The
bad boy had been bad again. No one gave a thought to how it was for me.

Sometimes, Nathan gave me a reassuring hug
in between rushing off to appointments. The video had gone viral worldwide and
there was a premiere for the rom com in the States shortly before the UK one.
Nathan was in demand on both sides of the Atlantic while I was stuck at home.

“Do you want Emma to find you another dress
to wear for the premiere?” Nathan asked.

“There’s no point. There’s no way I can go
to that now. Last thing I need is all those cameras in my face and people
gawping at me like I was some animal at the zoo.”

***

The paparazzi stopped camping outside the
house after a few days, but it didn’t help me much.

Once, I ventured out to buy a few things
and get some fresh air, but the guy at the cash desk in the local store leered
at me as if I were a piece of fresh meat. I might have been wrong. Perhaps he
always looked at women that way, but I was pretty sure he knew who I was and
that he had seen the video on the web. He had seen me naked. He had seen me
sucking Nathan. He had seen Nathan taking me from behind. He had heard me
begging for it.

I picked up my groceries, blushing
furiously, fumbled with my purse and paid, but I could never go back. I didn’t
know where I could go in peace. It was ridiculous. It was as if my life was
over. If I was different, I would have laughed it off, but I couldn’t. I didn’t
have thick enough skin for that.

And I had to listen to my mother on the
phone again. It was difficult enough to call her, but I had to speak to her
sometime.

“If we were disappointed with you before
when the newspapers printed that photograph from your wedding, that has got
nothing on this.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t expect anyone would
be horrible enough to film us.”

“Well, you should have thought of that
before you behaved like a common slut then,” my mother said.

I gasped at that. She never used words like
that, not that I could remember.

“I think you’d better stay away for now. I
don’t know what we did to deserve a daughter who would do something like that.
But I’ve seen the reports, Melissa. What am I supposed to think? It’s there in
black and white. Your father is beside himself. We can’t go to the golf club
anymore. I can’t bear the snide comments.”

I kept saying sorry, but she continued with
her tirade about what this neighbor or that “friend” had said, until I put the
phone down and wept. I couldn’t take anymore of that.

And if that wasn’t enough, I had Nathan’s
mother Grace on the phone too. She turned out to be less judgmental than my own
mother, but it was still awkward talking to her under the circumstances.

“We just spoke to Nathan,” she said. “He
says you’re upset. It’s not what I’d wish for you two—that video out there—but
what’s done is done.”

“I’m terribly embarrassed about it. It made
everything so sordid.”

“I haven’t seen it. I didn’t want to watch
it, but I’ve heard the comments and seen a few reports. Try not to take too
much notice of what anyone says. If it didn’t feel wrong at the time, it’s none
of anyone else’s business. Let them fester in their own horrible minds. It will
blow over.”

“You know I lost my job. I’m worried I’ll
never get another.”

“They’ll forget. I hope they will anyway. I
had an aunt who ran away with a married man when I was a girl. It was a big
scandal back then. She never lived it down, and never came back home, but they
were happy I think. I never forgot my aunt. She was lovely, but I never saw her
again.”

“What happened?”

“Oh she died quite young, before I got a
chance to meet up with her again. I always regretted that.”

“I hope we haven’t ruined everything. Even
my mother isn’t speaking to me.”

“She’ll come around. Give her time. If she
didn’t love you, she wouldn’t care what you did.”

I knew there was a grain of truth in that
but in my mother’s case I often wondered if she cared more about what other
people thought than about me.

But the call with Grace did help a little.
Nathan’s family weren’t completely against me at least.

A couple of weeks later, I ventured out
with Hannah to a wine bar. I needed something to take my mind off everything. I
needed to laugh again.

Big mistake.