The Club(31)

She did not like that word really. Celebrity. It irked her when people described Home as a club for celebrities, their events as celebrity parties. That interviewer from ES Magazine had used it repeatedly, and Annie had winced a little, internally, every time. It had been strange, that whole experience – she was not used to being the one asked the questions. She had corrected him on that point – she preferred to think of their members as celebrated people. Annie had read once, back in her journalist days, that that was what it had meant, originally. Back in the nineteenth century, ‘celebrity’ was simply used to describe someone recognized in their field. Charles Darwin was a celebrity, Florence Nightingale was a celebrity, George Eliot, just as much as an actress like Ellen Terry or an actor like Henry Home. It was only quite late in the twentieth century that the word had begun to take on negative connotations, to carry a suggestion of superficiality, to be associated increasingly with undeserved fame, someone to whom society paid unwarranted attention. All of which happened at exactly the same time as the word began increasingly to be used to describe young women in the public eye. Well I never, Annie had thought. What a coincidence.

Celebrity was not the word people used to describe Jackson Crane ever, was it? Look at him, Annie thought, smiling and waving and raising his eyebrow, holding court, looking as though he was lit by a slightly kinder cinematographer than everyone else. He was a movie star. Nor, interestingly, was celebrity a word people used much to talk about his wife. Was that perhaps partly due to her age – she must be in her early forties now, although still a good decade younger than her husband. Was it – no interview failed to open with it – where she had gone to university? Cambridge-educated actress and activist. Or was it her specific type of beauty – her dark hair, sharp cheekbones, her striking green eyes, the kind of looks that saw her continually cast in films set during the war or as some poet’s muse. The sort of elegantly, effortlessly expensive appearance that someone like Annie – the same age, also tall, also naturally dark-haired – would never have the time, or money, or self-control, or access to the right people with the right needles, to maintain.

Celebrity was, however, the word people used to describe Kyra Highway – currently playing some version of hopscotch with her daughter, both of them doubled up in laughter, on the painted lines at the far end of the main deck, meant for passengers who wished to play shuffleboard. ‘Celebrity artist’, people called Keith Little, currently stretched out pouting on a striped daybed, sunglasses on, shirt open to his mahogany six-pack as usual, something silver glinting in his chest hair, making quite a show of observing everybody – but that, too, carried with it a strong hint of disapproval, didn’t it? That he was a little too famous, and that he enjoyed his fame a bit too much.

He didn’t look as though he was enjoying it very much this morning. Every time a waiter approached he would give them a scowl, flap them away with his hand if they got too close.

It was a key part of Ned’s plan, to keep them all in suspense like this. To stagger the next stage, postpone the second turn of the screw, keep them on the back foot. After all, he couldn’t have all four men blowing up at once, spoiling the party. From the looks of things, Keith was currently somewhere between taking the whole thing as a weird, off-colour joke and convincing himself he would not pay Home an extra penny, and worrying a bit more seriously about what it was, this mysterious soon-to-be delivered package that would ensure Ned’s was an offer he should not, could not, refuse.

It was clear just from looking that Freddie Hunter had not received his package yet. He seemed to be everywhere at this party – clowning around with little Lyra, letting out a cry of delight every time he ran into anyone he knew, which was constantly, making a beeline for people who had not been on his show yet to schmooze them, ensuring everybody there knew he was at the party too. Admittedly he did seem a bit more manic than usual, a little bit pale and sweaty – but the night before had been a late one and he’d been knocking back the drink. Maybe, with a bit of time to process it, he’d come to the conclusion that the whole thing was a wind-up.

Yes, Annie thought, it was safe to say that Freddie Hunter had definitely not received his package yet.

As for Jackson Crane, it was impossible to tell.

Jackson was, after all, an actor – and not just any actor. Annie had once shared a lift with Jackson and Georgia at Manhattan Home, all the way from the lobby to the rooftop bar, and the whole way up they had been tearing chunks out of each other. He stank of booze. She was a nagging bitch. On and on they went. At one point, Georgia had hit him right across the face with her clutch bag; he gingerly touched his lip with a forefinger, inspected it in the mirror on the wall, and looked as if he was considering whether or not to retaliate. It was as though they had forgotten Annie was even there – or perhaps that was the point, and all of this was part of some kind of performance too. And then the doors had opened and, without missing a beat, Jackson had slipped his hand into Georgia’s and out they had walked, all smiles, to join their friends for dinner.

It was Kurt Cox, currently standing alone near the bow of the boat, she felt most sorry for. Still, he was a twenty-five-year-old man with a multimillion-dollar Netflix production deal and an inheritance coming that would surely dwarf even that. He was not going to starve, no matter how much Ned squeezed him for. He would kick up a fuss, and go through all the usual phases, and then – like all the others – he would accept the inevitable.