The Club(56)
‘Oh baby,’ he had told her. ‘That’s not the deal with me and Marianne at all.’
He was back the next night as well, having skipped the second act of something, and again he was waiting for her in the bar as she was leaving, eating alone. She smiled at him across the room. He patted the leather banquette next to him. She hesitated. He pulled a face. He held up a single finger. ‘One drink,’ he mouthed.
She stayed for several, spent the whole time laughing. Most of his jokes were dad jokes, really. He had repeatedly made reference to his age, done an impression of the noise his knees made when he was going up stairs these days. At the end of the night he had told her, with a stagey sigh, that he was leaving for the States the next day. He talked about how special a time he’d enjoyed in London. He talked about how wonderful it had been to meet her. He wished her good luck with the modelling, said to look him up if she ever came to New York (although how she might even begin to think about affording that, she had no idea). As they parted in the lobby he’d clasped her to his lapel in a hug that lasted longer than she’d been expecting it to.
For weeks, everywhere she went, she told everyone how lovely, how normal Ron Cox was, that he was exactly how you’d hope. When you saw him interviewed on TV – down to earth, self-deprecating, goofy – that was exactly what he’d been like in person.
Their affair – as she had thought of it, at the time – had begun six months later.
Filming at Pinewood, leaving Marianne and the kids – three of them if she remembered right, at that point, although he never discussed them – at the ranch, Ron had booked the best suite for a solid six months. ‘And you know why I chose this place, don’t you?’ he had asked her that first night, as he was taking his gloves off and folding them, before he removed his coat too, tucked them into the pocket and handed it to her with a smile. ‘Our little secret though, baby.’
Filming during the day, he spent most evenings at the bar, chatting with Ned, drinking with other members, charming the staff, telling them all the most indiscreet stories about the day’s shooting. The nights Nikki was working, he would pass by on the way back to his suite, hand her a note, give her a wink.
The thing she had to understand, he had made clear, was that even if he and Marianne had an open relationship, it came with certain expectations, certain understandings. You could not rub what you did in each other’s faces, you know? You had to be discreet. You had to be respectful. Especially when there were kids involved. It was the grown-up thing to do.
The first time they made love – his words – was the night she lost her virginity. Afterwards, he had asked her how it was. ‘You enjoyed that, huh?’ he had asked. ‘You liked that?’ He used a condom but said that it might be fun if she got the pill, if they didn’t have to use protection the next time. ‘I’m sorry if I got a little bit overexcited,’ he called through from the bed to the bathroom. ‘You okay?’ She was fine, she had told him, trying to keep her voice normal, trying to ignore the stinging sensation between her legs.
Then he told her that because he had a big action sequence to shoot the next morning, he should probably sleep alone to make sure he was fresh, that he had a taxi coming at 4.30 a.m., so . . .
Slightly dazed still, it took her an embarrassing amount of time to get the hint she should leave.
And even now, she could remember it with such immediacy it was as though she was reliving it, that moment, the lift back down to the ground floor, smiling at herself in the mirror but for some reason also wanting to cry, feeling her face start to crumple and being proud of how composed she kept herself as she quietly collected her coat and bag from the staff room.
Again and again she went back, over the course of that six months, and sat with him and drank with him – he let her choose the wine, and she had felt so sophisticated even though she rarely liked the taste – and watched movies on TV with him. And laughed with him. And joked with him. And basked in the way he seemed to study her, noticing things – the pale blue flecks in her eyes, her birthmarks, the way she chewed the inside of her mouth before answering a question or twirled a lock of hair around her little finger when she was nervous – in a way nobody else ever had. ‘It’s what I do, baby,’ he would say. ‘I watch people for a living.’ And he’d make a little square with the thumb and forefinger of both hands, close one eye and peer through it with the other. ‘Although none of them are as pretty as you, of course.’
She smiled inwardly when people asked if she had a boyfriend. And understood when pressures on the set made him cranky, when he was being an asshole because Jackson Crane had been an asshole all day. And sometimes he would catch her looking sad and would chuck her chin and ask her what was the matter and she would tell him it was because she knew this could only last six months and then he would be gone, and he would be back with his family, back with Marianne. And he would smile and tell her she had her whole life ahead of her, not to get hung up on an old guy like him.
And all the time, her secret dread, the thing she was most worried about, was how angry he would be and how angry Ned would be when he told him, if they found out she had lied to them.
If they ever found out she was only fifteen.
Vanity Fair
MURDER ON THE ISLAND
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 32
It has always been a Home tradition to hold a spectacular performance on the Saturday night of a launch weekend. A surprise concert in an unexpected setting. A banquet above which acrobats perform on flowing silks, accompanied by a gospel choir. A solo performed by The Bolshoi Ballet’s prima ballerina. For the launch of Island Home, the idea was to create an immersive theatrical experience for which the entire island was the stage.