Mo’s heart careened and his blood pressure dropped. Grateful to be sitting down, he counted a silent inhale to four, held it for a second, and let it rush out again.
‘Mo? You okay? You’ve gone white as a sheet.’
‘Ah, yeah.’ He straightened in his seat and took what he hoped looked like a nonchalant swig of red. He forced a cough to clear the sudden tightness in his throat. ‘What did she say, exactly?’
Rhona extracted her phone from the back pocket of her sailor-style jeans, brought the email up on the screen and slid it across the table to Mo.
He hoped she couldn’t see the tremor in his hands as he picked it up and read the message silently, the words slicing through the sudden chaos in his brain like feedback screeching through a speaker.
QUERY
Netta Phillips
To: Rhona van der Wilden
Dear Rhona,
I hope you don’tmind me contacting you, but Google tells me you are Morrison Maplestone’s manager and I have recently found something that I believe belongs to him hidden in my house in Melbourne. It’s an old journal from 1994, and I wondered if you could please ask him what he would like me to do with it. I’m happy to post it to him if he would like it back, or I can dispose of it if he doesn’t want it—just thought I should check. Photo attached!
Kind regards,
Netta Phillips
He placed the phone soundlessly on the table. ‘You think she’s, ah, been to the press with it or anything?’
‘I have no idea,’ said Rhona. ‘But I’m sure we’d know about it by now if she had and I don’t think she would’ve bothered with the email if she was the sort to flash it around. She certainly doesn’t seem to be, anyway.’ Clocking Mo’s raised eyebrows, she added: ‘I did a little digging and found her on a school website. She’s a primary school teacher. Runs regular fundraisers to support kids’ charities. Looks like an ad for multivitamins. Very wholesome.’
Mo felt the seed of dread at his core expanding, ring by ring, into a dark whorl that filled his chest. ‘I’d like to get it back. I don’t want it out there. There’s stuff in it …’ He ran his hands through his hair and squeezed the back of his neck until his muscles protested under the pressure.
‘Like what, Mo? Is it stuff I need to know about if she does take it to the media?’
Mo looked at his friend, her concerned face, her obvious awareness of his sudden discomfort. He’d never told Rhona the whole truth about his messed-up childhood. About his beautiful, drug-addicted mother and her horrible, unnecessary death. He’d never toldanyone. Even Mav, his own little brother, barely remembered their mum. Mav had only just turned four when she died, and in lieu of his own memories, Mo had fed him much more palatable, if mostly untrue, stories. And that’s how it had to stay. If the contents of the diary were exposed and Mav found out that Mo had kept the truth from him all these years … Well, Mo couldn’t bear to think about it. Losing Mav, or even just his trust, would kill him.
‘Not really,’ he lied, the dread expanding from his chest down to his belly. ‘But you know I don’t speak about my childhood, and I don’t want to have to start now just because someone’s found my diary from when I was eleven.’
There was a long moment of heavy silence before Don slid his chair out and left the room, giving his wife and Mo a chance to speak alone.
‘So,’ said Rhona, ‘you want it back?’
Mo dug a fingernail into the tip of his thumb until it hurt and nodded. ‘Yep.’
‘Say no more.’ Rhona and Mo had known each other for long enough for her to know pushing him for details would be an exercise in futility. ‘I’ll ask her to post it to me ASAP. It’ll be here within a week or so.’
‘No,’ said Mo, a little too quickly. ‘I don’t want to risk it getting lost. The post is hopeless and I don’t want a courier. It’s too … delicate.’
‘So, what do you want me to tell her? To jump on a plane and hand deliver it to you, my liege?’
Mo thought for a moment, ignoring the smartarse comment. ‘I can’t go to Australia myself,’ he said. ‘It’ll draw attention, and even if it didn’t, I have rehearsals and promos and fittings and all that shit for the gala. I’ll pay for her to come, first class—nice hotel, all that—and if she gives it to me and I can see that she hasn’t read it or flashed it around on the internet or anything, I’ll pay her, I don’t know, ten grand. Do you think that’s enough?’
Rhona straightened her glasses and gave Mo a hard, are-youfucking-kidding-me stare. ‘Do I think a free first-class flight, complimentary luxury accommodation and ten thousand pounds is enough to compensate someone for returning a book to a handsome celebrity?’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘Mo, what the hell is in that diary?’
Mo looked at her—his manager, his best friend, the person he trusted most in the world outside of his brother—and knew he could never bring himself to tell her the truth.
He scraped his chair back and stood. ‘I’ll deal with it,’ he said. ‘Just forward the email.’
Chapter Seven
NETTA
