‘Anyway, look, if you want any help with the media, I can put you in touch with our PR.’
‘I don’t want to do anything to add fuel to the fire. I just want it all to go away.’
* * *
But Louise was right – it got worse. The story continued to run over the next couple of days, fuelled by Tina’s friends popping up to have their say. Every member of her coterie who had stayed at the villa was tracked down to comment on the story. Their impressions of Kate were far from flattering, dismissing her as someone they had barely noticed and expressing astonishment that Will had even been aware of her. They put down his lapse to derangement caused by grief over his father’s death and characterised Kate as a big, awkward girl, hopelessly out of her depth in the glamorous world at the villa where she had been surrounded by celebrities.
Just when it looked as if the story was fizzling out, Tina rekindled it by breaking her silence, ‘speaking of her heartache for the first time’ in an ‘exclusive’ interview in her pet tabloid, which was promptly picked up by all the others. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and Tina had more fury than most. She played her wronged-woman role to the hilt. But what really tore Kate apart was what she said about Will. She told the interviewer how later that night, after Kate had left, Will had stayed up for hourstelling her he still loved her and pleading with her to give him a second chance. Tina said she had believed him when he said that his dalliance with Kate had meant nothing, but she didn’t know if she could forgive him, and she needed time apart to think things over.
The next few days were a feeding frenzy for the press, and Kate couldn’t go outside the door without being snapped by paparazzi and hounded by reporters. Will rang her mobile several times, but she didn’t pick up. Reading how he felt in the papers was bad enough. She didn’t need to hear him spell it out to her. It was no consolation that the backlash against Tina had started, as Conor predicted. Rival tabloids took sides, one even conducting a poll, which came out sixty-forty in favour of Kate. Columnists used the story to fuel a debate about ‘curvy’ girls versus ‘stick insects’, holding up Kate as a kind of heroine to ‘real’ women. They ran pictures of Kate and Tina, side by side, inviting their readers to decide whose figure was preferable.
Tina’s favourite tabloid retaliated with a dazzlingly beautiful picture of Tina juxtaposed with one of Kate looking like a sleep-deprived, mentally subnormal bag lady while she bawled out a photographer who had been chasing her the previous day. Beside her, Tina was a creature from a different species, ethereally beautiful, cool and elegant. The implication was clear: no man worthy of the name would choose Kate when they could havethis.
Nonetheless, she had her admirers and all sorts of offers flooded in – everything from modelling lingerie for ‘bigger’ girls to taking part in the inevitable reality-TV show. She even received a couple of marriage proposals from lonely men who had seen her picture in the paper and liked the look of her. Every day brought a new batch of offers, from the mundane to the truly bizarre. She refused them all, despite Conor’s protests. ‘There’s alot of goodwill towards you at the moment,’ he advised. ‘You should use it to your advantage.’
‘I don’twantto be some kind of plump-girl icon.’
‘It won’t last for ever, you know,’ he admonished.
‘Promise?’
12
Will returned to Tuscany at the end of the week, physically and emotionally exhausted from the strain of his father’s funeral and its aftermath. Eager to mend fences and for him and his half-brother, Paul, to get to know each other, Antonia had insisted he stay with them after the funeral. She couldn’t have been kinder, and Paul had been sweet, taking Will under his wing as thoughhewere the elder brother, going out of his way to make him feel comfortable and at home and to share memories of their father. But Will struggled to recognise the father he had known in the indulgent, supportive parent Paul described, and no matter how hard he stared at the pictures of Philip, trying to conjure some feeling of connection, a stranger gazed back at him. He couldn’t share Antonia and Paul’s desolating sense of loss and felt like an impostor.
He was glad to have had the chance to get to know Paul, but on further acquaintance, he found Antonia brittle and imperious. It irritated him that she felt she had a claim on his sympathy; it angered him that she appropriated the entire bereavement to herself, as though Paul hadn’t lost Philip too – and kind andwelcoming though she was now, he couldn’t forget that when it had counted she hadn’t wanted him around. Not wishing to be cruel, but fast losing patience with her, he decided it was time to leave.
He was also anxious to get back to the villa and see Kate. He had tried phoning her while he was away but she had never answered, which worried him. But perhaps it was just as well – it would be easier to talk to her in person.
He was just settling in on the flight back to Italy when the stewardess inexplicably flung his paper at him, shooting him a filthy look.
‘What’sherproblem?’ he muttered conspiratorially to the woman beside him, an elderly Irish matron.
‘Should have brained you with it,’ she growled, eyeing him coldly from beneath forbidding eyebrows.
‘What?’ Will was baffled – he had never seen either woman before in his life.
‘You’re no better than you should be.’ The woman buried her nose inWow!magazine.
Mystified, Will kept his head down for the rest of the flight, not wanting to attract any more abuse but more anxious than ever to get back to Italy and find out what they had been saying about him in the press.
* * *
Returning to the villa in the early afternoon, he found Louise in the study, going through the mail. ‘Hi!’ he said.
‘You’re back!’ She smiled up at him as Will collapsed into the chair opposite her.
‘How was it?’ she asked.
‘Oh, you know.’ Will shrugged expressively. ‘Sad. Horrible. Antonia wants to be friends.’
‘I don’t imagine she’s the easiest person to get on with.’ Louise said sympathetically.
‘Very high maintenance.’ Will grimaced. ‘Paul’s great, though.’
‘Your brother? I’d love to meet him.’
‘You will. He’s going to come and stay with me some time. He’s a huge fan of the band,’ Will smiled fondly. They fell silent and Will sank into a reverie. He was glad to be back with the people who really knew him, enjoying the fact that he could sit with Louise in companionable silence and neither of them felt the need to say anything.
