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Matteo had made an almost obscene amount of money since leaving drama school, and his asking price now ran into millions of dollars.
That was one of the reasons why Jennifer had allowed herself to be tempted away from the stage and gone into films herself. Matteo had made hundreds of opportunities possible, and she had seized them with eager hands—for surely it would have been crazy to turn down such chances?
She’d wanted to be his equal in all ways—and yet when her own asking price had rocketed she had felt none of the expected joy or satisfaction. Just a kind of nagging feeling that somehow she’d sold out. And the price she’d paid for her glittering career had been frequent separations from her husband which had fed all her insecurities and doubts.
Sometimes she had found herself wondering what it would have been like if they had created a proper place together. Spent ages lovingly choosing items together, instead of suffering the incessant march of an army of interior designers who had transformed each one of their homes into dazzling displays which celebrity magazines had fallen over themselves to feature. Matteo had drawn the line at that. ‘We have little enough privacy as it is,’ he had told them angrily.
Maybe she should have done something to try and claw some of that privacy back—but Jennifer had been a brand-new player in the celebrity game, and she’d been too busy enjoying it to want to pull the plug on it. How easy it was, with the benefit of hindsight, to recognise the mistakes she’d made.
She glanced uninterestedly at the unopened post and the pile of film scripts waiting to be read. Then her mobile rang, and in spite of everything her heart leapt. Because she’d be lying if she denied fantasising about Matteo on her flight back from Cannes. She felt as if he had poured all her emotions into a mixing bowl and stirred them up. Maybe he was ringing her to ask if she’d got back safely? Or maybe just to say hello—because if the divorce truly was going to amicable then why shouldn’t he say hello?
She picked up her phone and made her voice sound as cool as possible.
‘Hello?’
‘Jennifer?’
Jennifer’s heart sank, and she immediately felt guilty that it had. ‘Hello, Mum.’
‘Where are you?’
Jennifer held the telephone away from her ear as the loud voice came booming down the line. Her mother always described herself as an actress too—though she had never progressed beyond the strictly amateur productions at their local village hall. The rest of the time she had spent living out her fantasies through her only child.
Quashing the terrible temptation to say that she was anywhere but England, Jennifer murmured, ‘I’m at the London flat.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, why not?’ questioned Jennifer. ‘I live here.’
‘No, I mean why aren’t you doing the round of parties and interviews in Cannes? There’s hardly been a thing about you in any of the papers!’
‘That’s because…because—’
‘Because that bastard of an ex of yours was there, I suppose?’ interrupted her mother viciously.
Jennifer bit her lip. ‘Mum, I won’t have you talking about Matteo that way.’
‘Then you’re an idiot, darling. He’s made a complete and utter fool of you!’
‘Look, I’ve just flown in—was there anything in particular you wanted?’
‘Well, actually, yes! I was hoping to run an idea of mine past your agent! Or that rather nice publicist I met…what was his name? Hal? Yes, that was it! Hal! I think he took a slight shine to me!’
‘Mum—’
‘There are such rubbishy screenplays around at the moment that I thought to myself—well, why shouldn’t I have a go?’
Jennifer counted to ten. And then on to twenty. Now was not the time to tell her mother that she’d sacked Hal. Or why.
Promising to visit very soon to talk about it, she managed to finish the call and went throug
h to the kitchen while she listened to all the messages that had arrived while she’d been in France.
There were four calls from her agent. Two magazines wanted her on their cover, and a very famous photographer wanted to include her in his coffee-table book of the world’s most beautiful women.
But Jennifer didn’t feel in the least bit beautiful—she felt empty and aching, almost worse than she had when she and Matt had first split. At least then there had been endless, explosive rows, and she had felt that breaking up was the best thing to do. She had been carried along by the powerful storm of her anger and hurt.
But the episode in Cannes had been poignant and bittersweet. It had emphasised her vulnerability around him and reminded her of what they had once shared—but a pale imitation of the real thing. It had taunted her with what she was missing…that feeling of being properly alive. Because Matt was like the blazing sun in a summer sky, and when he wasn’t around the world seemed dark and cold.
