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CHAPTER ONE
‘LEAVE the country?’
Rosalind Marlow stopped pacing up and down the hearth-rug in her parents’ elegant lounge and stared at her mother in consternation.
‘Just for a little while, darling,’ Constance Marlow murmured placidly, finishing her cup of tea and settling back on the couch, looking quite unruffled by her daughter’s outraged expression. ‘Until some of this dreadful fuss dies down.’
‘Are you suggesting I run away?’ Rosalind demanded incredulously, her slender body stiffening in rejection of the idea of such rank cowardice. She and her five siblings had been brought up on the credo that one must always face up to one’s responsibilities, no matter how painful or embarrassing. Surely her mother wasn’t now suggesting that she compromise her honour for the sake of simple expediency?
Rosalind looked to her father to share her outrage, but he merely gave an expressive shrug, as if to say he was but putty in her mother’s hands. Which, of course, he was...but only when it suited him. As a distinguished director with over thirty years’ stage experience Michael Marlow was gifted with an unerring ability to control the volatile personalities of the egocentric actors and actresses who cluttered his professional and personal life—his famous wife included.
‘Think of it as taking a timely holiday, darling,’ her mother murmured in her beautifully articulated drawl. ‘You must admit it’s absolutely ages since you had a proper one. And after what you went through on that last job you certainly deserve a relaxing break.’
Rosalind shuddered at the memory of her recent, depressing foray into film. The disaster-plagued production had merely served to confirm her inner conviction that, like her mother, she was born for the stage rather than the screen. She liked to think of herself as versatile enough to tackle anything but she had never really enjoyed the disjointed, repetitive nature of acting for the camera, where everything was done in short snatches and some nameless editor in a booth somewhere controlled your ultimate interpretation of a role.
She should never have allowed herself to be flattered into accepting the female lead in the art-house production but the director, an old drama-school friend, had caught her at a weak moment and persuaded her that it would be ‘fun’ to work together again.
Some fun. Rosalind had cracked a wrist doing her own stunts and had almost been eaten by sharks!
‘That’s not the point,’ she argued, raking her fingers through her short-cropped red hair, making it stand fierily on end, a vibrant contrast to her pale skin and black roll-necked sweater. ‘It’s the principle of the thing. Why should I let myself be driven into exile, for goodness’ sake? I haven’t done anything wrong!’
‘Of course you haven’t, darling,’ her mother soothed, looking hurt at the implication that she didn’t trust her own daughter.
Rosalind simmered with frustration. She knew that her mother was playing shamelessly on her sense of guilt but she had made a promise and not even for her family’s peace of mind was she prepared to break it. However, she couldn’t blame those she loved for trying to winkle out the truth.
‘Even if you had, you know you’d have our unqualified support,’ commented her father quietly, making her feel even worse.
‘I’d tell you if I could,’ she burst out. ‘You’ll just have to accept my word that I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of!’
Her eyes avoided the coffee-table, which was strewn with tabloids bearing lurid headlines that variously branded her as a promiscuous sex-kitten, a butch, feminist home-wrecker, a pathetic, mixed-up waif with an insatiable craving for the love denied her by her disapproving family, and a helpless tool of an alien conspiracy to topple the governments of earth!
‘I thought we’d already agreed on that,’ murmured her eldest brother from the window-seat, turning his broad back on the entertaining sight of his wife trying to keep up with their three aggressively active toddlers in the rambling back garden of the large town house. Hugh pinned Rosalind with his thoughtful gaze. ‘But unfortunately the Press aren’t quite so trusting. By refusing to answer questions, you’ve left them free to speculate without the hindrance of having to conform to the known facts.’
Rosalind scowled, her thick, dark-dyed eyebrows drawing sharply together. ‘I gave them a statement; that should have been enough. You’re a lawyer; can’t I take out an injunction or something, to stop them harassing me?’
She slouched with unconscious grace over to the front window and peeked through the curtains. Sure enough, the gaggle of reporters who had been tailing her relentlessly for the last week was still clustered around the gate. Her wide mouth firmed. She was damned if she was going to allow them to hound her into giving them what they wanted.
At least they were no longer knocking on the door and shouting questions through the keyhole, thanks to Hugh’s threats to have them arrested for trespass. His hefty size and cold grey stare had added to the deterrent and not for the first time Roz had blessed her parents for having the lucky foresight to adopt a child who had developed into such an impressive specimen of adult masculinity. The natural Marl
ow offspring were all tall and slender, more accustomed to using charm than muscle to extricate themselves from trouble.
Hugh shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘Possibly, although even if successful all a court order would do would keep reporters at a certain physical distance; it wouldn’t stop them digging around for information or photographing you in public. In fact it would probably be counter-productive—make the Press even more tenacious. They could counter-claim that the public interest in this case transcends your need for personal privacy because of the political implications—’
‘But what happened had nothing to do with politics!’ Roz wailed, infuriated by the unfairness of it all.
‘A politician’s wife is involved; that makes it political,’ Hugh corrected her with his precise, pedantic logic. ‘With an important by-election coming up, all sides are going to be quick to try and use the publicity to their advantage, and while I don’t doubt that the Government is as keen as you are to see the story die a discreet death it certainly can’t be seen to be interfering with the freedom of the Press.’
‘Well, I don’t see how my running away is going to help,’ said Roz, her green eyes sparkling with ire. ‘People are sure to think it’s because I’m guilty of something.’
‘So what? They think that anyway,’ came another unwelcome brotherly opinion. Sprawled full-length on the floor beside the couch, Richard was genially fending off an assault by two miniature versions of himself.
‘Look, Roz, take it from one who knows—all this hide-and-seek is merely whetting the Press’s appetite and if you won’t oblige them with a scandal they’ll create their own. You’re God’s gift to the tabloid industry, you know: a well-known actress with a reputation for wild behaviour and a sexy body that photographs like a dream. All they have to do if the story threatens to lose impetus is to snap another shot of you in a skimpy dress getting in or out of a cab or threatening to deck another reporter and—presto—instant page three! They love chasing you around... you give such good press.’
‘Mind your tongue in front of the children, Richard,’ his mother chided, rapping him sharply on one up-raised knee.
He grinned irrepressibly, looking much younger than his thirty-one years. He dragged himself up to a sitting position, gently wrestling his sons off his chest. ‘Face it, Roz, they’re not going to just give up and go away, not while you’re dangling yourself tantalisingly under their noses. It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better and the rest of us are bound to suffer along with you’
His sweeping gesture took in the various members of the Marlow clan who had arrived for what Rosalind had been led to believe was a quiet afternoon tea with her parents. Instead she had found the house bulging with her siblings and their partners and offspring. In fact, the only ones missing from the council of war were her rock-composer brother, Steve, who was currently in Hollywood working on a film score, and her youngest brother, Charlie, who was a mechanic with a race-team on the overseas rally circuit.
For the most part Rosalind was grateful that she came from a close-knit family with a strong interest in each other’s well-being, but sometimes their loving interference only complicated matters. Right now she didn’t need the extra pressure that they were bringing to bear on her battered self-confidence.
The trouble was that her family still saw her as the over-impulsive, fun-loving and, OK, outright reckless creature that she had been in her teens. Why couldn’t they accept her as the mature, capable, staunchly independent twenty-seven-year-old woman she had become? Granted, her basic personality hadn’t changed; she was still outgoing and gregarious, throwing herself wholeheartedly into everything she did, and some people might mistake her passionate enjoyment of life for recklessness, but her family should know better.
In the last five years the disciplines and rewards of her profession had become the major focus of her prodigious energies. Because her loyalty, once given, was rarely withdrawn she still had some wild and loose-living friends, but it had been years since she herself had had to be rescued from the consequences of her own folly.
She glanced over to the corner where Olivia sat with her husband, Jordan Pendragon.
Normally she could rely on having her twin firmly on her side, but today Olivia seemed oddly reserved. Like Richard and Steve, Rosalind and Olivia were only fraternal twins, but they had always been closely attuned to each other’s emotional wavelength. Olivia’s marriage the previous year hadn’t seemed to jeopardise their closeness and thus it was disconcerting for Rosalind suddenly to discover herself deprived of the psychic support she had always taken for granted.
Olivia’s dreamy, abstracted air was nothing new—as an artist she frequently went around with her head in the clouds—but Rosalind had the feeling that this time the mental aloofness was deliberate, and it hurt. Everything around her seemed to be shifting, changing, veering dangerously out of her control. It was no wonder her nerves were a riot.
‘I’m sorry, I had no idea that this was going to turn out to be such a mess,’ she sighed, thrusting her hands into the pockets of her skin-tight jeans, her slender shoulders hunching under the thin black sweater. ‘The whole thing’s been blown up way out of proportion... all because some greedy hotel employee took it into his head to sell his distorted version of events to the highest bidder!’ she said bitterly. ‘Why can’t people mind their own business?’
‘People figure that since you make your living in public you are their business,’ said Richard unsympathetically. ‘You’re not the only one under siege. My office phone line is tied up handling the constant press calls and I’m fed up with granting interviews that turn out to be a total waste of time... not to mention having to hire security guards to keep reporters away from my cast and crew.’
‘I thought you believed that all publicity is good publicity,’ said Roz, with a pointed look from Richard to his wife which reminded him of the way he had flagrantly used the gossip columns to manipulate Joanna into accepting his proposal.
‘When it’s about me, yes,’ Richard said deadpan, and with outrageous immodesty, making Joanna put a hand across her mouth to stifle her laughter. ‘But they’re only gatecrashing my set to ask about you...why haven’t I cast you in one of my films? Is it because I think you’re unstable? Do you have drug/alcohol/attitude problems...what kind of breakfast cereal did you eat as a kid? I tell you, it’s driving me nuts! I’m running behind on my shooting schedule as it is; the last thing I need is any more disruptions on the set.
‘Do you know we actually filmed five takes of a scene yesterday before I discovered that one of the dead bodies was a reporter from the Clarion who had bribed one of the extras to let him take his place? The idiot kept breathing and blinking. Apart from not being able to act, he wasn’t even a member of Equity. He could have got me in trouble with the union, for God’s sake!’
Of course, she might have known that Richard was more concerned about his precious movie being completed on time than her problems! Rosalind glared at him as he unsuccessfully tried to detach the two red-headed babies from his now woefully stretched woollen jumper.
‘Now, Sean, stop sucking Daddy’s sweater; you’ll get fur balls,’ he scolded. ‘You too, David; you don’t have to do everything your brother does...’
As usual his twin sons ignored his stern command and continued to gum the soggy wool, until their mother gently uttered a word and they began to crawl obediently in her direction. Richard watched them go with a rueful smile that acknowledged a higher domestic authority. He scrambled to his feet, wincing slightly at the pressure on his lame knee, and turned his attention back to Rosalind.
‘If you genuinely want to deflect press interest the simple solution is to remove yourself as a potential source of information. Disappear completely for a while...at least until the initial feeding frenzy is over. It’s not as if you have to worry about walking out on your job,’ he added with cheerful malice, ‘since you don’t happen to have one at the moment...’
‘I’m currently resting between engagements,’ Rosalind informed him loftily. It was a point of pride that she had hardly been out of steady work since she had left drama school. ‘I’m considering several offers—it’s just a matter of deciding which one to accept.’
‘But you said yourself that none of them start for a few weeks, darling.’ Her mother pounced. ‘So why not make the most of your free time until then? Your father and I know the perfect place for you to go—peaceful, warm, exotic and—best of all as far as you’re concerned—wonderfully remote.’
‘It’s not an island, is it?’ said Rosalind with deep suspicion. ‘I think I’ve had enough of remote islands for one lifetime.’
The film she had just completed was supposedly set in just such an idyllic-sounding location. However, the cast and crew had found themselves virtually camping out on an extremely rugged dot in the South Pacific, in wretchedly primitive conditions and beset by all manner of hardships, including erratic delivery of supplies, a subtropical cyclone and Rosalind’s terrifyingly close encounter with a shark while filming the underwater scenes.
