The Ex Factor (21 page)

‘Yes, but what —’ But before I can press her on what she’d been about to say – and why it drained all the colour from her face – Danica turns on her heel and marches towards the visitor centre.

‘Is it me, or did it look like she was going to lose her lunch for a second there?’ Martha says. ‘Reckon she saw a ghost!’

‘Mmm,’ I reply, trying to ignore the knot that’s settled in the pit of my stomach. ‘She’s probably just a bit stressed. It’s always a madhouse on shoots.’ But I don’t believe my own words. Something doesn’t feel right, but I can’t put my finger on what it is.

Fortunately, Martha doesn’t appear troubled. ‘Okay, poochies,’ she says, stepping to the rear of the van and opening the door. She snaps her fingers and Sphinx, Caesar and Zulu step delicately out and sit at her feet. ‘You ready for some dune driving?’

My backside suddenly starts to buzz. I’m momentarily alarmed, until I realise it’s my phone, set to vibrate instead of ring as it always is on shoot days. I retrieve it from my pocket and my heart plummets as I register the number on the screen.

Mitchell.

‘You coming, Kitty love?’ says Martha, the three dogs’ leashes clasped in her hand.

‘Uh . . .’ I can’t drag my eyes away from the phone screen. Of
course
he would call now. After two weeks with no contact, some supernatural power
would
spur him to pick up his phone and dial my number just as I’m starting to feel vaguely normal again – and just as I’m about to begin the most crucial job of my career.

‘Kitty?’ There’s concern in Martha’s eyes now. ‘Everything okay?’

The phone continues to vibrate insistently. I should hit ‘decline’ and send Mitchell straight to voicemail. I should focus on my work: the only thing in my life that feels even remotely within my control at the moment.

I definitely, absolutely should
not
answer this call right now.

‘I just have to take this,’ I say, waving Martha away and swiping my finger across the screen simultaneously. ‘Meet you there in a sec!’

I wrench the van door open and clamber into the driver’s seat, slamming the door on Martha’s frown. ‘Hello?’

‘Kitty.’ It’s not a question or even a greeting. It’s a claim. My body instantly responds to the timbre of Mitchell’s voice. Immediately, I feel as though every part of my body is thrumming with electricity.

‘Hi,’ I say, and my voice seems tiny and weak. ‘How are you?’

Mitchell gives a single, mirthless laugh. ‘I’ve been better.’

I close my eyes and picture him sitting in his spartan living room, his huge, empty house silent and cold even with steamy, chattering Los Angeles spread out below it. In my mind’s eye he’s barefoot, wearing jeans and a holey Indianapolis Colts jersey, a smattering of dark stubble mottling his jaw. I wonder if he kept Gracie, the puppy. Is she curled up at his feet? I imagine I can feel the warmth of him radiating against my skin. I can almost smell his rich, earthy scent.

‘Kitty? You still there?’

My eyes snap open and I’m alone in a windswept Sydney car park once more. ‘I’m here,’ I say, and before I can stop myself, ‘I miss you, Mitchell. I miss you so much.’

He exhales deeply, as if he was holding his breath. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t called. I needed time to figure out what I wanted to say.’

Oh
. So it’s going to be
that
kind of call. The ‘right of reply’ conversation. His rebuttal to everything I said to him the night I left. I silently curse myself for admitting that I miss him.

I
really
shouldn’t have answered the phone.

‘And did you? Figure it out?’ I say quietly.

‘I think so.’

He doesn’t elaborate. Because he clearly wants to torture me.

‘You want to fill me in?’

‘You said two things to me the night you left, Kitty, and I’ve been thinking about both of them ever since you left. In fact, they’re
all
I’ve thought about. I think my team is worried I’ve lost my marbles.’

I’ve replayed Mitchell’s and my last night together a million times in my mind, but at this moment my mind is utterly blank. I suddenly can’t remember a single thing I said to him – let alone
two
things that could have been driving him nuts ever since.

‘You said I need to figure out what I want, and also that I’m not over Vida.’ Ah.
Those
two things. ‘But what I’ve realised is, you were wrong.’

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Martha waving madly at me. She’s standing next to one of the four-wheel drives while a stocky man dressed all in black – from his boots to the upturned collar of his polo shirt – lifts the dogs into the vehicle. He must be the driver, which means I have about thirty seconds to end the most important phone call of my life and go do my job.

‘I was?’

‘Yes. I was over Vida. I mean, I
am
over her.’

My stomach flip-flops. This old chestnut. ‘But . . . but you sent that note,’ I stammer.

There’s a beat of silence on the line. ‘What note?’

‘When you sent my things back to me, there was a Post-it in one of the boxes with a quote from one of your films. Something about ghosts in the garden?’

Mitchell groans. ‘That’ll teach me to try and be poetic. Kitty, that note wasn’t about Vida. It wasn’t from a script either. It was all me, trying to tell you that no one will ever come close to you.
You’re
the ghost that haunts me.’

If I were in my right mind, I’d tell him how ridiculously cheesy such a sentiment is. But when have I ever been in my right mind when it comes to Mitchell?

‘I haunt you?’ I say instead.

‘Yes!’ He gives an exasperated sigh. ‘You know what? Screw subtlety. I’m just going to tell it like it is. I never would have started anything with you if I wasn’t over Vida, much less ask you to come to LA with me. I think the problem, Kitty, is that
you
could never get over her.’

My jaw drops. ‘What’s that now?’

‘You never thought you measured up to Vida, when you’re worth a thousand of her. You listened when those ridiculous TV shows and trashy magazines compared you to her. You let them get inside your head.’

‘Of course I did, Mitchell! I’m a normal person. I don’t have a rhinoceros-thick skin that’s impervious to criticism. You’ve had years in Hollywood to develop the ability to tune all that stuff out. I had five minutes. And besides . . .’ I pause and take a deep breath.

Don’t go there, Kitty.

‘Besides what?’

‘Besides, you said yourself that you weren’t over Vida – that you’d never be over her. In that video.’

There’s a second of silence, and then Mitchell groans. ‘That video outside the bar? Kitty, I was
drunk
. Haven’t you ever said something stupid when you were hurting and you’d had a few?’

‘Yes. I said I’d go out with you.’

He laughs. ‘Was that a joke?’ His tone is hopeful.

I’m not sure. Mitchell saying that I’m the one hung up on Vida is absurd enough to be laughable. Isn’t it?

‘What about the other thing?’ I say, setting aside the can of worms marked ‘My Feelings About Vida Torres’ for another time.

Right,’ says Mitchell, and clears his throat. ‘You said I needed to figure out what I want. And I have.’

My stupid, ever-optimistic heart starts to beat double time. ‘Oh?’

‘Do I really need to spell it out?’ he says softly. ‘Kitty, I want
you
. I want to make this work.’

An enormous, idiotic grin instantly blooms across my face. A millisecond later a little voice in my brain pipes up, shouting a quickfire barrage of reasons why it can’t work, it won’t work,
it will never work.
But I’m not listening to my head; I’m listening to my heart.

‘I want that, too.’ All the resolve I’ve mustered over the past two weeks, my determination to put ‘Kitchell’ behind me, is undermined by that inescapable fact: I want to be with Mitchell. I am in love with him; that hasn’t changed, even though I can’t bring myself to say it aloud in a car park when he’s on the other side of the planet.

‘You do?’ Mitchell says, his voice choked. ‘I can’t tell you how happy that makes me, Kitty.’

‘Kitty!’ Martha has moved on from simply waving and is now seated in the four-wheel drive, hanging out of the passenger door and shouting at me. The black-clad driver looks impatiently at his watch. ‘They need you now! Get a wriggle on!’

‘How quickly can you get back here?’ Mitchell goes on.

How quickly can I
what?

‘
Kitty!’
Martha’s face has turned an agitated shade of puce.

‘Argh, Mitchell, I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.’ I clamber out of the van and take off at a trot towards the four-wheel drive. ‘I’m on a shoot and I’m needed on set. Can we talk more later?’

‘I have to fly to New York in an hour to do
Jimmy Kimmel Live
. I’ll be in the air for six hours and then I’m going right to the studio. Call you when I’m done?’

I do the maths in my head. ‘That’ll be the middle of the night here. Tomorrow?’ I reach the car and wrench open the back door.

‘Flying back to LA and going straight into a press junket.’ He sighs, and I wonder if he’s thinking what I am: how are we ever going to make a trans-Pacific relationship work if we can’t even manage to coordinate a phone call?

I take my seat and fasten my seatbelt, then twist around to make sure the dogs are properly secured in the cargo space behind me, ignoring Martha’s pointed look at the phone clamped to my ear. ‘Maybe you could, uh, email me?’

‘Kitty, I’m not going to
email
you,’ he says with a chuckle. ‘Look, I’ll call you when I land at Kennedy. Kimmel will just have to wait for me. You’re more important.
We
are more important.’

‘Okay,’ I say, the goofy grin commandeering my features once more. ‘I can’t wait.’

‘Me too. We’ve wasted too much time already,’ he replies, and I can hear the smile in his voice. ‘We can make this work. I know we can. I’ll talk to you in a few hours.’

Then he does that annoying thing Americans do and hangs up without saying goodbye, but I don’t even care.
He wants to be with me
, I want to shout. Nothing else matters – not distance, not fame, not media intrusion, not ex-girlfriends – as long as that’s true.

Even the fact that Mitchell seems to think I’ll return to live in Los Angeles can’t dampen my elation. I can’t live there again; there’s no way. But I know we can come up with some sort of compromise. I just
know
it.

‘You look like the cat that got the cream,’ Martha says, craning her neck from the front passenger seat. Her ire at my tardiness is apparently forgotten. ‘Good news?’

‘The best news, Martha,’ I say as the driver takes his seat and turns the key in the ignition. The four-wheel drive rumbles to life. ‘The very best.’

‘Well, it’s not my place to pry, obviously.’ She gives me a sly look. ‘Oh, go on, love! It was him, wasn’t it? What’s happened? Are you going to have him back, then?’

I open my mouth to tell her it looks that way, but my words are swallowed by a burst of static from the driver’s side.

‘Mike, are you still at the visitor centre?’ comes Danica’s voice through the walkie-talkie.

‘Just on our way out,’ replies the driver, who is evidently called Mike.

‘Can you hold up one sec? Talent’s ready to roll. Might as well send you all down there together.’

‘No worries,’ says Mike. He turns to Martha and then me. ‘Won’t be a tick, ladies. In my experience, if the big important celebrity’s ready to go, you make the most of it. They usually keep everyone waiting for hours.’

Martha’s ears prick up. ‘Celebrity?’ She turns to look at me accusingly. ‘You never said there’s a
celebrity
in this commercial, Kitty.’ She says ‘celebrity’ with a breathless reverence usually reserved for royalty, or a Kardashian.

‘I didn’t know, Martha,’ I say with a shrug. ‘They often don’t tell me who the cast is, unless it’s relevant to my work – like if I’m training a dog to work with an actor who’s afraid of them or something. I’m just about the lowest rung on the ladder, remember.’

‘So who is it?’ she asks Mike.

Now it’s his turn to shrug. ‘Some model. American bird.’

At that moment, the rear passenger door opposite me swings open. ‘Room for one more?’ asks a lightly accented voice.

And the ‘American bird’ folds herself into the car with the grace of a gazelle.

Vida Torres.

‘Vida!’

Even clad in a fluffy bathrobe and sporting elaborate winged eyeliner, with a glittering golden cobra headpiece perched atop her Cleopatra wig, there’s no doubt about it. The spectre that is Mitchell’s ex has just materialised next to me.

The Brazilian supermodel – 
not
American, I note with irritation, as if Mike correctly reporting Vida’s nationality could have somehow spared me the shock of seeing her in the flesh – turns languidly towards me. There’s a flash of recognition in her cocoa eyes.

‘Yes?’ she says coolly, as though we’ve never met.

Don’t pretend you don’t know me
.

‘I’m Kitty Hayden. Mitchell’s girlfriend.’ Well, if our phone call is anything to go by, that may yet be true.

In the driver’s seat, Mike emits a low, comprehending whistle. Apparently he’s not as clueless about celebrities as he seems. He shakes his head slowly as he guides the four-wheel drive out of the car park and onto the road. Martha, meanwhile, appears to be frozen in her seat. She doesn’t turn around, but I catch a glimpse of her face in the rear view mirror; she looks stunned.

‘Yes?’ Vida says again.

Oh, so it’s going to be like
that
. I briefly consider flinging my door open and dive-rolling onto the road, but it’s not just the likelihood of serious injury that stops me. Why should I leave? This is
my
turf – not to mention probably the most important job of my career. I’m not about to jeopardise it just because the woman who’s been publicly slagging me off at every opportunity for months has turned up.

Vida must be as stunned to see me as I am to find myself sharing the back seat with her, but she has an implacable poker face. She can’t have taken this job just to mess with me, I know that much. There’s really no way she could have known I’d be here – Vida would likely have been cast months ago, whereas Danica booked me at the very last minute. And besides, I can’t imagine ‘talent’ of Vida’s global stature would be briefed on the identity of the hurriedly hired dog trainer on some little Australian ad campaign.

Come to think of it, what
is
someone as famous as Vida Torres doing fronting a little Australian ad campaign? How could the skincare company even afford her?

‘What are you doing here?’ I ask, because I can’t think of a more subtle way to enquire.

She looks down her nose at me. It’s not difficult; even seated, she’s a good head taller than I am. ‘The creator of Cleopatra’s Serum is a friend. We walked together in Paris. I’m doing her a favour.’

She may run her own charitable foundation, but the concept of Vida doing anything for anyone is almost as foreign to me as the thought of her having friends. ‘You
walked
together?’

‘On runways,’ she says slowly, as if I might be too stupid to understand. ‘In fashion shows?’ It’s a question rather than a statement, and she scans my outfit with a smirk as she asks it.

‘Yeah, I know what a runway is,’ I say through gritted teeth. Vida lifts an eyebrow, and I know what she’s thinking:
If you say so
. Frankie will be outraged when I tell her that a supermodel judged her styling skills unfavourably.

‘Jeez, you must be working for mate’s rates!’ Martha pipes up, pivoting in her seat. She thrusts her hand awkwardly over the headrest.

Vida ignores it. ‘I suppose your presence here means there’s a
dog
involved in the campaign?’ she says to me.

But Martha won’t be discouraged that easily. ‘Three, actually,’ she crows. ‘Sphinx, Zulu and Caesar. My babies!’

‘You’ll only be working with one,’ I tell Vida. ‘The others are stand-ins.’

She arranges her flawless face into a tight smile. ‘You’re quite the expert when it comes to stand-ins, aren’t you?’ she says, and turns to stare out the window.

My gaze meets Martha’s and she flashes me an appalled ‘get a load of her’ expression before turning dejectedly to face the road. Mike, I can’t help noticing, is doing a fairly poor job of suppressing a smile.

But I’m neither appalled nor amused. I am consumed by a roiling, incandescent rage. She’s calling me a
stand-in
? Some kind of relationship seat-filler? Like I’ve just been keeping her side of Mitchell’s bed warm until she deigns to wander back in and reclaim it?

What is this woman’s
problem
?

I’m about to ask her when Mike swings the four-wheel drive abruptly off the road and onto the sand, bumping over the dunes to a soundtrack of Martha’s delighted squeals. I cast a look at the Pharaoh Hounds in the back; they look pretty unimpressed with all the tossing and bouncing.

The sand evens out after a few uncomfortable minutes and the location appears ahead of us, like the proverbial oasis in the desert. As expected, there are just as many people, vehicles and pieces of expensive film equipment here as at the visitor centre. The difference is back there everyone appeared harried, and here they all look bored.

That is until our car coasts to a stop and the whole crew seems to jump to frenzied attention. Looks like word of Vida’s arrival preceded us. She opens the door and glides out of the vehicle, shivering in the cold. My simmering anger, meanwhile, is keeping me toasty warm.

‘Vidaaaaa!’ A willowy woman in a kaleidoscopic caftan comes bounding across the sand towards Vida, twig-like arms outstretched and clanking with neon bangles. She looks like summer personified – and is apparently immune to the chill wind, despite having approximately zero per cent body fat.

The woman wraps my nemesis in a warm hug. ‘It’s
fab
to see you, darling. You look divine. Have I told you how
insanely
grateful I am that you’re doing this for me?’

‘Only a million times,’ Vida replies warmly. She looks genuinely delighted to see her friend, who I suddenly realise is Jacinta Sterne. Once a supermodel herself, she parlayed her catwalk success into a fashion and beauty business empire that has earned her ten times more money than her days as a clotheshorse ever did. Mate’s rates indeed; I’ve no doubt Jacinta is paying Vida handsomely for being her skincare spokesmodel. My respect for Jacinta as a fellow entrepreneur is tempered slightly by the fact that she’s friends with someone as awful as Vida, but I guess we’re all entitled to the occasional lapse in judgement.

I get quietly out of the car and open the rear door as Jacinta and Vida chat. The dogs are looking a little unsteady. I can hardly blame them after Mike’s stunt driving over the dunes. I release the bungee cords securing my insulated water cooler to the four-wheel drive’s cargo barrier, fill a large bowl and set it on the sand. One by one, I lift the Pharaohs out of the car and they lap noisily at the cool water.

‘Oh, hi! You must be Kitty,’ Jacinta says when she sees the dogs at my feet. She turns abruptly away from Vida and hurries over to me. I can’t help feeling a little smug as I see Vida adopt a sulky pout. She really can’t handle not having the full glare of the spotlight on her for a single second.

‘I think I may have given Danica a mild coronary when I asked for Pharaoh Hounds at such short notice,’ Jacinta continues with a sheepish giggle. ‘I was
so
thrilled when she said she had Sydney’s very best animal wrangler on the case.’ She squats to administer enthusiastic belly scratches to all three dogs, and I can’t help but like her in spite of her dubious taste in gal pals.

‘I’m glad I could help,’ I say. ‘Pharaohs can be hard to find – and even harder to train – but I’ve worked with these guys before. They’re true professionals.’ Martha, who has emerged from the car and is uncharacteristically quiet at my side, beams at her beloved dogs.

‘I’m sure they are. I’m so psyched about this campaign!’ Jacinta claps her elegant hands like an excited schoolgirl. ‘We’ve got these lovely dogs, we’ve got Vida – do you know Vida Torres?’ She gestures to Vida, now surrounded by a team of makeup artists and a short man wearing a headset, who I assume is Gary the director.

‘We, uh, we’ve met.’

‘Great. It’s all great. It’s going to be great!’ And she sweeps away on a billowing cloud of colour.

‘She’s a hoot,’ says Martha. ‘Shame the same can’t be said for Lady Muck over there.’ She jerks her head in Vida’s direction. ‘It’s sad when women are jealous of other women.’

I make a face. ‘Vida and Jacinta are pretty much on par when it comes to being insanely gorgeous. I doubt there’s any jealousy there.’

‘Not them, silly. You! All those snide comments in the car. Vida practically went lime green the second she saw you.’

It takes me a second to grasp what Martha is saying. ‘Wait, you think Vida is jealous of
me
? That’s absurd, Martha. Have you seen her?’

‘Pfft,’ Martha says, and waves her hand dismissively. ‘You’re much prettier than her, Kitty. She tries too hard.’

Vida is the stunning epitome of natural, effortless beauty; saying she tries too hard is like accusing cheese on toast of being too fancy. And yet I feel an overwhelming urge to hug Martha for saying so.

‘And anyway, looks don’t make a lick of difference. She envies what you have. It’s so obvious.’

‘You mean Mitchell? But she doesn’t even know we’re back together.’ Almost.

‘I mean a
life
. A real life. You have a house and a job that you love, and a family that loves you. And yes, a man who means something. What’s she got? Long legs and a few dollars. That’s not much, and she knows it.’

As Martha extracts a chamois grooming glove from her tote bag and gets to work giving the dogs a final going-over, I stand and watch Vida. I’m trying to see her as objectively as Martha does; not as the woman who broke Mitchell’s heart and who has been the source of so much angst between us, but as a regular girl like any other – albeit one who scooped the pool in the genetic lottery.

I’m not blinded by money or fame – my time with Mitchell in Hollywood definitely shattered any illusions I may once have harboured about celebrity. I’ve seen how a privileged life lived in the spotlight can be just as tough as any other kind of existence. And if I put myself in Vida’s towering stilettos, I can imagine that the past year can’t have been easy for her. Sure, she left Mitchell in ignominious fashion, but if there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s that the end of a relationship is heartbreaking for the one who leaves as well as the one who’s left. And yes, she betrayed him with his best friend, which is unforgiveable. But unless she’s completely heartless, sneaking around with Ellis must have been painful for Vida, too. We can’t help who we fall in love with, in spite of the potentially nuclear fallout it may cause. That’s another lesson I’ve learned the hard way.

And now her marriage to Ellis is over anyway. She must be asking herself if all the heartache was worth it. Also a question I’ve asked myself a lot recently.

So, sure, I can relate to Vida on some level. Wealth and status aside, maybe we’re not so different. Perhaps she
is
just a regular girl. And regular girls are programmed to loathe their ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend. That’s just biology.

If Martha’s right, if there is some microscopic part of Vida Torres, International Supermodel, that envies Kitty Hayden, Local Dog Trainer, then maybe I could cut her some slack. Take the high road. Be the bigger woman. Figuratively as well as literally.

The last of the white-hot anger I felt towards Vida in the car dissipates just as a second four-wheel drive roars to a stop beside ours, showering me, Martha and the dogs with a cloud of sand. Danica clambers out and hurries over to me.

‘I’m
so
sorry, Kitty,’ she says, grasping my shoulders. ‘I should have warned you that Vida was the star of this campaign.’

‘I’ll admit I was a little surprised to run into her.’ Understatement of the millennium. ‘You didn’t think to mention it?’ Danica’s sudden pallor back at the visitor centre suddenly makes sense.

She stares at the sand and peeps up at me through mascara-slicked eyelashes. ‘Honestly? I was in such a bind when you showed up at the office earlier in the week, and so desperate for you to take the gig, that I consciously thought
not
to mention it.’ She offers a contrite smile. ‘It was shifty of me, I know. I really am sorry.’

I chew my lower lip as I think about how to respond to Danica’s confession. Vida’s appearance has definitely blindsided me, but I think I still would have taken the booking even if Danica had given me a heads-up that she’d be here. I’ve got bills to pay and a life to be getting on with, and Vida Torres has been a thorn in my side for long enough as it is.

‘You know what, Danica? I think you actually did me a favour. If I’d known Vida was going to be here, I’d only have spent the past few days stressing out. This way, I’m prepared and focused and good to go.’

Danica looks incredulous. ‘You sure?’

‘Of course,’ I say with a shrug. ‘Whatever personal issues Vida and I might have, I promise you they won’t affect my work. I’m sure she’d say the same.’

‘Wow,’ says Danica. ‘You’re a more evolved being than me, Kitty. If my husband’s ex-wife turned up in my office after talking trash about me to the world’s media, I’d want to scratch her eyes out. And I’d want to scratch
my
eyes out for not being upfront with me. I mean, you.’

I briefly consider telling Danica about my newfound goodwill towards Vida, but decide against it. Something tells me my theory of how the six-foot glamazon in the shimmering Cleopatra costume is just like the rest of us could get lost in translation. So I settle instead for, ‘I’m sure we’ll both be able to contain ourselves.’

‘Great,’ she says with a relieved grin. ‘In that case, can I get you to join Vida and Gary, the director, for a quick pow-wow about what we need from the dogs?’

‘Sure.’ I take Zulu, Caesar and Sphinx’s leashes from Martha and follow Danica across the sand to a portable gazebo that has been set up to provide shade for the cast and crew. Unfortunately it doesn’t have any sides, so it does nothing to shelter us from the biting wind that’s whipping between the dunes. Vida’s perfect skin is ridged with goose bumps and her hard expression is every bit as icy as the temperature.