‘We’ve exchanged a few messages over the past couple days, mainly about your… cutesy shirt situation and how to field incomings on it, but I haven’t spoken to him properly since before the holiday weekend. We’ve both been taking some time to be with family.’
‘Can you get hold of Greer?’ Mara barks. ‘Do you have a landline for them, even?’
‘I’ve tried. She’s not answering and their landline is disconnected.’
‘Holy fuck. This is a fucking nightmare.’ Mara swipes her hand over her face and pinches the bridge of her nose. ‘Call me as soon as you get hold of one of them. Any time. Just call.’
She disconnects without letting Mike say goodbye and throws her phone on the sofa in frustration. I stand, slumped,the reality of my situation kicking in. I feel helpless—so helpless I’m tempted to get a cab straight to Heathrow and jump on the first flight to Maryland. Go bang on his door and beg him to tell me what the heck is going on.
Because if I think about Occam’s Razor right now—the theory that the most obvious solution is likely to be the correct one—then Josh Lander has just dumped me. On Twitter.
PART 2: Present Day - Second Billing
CHAPTER 14
Elle
Isuppose you’d like to know what the hell’s been going on for the past five years. Well, on some matters, I’m as clueless as you. But—deep breath—I’ll give you a quick recap.
I never got any answers or explanations from He Who Shall Not Be Mentioned. I never heard from him again.Ever.
Within twelve hours of Mara showing up at my door, I’d accepted that He Who Shall Not Be Mentioned—oh, what the fuck, let’s call him Dickhead; it’s far easier and he’s not worth the effort of the long version—had dumped me.
Within forty-eight hours, I was in such a state I triggered a flare-up with bad enough haemorrhaging to require two blood transfusions. I was in Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for a week.
By the time they discharged me, Mara had managed all the messaging around my love-life cluster-fuck. She’d put out a statement on my behalf saying Dickhead (another pithy nickname we settled on for him) and I were no longer in a relationship. At least the language of his tweet(Elle and I aren’ttogether anymore)allowed us to suggest it had been a mutual decision.
Not that anyone was fooled. Not for one second.
Josh Lander had dumped my shapely little arse, and the world knew it.
I spent six months trying in vain to steer media interviews away from my love life and towards my work. Richard and I reviewed tonnes of seriously amazing scripts. And Dickhead’s behaviour made the decision to accept the lead inFae, a big-budget Tolkien-esque movie being filmed in New Zealand, a no-brainer. It proved the perfect place to hide myself away and throw myself into my work.
I only left New Zealand once during that year of filming: to fly to LA and accept my Academy Award for Best Actress. It was the most incredible evening, but the whole thing was marred by my constant worry in the run-up that Dickhead would show.
He didn’t.
Shortly after I’d got out of hospital seven months previously, we heard he was in rehab. And a few months after that, he began to materialise on the LA scene again, often with a model or wannabe actress in tow.
I can’t tell you how sick to my stomach every glimpse of him made me feel.
Ignoring Dickhead’s antics became a matter of survival for me. He was dead to me. Thank fuck for work.
I’ve made four more movies sinceFae. Two in the UK, two in the US, but I’ve avoided filming in Hollywood (you don’t need me to spell out why). It’s been a whirlwind. And I’ve loved every moment. And with every movie release, the public has taken me more seriously as an actor in my own right and not as that poor girl Josh Lander once chewed up and spat out.
See? I can say his name when I need to.
I’m not that broken.
I can’t say I’ve really dated, but I’ve had enough sex to keep me sane. And we’ve slapped every one of those guys with an NDA before I’ve so much as kissed them. Ironically, there’s practically no overlap between the guys I’ve fucked and the guys the world has seen me ‘date.’ All the latter have been meticulously set up by Mara, and I haven’t touched them out of sight of the cameras.
That’s who he’s turned me into.
That’s who this industry has turned me into.
Strangely enough, the more cynical I’ve become in real life, the more I’ve turned to romance novels. Specifically, historical romance. It’s odd, right?
When we were on location in New Zealand, my makeup artist was a historical romance obsessive. She always had an Amanda Quick romance on hand and I found them the perfect distraction from this weird, lonely mess my personal life had become. There, in the bubble ofFae’slovely crew, I found healing. And heaving bosoms, feisty heroines and rakish dukes definitely helped with that healing.
