‘Just say it,’ I said.
And, with a pained grimace, he did.
‘I’m the one who’s been speaking toThe Screen,’ he blurted. ‘I’m their anonymous source.’
I didn’t react.
I couldn’t.
I felt stupefied.
So,thiswas why he’d been acting the way he had?
Not because of me, at all, but because he’d been hiding …this?
Oh my god,I thought.
Oh myGod.
‘The reporter, Kate, called me a couple of hours after we had that row in your trailer,’ he said, ‘reminded me I owed her a favour.’ He talked on, telling me that not every photo taken of us in Sicily was from when we were acting. There were others too, whichThe Screenhave been sitting on, of us having dinner at this little place we used to go to on the rocks. ‘Obviously we weren’t doing anything wrong,’ he said, ‘but they looked fairly intimate, and I knew they’d fuel the fire, so when Kate showed them to me back in August, I convinced her not to print them and said in return I’d help her out with the inside track on this shoot.’ He tugged his hand through his hair. ‘I didn’t think about what I was promising. I just wanted to kill those photos. When she called again, I should have told her to forget it, but I was still really angry over everything with you, not thinking straight, and I couldn’t see a way round it. So, I … talked.’
‘Right,’ I said, the anaesthesia of my shock already fading, anger taking over as I replayed everything Kate had written. ‘Youtalked. Nearly got Emma fired. Said Nick’s casting was a publicity stunt. That I might …shatter, was it?’
‘She twisted my words. Paraphrased, left stuff out … ’
‘Yes, that’s what theyalldo.’
‘I’m sorry. I am … ’
‘Felix …’ I was incredulous. ‘… you told them Nick and I were sleeping in separate rooms.’
‘No.’ His face hardened. ‘That wasn’t me. They had no quotefor that.The word is, was all they said. Kate must have got it from one of the staff. I refused to comment when she asked me … ’
‘You refused to comment?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why couldn’t you have said it wasn’t bloodytrue?’
‘God, Claude, I don’t know. I screwed up.’
‘You one hundred per cent did,’ I snapped.
And yet, even in the hot haze of my fury, I understood why he’d done it.
I was grateful that he’d done it.
I didn’t need to see those photos of us, dining by candlelight on the shores of the starlit sea, to know I never wanted them to get out.
I just couldn’t bring myself to say that to him. Or admit to myself what a hypocrite I was, for still being so mad at Nick.
I was too caught up in my own righteous indignation.
‘Does anyone else know?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘You need to tell them.’
