Epigraph
Summer 2017
Part I
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Part II
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Part III
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Part IV
Chapter One
Part V
November 2017
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Olivia Petter
About the Publisher
Summer 2017
When Rose opens her eyes, he has gone. The window is cracked open enough to invite a breeze, sunlight dancing in and out with the moving curtain. Her outfit is spread across the floor in all its parts: velvet flares folded into themselves in one corner, denim jacket crumpled in the other. The boots are neatly placed side by side underneath her desk as if by someone who didn’t want to make a mess. She is naked.
Picking her laptop off the floor, she decides to google him. In the last twenty-four hours, six new articles have been published. One is a round-up of his greatest ‘fashion hits’ that must have been recently updated because the first photo is from 2012. Another claims that he is considering adopting a cocker spaniel; sources say he will name it ‘Bobby’. And then there is one she has seen several versions of before that lists all the people he has dated since he was eighteen. She is familiar with most of the names on it because they’re either models or daughters of Hollywood actors.
Some of the articles have comments underneath them. ‘MARRY ME’ reads one. ‘Why has he cut his hair like that?’ adds another. ‘Sit on my face please, kind sir’ says a third – Rose reports this comment. She goes to Twitter next and opens the first account that comes up when she clicks on the search bar. It has 850,000 followers and there are two new tweets since Rose last checked. ‘Can’t believe I have finally met my husband’ reads one that appears to be a screengrab taken from someone’s Instagram account. He is standing in between two women who look like teenagers, poorly disguised in yellow-tinted sunglasses and a baseball cap. ‘He even offered to pay for our coffees’ the caption continues. ‘What a gem.’ The other tweet shows a photograph of him walking into a bakery: ‘I wish he was buying CROISSANTS for me!!’ It has been liked 5,531 times. There is no point looking at his own Twitter account because he doesn’t control it, so Rose scrolls through more accounts of the fans instead.
Finally, once her phone has enough battery to turn itself on, she opens Instagram. He has gained 3,235 followers overnight, bringing him up to 54.3 million in total. She swipes left, taps on his name and starts typing.
PART I
ONE
Still summer 2017
(but a little earlier than before)
The party started like all the others: strangers pretending to be best friends while looking over each other’s shoulders for someone more important to talk to. The music was too loud, the volume you’d expect at the end of a wedding. Some guests looked bored because they’d seen it all before. Others were new to the scene and had taken flight, energised by the possibility of sex with a celebrity and the opportunity to snort some of their cocaine.
Rose was by the door looking at her phone. It was normal for talent to be late. He was so late, though, that it made a point. About what exactly she wasn’t quite sure. But it rattled her. She had about fifteen minutes before Minnie came over to complain about how hot it was inside (even though the air conditioning was scratching at Rose’s throat), a sure sign she was stressed.
The person she was waiting for was Milo Jax. He was a musician, the kind with several Twitter accounts for each of his limbs. Even Luce knew who he was, which was remarkable considering the only music Rose had ever heard coming from her room was by Craig David. At thirty-three, Milo had already won countless awards, sold more than 10 million albums, and hosted SNL twice. His music divided critics – ‘charismatic bangers’ versus ‘tweeny-bopper pop’ – but had somehow transcended negative reviews; it was hard to spend a day out and about in London without hearing at least one of his songs playing somewhere. He was classically good-looking, possessing the kind of face that was both chiselled yet cherubic, topped by a mop of tangled dark curls, and pale eyes that looked blue in some photos and green in others, depending on the light.
‘It’s outrageous that this is your job,’ said Luce, furiously googling photos of Milo on her phone while Rose was getting ready at home. ‘I had a sex dream about him when I was fourteen.’
‘Fourteen?’
‘Back when he was in his skinny jeans era. Best. Shag. Of. My. Life. Look at that jawline.’
