‘He will probably be late, Annabelle.’
‘But how late?’
‘Late enough.’
‘God, I’m so excited to meet him.’
Rose sighed.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Sorry.’
‘Will you tell me what happened with you two?’
‘Nothing happened. He’s not someone you should spend any time worrying about. Trust me.’
Annabelle sighed dreamily. ‘Oh, but I don’t worry. I just love him. My friends couldn’t believe I’d be meeting him tonight. I promised one of them I’d get him to send a happy birthday message.’
‘Don’t do that.’
‘Okay.’
Another twenty minutes passed. More actors and musicians arrived, Rose had to stop Annabelle from asking each of them for selfies. Both of them had to keep placating Liz when Milo still hadn’t arrived by 8.30 p.m. The fashion show was meant to start at 9 p.m. Milo was meant to go on stage at 9.30 p.m.
By 8.45 p.m., Liz had started to panic. As had Minnie.
‘Rose, can I talk to you for a second, please?’ she asked, pulling her away from Annabelle.
‘Sure,’ she said, knowing exactly what she was about to ask.
‘Look, I’m really sorry to ask you this. But I can’t get hold of Joss. Is there any chance you could send him a message to see where he is? If he doesn’t show, it will be a disaster.’
‘Okay. Let me message him now.’
‘Thank you,’ she sighed with relief, placing both hands on Rose’s arms. ‘I know this isn’t easy for you.’
Rose walked away from the crowd and opened Instagram. She went to search for Milo in the search bar as she usually did. ‘Mil …’ she typed, as usually this would bring up his name with a blue tick. But nothing came up except for fan accounts. She typed his full name. Still nothing. She opened Google, searched ‘Milo Jax Instagram’. The link to his profile came up. She clicked on it and the page redirected to Instagram. She knew what was about to happen, her stomach sinking slowly into the rest of her body as she saw it.
His profile picture. The number of posts. The number of followers. The number of people he followed. But where it usually said ‘Follow’, it said ‘User Not Found’. Below, just white space with the words ‘No Posts Yet’. Her phone fell to the floor.
It took a few minutes for Rose to pick up her phone and walk back over to Minnie.
‘I don’t think he’s coming,’ she said in a single breath.
Minnie’s face fell.
‘Oh God,’ she said, turning around to look for Liz. ‘Okay, erm, don’t worry. This isn’t your fault, it happens all the time. Let’s go and find Oliver.’
She carried on talking but Rose couldn’t hear anything. Minnie might as well have been speaking an entirely different language. After a few minutes, she couldn’t really see her either. All she could see was a disfigured face, one that was becoming more and more contorted. The Francis Bacon face. And then everything went a little blurry. Minnie must have noticed something was wrong because she asked Rose to go and sit down.
Then Liz rushed in behind Minnie, shouting about something completely different and inaudible. There was some sort of other problem that meant Rose could turn around and start walking away without anyone noticing.
An hour or so later, Rose found herself alone in Hyde Park, sitting on a bench. She must have kicked the stilettos off along the way because they weren’t on her feet. Nor were they anywhere in sight. The noise of the party had long ago drifted behind her. She hadn’t meant to leave the party at all. But once she had emerged from it and started putting one foot in front of the other, she found it hard to stop. At some point, she started to run. Then she ran faster and faster until she had to sit down to regain her breath.
So Milo had blocked her. She now had no way of contacting him. He had committed to coming tonight and decided not to, for whatever reason. Because of course that’s exactly what he could do. It’s what he always had the power to do. Why had she ever thought differently?
Her whole body was shaking. The glassy water of the Serpentine stretched before her, reflecting the evening light. She should have known this would happen, the second Milo invited her into his world, she should have realised it was never an invitation at all. But a reminder that she would only ever be on the periphery of someone else’s life. That she would only ever be turned away.
She was crying now. And she couldn’t stop. Her mind drifted back to that night in his mews. To the dancing. The kissing. The sex. And then to that face below her. That unrecognisable morphed mash of colours and shapes. It was even more horrifying to look at now. Clearer, too. Slowly, it started to become more like a human face. On top of a human body that lay beneath her.
Then a new picture emerged. This time she was in her own bed and facing Milo, her body immobile from exhaustion and alcohol. His mouth was on hers but this time it felt wet and slippery, like it was trying to suffocate her. His hands were on her too, heavy like chains as they pushed themselves into the softness of her flesh. She was so tired.
Before Richard left, he used to let Rose sleep in bed with him on the few occasions Lola went away. They would listen to George Michael albums and lie silently together, his arms wrapped around her until she dozed off. She remembered trying to recreate that feeling with Milo; there was an urge to feel safe. But what she felt next was pain, an unfamiliar blow, like everything inside her was being forced out. Then it all went numb; neither sight nor sound was available. There was no pain any more, just a body relaxing into its own paralysis. Soon, she would be able to fall asleep. Any minute now.
In the park, Rose was on the move again. Her limbs were shaking, driving her forward. She reached the bridge overlooking the lake and climbed over the top of the short, pillared wall, so that she was sitting down on the edge, a black mass of water waiting beneath her dangling feet. She exhaled into the calm of the night, stretching out her arms. Finally, a breeze. It cooled her. The rushing sound of water and a familiar face, his hand reaching out for her. She smiled, breathing it all in.
PART IV
ONE
I was in a bad mood from the start of the evening. I had slept terribly the night before the party – mostly because Guy had ended things out of the blue. We were in the middle of watching an episode of Friends, the one where Ross gets married to Emily, when he started saying he’d been thinking about where this was going. I didn’t say much. I just let him talk. He said something about needing to focus on work and being emotionally unavailable. By the time Monica had started shagging Chandler, Guy was gone. I couldn’t eat anything all day after that. So I arrived at the Serpentine hungry and horny. A bad combination if you want to achieve anything that isn’t eating or fucking. Unfortunately, there wouldn’t be time for either.
The party was a total shitshow. Not only was there no performer because Milo had decided to go to the Seychelles with his new girlfriend but the seafood reception gave everyone food poisoning. I knew this was going to happen. I always told Minnie and Liz seafood was a wild idea. But nobody ever listens to Oliver. Except for Jasper. But that’s only because he wants to exploit my publicity contacts. Or fuck me, possibly with his wife. Or maybe it was just his wife. Honestly, I’m not sure what’s worse.
Anyway, the worst part was that, by the time the fashion show was due to start, people had already started filling the bathroom cubicles. There were queues forming outside but no one was moving. So people sort of just started being sick in the queue. They were snaking around the entire building, a proper vomit train. The smell was unbearable, like a cross between a toilet that wouldn’t flush and a bin bag of rotting chicken carcasses. Even Jasper was purging what looked like entire prawns he must have swallowed whole. There’s a rumour someone vomited on Kate Moss.
The only people who weren’t sick were the women modelling in the show because they hadn’t eaten anything – I told Minnie real people were worse than models. I hadn’t either, of course, because of my allergies, and neither had Minnie or anyone on the press team because we never eat the guests’ food.
