After a while, Bianka gets up and, without pausing Viking Keto, goes back in to the kitchen and pours the other half of the Malbec into her glass. With the extra alcohol, she feels bold and unhinged, so she grabs her phone and scrolls through her camera roll until she finds the video she’s looking for. It’s over three minutes long and it shows herself and Charlotte in bed with Maxime, which she sent to herself from Maxime’s phone after he’d died in the finca and Charlotte was still knocked out. She’s watched it many times already but it never fails to captivate her. She stands up again and draws the curtains firmly shut.
Then she plays the video on the TV. The people on the screen leap into action. Maxime is lying reclined on the bed, stroking himself and watching as Charlotte and Bianka meet in a kiss, tongues visibly flitting in and out of each other’s mouths. Bianka hits pause at exactly the right moment, when they break apart and look into each other’s eyes. Rather than the more sexually explicit parts that follow, it’s this moment Bianka watches over and over, the dull ache of loss filling her entirely. And now it’s even worse than the first time.
She begins to cry again, throaty sobs echoing around the little lounge. She rewinds over and over and over; their lips locked together, eyes closed, the slow move apart, the eyes opening, that beautiful look of utter adoration. She gets back up and opens another wine bottle, pouring almost half of into her glass, then downs it while still standing at the kitchen counter. Then she lies down on the sofa and blacks out.
Thirty-Two
Charlotte
It’s seven a.m. and a later start for me than usual, but I have a whole day off except for a Zoom call with my Norwegian network this afternoon. I do my stretches for a while, like Linda has taught me and insists I must do every day or otherwise I’ll end up ‘prematurely aged’, and only when I’m done do I look at my phone. I do an instant double take when I glance at my notifications. After a two-second scroll, it’s clear that my world is on fire.
*
‘You’re a fucking meme,’ says Caty, my manager and a no-nonsense New Yorker, pointing to the image which has been massively enlarged and projected onto the screen in the middle of the room. I nod, keeping my head down because there is nothing I can say that can undo this damage.
‘I mean. What were you thinking?’
‘I don’t think I was thinking,’ I say.
‘Our publishers are going to freak the fuck out. Probably Streamstar, too. And I can’t say I blame them. We’re going to have to issue a grovelling statement. Elly, you deal with that?’ Caty directs this last request at my publicist, a young and serious girl with a morose face and limp mousy brown hair. She nods. Caty paces around, back and forth in front of the photograph, which really only shows a woman taking a bite out of a piece of focaccia but no doubt has the power to ruin my career.
‘Do you have any idea who took this picture? We are going to sue their ass so bad.’ Judging by the angle it was taken from, it leaves no doubt that it was Bianka who took the picture; she was sitting directly opposite me at the restaurant. I can’t say that because I don’t want to risk an even worse situation with her. When I went through my phone, she’d also sent me a picture message from the pub with the caption ‘fuck you’.
I shake my head. ‘No idea. Sorry. The bar was super crowded. It could have been anybody.’
‘You’re supposed to be wholesome and trustworthy. That’s, like, your entire USP. You’re not the sexy, fun one who just does whatever the hell she wants; you’re the one people can aspire to. Your success comes from making keto work for normal people. Wholesome and trusty keto gurus don’t eat focaccia in public and get caught.’ When Caty says ‘hell’ she screams it. She screams ‘focaccia’, too. Fuck-atcha.
*
When I finally leave the meeting to address focacciagate, I have two new calls from Anette and three from Andreas. I call Andreas back first, shielding the microphone from a chilly wind sweeping in from the Thames as I walk away from the office building at the riverfront and head toward the parking garage. I’ve taken to driving everywhere, even in central London; since the show launched in the UK I feel as though I’m getting stared at wherever I go, even though I know that isn’t really the case, you’d have to be an A-lister for that, not just a carb-hater on TV.
‘Seriously, what the hell, Charlotte?’ Andreas says when he picks up.
‘Oh, hi to you too, honey,’ I say sarcastically.
‘Someone just sent me a picture of you. You’re a meme. You look high as a kite – please tell me you weren’t actually taking drugs in Ibiza? You know the kinds of people I work with. This could be very damaging.’ I reassure him that of course I wasn’t taking drugs and the picture must have been manipulated by a crazy, jealous troll. I hang up, but immediately the phone starts up again, vibrating in my pocket, and I could scream with frustration at how it just hasn’t stopped – it’s probably yet another journalist calling to confront me with one of my own numerous punchy quotations about the dangers of bread. I get in the car and simultaneously attempt to answer the phone and manoeuvre the car from the parking garage and into the flow of traffic.
‘Hello?’ I shout into the phone, but just then something catches my attention. It’s a sweep of blue across the tarmac, followed by the wail of the siren. Police. They know. They must have taken one look at me and they just knew. For a crazy moment I entertain the thought of just stepping on the accelerator, of tearing down the streets until I can get no further, boxed in by a traffic jam or a dead end by the river, but at least I’d have those wild moments, the last moments of freedom…
I pull over and a stern-faced female officer waits for me to roll down the window, a walkie-talkie ready in her hand to call in her big arrest. Stop it, I tell myself. Maxime hasn’t even been reported missing. No one knows. But I’m convinced my face tells a different story. I open my mouth to speak, to tell her that I didn’t do it, it was all a mistake, I’m just a nice low-carb lady from Norway, but no words will come and to my horror I burst into tears.
‘Ma’am?’ says the officer. ‘Do you know why I’ve pulled you over this afternoon?’ I nod but still no words will come because I’m full-on ugly crying now. ‘Ma’am? Are you feeling okay?’
‘I didn’t do it,’ I whisper, but thankfully my words don’t carry out through the window and into the world.
‘You touched your phone while operating the vehicle,’ she continues. ‘It’s against the law.’
I stare at her, my face contorted into a grimace. ‘I…’ I begin. ‘I’m sorry, I…’
‘Are you okay? Are you feeling unwell?’
‘Apologies, officer, it was a family emergency.’
She looks me up and down and the sternness is gone now, she actually looks concerned. ‘I’m going to have to give you a formal warning and a fine, as well as a mandatory traffic safety course, to be completed in Lambeth borough by end of July.’
I nod and cry some more, now mostly with relief. When I’m about to roll up my window and drive away, she asks, ‘Don’t mind me asking, but are you that bread lady off TV?’
I don’t even dare glance at my phone on the long rush-hour drive home, and when I finally do, I see I have over twenty missed calls from Bianka. I feel another surge of anger, then turn my phone off. How could she have betrayed me like this? I know I’ll have to deal with her at some point but I can’t right now. Now I have to make a plan.
Thirty-Three
Bianka
Same day
The next thing Bianka knew, it was morning outside. It had to be, judging by the sharpness of the sun’s rays and the angle that they fell across the floor. She was on the sofa and when she sat up, she had to lie back down; her head was aching terribly and she had a foul, indeterminate taste in her mouth. She must have been out for almost twelve hours, a rather worrying feeling. Pieces of last night came back to her: the pub full of strangers, the humiliation she’d felt, the run home in the rain, the drinking.
She grappled with her phone that was lying face down on the table where she’d left it. She squinted at the impossible information on its screen and sat back up, mouth dropping open in shock. Fifteen missed calls from numbers she didn’t recognize, and… 6,803 new likes on Instagram. With an onslaught of dread, Bianka tried to remember what happened last night before she passed out. She remembered watching the video. Then what? Had she opened another bottle of wine? She glanced into the kitchen – there were two empty bottles, their corks on the floor.
She opened the Instagram app and found it still logged into an account she didn’t recognize. @VikingKetoFanGirl was the handle and it only had a single post. She immediately recognized the picture because she’d taken it herself at Els Horizonts. She must have created the account last night in her rage and posted the picture that is apparently breaking the internet, or at least the low-carb corners of it. It was immediately obvious to Bianka that this image could end Charlotte’s career. It was taken close up; Bianka remembered how she’d angled the phone to pretend she was responding to a message, while actually zooming in on Charlotte’s face in the exact moment she bit into the thick, moist focaccia, her eyes closed and her face beaming with pleasure. Her hand began to shake as she read the hashtags. One read #TheRealKetoQueen and the other #CokedUpMuch? She’d even linked it to Charlotte’s official @ketoqueen account with over three hundred thousand followers. Immediately, she pressed Delete and disabled the account, though it was, of course, much too late.
Bianka sank back into the sofa, fresh tears stinging her sore eyes. How could she have done something like this? She’d lost any chance at all, however small, of reconciliation with Charlotte. She tried to call her over and over, then realized she’d blocked her number. She unblocked it and tried again and again, but got no answer. By early afternoon, she was going stir-crazy and realized she had to do something.
*
For the first time, Bianka wishes she had a dog; that way it wouldn’t appear so weird to be lurking around other people’s neighbourhoods. She looked Linda up on the very helpful Scandi ladies call list and found her address easily enough. She lives on a very exclusive street out in Cobham with vast villas and preened lawns. She’d assumed that Linda was Wimbledon-rich, like the rest of them – big house and a decent sized garden, privileged by London standards certainly – but this is next-level rich. The house looks like a miniature Cannizaro Hotel, with two distinct wings and lawns perfectly suited for helicopter landings, the kind of home that no doubt keeps several members of staff. Linda is clearly as loaded as Charlotte, if not more so.
Bianka allows herself one discreet walk-by and stares up at the house, mostly concealed behind tall hedges like a wrapped gift. It’s almost 3 p.m. and it’s unlikely that anyone is at home. Linda lives alone with her husband who presumably goes to work, and Linda herself keeps very busy indeed with a tight schedule of yoga, coffee dates, and eyelash appointments. When she reaches the end of the road, Bianka discovers to her great pleasure that there is a little coffee shop on the corner.
