Maybe Tom Collins had worked out for himself that there was no difference between real Ollie and book Oliver—they were both equally destructive.
Ollie went first to his little crib by the sea. He had to pass the turning to Tom’s house, but he couldn’t see the actual farm, as it was up the drive and over the brow of the hill. He made himself some tea, as he considered his approach. It all depended on Tom’s welcome. If Tom was pleased to see him—to see the immediate effort he’d made to prove that the kiss meant something to him—then all would naturally follow from that greeting…Ollie didn’t want to think about what would happen if Tom was pissed off at being chased.
He suddenly felt incredibly tired. He’d not slept much the previous night, and the drive had taken it out of him. He wanted sugar and alcohol but chose instead to eat some cheese he’d pilfered from his mother’s house with some crackers. Tom would half approve. It was better than shortbread. He was making an effort.
Sitting in his armchair, watching the ocean on its never-ending curl and crash, Ollie drifted away on exhaustion and let it all go for a while as sleep claimed him. Tom wasn’t going anywhere. In his dreams, he was exactly where Ollie wanted him to be, and he was staying there for just as long as he needed him to be there.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
After a shower, shave, change of clothes, and another snack, Ollie felt more than ready to tackle the Tom problem.
Ollie grinned as he thought of Tom’s face when he appeared in the doorway to the villa. Good or bad, he felt his appearance would at least be a surprise.
There was a minibus pulled up in front of the house when he slid his BMW to a halt. Lights illuminated all the rooms and the thump, thump of an extremely loud sound system was pouring out into the cold evening air.
Tom, it seemed, was having a party.
Ollie wasn’t entirely sanguine about discovering this, but he gave himself some credit for not immediately turning the car around in a hissy fit of pique and flouncing off because, clearly, Tom had been at some pains not to invite him or even tell him about this party with his friends. No, Ollie made the far more mature conclusion that naturally Tom wouldn’t want him at any event with his old army pals. He wouldn’t invite Tom to some of the dos he’d been to in his life. Their worlds were very different. So, not
sanguine
, but not wholly furious.
He didn’t bother knocking or ringing, as no one would have heard him anyway. He pushed open the door to find a man waggling his penis at him from the hallway.
Huh
. Perhaps this
was
like Cambridge then.
“Hey, sorry, matey, you know where the fucking loo is?”
Ollie pointed the man down the corridor, and he hopped off, swearing to himself.
There were six or seven men playing some kind of game in the sitting room, which apparently involved diving into a non-existent swimming pool, but they were all still clothed, so it began to resemble one of Ollie’s parties less and less, but he couldn’t get any of the men to answer his simple enquiries as to Tom’s location. He thought he’d try outside, but couldn’t find Tom there either.
The kitchen had three men in it who were apparently mixing a large jug from various bottles of alcohol. One of them greeted Ollie cheerfully enough and offered him a drink.
“Do you know where Tom is?”
“Who?”
That was new. Not an improvement, but the other men hadn’t even bothered to reply. He suddenly had a thought. “Skint?”
“Oh, the fucker’s nipped out for some more booze. Hi, I’m Sicknote.”
Ollie nodded limply.
“You a friend of Skint’s then? Local?”
Ollie made a non-committal reply and sipped his drink. He reared back and looked at the glass. “What the—?”
“Good, innit? We call it the
Arse-Fucker
. One sip of that, and you’re fucking anyone’s.”
One of the other men began raiding the fridge, making obscene comments on the stuff he found inside. “Give Skint a bell—tell him to get some proper fucking snacks in, Sicky.”
The man called Sicknote dug out his phone, but he seemed to have trouble pressing the buttons. He lost interest halfway through the attempt. “So, you known old Skinty long?”
Ollie was eyeing the furniture behind the house and deciding he’d wait for Tom in the relative quiet of the garden. “No, a couple of weeks. We met when he bought this house.”
Sicknote laughed, and the man from the fridge raid flung an arm around Ollie’s neck. “Skint? Buy a house? You’re havin’ a laugh, mate. We had to have a whip round for the booze he’s out gettin’.”
Ollie suddenly and embarrassingly remembered the story of Tom’s wife and the agreement they’d had. He mumbled something along these lines, but it only received a hoot of derision and a knuckle rub from the guy who appeared to be Ollie’s new best friend. “Janice? Colonel Jan buy Skint a house! You’re havin’ us on, kiddo. Some rich old biddy bought it for him—payment for babysitting her kid or something.”
Ollie detached himself from the moment. Not literally, of course; he was still there physically, being pummelled and passed around and plied drink, as if he’d been these guys’ friend for years, but mentally he took a step to one side, as if he were merely a character in a storybook, and nothing about this scene was then real. “Babysitting?”
Sicknote nodded glumly. “We told him: fucking jammy bastard. Met her at the rehab place where she was one of those posh bits of totty who likes to help poor wounded soldiers. Yeah, we could all fucking suggest a way she could have given a helping hand…” This was greeted with grunts and hand pumping from the other guys, just in case Ollie hadn’t got the joke. “Anyway, she had some faggoty little kid ’parently—no offence, mate—who was a total screw up. Drugs, alcohol, suicide or some shit. Crashed his car and killed some poor bloke. Skint needed a job. Marriage made in fucking heaven. He leapt on the old biddy, so we heard.”
The guy now mixing some fruit into the alcohol concoction added, “She was a right looker, so I heard. Like that fucking actress.”
Ever wanting to be polite and helpful, Ollie suggested, “Juliette Binoche?”
“Who? Nah. Dunno. Anyway, babysitting wasn’t all the bastard had to do, was it?” This question was accompanied by so many eye rolls Ollie wondered if the guy was about to have a fit.
Sicknote looked—well, as if he actually needed his name…a little green around the gills. “Nah, she wanted him to
fuck
the little wanker, too. Convince him he was gay or some shit, ’cus he was all…” Air quotes came into play. “
In denial
.”
“She actually stipulated that. That Tom was to…fuck him?”
“Stipulate.
Stipulate
…wow, boys, we’ve got a right posh one ’ere. Mind your Ps and Qs. Yes, sir, stipulated it.” They all began talking at once. Apparently, Tom had convinced the “old biddy” that he was gay to get the job. It was hilarious. Hadn’t even told her he was married. Skint was…well, he had the best nickname in the regiment. He was always
skint
. Would do anything for money. Always had, always would. He’d fuck someone for a can of lager, according to his best friends. Who knew? It was an apartment on a lake, last time Ollie had heard it.
“So, matey, what d’ya want to find Skint for? You want another drink while you wait?”
Ollie wasn’t sure. Did he want another drink?
He felt as if he’d had all the alcohol he’d ever drink in his life.
He’d suddenly lost the taste for it.
He made his apologies. Now that he’d been pegged as a posh git with a ridiculous vocabulary, he played on it, and made them all laugh by being charming and witty. Maybe Hugh Grant could play him in the movie.
Oliver
. Play Oliver.
He asked them to tell Tom something from him, tell
Skint
, and then he left.
The message was easy to remember, he felt, even for men so drunk that they had apparently not made the connection between the little faggot Skint had been paid to fuck and the pale almost unto death young man in front of them:
Fuck you
.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ollie arrived back in London on a cold, grey November morning at six o’clock.
He’d flown first class on his mother’s money and had taken a day in Singapore, also on his mother’s wealth, so he wasn’t particularly tired. Now, he had a car booked—also paid for by Ronnie Fitzroy. Or Oliver, he supposed. Oliver paid for him. He laughed. It was actually funny.
He wasn’t sure where to go.
He’d been living in Cambridge in digs when he’d killed Edward Barnes. He’d been a few months away from completing his PhD. He’d not lived in Devon, except for the occasional weekend, since he was seven. Nevertheless, it was home. His only one.
Ronnie wasn’t there, but the staff would be.
Or he could book into a hotel, he supposed. He was at something of a loss.
The driver was watching him in the rear-view mirror.
“Sir?”
Ollie roused himself and told the man to take him to Claridges. Ronnie’s purse was fathomless. He decided to plumb the depths.
Taking a thirty-two-hour flight after finding out that your entire life was a fiction, and that you’d been tricked, humiliated, and debased, probably wasn’t the best thing to do. It had given him far too much time to think. Ollie had donned the headphones and mindlessly flicked through the movies, but the whole time he was still back in that kitchen, being told he was a little faggot whom Tom had been paid to fuck. It was singularly the most hurtful moment of his entire life, and he had lived a number of years with surprisingly bad moments.
He needed some time to regroup and not remember for a while, and Claridges seemed to be a very good place to do exactly that. He was anonymous and treated with deference by uniformed men paid to be respectful.
His respite wasn’t helped by the fact that Tom kept calling his mobile, of course.
The calls had begun about fifteen minutes after Ollie had left the villa and had been searching frantically for his passport in his bedroom in the crib.
He’d only just made it to his car and taken the route left toward the fishing village when he’d seen headlights turning into his driveway. He’d then sat at Dunedin airport, scanning for the minibus, and had observed with some interest when it’d pulled into the drop-off zone and half a dozen slightly shell-shocked looking men had followed a running Tom into the departures lounge. Annoyingly, they’d not left for well over two hours, so Ollie had missed a number of possible flights to Christchurch. Once they’ve driven away, however, he’d emerged from his vantage point and hopped on the first plane he could. His phone had continued to ring while he was waiting for a connection at Christchurch, but he’d had to switch it off when he’d boarded his plane to Singapore.
Now, ensconced in a nice suite at the hotel, which was only costing his mother a little under three thousand pounds a night, he felt like answering the insistent ring.
He spread out on the vast bed and pressed the little green icon.
“Ollie? What the fuck?”
Ollie rolled over onto his belly. “Good party?”
“Fuck you! What the hell are you playing at? You just disappear? Your mother’s frantic! She’s flying home because of you! What’s going on?”
Ollie clicked off to consider his options for a while. Apparently, everything was
his
fault. His mother had hired Tom to seduce him—but this was
his
fault. She’d bought the house across the way, and Tom had faked a meeting and a friendship with him—but this was all
his
fault. His mother had then engineered a whole spurious visit to New Zealand, so she could ensure she was getting value for money from her newest acolyte—but this was
his
fault. Thinking then that Tom Collins had lied to her, that he was married and only gay for pay, she’d forced the issue, ordered him to step up the pace of his seduction—and this was
his
fault. Tom had deceived him, betrayed him, made him fall in love with him, all the while calling him a sick little faggot to his army friends—but this, too, apparently, was his fault.
Ollie pondered all his imperfections as he gazed at the vast expanse of ceiling above his head. He was clearly a very defective person.
The phone was ringing again. He clicked his favourite green button.
“Ollie?”
“Why do you always answer like that? Do you think my phone has been stolen in the ten minutes since I last picked it up?”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shouted. Don’t hang up. Please, just promise me you won’t—”
No, the red icon was his favourite. It shut off the voice he really didn’t want to hear ever again. Which was odd really, because he selected green the next time the phone rang.
“
Please
. What do I need to say for you to hear me out, Ollie? Please, just tell me that.”
“Nothing. I’m listening. Say whatever you want to say then stop fucking ringing my number.”
“Why did you believe Sicknote? Why didn’t you wait for me to get home and ask me if it was true?”
“I didn’t need to. Everything that was wrong simply fell into place. It is true, isn’t it?”
“Ollie, will you promise me you won’t hang up, that you’ll give me a chance to explain? Please. You don’t owe me a single damn thing, but I’m begging you, please—don’t hang up until you hear me out.”
“Okay. I’m not doing anything very important at the moment. Say what you want.”
“I told you that my life was fucked up. I met your mother at the rehab centre. She was worried about you, Ollie. You’d just come out of hospital and you were imploding, self-destructive. I needed the money, and so when she suggested I—Why are you laughing? You’re fucking laughing?”
“Jesus. I thought you were going to say that it had started as a job, but then you really did fall in love with me, and that I’ve made a huge mistake and…but that’s him, isn’t it? That’s what would happen to Oliver in a book. My God, it
was
all merely a job for you. It really was.”
“Shut up! Let me speak! I’m trying to tell you, but I don’t have that bloody quick tongue of yours. Of course it didn’t start as a job and then became
love
! Of course it fucking doesn’t work like that because—”