but he had made his bed and he honestly didn’t know how to get out of it. It was his idea to buy in Highfield, and he thought that perhaps things would change, for there were still times when he looked at her and caught his breath because she was so beautiful.
She would never be what he wanted her to be, but if he moved her out of the city, if they bought a country place, maybe she would settle down and they would have children, the quiet peaceful life he had always wanted.
He drove out of the city one Saturday when Penelope was at a photo shoot in Paris, with a list of properties the realtor had told him about, and spent the morning trudging through house after house, each one more pedestrian than the last.
“There is another house,” the realtor said slowly, just as Robert was beginning to feel despondent. “Although it’s more money than you wanted to spend.”
“Tell me about it,” Robert said, as they drove through town toward the beach.
The house on Dune Road was the last one on the list, and the most expensive. It was out of their price range, but the realtor said they had to see it, because it had been in one family for generations, and was, in her opinion, the most beautiful house in Highfield, and certainly a house worthy of a famous author and his equally famous and beautiful wife.
As soon as they turned on to Dune Road, the rosa rugosa overgrown, almost overtaking the sandy track, Robert’s heart started to pound. And then around the curve, through the gates, and up a driveway to a large square house with elegant pillars which was the most beautiful house he’d ever seen.
He didn’t need to go upstairs to see the views over the sparkling waters of Long Island Sound from the master bedroom to make his decision. He didn’t need to appreciate the antique library, the many fireplaces, the high ceilings and gracious French doors that opened onto a terrace with a pergola covered by an ancient wisteria.
He knew, as soon as he saw the place, that this would be his home, and that he would never leave it, never live anywhere else, for the rest of his days.
“You will love it,” he told Penelope the next day, when he finally managed to get hold of her, and Penelope, when he drove her out there the following weekend, simply shrugged and said it was nice. She didn’t have the yearning for a home that Robert had, didn’t have, he realized with sinking heart, an ounce of nesting instinct, nor of domesticity.
Before they closed on the house, Robert sold a film and, for the first time, money was no longer an issue, so buying the house was no longer a stretch. They had staff from the beginning, needed them to pick up after Penelope, who would literally grind her cigarette butts out on the wooden floors, drop her clothes wherever she was standing, knock over a wine bottle and not bother cleaning it up.
The staff turned a deaf ear when they heard the screaming, learned to disappear if Penelope was in one of her rages. Picked up the pieces quietly, having signed confidentiality agreements, knowing that they could never tell anyone of what really went on in the McClore house.
The only times she would be okay, the only times she didn’t resent him for dragging her out of New York, was when the house was filled with her friends and models and rock stars were draped over all the furniture. Robert learned to acquiesce, learned to accept the constant stream of people for it was easier than dealing with Penelope on her own.
Their parties swiftly became orgies. It was, in some respects, a sign of the times, or perhaps a sign of their marriage, because after a while Robert stopped caring and started sleeping with other people too, models who turned up, friends of Penelope, women who made themselves as available to him as the air that he breathed.
And it was becoming harder to breathe. There were nights when he would wake up and feel as if he was suffocating with unhappiness, with dread, with the fear of what was going to happen next.
But his fear, his nervous anticipation, his sense of dread fueled his writing with the same, and each book became bigger than the last. And then came the first of the movies, starring Warren Beatty, and he was