Hollywood’s golden boy as well, the man who could do no wrong.
Then that invitation to sail around the Mediterranean on Plum Apostoles’s yacht. They had already met a number of times, and Robert knew that Plum was Penelope’s latest conquest. He had seen the hurt in Ileana’s eyes when Penelope had led Plum upstairs, led him by the hand, turning on the stairs to kiss him fully and passionately in front of the rest of the people in the room, who applauded and laughed.
Ileana was attractive and sweet and so obviously ill at ease in this world. He took pity on her, took her to bed that night. Tried, with his actions, to apologize for the behavior of his wife.
He hadn’t wanted to go on the yacht, but Plum had decided he wanted to make it in the movie business, and was one of the major investors behind the smaller studio that was making Robert’s next movie. It was a business move. Nothing more.
Penelope came to bed in the early hours of the morning, ignoring Ileana, who, embarrassed, scuttled out, not before hearing Penelope belittling Robert, laughing at him, accusing him of being hopeless in bed, and feeling sorry for Ileana.
“You are a joke,” she hissed, turning to go up to the deck, and this time, for the first time, Robert lost his temper.
Perhaps lack of sleep, perhaps the wrong combination of drink and drugs, perhaps the final straw, but Robert felt a surge of temper at being dismissed, yet again, in front of someone else, and he followed her up to the deck and stood over her, almost nose to nose.
“Shut the hell up!” he shouted, louder than he expected.
“Why? Because you know it’s true? Because you’re not really a man, you’re just a pathetic little boy? A pathetic little boy who doesn’t know how to keep a woman happy?” She glared at him, then spat at him, full in the face.
He grabbed her arm, and something about the look in his eyes suddenly told Penelope he’d had enough, and she backed away from him, stumbling as she hit the railing.
And Robert stopped. It wasn’t worth it. They just needed to divorce. To stop making each other so miserable.
“You’re pathetic,” he whispered. “It’s not worth it.” He turned to go back.
Penelope flung out an arm to slap him, as she had so many times before, and she lost her balance.
No sound. Not a shriek, not a scream, nothing.
Robert heard the splash as he was walking down the stairs. He ran back up, and Penelope had vanished. He turned, his face white, to see Plum.
“Stop the boat!” Plum said. “I saw her go over. Get the crew up now ! ”
By the time they were flown back, accompanied by the police, by the press, he was a changed man. Or perhaps unchanged. It was a terrible, tragic accident, and he blamed himself. If he hadn’t lost his temper she wouldn’t have backed away, wouldn’t have been scared of him.
He ran the tape of that night over and over in his head for months. Finally he started to forgive himself, started to understand that no amount of guilt could change what had happened.
As he healed, he began to live the life he had always thought he was going to lead, before Penelope came into it, just with more money, more people wanting more things from him.
For he had come to realize that his life with Penelope was not what he would have chosen.
He had felt like an impostor much of the time, had known he didn’t fit in, found peace only when Penelope and the entourage that always surrounded her were traveling and he could be in the house by himself, build a fire and sit in an armchair with the papers, reading quietly, no need to be anywhere else, to see anyone else, to be doing anything else.
He stopped returning calls, burned the hundreds of condolences that arrived in his mailbox every day, didn’t answer the door to the flowers that arrived. He also stopped writing for a couple of years, finding that there was only one story that needed to be told back then, and he couldn’t tell that story, would never be ready to tell that story.
Until now. Until the idea of a mystery, of a series of mysteries raised its head. Last night, for the first time, he managed to stop worrying about where to find an idea for a mystery, and lost himself in the quiet