Out of the Darkness Read online

  And so my life had changed yet again.

  Chapter 6

  "Marianne, hurry! We’re going to be late for the train."

  Lily had been standing patiently by the door with her luggage while I was still trying to sit on mine to get it to close. Why did I always pack so much? Eventually, after removing a sweater, I managed to get it shut and dragged the heavy case to the door of the flat. "You're sure you turned everything off in the kitchen?" I asked.

  "You’re driving me mad. I refuse to go back yet again to check that the stove is turned off. The taxi is waiting. Let's lock up and get on our way."

  I’d been back in London for six months, and after being off work for two months, I had contacted the agency and told them I was ready to resume work, provided that there were still assignments out there for me and the world hadn’t forgotten my face.

  Slowly I had regained the pounds lost after Chad's death by not eating, and the improved sleep patterns and fresh air, plus the care given me by Lily, meant that the dark circles under my eyes had gone, and my complexion once again glowed. The jobs came in slowly at first, but within a couple of months, I was in the enviable position of having to turn work away again because of a full diary.

  Today, Lily and I were off to Paris where we’d both been hired for photographic work with a top French glossy magazine. We took the Channel tunnel instead of flying and a few hours later, we were pulling into the station in Paris, where a car was waiting for us to take us straight to the magazine's offices. They wanted to run through the plan before the shoot started properly the following morning.

  As we walked into the main office, leaving our luggage in the lobby, I sensed that something was happening. I could feel several pairs of eyes staring at me and heard some whispering.

  "What's going on Lily? I feel we’re the center of attention here."

  "Oh, it's nothing, I'm sure. They’ve probably not seen such hot chicks like us for a long time."

  The editor, Gabrielle, came out to greet us and I sensed awkwardness between us. After a brief hello, Gabrielle asked Lily if she would mind going with her assistant so that she could have a brief word with me in private. I wondered what on earth was going on.

  I followed Gabrielle into her office and sat down. She realized that I had no idea what was happening.

  "Marianne, I’ve had a call from your agency in London. They’ve been trying to contact you but your phone must be switched off."

  I pulled my phone from my handbag and realized that it was indeed off, and pressed the button to activate it. Within seconds, the screen lit up with ten missed calls. Four of them were from the agency in London, another from their New York office, one was from Andrew, and the rest were unknown callers. I wondered what on earth had happened that so many people were trying to contact me.

  "I take it that you’ve not heard about the pictures?"

  My blood ran cold. I suddenly had an awful premonition about what I was about to hear. "No, I know nothing. What’s going on?"

  "An online gossip website has produced numerous photographs of you posing naked, and they’ve also been printed in one of the more scurrilous newspapers in the US, as well as one in the UK. We don't know how these photos were obtained and from whom, but I regret that we won’t be able to use you for the shoot this time. I'm sure you will understand that the magazine cannot run the fashion feature with you in it while these pictures are fresh in the public eye. Perhaps in the future, when all this dies down… I am very sorry, Marianne, we had no choice in the matter."

  It must have been the flash drive, the one that was missing when Andrew gave me the photographs. I’d forgotten to ask him about it. But surely he wouldn’t… no, I was positive that Andrew would have nothing to do with this. I needed to call him. I needed to call the agency. My mind was in a daze with the shock of what I’d just heard. I went to find Lily.

  When she heard what had happened, Lily told me she was going with me back to London.

  "But you still have a job, Lily. You mustn’t leave on account of me."

  "I'm not letting you go back to London on your own. I let you down once before, I'm not letting you down again. I’ll get us a taxi and we’ll see if there are seats on the train going back to London."

  I was fortunate that Lily had insisted on coming back with me because I was in no state to be travelling alone. She took care of everything and within a couple of hours, we were on our way back to London. Neither of us looked online to try and find the website on which I was featured. I couldn't bear to look at it right now.

  At St. Pancras station in London, word must have spread that I was on the train, as we were met by several paparazzi photographers. We were jostled as we tried to make a run for the taxi rank. Lily was furious at our struggle to get through.

  "The bastards! They are just like vultures. I managed to stamp quite hard on one man's foot. I wish my foot had managed to make contact with that guy's balls, then they would really have something to stick in their magazines."

  We reached home and as soon as we made it through the door, I burst into floods of tears. "Why, Lily? Why would they want to do this after what I’ve already been through?"

  She dropped her bags and drew me into her arms and hugged me tightly. "I don't know, but we'll get through it. Don't worry, it will be okay. You go and sit down and I’ll make us a cup of tea."

  As I sat down my phone rang. It was Andrew.

  "Marianne, thank goodness. I was beginning to worry when I couldn't get in touch. Are you all right? Where are you?"

  "You obviously heard. I’ve just got back from Paris. They cancelled the job I was on and Lily insisted on coming back to London with me."

  He must have detected the flatness in my voice.

  "Do you want me to come to London? Or you’re welcome to come down here to Bristol for a little while until all this blows over."

  "It won't blow over, Andrew. They are out there on the web now. They’ll keep resurfacing again and again. My modelling career is probably over, but I don't care about that. I just care that all those people should see photos that were special to Chad and me. It makes me shudder to think…" I couldn't go on and burst into another flood of tears.

  Lily came into the room and took the phone from me. She must have heard some of the conversation. I heard her say, "Don't worry, I’ll stay with her. I'll look after her." A few more words were spoken and then Lily switched off my phone and hugged me.

  "Sit down and drink your tea. We’ll get through this. I'm certain of that. Andrew wants to come up and see you tomorrow, and then we’ll sit down and work out what we’ll do."

  The following day, Andrew came up to London on the train, and appeared at our flat at noon. When he saw me, he hugged me tight.

  "Marianne, I am so sorry. I just can't imagine how they got hold of all those pictures. I was certain there was nothing else on the laptop, and some of the pictures published were not included in that envelope I gave you in New York. I swear to you that I have never, and would never, let anyone have the photos."

  "It's all right, Andrew, I'm not blaming you in any way. It's my fault. I meant to ask you where the flash drive was. I knew that Chad had downloaded all the photos onto one, and when I realized it wasn't with the stuff you brought over, I meant to ask you to check around, and I forgot. Either it was in the safe and you didn't see it, or else Chad forgot to put it in there and it was in the stuff that was in his apartment. What did you do with the rest of his things?"

  "After I’d taken out what I wanted to keep, I paid a company to empty the place for me. Someone must have found it, and when they realized what was on it, they probably sold it to the website. This particular website is notorious for dredging up all sorts of stories about celebrity lives, and don't really care how the information is obtained. I've already spoken to a lawyer I know in London, on your behalf. I hope you don't mind but I’ve asked him to come here at two pm. I think we need to hit these people with an injunction as soon as po
ssible."

  The lawyer, when he arrived, was a man of about fifty, called Greg, who had been involved in several cases like this before. He asked lots of questions and wrote copious notes. Eventually, when there was a pause in proceedings, he told me that he was going to go straight back to his office and make an immediate application for an injunction on the grounds that the material was stolen from Chad's home, and not given or sold by him or me to anyone else.

  "I think I ought to point out that these type of cases, involving both the Internet and print media, and covering several countries, can be very tricky," Greg warned. "Each country has its own privacy laws, or sometimes none, and so an injunction here, for example, wouldn’t be valid in another country. However, we’ll do what we can to shut the story down. I just don't want you to get up your hopes too much and for you to be disappointed if our move fails."

  I tried to sound positive, but inside I was hurting so much. "Thank you, Greg. I know you’ll do your best."

  "Another thing that might help would be to get a PR company to spin the story in your favor. I know something about your personal tragedy, Marianne, and I know from experience that the general public are usually very sympathetic towards people who experience these events and against the scurrilous elements of the press who try to exploit someone's misery in this fashion. However, it risks opening the story to the wider press, instead of the few places where it has appeared. There will be many people who won't have seen the pictures at all and the temptation for the papers, which pick up and run the story, would be to make a splash of it so that it becomes more of a story. If we manage to obtain the injunction, the papers wouldn’t be able to use the pictures—at least, not in the UK. Anyway, I’ll leave you to ponder what I’ve said and I’ll get straight back and get things moving."

  After he had gone, Andrew, Lily, and I talked about his suggestion of a public relations exercise. I was reluctant. I simply didn’t want to talk about Chad and me and have it disseminated in public. I was still grieving so badly for the man I adored, and I didn’t want to reopen the wound. However, after a lot of talking, they persuaded me to talk to the PR people. When Andrew had gone, Lily and I sat sipping a glass of wine, each lost in our own thoughts.

  "You know, Lily, however this story ends up, I think I’m done with modelling. I think I need to do something more useful with my life."

  "Don't do anything irrevocable," Lily warned. "Events that cause you despair might disappear out of your mind in a year or so. People have a short attention span, and once the shock of seeing the photos has passed, it’ll be yesterday's news.” She reached over and stroked my arm, as if to reassure me. “Lots of people come back from far greater scandals than this. Besides, I can't see what can be so wrong. From what you’ve told me, the photos were all quite tasteful."

  "Most of them were. Unfortunately, after three glasses of wine, I lost much of my inhibition and some of the shots were a bit triple x-rated. Chad said that they were for his private porn collection, for when I was away working. I thought he was joking, but I’ve looked at the website and some of them are there. I know you haven't looked at the site out of respect for me, but if you want to, I won't mind. I’d rather you saw them than a dirty old man in a grubby raincoat."

  "No, it's okay. I don't need to see them. They were special to you and Chad, and I respect that."

  I gave her a hug. Life was tough, but after losing Chad, nothing could ever be as tough again.

  The PR company persuaded me to give an exclusive interview that would be widely read, both in the UK and US. They would tell my story sympathetically and would send a photographer, too, to take a wide range of shots at a nearby large country house.

  The journalist was a woman called Joanne. I’d met her before and she was very sympathetic and understanding.

  "There are a lot of bastards in this world," she said, "but I think that the piece we do will show the public that you are a nice young woman who had her heart ripped out when her loving boyfriend died, and who doesn’t deserve to have the pictures flaunted in front of the whole world."

  Joanne was as good as her word and told my story sensitively. I’d taken a selection of clothes to wear, and the magazine had brought some too, and the photographer, Harry, who’d worked with me before, took hundreds of shots. Many of them were of me standing alone, looking into the distance, or sitting lost in thought, contemplating my future. Even though I didn’t consciously make myself look sad, my sadness was there for all to see. Joanne said that someone would have to have a heart of concrete not to be moved by my plight.

  The magazine came out the following week and generated a lot of comment, almost all of it favorable to me. My agency said that they would be happy to continue to represent me, but did suggest that I had a short break to allow the furor to die down. As for the injunction, it had a limited success, but I decided not to go down the route of trying to sue people. I thought that this would backfire if the case eventually came to court a year or so down the line. So I made the decision to live with what had happened, and make some big changes in my life. I needed a new direction and something to give some meaning to my existence. And I thought I had the answer. I would go to Africa and do some volunteer work.

  Chapter 7

  I arrived in Dar-es-Salaam, in Tanzania, just a few weeks after the article appeared in both the British and American editions of the gossip magazine. I hadn’t realized that I could get a volunteer posting so quickly, but a woman I knew, who was heavily involved in a charity that helped educate young children in Tanzania, was able to pull some strings. As soon as I was able to get my vaccination shots, I was accepted to help teach English at a primary school a short distance outside Dar-es-Salaam, the large port on the coastline of the Indian Ocean.

  I fell in love with the school and the children as soon as I arrived, and they seemed to like me, vying with each other to sit next to me when I was first introduced to them as their new teacher. I was petrified. I had absolutely no experience of teaching, and I was afraid that someone would discover me to be a huge fraud. It was quite a shock to find, after a few weeks, that I was actually quite good at it.

  There was another woman there from Belgium, called Monique. At the school, the headmistress was Tanzanian, and there were two Tanzanian teachers, one woman and the other a man. Next door to the school was a clinic and one of the two doctors there was a British man, of around thirty, called Chris, who had trained as a doctor in the UK, but wanted to use some of his talents here, in Tanzania, before settling down back home. Working alongside him were two nurses from the local community.

  It was a tight, friendly little group and, for the first time in a long time, I began to feel happy again. I was still grieving for Chad, but was slowly beginning the journey back to full membership of the human race. Chris, Monique, and I developed a real friendship and spent most of our evenings together, laughing and talking and, in our free time, discovering something about the life of the people here in this country in East Africa, about which I had never given a thought before.

  People in this part of the world seemed to have so little compared to the spoilt and pampered life I’d led as a top model. The children I taught had absolutely no idea who I was and it was bliss being able to live life out of the glare of the spotlight. If Chris or Monique had heard about me, or about the scandal, not a word was said. I was so grateful to be away from all that. London, and my life there, seemed a million miles away.

  I was so used to men ogling me and trying to hit on me that at first I was puzzled when Chris practically ignored me and concentrated instead on Monique. I suppose I was even a little piqued, my pride a little wounded, not to be the center of attention. But it was good for me to realize that not everyone is in thrall to beauty and it certainly taught me to be less vain and shallow.

  After a while, I realized that Chris and Monique actually had a thing going on between them. I was worried that this might make me seem like a spare wheel and that they would resent me
tagging along wherever we went. But it wasn't like that. They both went out of their way to make sure that I was included in any plans they made. In a way, it was kind of humbling and a lesson for my ego to find that here was a man who didn't worship the ground I walked on.

  I was out in Tanzania for nine months, and with each passing month I could feel myself healing, after the agony of losing Chad. I knew that he had been out here once. I remembered seeing some of the pictures he took of that trip, and it comforted me that I could begin to think of him without the pain in my heart splitting it in two. Finally, I knew that, as much as I enjoyed teaching the children, I was ready to go back home and resume my life.

  I e-mailed Lily and told her that I was coming back, and she promised to meet me at the airport. She was sharing a place with another girl now, so I knew that I would have to find somewhere to live, but I expected that. It was unreasonable that the lives of the people around me should stand still, just because mine had.

  We flew into each other's arms at Heathrow, and Lily pulled back and looked me in the face. "Well just look at you. You look amazing, Marianne. I haven't seen you look this good for so long."

  I hadn't realized, of course, but now Lily mentioned it, I did feel good. I’d put back on the weight I’d lost in grieving for Chad. I was sun-tanned, with a healthy complexion and, best of all, I had remembered how to smile again.

  We had kept in touch with weekly e-mails throughout my time in East Africa, so I knew that there had been a spate of articles and comments online about the nude photos, but it had eventually all died down, especially as I hadn’t been around to fuel the flames. Other scandals had come along and pushed mine away from public consciousness.

  I slept on a fold-up bed in Lily's room for a week, but then found a small flat nearby, and moved in a few days later. The agency welcomed me back and, after I had a chat with the director, who saw me looking better than ever, she said that she would push for some new work for me. She was happy that the upset regarding the photos seemed to have died down.