Freddie raised an arm, gave him a thumbs up.
‘We’re fine,’ called Annie. ‘Carry on, carry on, we’ll catch up.’
This really was not going as smoothly as she had anticipated.
Annie had been hoping to catch the two men – and put her proposition to them – on their way down to the spa for a morning swim maybe, or having a cheeky cigarette by the fire pit after breakfast. Annie herself had been up for hours – she had awoken with a start and a splitting headache at five thirty, the sky still moody outside her slightly open curtains – and asked housekeeping to let her know when the men left their respective cabins. Unfortunately for her, both had ordered room service and failed to emerge before midday. Keen to avoid Ned today as far as humanly possible, she had slumped back into bed and done the same herself.
As a result, she’d been forced to tag along to the one activity she knew they were signed up for, and trot around the island on a horse, her stomach lurching with every sway of the saddle under her. Not to mention her headache, which this helmet （her normal size, but far too tight today – had her hair extensions added an inch to her head’s girth?） was doing nothing for, and her outfit （black leather leggings, leopard kitten-heel boots and a red cape coat）， which in this context made her look like a demented ringmaster, and this horse – a skinny, weird-looking creature with dappled grey hair and one blue eye – which was so jittery she felt it might bolt at any moment.
Neither Keith nor Freddie looked like he really wanted to be here either – even if Keith did look surprisingly comfortable in the saddle. Still, what else were they going to do? Sulk in their cabins all weekend like Jackson Crane? Presumably they were both hoping for a chance to talk to Ned at some point, to plead with him, to explain why it was literally impossible for them to pay, on a regular basis, the kind of money he was talking about. Even for a man as wealthy as Keith. Even for someone on the salary of Freddie Hunter. Annie tried to imagine them receiving their packages, opening them to find the unmarked memory stick within . . .
What would she do in their shoes, she wondered? Would she realize at once what this was, what was happening, what it meant? Would she scramble to detonate the tiny truth bomb, plugging it into the side of the TV to see exactly what she was dealing with, try to gauge if there was a way to just let the film leak and spin the fall-out somehow? Or would she ignore it for as long as she could bear, book a facial, go for breakfast, refuse to pull the pin on the grenade?
And when they did watch it, forced themselves to watch it, how much would they have to get through before they realized exactly what they were looking at? How long before they realized they were screwed – that however much Ned asked of them, they were going to have to find some way to cough up. If they valued their careers. If they valued their reputations. Their families, their friends, their freedom.
The douchebag tax, that’s what Ned called it.
You’d think that the members themselves would be the weak link in the operation – that they’d warn each other somehow, take their fellow douchebags aside for a quiet word, so they didn’t get stung the same way. But what would they say – and more to the point, who would they say it to? By the way, person I have once shared a screen with, you know that thing the make-up artist indiscreetly told me you like doing, that you can’t do in your own penthouse, the thing that requires a hotel suite and someone to clean up after you? Well, I wouldn’t do it any more, not at Home, not if I were you . . . It was not a conversation she could imagine members rushing to have – there was nothing they could say without incriminating themselves: I too have a nasty habit, a dirty secret, an unpleasant little career-killer I need to hide at all costs, so I know that Home is not the place to do things you wouldn’t at home . . .
She wondered if either Freddie or Keith had any idea what the other one was on the hook for.
Freddie, clutching his reins tightly, back stiff, face slightly greenish, looked like he might be about to vomit. Or cry. She did not blame him.
It could be tricky for Keith, perhaps, raising that amount of money, every year, indefinitely. It would probably involve a complete reorganization of the way he worked, the way he sold his work and who to, but it was possible. There was simply no way Freddie Hunter could stump up that kind of cash. Not with his debts. Not with his spending habits. His mortgages. His multiple fucking helicopters. He knew it. Ned knew it.