The rise and fall and ri.., p.1
The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of Clara Wild, page 1
The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of Clara Wild
By
Natasha West
Copyright © 2024 by Natasha West
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
One
Lily Gray was roughly halfway across the Atlantic Ocean when the poisoning kicked in.
It started with a rumble about three hours in. Lily didn’t pay it much mind, too invested in reading articles about Clara Wild’s various broken engagements. Lily was fascinated, not because she cared much about the love lives of former TV stars in general, but because she was being paid to care about this one in particular.
Clara Wild had been a star in the early two-thousands, making it big on a TV show called Earthlings. It was about the first colonists on Mars. All of them were inordinately hot, and the writing was good, so the show pulled in the sci-fi nerds who loved hard, as well as a broader audience of people who liked to watch pretty people doing things. The combination of those demographics was enough to create a megahit.
Clara Wild, while not top billed, had been extremely popular as Robin Blake, the colony president’s daughter and a secret dissident who was working to undermine the colonists' attempts to establish a successful community. People said she was the breakout star and predicted big things for her. But when the show ended, so did Clara’s career. No one knew why. But because the show was still available on streaming services, the younger generations were watching and loving it, so the question continued to be asked: ‘What became of Clara Wild?’
Lily had been tasked with answering that question once and for all. That was the reason for the flight from London to LA. Lily was ghostwriting Clara Wild’s autobiography and was headed to meet the woman herself. But Lily’s early research had turned up little on the mystery woman, so she could only hope that Clara Wild liked to talk.
One of the few things Lily had dug up was the list of her three fiancés. Three men had gotten a yes before being dumped prior to a wedding taking place. It was an intriguing pattern. Lily wondered if anyone had tried proposing to Clara since. The information on her love life had dropped off sharply in the last fifteen years, maybe because there was nothing to tell. Or maybe because of her declining fame. Lily supposed she’d find out soon enough. She was prepared to ask the tough questions. It was what she did.
There it was again, that rumble in her stomach. And here came its chum, nausea. Lily couldn’t ignore it now; something was up in her gut region. And now she was freezing cold. What the hell had she eaten?
‘Excuse me, I don’t mean to be rude, but are you OK?’ asked the middle-aged bearded American man next to her.
Lily turned, surprised. ‘Why?’
‘You look kinda sweaty,’ he observed.
She was now so obviously sick that strangers had to check on her. That wasn’t good.
‘I’m fine,’ she lied. Because what else was she gonna say? ‘Help me, my stomach’s trying to kill me?’ She wiped at her hot, wet forehead and said, ‘I’m just feeling a tad under the weather. It’ll pass.’
The man scratched his temple, unassuaged. ‘Well, ma’am, I have to check. Because we’re all stuck on this plane, and if it’s, you know…’ He let the implication hang in the air.
Lily shook her head. ‘It’s not that. It’s nothing contagious. I think I ate something.’
The man looked relieved. ‘Oh, OK.’ He turned away, totally uninterested now.
Lily looked out the window, rolling her eyes. The guy was quite happy for her to die right next to him so long as it didn’t cause him an issue. Bloody Americans. If a Brit had been sat next to her, they’d have made a much better pretence of giving a shit. Brits could fake caring properly.
Oh Christ, her stomach was roiling now. It was only a question of which end blew first.
‘Excuse me? Do you mind if we swap?’ Lily asked the guy.
He looked up from his phone. ‘Huh?’
‘I think I should sit in the aisle seat. In case I need to move,’ she explained.
‘Move where?’ he frowned. Now that he knew he wasn’t in danger of infection, he was annoyed she was talking to him, the utter dick.
‘To the toilet,’ she said. ‘Unless you want me to do it where I sit.’
His eyes widened in alarm. ‘No, of course not.’ He jumped up, and Lily shuffled out. The man took the window seat, and Lily sat back down in the aisle seat.
She needed a distraction and a ginger ale. She ordered the latter from a passing flight attendant and went back to reading about Clara’s first doomed fiancé, a baseball player called Josh Stern. Handsome and athletic, he was Mr All-American jock. He’d been enamoured enough to put a ring on it after only a month, during the shooting of the second season. She’d given it back as soon as the season ended.
Come the fourth season, another suitor came calling: an actor named Brad Stark. He’d lasted across the fourth season and again, gotten dumped in the hiatus. By then, Earthlings was at the height of its popularity.
Then, at the start of filming season five, she hooked up with a movie director, Daniel Buchanan. Daniel had thought he could beat the odds, only to go the way of Josh and Brad. He was dumped before the sixth season started shooting. Another ring was given back.
Lily glugged a third of her tiny can of ginger ale in one go. Was it helping? Maybe. Wait, no… Lily jumped up and ran to the toilet.
Four horrific minutes later, she emerged to a small cue. ‘Umm, I don’t think you want to go in there,’ she told a coiffed teenage girl. The girl gave her a look that made her feel about two inches tall.
Lily wobbled back to her seat. She could distantly hear someone shout, ‘Clean up needed here! Jesus, it’s a real mess!’ Lily was flush with embarrassment. Everyone in a five-metre radius knew what she’d done.
That was when she realised what had put her in this position. She’d been clearing out her fridge before she left and had seen something she never wanted to see again. Kombucha, homemade. Lily hated Kombucha passionately, now more than ever. She decided to pour it down the drain. But she’d wanted to prove something to herself before she did—that it tasted like shit.
She took a big swig, and yes, it was dreadful stuff. It was like someone had drunk a bad coffee, had a pee an hour later, and bottled it.
Lily poured the rest down the drain. ‘Bye-bye,’ she said to the kombucha. Though not really. She was saying goodbye to its maker.
Only she hadn’t said goodbye to it, had she? Because it was back.
She googled kombucha food poisoning. Apparently, it was usually not the kombucha itself but the circumstances of its bottling that caused the problem. That tracked. Of course that arsehole had been slapdash in the bottling process. And now Lily was probably going to die en route from Heathrow to LAX from norovirus.
She wrote a quick email.
In the event of my death, I want it known that it was kombucha bottled by Jenny Lake that killed me. Please do an autopsy and check the bottle in my recycling. That should confirm what the source of the bacteria was. And please give Jenny Lake my last words, which are these: Jenny, you killed me. You’ll probably only get a manslaughter charge, but be in no doubt that this was murder, you sloppy, lazy, selfish piece of shit. Fuck you forever.
She emailed it back to herself. Hopefully, the police would check her emails after her corpse was shipped back to the UK.
***
At LAX, Lily was waiting for her bags. She wasn’t dead, but she almost wished she was. Even though she knew she was probably dehydrated, she hadn’t dared drink water for the last few hours for fear her body would shoot it right back out. She couldn’t have laid a bet on which end would do the firing, and in the close quarters of a flight, she would rather have shrivelled into a prune than publicly shamed herself again. But she was on land now. She could go to her hotel and die there in peace.
Only she had an email from her publisher.
Hey, good flight? I know you’re probably keen to chill at the hotel and get over the lag, but Clara Wild had requested that you pop by today for a quick meet and greet. She’s expecting you around three.
Jesus wept. Lily had to meet Clara Wild in an hour. She went to the bathroom and checked the damage. She was a sweaty mess.
She squirted perfume on herself in abundance to cover the sweaty smell and ran a brush through her wheat-blonde tangles of straight hair, pulling it up into a messy bun. Then she tried to create some semblance of a human face with concealer and foundation. It wasn’t great, but it would have to do. However, she should probably keep the window low on the drive over there and air herself out a bit.
**
By the time the shuttle had driven the forty minutes to the quietly wealthy streets of the Hermoso Cove area, Lily felt kind of lightheaded. It was so bright in LA that her shades weren’t up to the job, and her head hurt. She was gonna have to make this a quick hello.
She looked up at Clara Wild’s house. It was three stories of sandstone and glass jutting up from the street behind wrought iron gates. Lily could see an actual beach around the back. How the hell had she afforded this? She hadn’t worked in fifteen years. Another uncomfortable question for the list.
Lily pressed a button on an intercom. ‘Yeah?’ someone said irritably.
‘Err, Lily Gray here,’ she said. She took off her shades. It seemed like the sun was dimming. Was it setting early? It was dark for three PM. Weird.
‘Come in,’ the person replied, and the gates swung open.
Lily stepped in and walked up the drive to the ornate wooden front door and waited for it to open. It was around that time that the darkness took her.
Two
Clara Wild was pissed before she even opened the door. She was not into this at all. Every aspect of it was her nightmare. Talking to a stranger about her life? Nightmare. Having that person interpret that conversation into a story? Nightmare. Everyone reading that story and thinking they understood anything about Clara? Nightmare. All in all, the whole next year of her life was going to feel like a succubus was sitting on her chest.
She was not planning to be nice to this person. She was going to be polite—kind of—and no more. Though Clara wasn’t going to torture this Lily Gray person, as such, the idea was that if she didn’t make it remotely pleasurable, she would be inclined to finish things as quickly as possible.
But then Clara opened the door—ready to be a moderate asshole— and no one was there to be assholed at. Until she looked down and found a passed-out blonde woman on her doorstep.
‘Christ!’ Clara yelped.
She knelt down and checked the woman’s pulse. She was still in the land of the living. Her big dark eyes drifted open for a moment, and Clara was given a moment of eye contact with the woman.
‘Are you Lily Gray?’ Clara asked, the only thing she could think to say.
The woman didn’t attempt to answer that question. ‘Wow, look at you,’ she said dreamily. ‘I’d put a ring on it, too.’ And then her eyes closed again.
‘What?’ Clara asked, but it was too late; she was out again.
Clara dragged the woman into the foyer and immediately called nine-one-one. They were there in five minutes. The paramedic took her vitals and confirmed she wasn’t dead or dying but definitely in need of care.
Clara took a ride with her to the hospital, where she was asked a lot of questions she had no answer to. ‘I don’t know what meds she’s on; I’ve never met her before,’ she explained to a tall young nurse with a neck tattoo, the third person to grill her.
‘Then who is she?’ the nurse asked.
Clara shrugged. ‘She’s helping me write my biography.’
The nurse looked at her like she was lying. ‘Right.’ He turned away and went back to check Lily’s vitals.
Clara hated this. She’d been dreading this anyway, and now she was at the hospital, and everyone thought she was drug buddies or something with this woman. That was all she needed. A scandal to break. Correction, a false scandal.
She hated it when this happened. One time, twenty years ago, it had been reported that she’d slept with Chad Michael Murray because she happened to stand near him at a club. She’d still yet to live that one down.
The woman suddenly moaned and opened those big, dark eyes. She looked around her. ‘What…’
The nurse smiled at her. ‘Hi. You’re in the hospital.’
‘You’re American?’ the woman mumbled.
He nodded. ‘That’s right. You’re not, I take it?’
‘No, I’m…’ Her eyes widened. ‘Oh god, no. Not an American hospital, please no.’
‘What’s wrong with American hospitals?’ the nurse scowled.
The woman was now fully conscious, not to mention terrified. ‘My insurance? I don’t know if it covers food poisoning. I mean, I was poisoned in a different country. That’s bound to trip me up somehow. Oh my god, I’ll never recover.’
‘Actually, your vitals are—’
‘Financially!’ the woman almost screamed.
Clara had to interject there. ‘Hey, don’t worry. They looked through your stuff, they already ran you. They said something about you having the kind of insurance people buy to do extreme sports.’
Lily relaxed slightly. ‘I got the best I could. You hear horror stories…’ She seemed to realise something. ‘You’re Clara Wild.’
Clara nodded. ‘And you’re Lily Gray?’
‘What happened?’ Lily asked.
‘I found you passed out on my step,’ Clara told her. There wasn’t any more to the story.
‘Bloody kombucha,’ Lily muttered.
‘What?’
‘That’s what got me, I think. I’m pretty sure the bottler was lax about sanitation,’ Lily said bitterly.
‘And you let yourself get dehydrated,’ the nurse admonished.
Lily sighed. ‘I couldn’t make anything stay in my body, and I was on a plane,’ she said, pleadingly.
‘Well, next time you wanna avoid our high-priced care, you might wanna take better care of yourself,’ the nurse replied pissily.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Don’t apologise to me,’ he said, confused.
‘I wasn’t,’ Lily said, turning to Clara.
Clara frowned. ‘Oh, you’re apologising to me? For what?’
‘This was unprofessional.’
Clara was surprised into laughter. ‘I don’t think that’s the word I’d use.’
‘I shouldn’t have come. I should have just emailed and said I was sick.’
‘Why didn’t you?’ Clara asked her.
‘My publisher said you wanted to meet today…’
Clara was incensed. ‘I didn’t even say that. It was his idea, and I said OK.’
Lily rolled her eyes. ‘Of course.’
‘Well, maybe it was for the best you came to me. If you’d passed out at a hotel, it might have been a while till they found you. At least you’re getting treatment,’ Clara shrugged.
‘That’s a kind way to see it, thank you,’ Lily said sheepishly.
Clara was annoyed with herself. The plan was to be just this side of cunty to her ghostwriter. And she was being kind to her. Lily had to go and pass out, didn’t she? It had ruined everything.
‘So, she is a writer?’ the nurse asked.
‘That’s what I said,’ Clara snarked at him.
‘What did you think was happening?’ Lily frowned.
The nurse became uncomfortable. ‘Nothing. I just…’
‘At a guess, he thought we were doing drugs together because I’m an actress,’ Clara shrugged. ‘Maybe coke? People still doing coke?’ she mused. ‘I’m really out of the loop on party drugs.’
‘I never said that,’ the nurse snapped.
‘I literally cannot think of a substance further from cocaine than Kombucha,’ Lily added thoughtfully. ‘Except water. Speaking of which, would you get me some?’ she asked the nurse, her tone wonderfully short. ‘I’m parched, as you might expect.’
The nurse, put in his place from the tag-team reproach, nodded and dashed off to get her some. And Clara was deeply annoyed to find that she liked Lily.
Three
Lily could have died. Well, she nearly had. And to think, she was embarrassed by dirtying an airplane toilet. Fainting on her new boss’s doorstep had that beat into a cocked hat.
It had to be said that Clara was being nice about it. Lily was actually kind of shocked at how cool she was. The last person she’d written for had been such a rude dickhead that Lily had almost quit more than once. She’d had the phone in her hand on four different occasions, ready to tell her publisher that she was done with Simon Foster and that he could write his own bloody book about his adventures in theatre directing. But she never quite did it. Instead, she struggled through it. It was what she did. She was a grinder. In life, in love, in work. She gritted her teeth and got through whatever was thrown at her.
She’d thought this was probably gonna be the same sort of thing. But Simon had never delivered her to the hospital. Clara had one up on him already. So, despite how bad this all was, it was somehow better than she’d expected.
