Ellie stiffened. ‘He said that?’
‘I spoke to him last night. He’s very … concerned about you.’ He was negotiating the words like a horse doing dressage. ‘It’s hard for him to reach out to you given the circumstances but he has your best interests at heart.’
Ellie had tried hard from a very early age not to entertain the idea that her dad might actually think about her, let alone care for her. Because it didn’t matter how many gold stars she got at school or that she’d moved up a grade in gymnastics, he was never going to roll up on a Saturday morning and whisk her off for a matinée performance at Camden Odeon and a Happy Meal afterwards, like the absentee fathers of her friends.
Now as she sat there, under David Gold’s pinstripe gaze, the walls that Ellie had put up were crumbling at the edges. For the first time, and using a suited, smiling emissary, her father was reaching out to her – but only because he wanted something. The resentment that she always tried to tamp down reared up and she would have loved to dash her father’s hopes the way he’d dashed hers. Maybe, though, it was better to have him, and his undoubtedly expensive lawyer, on her side?
‘OK,’ Ellie said without much conviction. ‘OK. Let’s try it your way.’
‘Good. I’m so glad we’re all on the same page. Now, would it be possible for you to leave the country for a couple of weeks?’ he asked, and Ellie was so blind-sided by the question that she found herself nodding. The nodding turned into a swift and violent shake of her head that almost gave her whiplash.
‘No! No! That’s impossible! I’m curating a really important exhibition, Emerging Scandinavian Artists,’ she explained, because it would be nice if he reported back to her father that she was doing just fine without him. But then, as Ellie thought about the exhibition, which was less than a fortnight away and was in that fraught stage where half the pieces were in transit or languishing in Customs, and the catalogues still weren’t back from the printers who’d totally screwed up the pagination on their first attempt, she realised that doing nothing might not work. ‘My boss will be absolutely livid if my face gets splashed all over the papers … Look, could you not go to one of the broadsheets and get them to run something more sympathetic? Or why couldn’t he grant the Sunday Chronicle an exclusive interview about his charity work or—’
‘Absolutely not!’ David Gold’s smile slipped so all Ellie could see was the steel underneath. She flinched, and he must have realised that he was the one who’d gone off-message and also that there was only so much goodwill a girl could have to a deadbeat dad because he reached across the table, almost as if he was going to give her hand a comforting squeeze. Got as far as resting his hand on hers and, oh! That tug towards him, those tingles she’d felt at Glastonbury, increased, intensified so that Ellie expected to see blue sparks where skin met skin for that brief second before they both snatched their hands away.
Ellie folded her arms and stared stonily down at a splash of coffee on the tablecloth. No. No! No more what-might-have-beens. He was her father’s lawyer, which meant he had a metaphoric ring fence, barbed wire and ‘Danger! HazChem!’ signs around him. On a very basic level, they might be sexually attracted to each other but not giving in to one’s baser urges is what separates us from animals, Ellie told herself sternly.
David Gold had also put his hands to better use and was straightening his already ramrod straight tie again. He was also swallowing hard. ‘I can only reiterate that in my considerable experience in this area, talking to the press is never a good idea,’ he said, once he’d stopped swallowing. ‘So, let’s move forward, shall we?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Good, then we’re agreed.’
They weren’t agreed as far as Ellie was concerned, and there were still plenty of things that she wanted to say to David Gold. He still hadn’t outlined his precise plan to get the Sunday Chronicle to possibly spike the story, but they were interrupted by a waiter who was ushering Ellie’s next appointment to the table with much deference, as befitted an A-list WAG who was fake-tanned, had her platinum-blonde hair teased up into awe-inspiring gravity-defying splendour and, despite the fact she was five months pregnant, was poured into a bandage dress and teetering unsteadily in six-inch Christian Louboutins.
‘Oh, Mandy, hi,’ Ellie said weakly, as she stood up to greet Mandy Stretton, née McIntyre, WAG, spokesmodel, TV presenter, entrepreneur and owner of her own very profitable chain of express nail bars. She kissed Mandy in the vicinity of each cheek and tried to sound more enthusiastic. ‘So great to see you! You look radiant. We were just finishing up here, weren’t we?’
She turned to David Gold to perform an awkward introduction but he’d got up and was holding out his chair for Mandy to sit down, returning her smile with one of his own. This smile reached his eyes, made them crinkle up at the corners. It was much prettier than the smiles he’d directed at Ellie and made her pulse quicken.
Mandy wasn’t immune either. She fluttered her eyelash extensions as he smiled down at her. ‘I’m Mandy,’ she said. ‘I’m one of Ellie’s clients. I was using another art dealer to find someone to paint my portrait while I’m preggers. Nude but classy, like that shot of Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair, but he kept introducing me to painters who were, like, totes up themselves and wanted to do me all abstract with two noses or a transparent stomach …’
There was no point in trying to cut Mandy off once she started talking; Ellie would just have to wait it out and suffer a hundred agonies in the meantime.
‘… Or else they’d get really snippy when I said that the background of the portrait had to be white. I can’t redecorate the lounge again, can I? Ellie totes got where I was coming from. So, are you having your portrait done too? You have excellent cheekbones. Not like my Daz,’ she added fondly of her footballer husband, who might have scored a hat trick in the last England qualifier but was rather homely-looking.
‘Oh, you’re very kind but I don’t think my cheekbones would stand up to that kind of scrutiny,’ David said with a warmth that hadn’t been in evidence earlier that morning. ‘And I’m not very good at sitting still for long periods of time.’
Ellie realised Mandy was looking at her rather pointedly. ‘Oh, sorry. Where are my manners?’ She gestured jerkily at Mandy. ‘Mandy, this is David Gold, he’s um, a …’
‘A business associate,’ he interjected smoothly, taking Mandy’s hand, and for one awful moment Ellie thought he was going to kiss it. He didn’t, thank God. ‘And of course, you don’t need any introduction. Congratulations, by the way.’
Mandy giggled, then David Gold cracked a joke about lawyers taking a breakfast meeting with Satan that was actually quite funny and made Mandy giggle even harder. And it turned out one of his underlings represented one of Darren’s team-mates, so he slipped Mandy a business card while Ellie sat there smiling tightly.
‘I really must go,’ he said at last as Mandy ‘aw’ed her disappointment. He turned to Ellie. ‘Please don’t worry. I’ll let you know if there are any new developments.’
Both women watched him walk away with a long-limbed stride. Ellie sighed in relief, then Mandy sighed too. ‘There’s just something about a man in a well-cut suit,’ she said. ‘He had a really firm handshake. Definitely a keeper, Ellie.’
‘Definitely not my type,’ Ellie stated flatly. ‘Absolutely not.’
Mandy looked at her, aghast. ‘But he’s a lawyer! Whoever heard of a poor lawyer? OK, a lawyer isn’t a Premier Division footballer but everyone has to start somewhere.’
Camden, London, 1986
It was only ever meant to be a short-lived affair in a summerhouse in someone’s back garden.
When he wasn’t in Camden with Ari, then Billy was in W11 with his wife. It made her feel sick with shame even to think about it, and it was good that she did think about it because Ari needed to remind herself what Billy Kay was really like.
When she was with him, even when he was inside her, he held back. Kept himself at a
distance. His smile never reached his eyes. He always spoke lightly and playfully to her, but never deeply.
It made Ari try harder. Made her want Billy more. Made her long to be a warrior queen who could conquer his soul. Ari was sure that somehow she could say the right words, do the right thing, find a way to win his heart, because his wife bloody hadn’t. Otherwise why would he be spending so much time with her?
Still, it wasn’t wise to give Billy everything. He took and took and if Ari let him keep taking, there’d be nothing left of her, so she held herself back too. But Billy could sense every time that Ari tried to pull away from him. Every time. And he’d peel away her clothes, take down her hair and kiss her until she couldn’t think straight.
He’d make love to her slowly and oh so sweetly, so differently from their usual frenzy and fury. Then he’d reach between them so he could press his thumb against her clit and stop.
‘Tell me you love me,’ he’d say, not even blinking as Ari scored her nails down his back in an effort to get him to keep moving because she was so close. ‘Tell me, Ari!’
She’d shake her head and he’d thrust just hard enough to get her hopes up, then stop.
‘Don’t you love me, then?’ he’d ask, his thumb teasing her clit briefly, and every time she’d fall apart and crumble.
‘I do. I love you.’ Ari would throw the words at him like they were stones, and she wanted to believe that they were just words she said so he’d start moving in her again and kiss her like he really meant it.
Sometimes ‘I love you’ was just a means to a beautiful end.
Chapter Nine
The funny thing was that when you were expecting the worst, sometimes the worst never materialised. When nothing happened, not even a tiny story tucked away on an inside page of the Sunday Chronicle, Ellie actually felt a little disappointed.
Probably disappointed wasn’t the right word, but it was definitely an anticlimax after a week of worrying and angsting and having insomnia that not even an oxygen facial and huge amounts of Touche Veloutee could disguise.
After scouring all the Sunday papers and not finding a single mention of her name or the phrase ‘secret lovechild’, only a couple of pictures of her half-sisters stumbling out of a Mayfair nightclub after a few too many sherbets, Ellie knew the storm had passed.
She was camping out on their unofficial roof terrace, which could only be accessed by climbing out of the bathroom window and got rather whiffy with the scent of chargrilled meat when Theo had the restaurant’s kitchen door open and the wind was blowing in the wrong direction. There’d been no wind, not even a stiff breeze, for weeks now and Ellie squinted up at the cloudless blue sky and decided to count her blessings, of which there were many.
For a start, she wasn’t that Sunday’s cause célèbre, and the silence from David Gold was deafening, so the story must have been killed. Maybe David Gold had used his charm and connections to call in some favours. Or maybe the editor of the Sunday Chronicle had decided that it was a non-story. After all, her father hadn’t released any new material or organised any global charity concerts for the victims of child poverty lately. He wasn’t exactly newsworthy, which meant that Ellie wasn’t newsworthy either, which was good because she didn’t have time to be newsworthy.
The Emerging Scandinavian Artists exhibition was now eight days away. The exhibits were mostly present and correct and all emerging Scandinavian artists had their travel itineraries, and their hotel bookings, confirmed. If the exhibition went well, then Ellie would earn a hefty commission. Maybe even enough that she could start flat-hunting soon.
Ellie stretched out her legs, which were tanned to a pale caramel colour and leaner, thanks to a week of being too stressed to eat more than trail mix and Greek yogurt, and gave a silent prayer of thanks because her life was pretty good.
Life would have been even better if she’d never had to warn her nearest (Vaughn) and her dearest (Ari and her grandparents) about her impending infamy.
‘I have to tell you, Cohen, you’re skating on very thin ice,’ Vaughn had said after he’d listened to Ellie’s ponderous explanation of the coming media apocalypse. ‘If there are paparazzi camped outside and interfering with my business …’ He’d tailed off with a meaningful look, his right eyebrow arched the way it always did when he was being a dick.
Breaking the news to her grandparents had been a cakewalk in comparison. There’d been a lot of recriminations about how it would never have happened if Ellie had been dating a nice Jewish boy, but they were completely down with the idea of maintaining a dignified silence, ‘though if things get really bad, bubbeleh, then I’m sure the Jewish Chronicle would run a sympathetic piece’.
That had left only Ari, who’d said nothing, had barely blinked, while Ellie had filled her in on all the gory details. She’d poured herself a double measure of vodka, downed it in one, then smashed the shot glass she’d been drinking from. That was followed by two plates, and a shouty, sweary invective about the gutter press, the moral failings of anyone connected, however tenuously, with the Law Society, and Ellie’s father’s inability to man up.
‘If he wanted to, he could stop this,’ she’d raged, as Mrs Okeke from the flat above banged on her floor. ‘But no! That would involve getting his hands dirty!’ Ellie had been surprised that Ari had taken it as well as she had …
‘What are you looking so chipper about?’ said a voice, and Ellie turned to see Tess with her head stuck out of the bathroom window. Her friend glanced down at the newspapers. ‘Oh shit! I was going to get up early and hold your hand while you went through them. Or is it not shit? Is that why you’re smiling?’
‘Bullet totally dodged,’ Ellie said, holding up the Sunday Chronicle for Tess’s inspection.
‘Thank God,’ Tess panted as she tried to manoeuvre herself through the sash window. It was a tricky procedure as the window only opened part-way and you had to fold your body in half while simultaneously trying to get both legs through the gap. ‘Sod it! I can’t do this when I’m wearing only a vest and a thong.’
‘I’ll come to you,’ Ellie decided. ‘I’m wearing bikini bottoms with full coverage.’
Ellie stood up and stretched, revelling in the heat of the sun and a distant but distinct wolf whistle from the four Australian guys across the road, who also had their own unofficial roof terrace.
‘Does this mean you’re going to start eating proper meals again?’ Tess asked. ‘No one can survive on Greek yogurt and trail mix alone.’
‘Too bloody right. I’m starving.’ Ellie looked at her watch. It was just after eleven. ‘If you start getting ready now, we could be having Sunday roast and cocktails at the York & Albany in just under an hour.’
Tess was already disappearing towards the bathroom before Ellie could get her legs through the gap in the window. ‘Make it half an hour,’ she threw over her shoulder. ‘I’m starving too. I had sympathetic stress.’
Ellie sailed through the week on a wave of euphoria. She worked hard – the Scandinavian exhibition was the last big push before the art world’s big hitters spent August in sunnier, beachier climes – but she was playing hard too.
She went to three exhibition pre-shows and after-show parties, attended a Jewish Cancer Care charity ball with Tanya, Emma and Laurel, schlepped all the way to New Cross for a Fuck Puppets gig and accepted an invite to Muffin’s birthday drinks, which was at a chichi Chelsea bar full of braying posh people. Ellie didn’t know what Muffin had been saying about her, but her friends kept telling Ellie that no one would ever guess she’d been ‘to a state school with a load of poors. You don’t look like a chav. You totes look like one of us.’
On Saturday night it was a relief to be back among her own people. Some of Ellie’s old friends from Central St Martins were having a barbecue in the huge back garden of their shared house in Ealing and had hired the biggest paddling pool they could find in direct contravention of the hosepipe ban.
It was the perfect summer party. Ellie
sat dangling her legs in the controversial paddling pool, drank far too many glasses of Pimm’s and lemonade and got chatted up by a graphic designer who’d been in the year above her at college. Jacques was good-looking in a graphic designer-y way and listened attentively to what she had to say about the ratio of fruit to alcohol to lemonade in a perfect Pimm’s cup. Ellie gave him her number and responded with determined enthusiasm to his suggestion that they meet up to go to an open-air screening of Singing in the Rain.
Now that everything was back to where it should be, Ellie could start searching for Mr Normal, and if normal meant hanging out with guys like Jacques and not utter lowlifes like Richey, or corporate, suity guys who smiled too much, then Ellie could see herself totally embracing normal.
‘It’s not like he’s boring normal,’ she told Lola and Tess as they caught the tube back to Camden where a friend of Tom’s was hosting a special ‘Girl From Ipanema’-themed night in a pub on the Chalk Farm Road. ‘Like, he’s called Jacques, not Jack. His mum’s Swiss or something.’
‘As long as he is normal,’ Tess said. “I mean, he wants to take you to see a musical. Are you sure he’s straight?’
‘Don’t be so homophobic.’ Lola elbowed Tess sharply in the ribs. ‘Going to see musicals isn’t gay. It’s ironic. Or is it post-ironic?’
‘Maybe it’s post-post-ironic and is back to being ironic again?’ Ellie suggested, because she could never keep track of these things.
They argued about the difference between irony and post-irony all the way to Camden, then trooped up the escalators and down the High Street, grimly ignoring the hordes of beered-up men who’d apparently never seen three girls in short sundresses before.
Ellie was immensely relieved when they got to the pub on a road off Chalk Farm Road and she didn’t have to listen to Tess and Lola argue about hipsters now they’d moved on from the difference between irony and post-irony.