When it came down to it, when you stripped away his studied nonchalance and swagger, Billy Kay was just as scared as everyone else. ‘I love you, Billy,’ Ari said, and it was the first time she’d said it to him, first time she’d said it to anyone, and really meant it. ‘I couldn’t leave you. I’m not whole without you.’
He curved his fingers around her, so he had to be able to feel the thud of her heart tapping out the rhythm of her love. ‘I love you too, Ari, and I promise that I will always be there for you. Even if we’re apart, I’ll still be yours.’
His need was terrifying. ‘I’d never expect you to make a promise like that,’ she said.
‘I don’t care. I’m still making it,’ he said, and he leaned over to kiss her.
Chapter Fifteen
As Ellie started to follow David Gold out of the alley, he suddenly stopped. ‘Georgie’s waiting in the car. Where shall we go? I should be able to rustle up a private room at the Groucho.’
‘I can’t,’ Ellie insisted. Her throat was scratchy and sore as though the tears weren’t far off, but she was determined not to cry in front of him. ‘I’m sorry. I just can’t.’
‘We’re trying to help you.’ He lowered his head as he lowered his voice and Ellie was suddenly aware of how they were boxed in, so close that she could feel the heat coming off his body. ‘Why can’t you understand that we’re on your side?’
‘I know that,’ Ellie said, though so far all his good advice and warnings had amounted to this moment at five to eleven on a Monday night, when Ellie and a good quarter of her worldly possessions were trying to find a place to hide. ‘But I’d rather you were on my side tomorrow and not right now.’
‘Poor Ellie. You’re having a very bad day, aren’t you?’ It was the first time he’d said her name without prompting. His voice was a soothing hum and he was looking her right in the eye so Ellie couldn’t look away but tried to search for the truth in the shadows that danced across his face in the murky light. ‘You say where you want to go and I’ll take you there. But first I need ten minutes of your time.’
It wasn’t worth getting in the car, though Georgie waved at her from where she was spread out on the back seat, as if she didn’t harbour any ill will about Ellie trying to make a surreptitious run for it. She walked alongside David Gold, and even though her tote and laptop bag were digging into her aching shoulder, she forced herself to hold her head high, back so straight it would have delighted her old headmistress, and even managed to have a desultory conversation about when the weather might break.
It was a relief when they reached their destination: two narrow three-storey houses that had been converted into a small boutique hotel. Ellie surrendered her baggage to the care of a dapper, suited young man who opened the door for her.
‘Lovely to see you again, Ms Cohen,’ he murmured. ‘Are you checking in for a client?’
‘For myself,’ Ellie said. Vaughn had set up a corporate account here for his Platinum Service clients because the hotel prided itself on discretion. They hadn’t even kicked up a fuss when Vaughn had stashed a former YBA in a King suite while he persuaded him to go to rehab and the former YBA had taken a violent dislike to one of the armchairs and pissed all over it.
Ellie would not be pissing on any armchairs. She just wanted a room with a bed in it, an en suite with a deep tub where she could have a long soak and, if she could choke them down, a sandwich and a cup of tea.
She booked in, book-ended by her father’s lawyer and her father’s publicist, who both offered up their business credit cards, which Ellie refused as a matter of principle, then her bags were whisked away to her third-floor superior Queen room. She longed to go with them, but instead asked if they could use the small sitting room off the restaurant.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Georgie took Ellie’s arm and pulled her towards the sofa. ‘We’ll be much cosier like this,’ she decreed, sitting down so Ellie had no choice but to sit too. ‘I have to say, Ellie, again, this shouldn’t have happened, but now that I’m back in London you don’t need to worry. Every single editor of every single paper owes me at least one personal favour and David is a genius at crisis management. Aren’t you, David?’
‘I do try,’ he said from where he was sitting in one of the bucket armchairs, legs crossed, arms folded, watching the pair of them with unconcealed fascination like they were an enthralling episode of Casualty.
He seemed very relaxed for someone who was meant to be managing a crisis, but there was a restlessness in the way his fingers drummed against the arm of the chair and the jiggling of his ankle, which made Ellie’s nerves hum.
‘So, what did you need to talk to me about?’ she asked carefully.
‘You’re right. Let’s just get this done.’ Georgie unzipped her Gucci document case, pulled out a sheet of paper and thrust it at Ellie. ‘Front page of tomorrow’s Sun. Sorry to be the bearer of such bad news.’
Ellie smoothed out the A3 photocopy and read the headline: THE OTHER MEN OF SIR BILLY’S OTHER WOMAN.
There was a photo of Ari, an onstage shot, in a leopard-print catsuit, but caught at an odd angle so even to Ellie’s forgiving eye she looked absolutely deranged. Then, of course, there were photos of the two most famous men ‘fifty-year-old Ari has bedded’: Billy Kay and ‘Oscar winner and A-list Hollywood star, Tommy Wickham, who close friends say ageing rock chick Ari “stalked fanatically” even though he was involved with supermodel Caroline Knight’.
Of course the truth lay buried deep beneath the surface. Tommy had been a struggling actor whose biggest role had been in a mockney gangster film at the height of the whole Cool Britannia/Britpop thing. He’d hung round the edges of the Primrose Hill set where he’d met Ari because it was the mid-nineties and anyone who was vaguely hip and lived in the NW1 postal code was deemed an honorary member of the Primrose Hill set, even if they didn’t exactly hang out with Kate Moss, Noel Gallagher and Jude Law on a nightly basis.
Despite Tommy not being Chester, his approval rating with Ellie had been high because he’d made Ari happy and would turn up on Saturday mornings in his clapped-out Ford Cortina to whisk them off on adventures to Brighton and Bath, or his parents’ farm in Kent. It had been a proper, serious relationship until Tommy had asked Ari to marry him and she’d turned him down.
It was only after he’d gone to stay with friends in LA while he nursed his broken heart that his career had taken off and Caroline Knight, supermodel and a raging coke fiend, according to Ari, had started sniffing around.
In fact, none of the names in Ari’s ex-directory held any surprises for Ellie. There was the guy she’d dated for three years when she was a teenager, who’d been in a punk band but was now a doctor; two guys she’d seen before Billy, who’d been in minor indie bands. One was now a Grammy-winning music producer and the other was a hip restaurateur. Another serious fixture had been a music journalist who was now married to an actress and had a successful career as a screenwriter; and finally a photographer who Ari had been seeing up until about a year ago.
This list of past lovers was nothing to be ashamed of as far as Ellie was concerned. Ari was attuned to recognising talent in other people even when they couldn’t see it themselves, so Ellie wasn’t surprised that her old boyfriends had all gone on to greatness; it just killed her that Ari was always the one that got left behind. But that aside, all she could think was, good on you, Mum, as she looked over at David Gold, then at Georgie, both of them staring at her intently as if they expected her to explode into a frenzy of tears and snot at any second.
‘I hope these revelations about your mother aren’t a shock,’ Georgie said sympathetically. She treated Ellie to another hand squeeze. ‘Rather a low blow, I thought.’
Considering what she’d been expecting, the front page of the Sun wasn’t so bad. Ari would probably prefer not to have her sex life dished up on the nation’s front pages, but Ellie knew that Ari would be able to deal with it. She’d probably get the cover made int
o a flyer for The Fuck Puppets’ next gig. ‘Well, they’re not really revelations, are they? It’s just a really inaccurate rehashing of the facts.’
David Gold raised his eyebrows in what looked like surprise and Georgie tightened her grip on Ellie’s hand, until Ellie winced and pulled away because Georgie didn’t know her own strength or that the bevelled edge of the ring on her third finger was very pointy. ‘I’m sorry, my darling, that was the warm-up. What we wanted to talk about was this.’ Georgie retrieved another photocopy from her document case. ‘You see, I thought you’d promised that you wouldn’t speak to the press.’
Oh God, now what? Ellie felt an ominous dread pressing down hard on her ribcage, which made it difficult to breathe. ‘May I?’ She held out a nerveless hand for a copy of the front page of tomorrow’s Daily Chronicle. She could hardly bring herself to look at it, and when she did, she wished she hadn’t.
BILLY’S KID DRIVEN TO THE EDGE
LONG LOST DAUGHTER ON 24 HOUR SUICIDE
WATCH
‘I WANT TO OPEN MY VEINS WITH A RAZOR IN A
WARM BATH,’ SOBS TRAGIC VELVET.
It was a fair cop. She should have hung up yesterday when Sam Curtis called, instead of yapping on so he could take her words out of context and splash them over the front page. There was also a picture of Ellie looking neither tear-soaked nor tragic, but very pissed off as she stood on the doorstep of the gallery. ‘Well, I did say that, but I didn’t say it like that,’ she protested. ‘It was a joke.’
‘Ellie, I asked you to do one thing,’ David Gold reminded her and Ellie wished that actually he’d stop calling her by her proper name if he was only going to say it to get her attention right before he pointed out how she’d fucked up. ‘I told you not to talk to the papers. Not just because it would paint you in a very bad light—’
‘You mean a worse light than the one I’ve already been painted in?’ Ellie asked him and Georgie clucked and gave her arm a comforting squeeze.
‘Yes, a much worse light,’ he agreed. ‘Because even if you think that you’re telling your side of the story, they will twist everything you say to suit their own agenda. Even the most media-savvy people get burned by the press.’
‘So true, and it’s going to be very hard for David and me to look after you if you’re going to go rogue, my darling,’ Georgie said ever so gently. ‘And just think what effect stories like this are going to have on your family, on your grandparents.’
That, at least, Ellie was spared. Morry and Sadie refused to have the Chronicle in the house, and she’d spoken to Sadie that afternoon about the best method for removing a vinaigrette stain from cotton so Sadie knew she wasn’t thinking of topping herself. ‘No one is going to believe that I’m contemplating ending it all,’ Ellie said defensively. ‘I mean, they papped me going to work. Who’d go to work if they were feeling suicidal? At the very least you’d ask for the morning off.’
‘At the very least,’ David Gold concurred, and when he wasn’t on a full charm offensive it was hard to tell when he was being sarcastic.
It was so late. They were all tired. Georgie had to be flagging if she’d flown in from Mustique, but it was impossible to know, what with the Botox and the fillers and the sheer force of her personality. Ellie wanted to give a silent cheer when David Gold stood up. They were obviously about to wrap things up and in another five minutes she’d be in her superior Queen room, shutting the door, peeling away each protective layer she’d wrapped herself in and … He walked as far as the sofa and sat down next to her, so that she was hemmed in on each side.
Despite the reassuring hum of the air conditioning, Ellie felt the first beads of sweat on her forehead as Georgie shifted position and Ellie found herself even closer to David Gold. Close enough that she had to tense her thigh muscles so her leg wouldn’t touch his. She took a deep breath. ‘I promise I will never knowingly talk to another reporter,’ she insisted. ‘I’m not going to even answer my phone unless I recognise the caller ID. I promise you that I’m not going to talk to anyone but – I don’t mean to be rude, I really don’t – you have to rein those girls in. You know, Lara and Rose. They shouldn’t be saying anything to the press either.’
‘I think we should talk about crisis management now,’ David Gold murmured, as if she hadn’t even spoken, as if her best efforts to convince them she could be trusted counted for nothing and they didn’t appreciate Ellie trying to stick some of the blame on Billy Kay’s more legitimate daughters.
Ellie didn’t have the energy to do anything else but subside on the sofa with a tired sigh.
‘Shall I take it from here, Georgie?’
‘Please,’ Georgie said, as if she too was emotionally drained, but at least crisis management sounded good. Or at least it was proactive.
‘So, Ellie, forgive me for asking this but how many of your old boyfriends are likely to come crawling out of their corners with more stories about your, er, rather colourful sex life?’
‘I beg your pardon!’
Ellie expected David Gold to crack his knuckles, but he didn’t. Not when he could pull out his BlackBerry from an inner pocket and smile at her ruefully. She wanted to wipe the smile off his face with a Brillo pad. ‘I’m aware that this is rather indelicate but it‘s best that I know exactly what we’re dealing with. Nude pictures? Sex tapes? Threesomes? Bondage?’
‘Oh my God!’ Something in the back of her throat pinged with the strain. ‘Please stop talking! And no, no, no, a world of no!’
‘Darling, Billy asked us to help you and that’s what we’re here to do. I know it’s embarrassing and I wish we didn’t have to ask, but there’ll be absolutely no judgement from us,’ Georgie advised her kindly. She patted Ellie’s knee again with a heavy hand. ‘Right, David?’
‘Absolutely no judgement,’ he said in a carefully neutral voice. ‘But we’re all adults here. Everyone has done things they regret and we are on a clock, so while I understand that you need to make a few token outraged protests – I’d do exactly the same thing in your position – can we skip them, please?’
Ellie’s mouth fell open and hung there for several, very unattractive seconds. It was bad enough … all of it, but to have him, David Gold, speculate on her sex life, to imagine all the things she might have done in the dark, in bed, with another man, was highly inappropriate and none of his bloody business. Especially as she refused to condense her relationships down just to mere sex, because they’d all meant so much more than that. Even Oscar, her friend with benefits, had been a close friend first; someone she’d laughed with and hung out with and looked out for, and the sex had come a close second to that.
And though it was the last thing she wanted to think about, Ellie wondered what David Gold had done that he’d regretted. Probably not that much. She was beginning to think that if you cut him, he’d bleed lawyer, so he probably made his lovers sign a legal disclaimer before he brought out the handcuffs or the video camera. Then Ellie went red as she thought about him directing the action with his usual honeyed tact. ‘It would be terribly helpful if you could spread your legs a bit more, so I can see what your busy little fingers are getting up to …’
Ellie pressed her hands to her cheeks, which were so hot they physically hurt. This was all bad enough without developing an erotic fixation on her father’s lawyer, who already seemed to think that she would stop at nothing to get her rocks off.
‘Ellie? Please tell me there’s no sex tape,’ he probed gently, his thigh pressed against hers now because the sofa wasn’t really big enough for three people to sit on. She could feel his touch searing a path along her thigh, which wasn’t fair. She tried to ignore the burn, which echoed the painful blush on her face, because she didn’t want to have a stupid, adolescent, un controllable crush on someone whose practised charm couldn’t disguise his disdain for her. It was the pattern that Ellie always traced: falling for a man who would let her down and leave her broken up and blue.
Not any more.
She turned and glared at him, put everything she had into it. ‘OK, I’m not a nun, but I’m not a tart either, thank you very much. Not that being a sexually active young woman is anything to be ashamed of but I haven’t been as sexually active as the Sunday Chronicle says I have.’ It was better to stop talking. Now. Ellie closed her mouth just as Georgie’s phone rang with the melody of ‘It Felt Like a Kiss’, Billy Kay’s biggest hit. It seemed a little sad for his publicist to have it as her ringtone.
‘Oh! I have to take this,’ she said, hoisting herself up off the sofa. ‘I’ll be back in five. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!’
Ellie was going to do precisely nothing with David Gold, but now she had that tune in her head. ‘It Felt Like A Kiss’ was the song Billy Kay had written for Olivia, to beg her forgiveness after his affair, though Tabitha and Tom swore blind it was about Ari. Ellie didn’t want to think about that and she didn’t want to think about what it would feel like to kiss David Gold, but apparently she was, because once you’d imagined a man directing you in his own personal porn film, a kiss was positively vanilla. But then again, one kiss from someone could mean more than a two-year relationship with someone else. A kiss could change your life.
It was time to get away from him, or at least move from the sofa to the solitary safety of an armchair, but as Ellie started to stand up, David touched her arm and it was suddenly like she’d forgotten how to use any of her limbs.
It felt as if she’d never been touched before – as if all the pats and strokes and the thousands of other touches from other people didn’t matter any more. Oh God, please no. Not him. Not when he doesn’t even like me. Not when I’m just a problem that he needs to make go away.
Ellie wondered if David could feel it too because he leaned in close enough that she could almost taste him. Certainly if she moved a whisper closer and pouted her lips, they’d be kissing. Or she’d be kissing him because Ellie could guarantee that her kisses wouldn’t be either welcome or returned. She was painfully aware of the prickle of her oversensitized skin and the gasping sound she was making as she struggled to remember how to breathe.