‘Everyone has at least one redeeming quality,’ she clarified. ‘Yes, I try to find that redeeming quality so I can establish some rapport with them, but that doesn’t mean I’m manipulative.’
David sighed as if he knew that he wouldn’t be going to sleep any time soon. ‘I didn’t use those exact words,’ he said calmly. ‘And I’m sorry to break it to you, Ellie, but there are plenty of people who do not possess one solitary redeeming quality, and if you tell me that Hitler was a vegetarian and that he loved children, I will open the window but only so I can dangle you off the balcony.’
‘I’m just saying that it was a very unfair accusation.’ Arguing with a lawyer who had a string of letters after his name to prove just how good a lawyer he was should have been daunting, but after tonight David seemed a lot less daunting. Anyway, she had right on her side. ‘No one goes through life scowling and being rude, and still expects people to like them. Only the very rich or the very famous.’
‘The rich and famous are my stock in trade, and I’ve yet to meet anyone from either camp who wasn’t avaricious, amoral and/or utterly lacking in anything approaching a conscience.’ He said it without heat or outrage, but as if he was discussing a very dull book he’d just read. ‘They may seem wide-eyed the first time they arrive in my office with a contract that their record company or their agent wants them to sign, but as soon as they’re halfway to their first million, they’d sell out their mothers for a bigger slice of the pie.’
‘That’s not true. I’ve met plenty of rich and famous people and yes, OK, they can be demanding, but they can also be very nice.’
‘Ellie! How can you be so naïve?’ David sounded less bored now and more exasperated. ‘Nice is just an angle.’
‘No it’s not!’ Ellie was about to venture that they should probably agree to disagree because she didn’t want a prolonged argument, when David sat up. ‘I don’t want to shatter your dreams,’ he said, then proceeded to do exactly that.
Without once breaking lawyer–client privilege, he painted a world where there were no such things as scruples or decent, honest folk. Everyone had a price. Whether it was the movie star who grudgingly agreed to pay off his girlfriend after he’d beaten her up so badly she needed reconstructive surgery. Or the tween pop idol who made his entourage sign a non-disclosure agreement so they wouldn’t tell the press he was banging his forty-year-old female manager. Or the much-loved but much-closeted A-lister who dated a selection of beautiful, leggy Z-listers, who were each under contract – a contract that was terminated two weeks after his annual appearance on the red carpet at the Oscars.
And finally, there was a lawyer who would draft these contracts and non-disclosure agreements and, representing the best interests of his clients, would draw up verbose sub-clauses, addenda and codicils, which ensured that the wide-eyed hopefuls that tripped into his office would barely make a penny even if their songs or their screenplays touched the hearts of millions. He was witness to all the schemes and machinations of the great and the good to ensure that they stayed great and good and he did nothing to stop it.
‘On the contrary, I facilitate it,’ David told her. He was sitting on the edge of the bed now, his shoulders so hunched that Ellie longed to knead and smooth until all his tension melted away, but she didn’t think he’d let her. ‘So, please don’t tell me that people are pure and good and righteous because it’s simply not true.’
If David believed that, then Ellie wondered if he still believed that she’d been complicit in her own downfall; that she and Richey had split the thirty pieces of silver between them. Or that this was her revenge on a father who’d never once expressed an interest in her. It didn’t even matter what her supposed angle was. What was important was that David believed that she had one.
After everything that had happened tonight, if he still thought she was on the make, that she wanted to cash in on her notoriety, then Ellie knew that they could keep arguing about this until the sun came up and the sun went down again, but there was no point. It was all entirely hopeless.
‘You should get some sleep if you want to get up at dawn o’clock to do some hideous training run,’ she said softly, and she caught him by one bony wrist so she could tug him to lie back down next to her. ‘Come on, think some nice, happy thoughts to get you snoring again.’
‘I told you that I don’t have happy thoughts and I certainly don’t snore,’ he said a little huffily. ‘I have excellent peak respiratory flow. People with excellent peak respiratory flow don’t snore.’
Maybe he was joking. Ellie couldn’t tell. She lay next to him in the dark, staring at his clean, precise profile, and again she longed to rub the furrow in his forehead with her fingertips and smooth it away, but she didn’t. She just kept hold of his wrist and measured out the beat of his pulse until it was slow and steady and he was asleep.
Ellie knew that she wasn’t going to sleep. Not tonight. Because this was going to be the only night she spent with David Gold and she wanted to stay awake to see what his face looked like when he was dreaming and to prove or disprove the snoring theory, and if by some miracle he got cold and shivered in his sleep, she’d be there to put her arms round him.
She was going to let herself have this one night and then it would be over. Her other lovers – the lame ducks, the fixer-uppers, the men who needed mending and putting back together – were never going to be the sort of men that Ellie couldn’t live without.
But David didn’t need mending. He didn’t have habits that needed breaking or a problem that could be solved by a couple of nights of chatting it out and persuading him to seek the help of a trained professional.
David was a finished product. He could make his way through the world and navigate life without any help from Ellie. His cynicism was deeply engrained and invisible to the naked eye, like a glass wall, so that every time Ellie tried to get close to him, she’d end up smashing her face against it.
Worse than that, she’d revert to type. She’d try to fix what couldn’t be fixed and it would break her heart that he could never truly be happy. And how could you really love someone who didn’t know how to get happy?
London, Camden, 1986
Billy came back to her on Christmas Eve. He didn’t come crawling back on his knees to beg forgiveness but he had roses, champagne, his custom-built Collings acoustic guitar ineptly wrapped in Christmas paper and a hangdog look on his face.
‘I love you, Ari. I love you better than anyone else,’ he said. ‘You said you loved me too. Have you changed your mind?’
Ari would never know how you could love someone with everything that you were, but not like them very much. ‘Next time you leave, I won’t have you back,’ she told him, but she let Billy wrap her up in a blanket and take her into the house, where in deference to her condition and because it was December, the playwright and the playwright’s crazy Japanese girlfriend, who’d once accused Ari of stealing her Christian Lacroix coat (like that would ever, ever happen), had agreed to let them have a centrally heated room on the third floor with an en-suite bathroom.
They lay in bed together, not sleeping, but holding each other, and on Christmas Day Billy cooked them beans on toast, which they washed down with the champagne, and instead of giving him a present, Ari gave him ten pence so he could phone his daughter and wish her a happy Christmas.
Ari suspected that Olivia had thrown him out for good, but she didn’t care because Billy was there and he was all hers now, refusing to leave her side. He wouldn’t stop telling her that he loved her and saying stuff like, ‘My life didn’t really begin until you were in it, Ari.’
It was like how they used to be or, if she was being honest with herself, how Ari always wanted them to be, but they never were.
Billy’s parents had finally cut him off, but they borrowed two hundred pounds from Carol for three more days of studio time and finished the backing vocals on the last track on the last day of the year.
‘I feel sad,’ Ari said t
o Billy as they walked home to Primrose Hill through the backstreets, away from the distant sounds of New Year’s Eve parties. ‘Like nothing good is ever going to happen again.’
‘Only good things are going to happen,’ Billy promised. ‘You’re going places and I’ll be there with you every step of the way.’ Then he kissed her under the glow of a streetlight. The taste of him made Ari forget that there was something important she had to do before she could get on with her destiny.
Hours later she woke up with a dirty grey pain clamping its teeth around her stomach.
Chapter Twenty-five
When Ellie woke up she was on her own without even a David-shaped indentation on the duvet next to her, BUT there was a note on the pillow.
Ellie,
Didn’t want to wake you. Have to do 20km this morning with my running club. Hope you slept well.
Back at 11-ish – we’ll talk then.
David
It was ten. Usually Ellie only ever slept in that late on a Sunday, and only when she’d had a skinful the night before. As she showered, dressed, listlessly packed her bags and tried to force down a cup of coffee and a toasted bagel, she certainly felt as sick and weary as she did when she was hungover.
Then she checked her email and was reminded that she was going to Paris, which, according to legend and popular culture, always had the cure for whatever ailed you. Somehow she doubted it. Paris wasn’t that amazing, which was something she and Vaughn agreed on.
Cohen
No one stays in Paris in August, apart from idiotic tourists and surly Parisians who don’t have the funds to leave Paris for an entire month.
You also have a very idiosyncratic idea of what working your notice out entails. Still, if you’re set on this course, there are a few jobs I need you to do.
See attachment.
Vaughn
The attachment was another bullet-pointed list of items, which made Ellie’s head swim. When she got back from Paris and was feeling more like herself, she was going to have it out with Vaughn about her notice, the withdrawal thereof.
After last night, Ellie never wanted to have it out with anyone ever again, but some things couldn’t be left unsaid. Once she’d made the bed and attacked all surfaces in the spare room with a damp cloth so it looked as pristine as it had on the day she’d arrived, she tore out a page from her Smythson desk diary, which Vaughn always bought each of the staff as a Christmas present, and chewed ruminatively on the end of a pen. After ten minutes of staring at the blank page, she wrote,
Dear David,
Thank you so much for putting me up and putting up with me this last week.
I think we both realise that after last night I can’t stay here any longer. This situation between us is unworkable.
Even if we rewound back to Glastonbury, and this time there was no Richey, no other women you see casually, no Billy Kay, do you think we’d have managed more than a couple of dates? I don’t, because we both see the world in such a different way. You’re so fixated on figuring out what my angle is that you can’t see who I really am.
You’ve witnessed the very best and worst of me, because I’m living in extraordinary times, but you have to believe me when I tell you that the ordinary, everyday me is not that bad. I’m not a saint – hardly! – but I try to do the right thing. That should count for something but it doesn’t with you.
I’m going to Paris. It’s a work trip but also, if I need to lay low for a little while, then it might as well be in Paris.
If you need to talk to me about anything relating to Billy Kay, you have my number. There’s not much point in talking about anything else.
I am sorry. I wish things could work out differently. I wish we were different.
Thanks again.
Ellie
It would certainly never make the ranks of the Hundred Greatest Love Letters Of All Time, but it was the best that Ellie could do, especially when it was almost eleven and she didn’t want still to be kicking around when David came back.
Ellie left the flat, even peeping round corners and slowly prising open doors as if she were on a stake-out, but there was no sign of David, no paparazzi, and after a short downhill walk she was on the 134 bus to Camden.
Camden was heaving with tourists, and teenagers in heavy combat boots and heavy combat jackets, despite the heat. Ellie kept to the back roads, until she reached the little alley off Castlehaven Road and the rehearsal studios where whatever band Ari was currently in rehearsed at noon every Saturday, without fail.
There was no point going home before she went to Paris. She had everything she needed, including clean clothes, and though she was desperate to see Tess, it had been six days since she’d last seen Ari, and Ellie really needed to see Ari.
It wasn’t until she turned the corner that Ellie realised that she really needed to see Chester too, because there he was, sitting on the wall outside the studio, looking reassuringly Chester-like in white Fred Perry and pork pie hat as he alternated bites of a bacon butty with sips from a Styrofoam cup of tea.
He looked up at the same moment that Ellie abandoned suitcase, holdall and smaller holdall in the middle of the courtyard so she could get to him quicker.
‘Princess!’ he exclaimed, holding his arms out wide so Ellie could hurl herself into them. ‘How are you?’
‘I’ve missed you,’ Ellie told him. Then Chester was hugging her like only Chester could. He put everything into his hugs so the recipient was never in any doubt of the sincerity of the hug. ‘Did you have a nice time in Benidorm?’
He had. Ellie sat on the wall next to him as he talked about lazing on the beach by day and listening to Northern Soul by night. ‘If it had been up to me I’d have come home as soon as I read all the stuff in the papers but …’ he tailed off uncertainly.
‘I know you and Mum had a bit of an argy-bargy.’ Ellie sighed. Chester put up with quite a lot from Ari, and the Northern Soul week in Benidorm was his annual break from putting up with quite a lot from Ari. If Ari had just told Chester that, instead of making such a big deal about not needing him, there would have been no fight, but Ari never did anything easy. ‘Look, you called me every day and there was nothing much you could have done and it was fine. I’ve been fine. I’m not saying it’s been easy but Billy’s lawyer’s been very … helpful,’ she added stiffly.
‘Are you sure?’ Chester scrutinised Ellie’s face. ‘Some of that stuff in the papers was way out of line, even for them. If I ever track down that Richey, he can forget about having working kneecaps.’
‘You mustn’t!’ Ellie was genuinely horrified. ‘A week in Benidorm is one thing, but being sent down for God knows how long is something else completely. Promise me you’ll leave him alone.’
‘If that’s what you want.’ Chester gestured at her luggage. ‘You going home?’
‘No. I’m going to Paris.’
‘Really? Because I spoke to my mum and dad and they said you’re welcome to stay at theirs,’ Chester said, tugging at the collar of his shirt.
‘I’m going to Paris for work. Not because of the stuff in the papers,’ Ellie lied, because she couldn’t tell Chester about David. Besides, there was nothing to tell. It was over before it had even begun. ‘It’s really kind of Ron and Julie, but Paris does have the edge over Romford. Just a slight one.’
Chester grinned at that as Ari emerged from the studio clutching a bottle of water. Her hair was tucked up in a Rosie the Riveter-style headscarf and she was wearing a vest, cut-off jeans and a malevolent scowl, which disappeared as soon as she saw her daughter.
‘Babycakes!’ she said joyfully, hoisting herself up on the wall next to Ellie and putting an arm round her. ‘I was just wondering if you were still cloistered or if there was any chance of a sighting of my favourite daughter.’
‘I can’t. Going on a work trip to Paris. I’m staying at Esme and Sue’s,’ Ellie added, and she didn’t have to say any more because for Ari’s last two birthdays, they’d gone to
Paris and stayed with Esme and Sue. Ellie was hoping it might become a birthday tradition.
‘I thought Paris was dead in August. Won’t all the shops be closed?’
Ellie hadn’t really believed that anyone with sense and money left the greater Paris area until September the first, but maybe it was true. ‘Do you think?’ She shook her head. ‘There’s an M&S on the Champs-Elysées. That won’t be closed.’
‘Of course everywhere will be open apart from a few poncey restaurants that you wouldn’t want to go to anyway,’ Chester declared stoutly.
‘Do you have to go to Paris right this very minute?’ Ari asked as if Chester hadn’t even spoken. ‘Why don’t you go on Monday and stay round mine this weekend? I swear I’m living paparazzi-free these days.’
‘I can’t. My Eurostar ticket isn’t flexible and, God, I have to get out of London,’ Ellie insisted, as if Ari was about to snatch her non-flexible Eurostar ticket from her. ‘After everything that’s happened, I need some space to get my head straight and think about what I’m going to do next.’
‘OK, honeychild, it was just an idea,’ Ari said, lifting up her shades so she could fix Ellie with a look. ‘Everything all right? Well, apart from the obvious, which really isn’t that obvious any more. I knew all the press attention would die down. And I hope that you told Georgina Pratt where she could go with her PR bullshit.’
‘Georgina Pratt?’ Chester stroked his chin. ‘Where do I know that name from?’
‘I’ll tell you later,’ Ari said shortly. ‘It’s not important right now.’ She turned back to Ellie. ‘Anyways, where have you been staying for the last week?’
‘Didn’t you say something about—’
‘Not now, Chester,’ Ari snapped, cutting right through what he was about to say. She seemed ratty and rattled, which wasn’t a surprise. Like Ellie, she must have been thinking about Billy Kay a lot but, unlike Ellie, Ari must have had to confront her most gruesome demons and wonder if she could have done things differently. Ultimately, it had been Billy’s decision to stay away, not to provide any emotional or financial support, but maybe if Ari had been more … ‘I’ve hardly seen Ellie at all and now you’re gatecrashing what little time I do have with her.’