There was the very faintest murmur of agreement. ‘It’s obvious that you love your mother, but she hasn’t been a very good role model, has she?’ Jeff Jenkins said, and it took every ounce of muscle control she had for Ellie not to leap off her stool and smack him. So, Ari was a single mother, big whoop. If that was the worst they had to throw at Ellie, then they were going to have to try much harder. Statistically speaking, a good half of the audience were either lone parents or had been brought up by a single parent, and they needed to join her team.
‘No, she wasn’t a good role model,’ she agreed equably, and she saw Ari’s face, as familiar as her own, smiling that crooked, wryly amused smile. Whatever deeply buried anger and resentment Ellie might have harboured towards her mother was no match for the love that she had for Ari. No matter how bad things were, Ari was the constant in her life, the person she could always turn to. It had ever been so. No matter how inadequate Ellie had felt sometimes, she’d always been good enough for Ari.
‘She was an excellent role model,’ Ellie explained for the benefit of the peanut gallery. ‘Sometimes she’d have up to five part-time jobs, but she was also the cool mum who was in bands and knew loads of interesting people. And somehow she never missed a single school sports day or a PTA meeting.’ There was so much more to say. That Ari had taught her about Patti Smith and the suffragettes, showed her how to play ‘Heart Of Glass’ on the guitar and told her that she was beautiful but that it was more important to be clever and funny, and that she could be anything she wanted to be. She’d stuck inspirational Nora Ephron quotes on the bathroom mirror and though it killed Ellie not to be able to share that with the On The Sofa audience, she needed to keep this simple and direct. She paused and it seemed as if the audience were leaning forward eagerly. ‘Though sometimes I wished that she didn’t turn up for school sports day or parents’ evening in a leopard-print catsuit, but whatever.’
There was laughter at that. Not sneery, cackling laughter either. It could be that the tide was turning in Ellie’s favour. Lara Kay obviously thought so because she pointed a stiff finger at Ellie. ‘Well, she couldn’t have been that good a role model when the papers are full of stories about what … how … well, that you’re a bit of a slapper, quite frankly.’
Even Rose looked shocked and there was a gasp from the audience like they were clutching their collective pearls, and surely Lara wasn’t allowed to say the word ‘slapper’ before the watershed? And …
‘That’s a really hurtful thing to say,’ Ellie said. ‘Especially when the papers print stories that aren’t true and—’
‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’ Rose shrugged sheepishly, like her heart really wasn’t in it. ‘You might pretend that they’ve made up the stories but there’s no smoke without fire.’
Ellie opened her eyes as wide as she could. ‘So, the stories in the papers about you shoplifting and Lara sleeping with her best friend’s boyfriend were true, then?’ she asked in faintly scandalised tones.
‘No! That’s not what I meant!’
‘There were actual quotes from the actual guy you were seeing about your actual sex life!’ Lara reminded Ellie furiously. ‘Actual pictures of you in your underwear.’
A ripple of excitement went through the audience. Angie Drake smiled nervously, eyes darting between the two sisters on the sofa and Ellie on the stool of shame. Jeff Jenkins realised that he had to take control of this situ ation. ‘To be fair, Velvet, Lara does have a point.’
Not from where Ellie was perched, but she was committed to this now. ‘Let me be very clear. I did not sell my story and I certainly did not use my new-found fame to make vast sums of money by giving interviews to the papers and signing up to pose in bra and pants—’
‘That was a legitimate modelling job.’
‘Will you let me finish?’ It was the ‘don’t fuck with me’ voice that Ellie didn’t know she was capable of until it came out of her mouth when Muffin was being absolutely impossible or Ari was about to embark on some ridiculous scheme. It was the voice that could even stop Vaughn in his most autocratic tracks. Lara Kay settled back on the sofa with angry huffing noises. ‘If I’d wanted to sell my story – which I didn’t and don’t and never have done – then I would probably have done it when I was working insane hours in awful jobs to fund my degree. Have you ever cleaned the men’s loos of a pub after last orders on a Friday night?’
It was a rhetorical question but Angie and Rose both shook their heads.
‘Well, I have, and it’s character-building. Or that’s what my boss used to tell me.’
The audience were definitely Team Cohen now. Before she could lose their interest or Lara and Rose could make it all about them again, Ellie spread her hands wide. ‘I don’t want to be all “woe is me” but the last two weeks have been awful. I’ve had my privacy stripped away from me, my grandparents, my mum, my friends have been door-stepped by the press; I’m not even sure I still have a job; and I know it’s a bit rich to sit here on a prime-time TV show and moan about press intrusion, but I wanted people to be able to see the real me.’
‘Do you really expect people to believe that you didn’t pose for those photos?’ Jeff Jenkins asked with a sceptical look to camera. Ellie would never have believed he’d be such a tough crowd; he had always seemed so charming on TV.
‘When you’re followed round all day by photographers, they take hundreds of shots and use the one picture when you’re stretching up or bending over or—’
‘… like, sometimes it’s really hard to get out of a sports car with your legs clamped together,’ Rose Kay offered eagerly. ‘I’ve had photographers lie on the ground to try and get an upskirt picture. They’re disgusting.’
‘Right, well, there you go,’ Ellie said, and Rose beamed at her. It would have been churlish not to smile back. Ellie managed a tight grimace as Rose was poked in the ribs by her sister, who then turned the full weight of her venom back at Ellie.
‘Like, that bikini picture wasn’t papped. It was posed!’
It was impossible for Ellie not to roll her eyes. ‘What is your problem?’
Lara quivered with outrage. It had to be exhausting to maintain that level of outrage for so long. ‘You are! The things you’ve done to my family. You should be ashamed of yourself.’
It was time to wrap this up. Ellie could tell that from the guy who was standing behind the camera making winding motions, and Angie was sitting up straighter, looking right to camera and smiling …
‘I’m not ashamed of anything,’ Ellie said quickly. ‘What have I done that’s so wrong apart from dating an absolute creep and not having tighter security controls on my Facebook photo albums? If that’s what I’m guilty of then so is every other twenty-six-year-old woman in Britain, am I right, ladies?’
Ellie wasn’t sure she could pull off an Oprah-esque ‘am I right, ladies?’ but the On The Sofa audience were clapping and there was even an excited, ‘You go, girl!’ from one of the back rows.
‘Ellie, you’re handling this so well,’ Angie Drake pronounced breathily. ‘But before we break, how did you feel when you found out you had a half-brother?’
The question caught Ellie unawares like a punch to the stomach, so she wasn’t capable of dissembling. ‘I was … I am kind of shocked.’
‘Especially when Charlie’s grown up knowing his father. It must have been very hard for you not to have a dad. Is there anything you’d like to say to Billy Kay?’
One of the cameras zoomed in on Ellie. If it got any closer, she’d have a good case for aggravated assault. But it was hard not to tear up because for most of her life she’d thought about what she wanted to say to Billy Kay. Even a month ago she’d have tried with all her might to forge some connection or bond with him. But that was a month ago, and this was now.
‘He might have been there at my conception but it takes more than that to be a dad.’ There was one single, unprompted tear teetering on her bottom lashes. ‘Anyway, who needs a fa
ther when you have grandparents and aunts and uncles, cousins and amazing friends?’ Just the thought of Chester gave the unshed tear the push it needed to start a slow trickle down her cheek. ‘So I don’t feel like I ever missed out by not having a dad. Not even a little bit. In fact, I feel lucky and blessed that I’ve spent my entire life surrounded by people who love me.’
The audience were actually getting to their feet and cheering, but it was less to do with Ellie’s tour de force performance and more that a producer was making frantic arm movements to get them to stand up and applaud wildly.
As Jeff Jenkins asked the On The Sofa viewers to tune in at the same time tomorrow Ellie was helped down from the stool. Someone shoved a wad of tissues into her hand as she was hurried from the set.
Once Ellie had finished dabbing at her eyes and blowing her nose, she realised that the someone was Tess. ‘I’m sorry it turned into such a bloodbath.’
Ellie peered over Tess’s shoulder to the On The Sofa set. Lara Kay was screaming at one of the producers. ‘Have you been fired for giving me the heads up?’
‘They decided that Zach was expendable after he did such a rubbish job of prepping you.’ Tess smiled beatifically. ‘New producer’s going too for sullying the On The Sofa brand. You know, when Lara Kay called you a slapper?’
‘It will be etched into my memory until the day I die,’ Ellie said truthfully, because she wasn’t in that place where she could joke about what had just happened. She didn’t think she’d ever get to that place. ‘I can’t believe you’d want to carry on working here. It’s a pit of vipers.’
‘No, it’s really not,’ Tess insisted. ‘Usually it’s fluffy and extremely non-controversial, which is why our phone lines are jammed and Slappergate is trending on Twitter. Look, I am sorry, Ellie …’
‘I know you are and you did try to warn me.’ It hadn’t been Tess’s fault, Ellie knew that, but she wasn’t ready to let the subject rest. ‘So how did my interview get derailed when you were meant to be looking out for me?’
‘I’m not exactly sure. When I got in at eight thirty this morning, everything had changed. Apparently, the new producer took it upon herself to contact Billy Kay’s publicist to see if he’d come on so you could have a touching televised reunion.’
‘God, no!’
‘And it turned out that Billy Kay’s publicist was a real piece of work,’ Tess said, just as there were the sounds of a commotion behind them and Ellie looked round to see Georgie Leigh storming onto the set from the other direction so she could yank a still-screaming Lara Kay to one side and seize the producer by her shirt.
‘That was not what we agreed!’ Georgie was dressed all in black this time, still dripping with gold jewellery so her bangles jangled furiously as she all but shook the hapless woman, who was trying to say something but not getting very far. ‘Who coached that little tart? When I find out who it was, I’m going to end them!’
Tess and Ellie both cowered behind one of the stage flats. ‘Now I understand how my interview got derailed,’ Ellie whispered. ‘That’s Ari’s deadliest enemy.’
They watched as Georgie unhanded the producer and pushed her away. She did a keen-eyed sweep of the studio, her gaze coming to rest on the flat behind which Ellie hoped she was obscured from view.
‘The only other time I met her she was really nice. Overbearingly, creepily nice,’ she hissed to Tess. ‘I think the homicidal threats are actually preferable. You know where you are with homicidal threats, don’t you?’
‘Let’s get you out of here,’ Tess decided, and she bundled Ellie out of the studio, down several miles of corridor, and deposited her in a tiny airless room with a desk, chair and a flipchart. ‘I’ll grab your things and order you a car. Be back in ten minutes.’
Camden, London, 1987
Carol started crying as soon as Ari arrived at The Coffee Cup in Hampstead, wheeling Velvet in the new pram that she’d bought with the proceeds from selling her second favourite guitar.
‘You’re keeping her, aren’t you?’ Sadie asked. When Ari nodded Carol cried even harder.
Eventually she stopped crying and once she’d dried her eyes, she stood up. There was a hardness in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. ‘I will never, ever forgive you for this,’ she promised.
Ari was sorry for hurting Carol, the kind of sorry that couldn’t be put into words. She did try but Carol turned her face away.
‘I never want to see you again. What you’ve done … You promised … I didn’t think it was possible to hurt this much,’ Carol said in a choked voice, and Ari knew how she felt because she knew how much it would destroy her if she didn’t have Velvet.
‘But I am sorry, Carol.’ The words weren’t ever going to be enough, but when Ari went to place a hand on Carol’s arm, her sister reared back as if she had dipped her fingers in hydrochloric acid. ‘I just never knew that I’d love her like this.’
Sadie stood up too. Ari had never seen her quite so furious – close to it, but she’d never reached the summit before. Nice Jewish girls didn’t have babies out of wedlock. Or if they did, they certainly didn’t brazen it out instead of having the child adopted by a lovely, kosher-keeping couple or the older sister whose life was blighted by the curse of infertility.
‘You are a selfish, selfish girl. Don’t come crawling to us when you’ve changed your mind, and don’t think you’ll get a penny from us either. You’re on your own, Ariella,’ were Sadie’s parting words, as she swept majestically out of the café, Carol trailing behind to send one more agonised but venomous look in her sister’s direction that would haunt Ari for years to come.
They’d left a pot of tea and a round of raisin toast behind and Ari wasn’t proud. Also, she was hungry and had one pound, forty-seven pence to last until she could get a job.
For one fleeting second, she wondered if she’d done the right thing by her daughter. All she had to give Velvet was love and Ari was never very good at loving people.
Well, she was just going to have to get better at it.
Chapter Thirty-three
Tess wasn’t back in ten minutes and Ellie had nothing to do but mull over her first and last TV appearance, because she was never doing that again. Not even if BBC4 begged her to present her own series on Modernist Art.
She’d wanted to appear dignified, but she’d used her ‘bitch, please’ voice, badmouthed Billy Kay, even though she’d been adamant she wasn’t going to stoop that low, and she’d cried. It might only have been one tear, two at the most, but crying on television … she was never going to live it down.
It was more than that. The secret place inside her heart that was reserved for just a handful of people had been exposed to the entire nation. You always had to hold something back, but Ellie had given it all away and she felt hollow now. Empty. As if while she’d perched on that stool, in front of the harsh lights and the all-seeing cameras, her soul had been scooped out like the flesh from an over-ripe avocado.
‘Car’s here,’ said a cheerful voice, and Ellie looked up at a woman who wasn’t Tess, who had just opened the door.
Ellie was reunited with garment bag, vanity case and handbag, and on reaching Reception was also presented with a huge bouquet of pink roses and lilac hydrangeas ‘From all your friends at On The Sofa. We’d love to have you back. Any time,’ said the woman who wasn’t Tess. Ellie wanted to say she’d rather eat her own spleen but mumbled that she’d love to before she was shown into a people carrier.
There was no driver, not that Ellie minded. She was already retrieving her phone and scrolling through a multitude of messages from people who she wouldn’t have believed watched daytime TV. Most were cheer-leading variations on the theme of You rocked it, babe, and your hair looked fantastic, apart from Lola who wanted to know: Did U get a look at Jeff Jenkins’ knob? Bigger than a baguette?
It felt good to giggle though it swiftly became a gasp of fear when Ellie saw she had a text from Vaughn. Vaughn didn’t usually do texts, but he’d
also sent an email and left a caustic voicemail message requesting Ellie’s presence in his office ‘before end of business today. By which time I might not be quite so angry with you, but don’t count on it, Cohen.’
She’d been half inclined to ask the missing driver to drop her at the gallery, but now Ellie wasn’t sure. She could go home because she hadn’t been home in weeks, but technically she always thought of Ari’s tiny, cluttered flat as home. Ari, however, was the one person who hadn’t left any messages, even though she was the one person that Ellie most wanted to talk to.
She was angry with Ari for withholding and Ari had to be angry with her for raking up the past, but whatever they’d both said had to be unsaid because Ari was her mother and her best friend and they belonged together. They had to get through this latest, gut-churning upset and Ellie wasn’t going to let the day finish without making up. After all, Sadie insisted that it was bad form to let the sun set on a quarrel, though Ari always pointed out that Sadie was physically incapable of apologising to anyone for anything.
Ellie was just wondering if Ari was at work today and might be persuaded to take a long lunch when she heard the boot slam shut. Then both passenger doors opened and two people got in on either side of her so Ellie was forced to slide to the middle of the seat.
‘Sorry. Could you budge up just a little more? You’re sitting on my seatbelt,’ squeaked a voice to her left. Ellie stared in horror at Rose Kay, who was suddenly sitting next to her.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ Lara Kay was on Ellie’s other side. ‘Now you’re trying to take our Addison Lee car as well.’
‘I was here first,’ Ellie said icily. ‘Why don’t you get out of my car?’