Читать книгу Girls’ Night In - Jessica Adams - Страница 12

Fiona Walker

‘Al Matthews is PR, darling,’ Sly winked, dragging out his Edinburgh brogue for emphasis. ‘He is absolutely the man to boost your image. Look at Red and Slim.’

‘Pul-lease,’ I laughed. Last year’s pop sensation Ruby ‘Red’ Richmond had been supposedly in lurve with cult actor Slim Tim Gorman for several weeks and pictures of them looking sickeningly couply were splashed all over the tabloids. Everyone knew it was a publicity stunt. Ruby was far too anorexic to kiss anything but bathroom fittings and Slim Tim was a coke addict who snorted Colombia’s finest from the cistern lids of the best clubs in town. Come to think of it, they were as well matched as Armitage and Shanks. Clever old Al Matthews. And they said he was losing his Midas touch.

‘Word on the street is that PR pairings are the thing when it comes to dating,’ Sly persisted, flattening himself back on the sofa as my fat old terrier, Carrot, flumped from one cushion to another in search of buried crumbs. ‘Meeting your lover at the Priory Clinic is very last year. Everyone’s getting together through the Alchemist these days.’

‘I don’t need another relationship right now – fake or otherwise,’ I sighed, reaching for my coffee. ‘I prefer life away from the spotlight.’

He looked as though I’d said I’d be perfectly content wing-walking nude over the Gobi. ‘Smack, darling, you’re festering. You’re just this far away from appearing in one of those ghastly where-are-they-now shows.’ He pinched his fingers together and then narrowed his eyes as he spotted a chipped nail from fighting his way through my overgrown front gate.

‘My name is Sadie, not Smack,’ I reminded him gently. ‘No one’s called me Smack for months. People around here have no idea who Smack was.’

‘Precisely my point!’ he bashed his hand down on a cushion, propelling Carrot on to my lap. ‘You need to get back into the scene, go to some lovely parties, buy some new frocks. Look at you, you’re so gorgeous. You’re sitting in the middle of this – this isolated tip, accumulating cobwebs like Miss Haversham. And what is that?’ He spotted what appeared to be a sleeping woolly mammoth in the corner of the room.

‘Carrot’s bed,’ I explained sadly. ‘It’s a pile of gorilla suits Bill was going to use in the Christmas special before it was scrapped.’

Admittedly, the cottage wasn’t looking its best. It was as dusty as a moth’s wing and three days of constant rain had left mud trodden all over the bare elm floorboards. When we’d bought the place six months ago, Bill and I had planned to scour antique shops and European flea markets for furniture. But I had no desire to shop now that I was alone and broke.

Sly shuddered, doubly determined to make his journey into the wilderness worthwhile. ‘It’s time you cashed in, darling. Since he left you, Bill’s press has been so absolutely diabolical that he’ll never work in the UK again. You know the deal. As your agent, it’s my duty to get you out of this depression. I’m going to call the Alchemist straight away.’ He delved in his Prada courier bag for his mobile. ‘Face it, Smack – I mean, Sadie, darling – you’re up to your silicones in debt. You’ll lose this place soon. And Bill needs – Ah, hello, Al. Sly Preston here – the sly guy with the eye for to-die-for stars, remember?’ Sly had been spending too much time in Hollywood lately. ‘Now I am going to say one word and I guarantee you’ll pass out with happiness. Smack!’

I pulled a face at Carrot as Sly started discussing me with the Svengali of the tabloids, a man who could give so much spin to a fading star that the Sun lit up.

‘Yes, that’s right. Bill Roth’s ex, as in “Smack my bitch up”,’ Sly was purring into his phone. ‘Mmm, co-hosted Loved Up, yes – now on NBC with Ash Numan. Not a patch on Smack. No, she still looks great. Suicide attempts?’ He looked at me in shock. ‘Not as far as I know. Oh, I see, that’s good press, is it? Maybe it can be arranged. Lunch? Let’s gaze at our windows as Chekhov said.’ He peered at his electronic diary.

I closed my eyes. ‘Smack my bitch up.’ Oh Bill, if only they’d really known you, your adoring public. If only they’d seen the private side I saw, the gentle humorist, the philosopher, the lover who took all night to satisfy me even though it no longer gave him pleasure.

In the six months since I’d been gone, London had turned its restaurant tables. I hadn’t even heard of the Michelin-starred Course in which we met A1 Matthews. It was a predictable minimalist hush of rich, celeb-spotting diners, and to my horror I seemed to be the star attraction.

As expressionless waiters glided around on invisible tracks tending to our every whim, I studied Al over a Zen flower arrangement. He was known as the Alchemist, not just because he could turn base metal into gold, but because it was rumoured he knew precisely the right measure of drugs to keep most of his burnt-out celebrity clients partying late into the night. Yet he wasn’t quite the designer-suited automaton I remembered from endless parties with Bill. He was more self-effacing with very clever blue eyes. It was a calculated front, I realized, guaranteed to charm and disarm. It irritated me to find him so likeable. There was no denying his guile.

‘Now, sorry to go through the obvious, but I want to get my facts straight,’ he smiled easily. ‘You exploded into the spotlight because you were Bill Roth’s girlfriend, right?’

‘Well, yes–’ I started.

‘Not at all,’ Sly cut across me archly. ‘Smack – or rather Sadie, was a serious broadcaster in her own right before Bill head-hunted her from GLR to become the female voice in his radio zoo crew. She also co-produced many of his television shows.’

‘I can see why Roth brought you into the equation,’ A1 Matthews was looking at me thoughtfully, assessing the damage, the raw materials still available now that I had been robbed of my greatest asset, a celebrity relationship. ‘And you co-hosted all three series of Loved Up, as well as fronting commercials, writing several columns and continuing to work on radio?’ He sounded as though he was drafting my press release.

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Loved Up had, in fact, been my idea. Not that I had ever leaked that, not even when Bill had broken his UK contract after three hit series and taken the ten-million viewer TV show to America with an ultra-famous new co-host. He was Hollywood A-list now, whereas I was credit card black-list and only remembered as his long suffering side-kick, the Ernie to his Eric, the Little to his Larging-it success.

‘The ad campaign for Tsar Vodka alone netted Smack a cool two million,’ Sly boasted, having set it up. ‘And let’s not forget that she came in third in MX magazine’s Sexiest Women on Earth pole only last year.’

‘Just before Bill ran away with Ash Numan, who incidentally came in at number two,’ I muttered. ‘He would have tried for the chart topper, but boning Lara Croft might lead to electrocution, not to mention the constant threat of a T Rex attack.’

A1 hid a smile. I know my loudmouth Essex raver attitude irritates some people, but he seemed to like it which surprised me, given that he was so posh.

‘Sadie’s strength is in cutting-edge journalism,’ Sly clearly didn’t trust me to sell myself. ‘Her party column made cult reading.’

‘So did your credit card bills by all accounts,’ A1 glanced at his notes. ‘And a black Amex card has a very good cutting edge.’

‘There’s only one Bill I still owe,’ I hissed, deciding I didn’t like him after all. ‘Contrary to what you may have read in the papers, I did not take cocaine, or shop like it was going out of fashion, nor did I have personality and eating disorders.’

‘So set the record straight,’ A1 creased his forehead. ‘You can write, we know that; you’re clever as well as beautiful. I know you won’t kiss-and-tell but why not get a book deal? The syndication rights alone could earn you–’

‘The story’s not for sale,’ I snapped. ‘Like Sly says, I just want to be seen at a few parties, show the world I’m over it, raise my profile.’ I knew I sounded like I was having my teeth pulled, and Sly kept kicking me under the table, which didn’t help. I stared at Al’s curious asymmetric face with its crown of wild curls. For someone that repackaged people for a living, it seemed odd that he cared so little about his own image.

A1 was watching my reactions carefully. ‘What good will appearing on a minor star’s arm do you at this stage? You’re not a bimbo.’ He sounded strangely sad.

‘Anyone would think you were trying to do yourself out of a job here, Al,’ Sly laughed nervously, knowing that if I hooked up with the right cheque-mate he stood to cash in on a small fortune, and not just in money. ‘You’re crying out for someone like Sadie. What’s the problem?’

‘I just want to make sure she’s ready,’ Al cocked his head, clever blue eyes seeming to strip my face of its skin. ‘Once bitten, twice camera-shy, after all.’ It wasn’t the voice of a therapist, just a businessman who wanted to protect his investments and avoid messy mergers. It was common knowledge that Al’s sham get-togethers were starting to irritate the tabloids.

‘I’m ready,’ I shrugged far from enthusiastically. ‘I need the money.’

His eyes didn’t leave mine. ‘I wish I could be so sure that’s all you’re after.’

I stared back at him and instantly knew that he had rumbled me. I wanted to run back to my cottage. I wanted to bury my face in Carrot’s neck until the bailiffs arrived to throw us out. But Al Matthews said no more; he simply nodded at me and looked away. He seemed weary and surprisingly indifferent. I followed his gaze around the Course dining room, totally alienated from all the little power-hunches over power lunches taking place all around us. I half suspected that if I suggested Al and I slope out for a quiet pint he’d be game on, but Sly was calling the shots and picking up the Bill today.

‘You heard her, damn it, she says she’s ready,’ he was almost off his chair with excitement. ‘Tell us who you have in mind. Sadie won’t let you down, we promise.’

Sighing, Al delved into a slimline briefcase to pull out several folders. ‘Next week is the Sound Awards, followed almost immediately by Elvis James’ annual ball, the Duke of Suffolk charity gala and then Red and Slim’s wedding. I am responsible for the smooth-running of all four events, and a big part of that is making sure the guest lists are topped up with newsworthy stars and their, er, partners.’ He fanned the files out in front of him and looked up at me tiredly. ‘Take your pick.’

I couldn’t focus as I glanced at the names and faces swimming in front of me – druggy teenage pin-ups, fading comics, drunken footballers and wife-beating celebrity chefs all in need of an image boost. What did it matter? They were all in the same boat. I picked one at random. ‘Have him washed and dressed and brought to my hotel in a limousine an hour before the party,’ I joked feebly.

Al slid a finger beneath his collar and cleared his throat. ‘Are you sure?’ Again, his eyes seemed to bore into my soul.

‘She’s sure,’ Sly grabbed the file and looked at it. ‘Oh yes, he’s gorgeous. Shame about the paedophile rumours. The papers will write anything these days.’

A week later and the papers were all writing that I was dating the Premier League’s top striker. We had been seen at several parties together, plus shopping at Brown’s, lunching in Paris and out walking Carrot in Hyde Park. That annoyed me – I didn’t want Carrot exploited, but I was determined to be a consummate professional. I wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible.

I wasn’t yet headline news, but I was back on the Tiffany chain gang. The phone in my hotel suite rang constantly, mostly calls from Al who was picking up my bills and making sure I gave good quote.

‘The Mirror want an exclusive. Your new-found love with Vizza, how he saved you from near-suicide. They’re offering good money.’

‘I won’t talk about Bill,’ I threatened. We argued about it endlessly, but I always got my way. He was annoyingly fascinated by our break-up.

Of course, I couldn’t stop the press from writing about Bill anyway. Stories of my new romance had stirred up the whole love rat thing again, as I’d known they would. His name took another knocking as the nation was reminded how he’d dumped the pocket Venus for the six-foot Amazon to further his career over the Pond. The mud didn’t reach him in the States, but it was looking more and more unlikely that he’d be popping back to see his old ma in Guildford in the near future.

‘It’s what you wanted, isn’t it, Sadie?’ Al laughed cynically. ‘Revenge?’

Knowing he couldn’t have been more wrong, I didn’t answer. Something about Al got under my skin, struck me as odd. He seemed almost as reluctant to be in this business as I was. If it weren’t for his reputation, I’d say he hated it.

My ‘relationship’ with Vizza lasted just over a fortnight, and Al gave me a week off for good behaviour while Vizza revelled in increasingly outlandish exclusives, revealing his broken heart. Yeah. Like he knew how it felt – not.

I installed satellite in my cottage, courtesy of the Mirror exclusive. Together, Carrot and I watched primetime television from America in the UK early hours. Night after night, I studied Ash Numan’s face, wondering how one woman could be so flawless. Watching Bill made me cry. He was back to his old form, just like the early days, almost deranged with energy and anger, not the self-satisfied overweight smug-bugger he’d latterly become in the UK series. Christ, he was operating. He was cruel and funny and sexy. I couldn’t take my eyes from the screen.

To my amazement Vizza called several times a day, sometimes in tears, begging me in his broken English to reconsider ‘our love’. What love? He’d barely talked to me. Admittedly he’d tried to kiss me, but he’d also tried to kiss two members of a boy band in Kabaret, and Frankie Dettori at a sports charity dinner. At least Bill had been discreet.

Al phoned me on Sunday to demand I buy the News and read a feature they’d cobbled together about me in the light of my latest doomed love affair. I snorted with laughter as it talked of my ‘inexplicable, compelling, dangerous sex appeal’, which brought grown men to their knees. If only they could see me now, schlepping around in shorts and wellies, eating ice cream at two in the morning as I watched Bill on television. The gap between truth and tabloid had never been greater. The plan was starting to work.

‘It’s time for the big guns,’ Al told me. ‘Are you sure you’re ready?’

‘I’m sure,’ I insisted, knowing that I had no choice now that the ball was rolling.

Soon afterwards, I was officially the love of George Brian’s life. George was a tricky one. He was far more persistent than camp, confused Vizza, and he treated me as little different from a hired escort. Al had to repeatedly warn him off and remind him that it was just publicity.

‘I can fight my own battles,’ I told him, but he still appeared at most of the parties we went to, like a discreet bodyguard. To be honest, it was good to have someone to talk to – George communicated only in grunts. But the more I talked to Al, the more I realized that he resented saving celebrities from their own excesses.

‘Take George,’ he sighed, pointing out my supposed faithful new boyfriend slipping his hotel key card to a teenage model at a film premiere. ‘He thinks his fame makes him invincible. That’s my fault. I expect Bill was like that too, wasn’t he?’

I ignored the question and made Al go and discreetly fetch George’s key while I resumed my duties at his side, acting the adoring girlfriend, jokily deflecting journalists’ questions about marriage and babies.

George Brian was far hotter property than Vizza, a big-name actor with a long criminal record. As his girlfriend, I was instantly headline news, and the press swarmed all over me. My hotel was besieged, my face was everywhere, and Sly delightedly reported that offers of work were now flooding in.

‘You are so, so lucky going out with lovely George,’ he giggled. ‘Tell me, are the rumours true? Does he have a tattoo on it?’

‘I wouldn’t know – it’s strictly business,’ I snapped, although fighting him off was getting harder and harder. If only Bill had been so keen.

Despite my resilience, I couldn’t take George for long. After a month, my body was black and blue from being felt up; I hated his stale breath and stupidity. George wanted me to join him on location in Italy, but I’d had enough and called time, asking Al if he could set me up with someone less demanding.

To my alarm, the once-ambitious Alchemist refused, saying that we needed to cool my hot date image. ‘You’ve amazed me, Sadie. The press love you. You have the X factor they can’t get enough of. But you can go it alone now.’

Much as I wanted to stay at home and watch Loved Up, I knew I was too close to my goal to give up. ‘I have to do one more. Just one more.’

‘They’ll cotton on to the fact that you just date my clients,’ he argued. ‘We’ve gone far enough. Vizza’s been transferred for five million; George has scotched the date rape rumours. You’ve got a column, a potential chat show and a new radio contract. It’s worked. Don’t be greedy. The press might well turn against you if you carry on.’

‘Just one more,’ I pleaded. ‘You have a list of clients as long as your arm who could use my help. I have credibility and you need that.’

‘Are you doing this for yourself or for me?’ he laughed, giving in. Why did he suddenly keep reminding me of Bill?

My cottage was being made-over by a woman’s magazine, so I stayed in London and gave away the endless roses Vizza sent me to local hospitals. By the end of the week, the wards of UCH looked like marquees at Chelsea Flower Show and the papers went into overdrive as I was spotted coming out of The Ivy with new young pop heat throb, Mac Savage. I strongly suspected that Al had only paired us up because Smack and Mac looked great linked in print. He was getting dangerously cynical.

Mac was sweet. Young, excited, hampered by a huge crush but far too shy to try it on. Best of all, he was a huge fan of Bill’s. He even sat up yawning in my hotel suite, drinking Sprite from the mini-bar as he watched Loved Up on NBC and agreed that Bill had got his old spirit back. But then he blew it by asking me to seduce him.

‘Bill was mad to dump you for that fake monster. You’re so beautiful.’

I cried for hours. Poor Mac tried to understand, doling out tissues and joking that he’d been using Kleenex himself all week, but to mop up something far less delicate than my tears. He even said he loved me. Shit, I felt bad about that one.

Al was livid.

‘You weren’t supposed to sleep with him!’ he complained when the papers were full of long-lens photographs of Mac leaving my hotel at dawn, looking rumpled and stubbly and devastatingly handsome.

‘I didn’t. We watched television,’ I sighed. ‘I thought this was precisely the sort of press you wanted. This is what you hired me for.’

‘I didn’t hire you,’ he sighed. ‘You employed me. I used to be quite good. And I don’t want to make you look cheap. This story just makes you look cheap, Sadie.’

‘I am cheap,’ I muttered. ‘Now it’s out in the open.’

You see, the press had finally turned against me big time on this one. ‘Sadie the Heartbreaker’ ran the bylines, ‘Was Roth Right To Leave Her?’ ‘Mac and Smack the Bitch Uptown.’ Sympathy for Bill was creeping into the alliterative, double-entendre prose. Rumours abounded that I had always been a serial tart, that Bill Roth had been at the end of his tether when he left me, that I was the reason his shows had started to suffer in the UK. The public was ready to forgive Bill at last; they wanted their big, loud, angry star back on home turf. It had done Mac no harm either, although Al was lampooned.

‘You’ve totally discredited my work,’ he fumed. ‘My name’s all over this.’ It was true. The Mac thing was one set-up too much for the press and the long-prepared features about the Alchemist ran side-by-side with the latest Smack story. To say I’d blown his cover was an understatement – I’d napalmed his roof.

‘You knew what you were letting yourself in for when you agreed to help me,’ I said quietly, wishing it didn’t make me feel quite so bad.

Darling Mac had sent a box of chocolates around to the hotel that morning with the note: Mine’s a soft centre, but please take it because you’re eating me up already. I looked at it for a long time, listening to Al’s breathing on the other end of the phone.

‘I know why you’ve done this, Sadie,’ he said finally. ‘And I hope it works, because you’ve not only burned my boats, you’ve burned your own too, and it takes a hell of a long time to swim to a desert island.’

I closed my eyes. He’d guessed at that first ever lunch. That’s why he’d been so reluctant to agree to do this stupid dating thing. I still had no idea why he’d said yes.

‘I think,’ his voice shook, ‘that we can help each other out here.’

‘I’m sorry, Al,’ I sighed. ‘If I do employ you, then I’m afraid you’re fired.’

‘Wait! I have to ask you something,’ he pleaded.

‘Forget it,’ I hung up on him, wishing I cared less, that the Alchemist had been a vulture after all, not the wise owl I’d grown to like.

I cried all the way home on the train, hours and hours of sliding past blurred green fields. My heart was hanging like a small corpse in my chest, wrenched from its strings. I wrote a letter to Mac to apologize for my behaviour. I knew his soft centre would harden up and go stale sooner or later – they all did – but I hoped that he got lucky.

Despite the dark glasses, I was still recognized constantly, which almost finished me off. I was sure my tear-stained autographs would make a mint in years to come if I finally committed the ultimate publicity stunt by committing suicide. I guessed that was what A1 would want. It would make great press; at least three of his clients would have more column inches than the Coliseum in coming weeks and the posthumous biography would sell shed-loads, so Sly would be happy too. He’d always wanted to write and he was the only person besides Bill who knew the entire truth.

Back at my made-over, disgustingly twee cottage, I ignored the Al’s increasingly irate answer phone messages and cuddled Carrot to my chest as I counted.

Seventy-eight sleeping pills. More than enough. But I knew I couldn’t do it. Not while Bill’s future lay in my hands.

Al turned up on my doorstep the next morning, armed with his slimline briefcase, like an estate agent arriving for a valuation. His wild curls had been slicked back and his blue eyes burnt with furious determination.

‘I’ve brought you a file in the hope that you will consider one last job,’ he handed it over and looked around. ‘Nice place.’

It looked disgusting, Colefax and Fowlered to within one inch of its sixteenth-century life with swags, stipples, indoor water features, distressed furniture and a distraught owner looking like sin from a sleepless night. It only took a moment for AI’s professional cool to crack. Underneath, he was jumpy and nervous.

‘OK, it’s awful,’ he admitted. ‘I’m sorry. The magazine promised the best interior designers. We’ll sue.’

‘Thanks, but I have no interest in designer libels. And I appreciate you bringing this, but I told you, you’re fired.’ I threw the file on the dresser and waited for him to leave.

‘I drove all the way from London,’ he stayed put in my doorway. ‘I brought you this too.’ He fished a slimline orchid out of the case, looking embarrassed. ‘It reminded me of you,’ he cleared his throat. ‘Fragile and rare, and desired by too many people for its own safety.’

I looked at it for a long time and felt the sun flooding through the open front door on to my face. It gave Al an ill-deserved halo as he stood in front of me.

‘I understand all your cuttings now,’ he said, his face a dark silhouetted shadow. ‘What interviewers meant when they wrote about your old-fashioned star quality, about how dangerous you are, how irresistible.’ He looked at me curiously. ‘I hope Bill knows how lucky he is.’

‘What do you mean?’ Cornered, I pretended not to understand.

‘You hate the limelight, don’t you?’ his shadow moved, blinding me with sun. ‘That’s why you seemed so reluctant to go back into the public eye when I first met you, why you insisted on taking the fast-track to feature-spreads. You were doing it for love. Not revenge, nor self-glory. Love. Call Bill now,’ he offered me his mobile. ‘Call him. Tell him it’s worked. That it’s time to come home.’

‘No,’ I turned the flower around in my hands, voice choked.

He waited until a tear splashed on the cellophane before he spoke. ‘Your relationship hasn’t ended at all, has it, Sadie? It’s simply on hold until Bill’s career picks up. He staged that scandalous defection with Ash Numan to further his American interests with your support. He knew that if you went on a celebrity datefest a few months later, you’d create enough personal publicity to negate all his love-rat bad press over here. That’s why you waited a dignified amount of time after your “messy” bust-up and then approached me. You agreed to turn yourself into a media whore so that he’ll receive a hero’s welcome when he comes back. You did all this for him, didn’t you?’

Stifling a sob, I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth. ‘Yes.’

A1 whistled quietly, almost incandescent with anger. ‘What a sacrifice you made, Sadie. First he’s a rat, now you’re the bitch. First he’s a tired shock-jock-turned-TV-star who’s lost his edge, now he’s Britain’s lost misunderstood bower-boy everyone wants to come home. Nice one, Smack – the ultimate publicity stunt. Clever old Sadie and Bill. The press will go wild when you two finally get it back together. No wonder my career’s up in smoke. You made me look like an amateur, didn’t you?’

‘Faking a break up is no worse than faking relationships to get your clients in the headlines,’ I howled. ‘You do it all the time.’

‘And I did it once too often with you, didn’t I?’ he laughed. ‘Why couldn’t I say no to you? Why?’

I couldn’t answer that one.

‘So now that you’ve more or less wrecked my career, why refuse to call Bill home for the romantic reunion?’ His eyes blazed furiously. ‘At least give me the satisfaction of knowing that I helped Loved Up’s young dream team get back together.’

‘No! He needs more time,’ I sobbed. ‘He’s not ready to come back yet.’

Then A1 whistled again as the irony fist hit him in the face at last.

‘Oh Jesus. Oh poor Sadie,’ he shook his head, laughing bitterly. ‘It hasn’t worked, has it? You did all this for love and now you find out that he no longer needs you. He likes it in the States. He likes working with Ash – might be in love with her even. Is that it? Now he can bring her back here with him whenever he wants to and you’ve got zip-all except a zipped lip. He’s used you just like you’ve used me. Well, I hope you’re taking a cut, because I’m just taking a stab in the back here.’

‘It’s not like that,’ I muttered tearfully.

But Al wasn’t listening. He grabbed my hand and pulled it away from my face, blue eyes digging around for my tarnished soul. ‘You have to help me out here, Sadie. Can’t you see, I need you even if Bill doesn’t?’

Ducking my head away from the shafts of sunlight, I looked into those curious, quirky blue eyes and fell in. I fell so deeply that the blood rushed to my head, the oxygen was punched from my lungs and my vision tunnelled until all I could see was blue, blue, blue. Christ, it was like coming home.

‘What do you want me to do?’ I tried to blink, to look away, but I couldn’t.

‘Save me,’ he breathed, his mouth so close to mine that I could feel his breath on my lip, as warm and sweet as a patisserie. ‘Save me like you saved Bill.’

Frantically shaking off his gaze, I turned away. I knew what I had to do. Sadie the sacrificial lamb had one more task. It was about time she performed a striptease and showed off her mutton.

‘You’d better sit down,’ I closed the door behind him and whistled Carrot from the sofa. ‘There’s something I should show you.’

Feeling charred with self-hatred, I went back to the dresser and pulled out a drawer. It was cram-full with airmail envelopes. Letters from Bill, increasingly desperate, telling me how much he missed me, how lonely he was and how much Ash got on his nerves. They asked me how things were going, why I wouldn’t return his calls, when he could come home. The last few letters were the most heartbreaking, saying that he realized I no longer wanted to help him, that he could understand why, but begging me to reconsider.

Al read them in silence. When he finally looked up, his blue eyes were bewildered. ‘Why, Sadie?’

I scrunched my eyes tight shut. ‘Can’t you see? I don’t want him to come back to me, Al. I set him free. I did this so that he’d stop relying on me.’

I could hear his sharp intake of breath. ‘You went through all this to what – to chuck him? Jesus, Sadie! I mean, I know you’ve done his career no end of good, but wasn’t this all a bit elaborate, not to mention hurtful?’

‘You have no idea!’ I leapt up furiously, snatching the letters back. ‘Bill and I had an agreement from the start. Our relationship was always a sham – not the sort that lasts a few weeks or months like the ones you set up, but one that has lasted for years and years, one that almost destroyed me. You see, I committed the ultimate sin by believing the hype and starting to love him for real. I know him better than anyone; I think he’s wonderful and talented and warm and funny, but he could never love me in return, not in the way I wanted. God knows, he’s tried. Yes, I’m “chucking” him, if you want to put it that way. I’m chucking him because sooner or later, he’ll realize that he can live without me and he’ll move on, find real love – one that matters. I had to hurt him to do this. It was the only way short of – short of –’ I stopped myself short, knowing I’d said enough.

Al was mute with surprise.

‘Now you have your story,’ I opened the door. ‘Go and tell that to your tabloid friends. It’ll save your credibility, after all. Tell them Smack the Bitch dumped Bill Roth by sending him away to America to get famous there – she even paid Ash Numan to pretend to love him, which is why she’s boracic. You can’t make me look cheaper than I already do. Now fuck off and sell the story. If you want to double-up your PR while you’re at it, I’ll happily pose with a box of tissues. I’m sure one of your clients manufactures them. Why waste the opportunity to product place?’

‘This isn’t what I wanted, Sadie,’ he pleaded. ‘I don’t need this.’

‘Well, it’s all you’re getting,’ I screamed, pushing him outside.

Carrot was old and rheumatic, but he always rose to the occasion. Al left the cottage with a small terrier attached to one leg, gnawing frantically.

When I finally heard his car engine roar away, I turned back to the dresser and spotted the file that he’d left. To my amazement, it contained a large photograph of just one man. Al Matthews, PR Guru, smiled at the camera with his lop-sided could-be-beautiful face and dishevelled comb-me-with-your-fingers hair. That, it seemed, was the final favour he’d come here to beg. Al wanted me to fake-date him.

It suddenly made such horrible sense that I started to laugh. He was caught up in his own spin and it had started to snowball. The press no longer trusted him. They didn’t like the sham relationships, the client incest, or the manipulation. He’d had his fifteen minutes cubed and was now too famous to get away with a career as a Svengali. A future in panel shows or politics beckoned. And now that he’d been hoist by his own PR petard, he had to make himself even more notorious, more famous to survive and prosper. In his eyes, that meant hooking up with the most talked-about bitch in the country right now.

All he’d wanted was to trawl me around a few parties. Instead I’d told him my darkest secret. Shit.

I waited all week for the story to break. I bought the papers each day, scoured them obsessively. They reported that George Brian was now dating Ruby Red after her dramatic no-show at her wedding earlier in the year (yes, gratuitous photo of me at non-wedding). They reported that Mac’s Number One single ‘Older Woman’ had turned platinum (cue another photo of me), that Vizza was hotly tipped for Sports Celebrity of the Year and believed to be seeing a Spice Girl whose solo career had bombed (small shot of her, huge one of me). There was nothing about Bill. The letters kept flooding in from America, but I had stopped opening them. They hurt too much.

In anticipation of the hacks calling, I’d changed my telephone number and only passed it on to the select few I trusted. After a full fortnight, when I’d just started to believe I was safe and that Al had gone to live in an ashram, Sly called. It was early morning and I’d been up all night bingeing on ice cream.

‘What have you done?’ he screamed. ‘The News has dedicated three pages to it. The photo of me is awful.’

My face drained of colour and I fought to breathe as I dashed to the hall where the papers were waiting in a soggy pile. What had Al told them? How could he possibly know Sly was involved?

But the story that unfolded with more puns in bold italic than ever disgraced a Carry On script wasn’t Al’s. It was Bill’s.

‘Loved Up Star Comes Out’ ran the headline. ‘Bill tells how love for gay agent ruined life with sexy Smack.’

Bill told his story with the minimum of sentiment, outlining how his feelings for me had changed over the years, how he grew to rely on me as a sister, a mentor, and a therapist, but no longer as a lover. He told the nation how he clung to me even though I wanted to leave, how he begged me to stay, threatened suicide and even once locked me in our London flat for several days. He named Sly as his lover of close to five years, a man who had stood by him with unending patience and support. He spared himself no embarrassment as he finally exposed the true nature of our relationship and set me free. Christ, he was brave.

It was just after dawn, but the press had already started to gather outside. I ignored the knocks on the door and let Carrot bark himself hoarse as I hid from them all and took the phone off the hook. I’d been through it all before and wearily prepared for the long siege. ‘Cross your legs, Carrot, mate.’

It was only when I hear a familiar voice yelling through the letterbox that I opened the door a crack. Al burst inside, looking unshaven and exhausted.

‘Why didn’t you tell me he was gay?’ he demanded.

‘It was none of your business.’

We both jumped as a flash at the window almost blinded us. I closed the curtains on the photographer and buried my forehead in their dusty folds. ‘Coming out will probably destroy Bill’s career.’

‘No it won’t,’ Al shook his head. ‘He’ll have to cling on to the sides of the boat for a while but he’ll weather the storm. Look at Elton John, Michael Barrymore, Rupert Everett. They all came out and survived. Bill could see it was time. All he needed was good advice and a hand to hold.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I didn’t get these red eyes from staying up partying,’ he muttered, sagging down on the sofa. ‘I’ve just got off a plane from California. Bill had no idea how much you’ve been suffering. Typical starry attitude, only thinking about himself. Still, he’s a nice enough bloke. He’d just had lousy PR management, that’s all.’

‘You went to see him?’ I was appalled. ‘Christ, you’re a bloody hyena, aren’t you? Is there no bone you won’t pick for your pound of flesh?’

‘I gave him good advice, Sadie,’ he sighed, looking even more tired. ‘I thought that at least I could do one decent thing before I quit to prove I haven’t been in the wrong career all these years.’

‘But why Bill?’

‘For you, of course,’ he walked to the dresser where his ‘file’ still lay under a pile of unopened mail. ‘I hoped you might reconsider my final offer?’

I looked at the photograph and laughed. ‘You must be joking! I couldn’t fake another love affair. Can’t you see what a mess that would make?’

‘I don’t want to fake it, Sadie. I never did. Like I just said, I quit PR.’ Al was opening the most recent of Bill’s letters. ‘Sadie darling, he still won’t go away. Christ, he’s persistent. He says he loves you and says I have to set you free –’

‘Give that here,’ I snatched it away and started to read. I’d trust Bill with my life – after all I’d trusted him with my love life for years. He’d clearly confided in Al a great deal. They had talked for hours, discussing the nature of fame, the way it destroys, creates untruths, damages souls. Bill liked Al, was clearly smitten, and even had the nerve to be irritated with me for using him. ‘He’s very like you, Sadie darling. He fell into this twinkly world by accident. Give him a chance. Don’t let me down – now I’m allowed to be camp at long last, I simply must wear a ridiculous Versace suit to the wedding.’

‘Oh God, Bill, you daft bugger. Why wait so long?’ I put the letter down with a sob and looked at Al’s sad, dishevelled face. ‘You don’t want to fake it?’

He shook his head, cupping my face in his hands. ‘I want the real thing, far away from the public eye. Just you and me and normality.’

‘Oh God, that sounds good – a forever of normality,’ I bit my lip, diving into his eyes again and swimming around for joy before splashing my way tearfully towards the most wonderful of long kisses.

‘There’s only one problem, Al,’ I realized as I resurfaced for air. ‘Half the country’s press are camped outside this house right now and they know we’re in here.’

‘So?’ He laughed. ‘Let’s give them something to write about before we disappear forever. Where’s your suitcase? Does Carrot need anything packing? Some food and her bed, maybe.’

Now that gave me an idea …

As we tanked along to M20, laughing our heads off, we heard the first reports of our extraordinary exit from my cottage on Radio 5 Live.

‘The couple are believed to have left Smack’s house dressed in gorilla suits. Most of the tabloids have already put this down to a publicity stunt after Bill Roth’s extraordinary confessions in today’s News. Editors say that the Alchemist has stretched his credibility too far this time.’

‘Welcome to incredibility,’ I laughed.

‘Incredible,’ Al stretched across to kiss me as we queued for the Channel Tunnel. ‘We’re the first celebrity couple who got together to escape the limelight completely. Where do you fancy going? I hear the South of France is lovely at this time of year.’

‘Too many stars.’ I wrinkled my nose. ‘How about Belgium?’

‘Well, the chocolate’s nice,’ he nodded. ‘And we could afford to rent a little farmhouse somewhere remote.’

‘Perfect,’ I sighed, leaning back and tickling Carrot’s nose. ‘What will we do there?’

‘I rather thought,’ he chewed his lip and glanced at me guiltily, ‘that we could set up a super-discreet retreat for harassed celebrities?’

I started to giggle in England, and I was still laughing when we got to France.