Kiss and Tell (11 page)

‘He is not famous enough,’ Mama repeated, making her way to the large reproduction Regency bureau, which she unlocked with a small key kept on a chain around her neck. ‘We must find you a better man,
ma
i
ka
, a man who will put a ring on your finger again.’

‘We could try a woman this time?’ Sylva suggested. The trend for glamour girls to have a Sapphic phase was admittedly getting rather well-worn and sleazy – fed up with years of men wanting them only for their bodies, blah blah, get together with another woman, blah blah, media-fuelled talk of bisexuality adds to the cool factor, blah: Lindsay Lohan, Megan Fox, Jodie Marsh, Angelina Jolie, blah blah – but Sylva thought it still had mileage if handled delicately. Hadn’t a publicity-hungry supermodel once let loose a rather saucy rumour about a glamorous drag queen that had worked well? Sylva envisaged something on a rather more classy scale: perhaps an androgynous aristo in tailored tweed, or a gorgeous raven-haired rock chick.

But Mama pretended not to hear. She would never entertain the idea of Sylva having a relationship with a woman, however artfully staged. Like Queen Victoria, she refused to believe lesbianism even existed.

In the bureau were her files – tens of neat pink ring binders in which she kept many acres of Sylva’s cuttings (though only the most recent ones: all of the others having been archived into many large boxes in an attic room because they took up so much space). Beside
these recent cuttings, so meticulously filed, was a baby blue ring binder that she now drew out and opened.

Sylva sighed. ‘No, Mama, I don’t think we can make that work. Not yet. It’s too soon after Jonte.’

‘Of course we can make it work.’ Mrs Szubiak placed the file on top of the magazines in front of her daughter, obscuring Nell Cottrell’s beautiful face, although her famous escort still peered out above it, looking very handsome and self-satisfied. ‘It is time for my little girl to star in another fairytale.’

Ironically, as Sylva’s mother opened the file, Dillon Rafferty’s name was at the top of the index list in her neat, curling handwriting, along with a dozen other potential targets, all of which Mrs Szubiak had studied carefully, compiling very detailed biographies full of information and photographs to help her and her daughter in their quest. Among them was at least one dotcom billionaire, two Oscar-winning actors, several rock stars, an oligarch and a red-blooded Royal prince within a couple of croaks of the throne.

On the spine of the blue file, also in Mrs Szubiak’s neat copper-plate capitals, was one word: HUSBANDS.

‘It is time,’ she told her daughter grandly. ‘To select Number Three.’

‘Must we?’

‘Yes,’ she covered Sylva’s delicate hand with her own, gnarled and hardened from a tough life before their escape to England. She would never allow her daughter to know such a life again.

Long ago, Mama had decided that marriage for Sylva was as much a career move as launching a new clothing range or promoting her latest ghost-written book.

‘Third time lucky, as they say in this country,’ she said determinedly.

‘Third time lucky,’ Sylva echoed, sliding the file towards her mother so that she could once again study the magazine shot of Dillon Rafferty and his new girlfriend. ‘Who do you have in mind?’

As if she needed to ask …

The knotty forefinger with its long, nicotine-yellow nail landed on Dillon’s nose. ‘Let’s start at the top of the list and work our way down, as before.’

‘Nothing like aiming high.’ Sylva felt a shiver of excitement course through her. On cue, ‘Two Souls’ started playing on the distant
kitchen radio, which Mama kept permanently tuned to Radio Two. ‘Tell Rodney I’m ready for him to start shooting now, Mama.’

Mrs Szubiak gasped, clutching the file to her chest. ‘You are surely not going to let him see our plans?’

‘Of course not,’ Sylva stood up and, turning to the huge Venetian mirror above the ornate fireplace, ruffled her thick blonde hair – a metre long including extensions. ‘I am going to do some gardening with the kids. Plant veggies. Dillon’s got an organic farm shop, hasn’t he? He’ll approve. It seems the perfect start to our masterplan.’

Mama regarded her daughter slyly. Sometimes she couldn’t be quite sure whether Sylva was being serious or not.

‘The children are not here,’ she reminded her.

‘Aren’t they?’ Sylva asked, vaguely recalling that her small boys and their doting entourage of nannies were currently splashing around in the pool of Lissom Hall, the nearby private spa that had made her an honorary member after so many photo shoots staged there. ‘In that case, I’ll plant veggies on my own. Tell Rodney that I’m going to the garden centre in five minutes. They can start shooting me there. I’ll take the Cayenne.’

She raced upstairs to change into denim hot-pant dungarees with nothing but a lacy cream and blue camisole underneath, matched with patterned baby blue wellies and topped with a floppy straw hat that cast a bewitching dappled shadow on her high-cheekboned face.

Sylva knew how to set a scene.

Chapter 5

Dillon and Nell were fast-tracked through customs at Heathrow and, accompanied by his record label PR, Tania, and the super-efficient airport’s VIP liaison executive, pushed their overloaded luggage trolleys past the banks of photographers intent on getting a shot of the global chart-topper and his new squeeze.

Having spent the final hour of the flight locked in a First Class wash room, changing and applying make-up, Nell was now hiding her perfectly painted eyes behind oversized dark glasses, a Hermès
scarf tied over her beautifully styled hair and a long summer mackintosh buckled over the floral playsuit she’d bought in Saks the previous day.

‘Where’s your little girl, Nell?’ one of the hacks called out.

‘With her grandmother,’ Nell said smoothly, despite Tania frantically signalling for her to say nothing while trying to bat all the press away with the aid of her vast Mulberry handbag. ‘I can’t wait to see her.’

But when they were finally ensconced behind the tinted glass of the vast car sent to pick them up, the Louis Vuitton luggage and tens of designer shopping bags crammed in the boot and Tania dispatched in a humble black cab, Nell suggested that they take a suite at Cliveden for the night. ‘The label will pay.’

‘Why should they?’ Dillon laughed incredulously. ‘They’ve already put us up in five-star luxury in New York just so that you could shop all week. I have houses in London and Oxfordshire; I hardly need to stay in a hotel near Henley. Besides, I want to get back for my kids.’

‘They’re still in LA with Fawn, packing their little suitcases,’ she pointed out sourly, having found herself stranded at the Four Seasons for several dull sunbathing and shopping afternoons a fortnight earlier while he spent time with his children and ex-wife at his former in-laws’ Malibu beach house.

‘Yes, and when they land tomorrow the kids will come straight to West Oddford,’ he reminded her.

‘So I can have you all to myself for a night? At the London house?’

‘That’s all ready for Fawn,’ he sighed.

Since their divorce, Dillon and Fawn had maintained a close transatlantic relationship for the sake of their two daughters, Pomegranate and Blueberry. When in the UK, Fawn always based herself in the couple’s former marital home. The Nash-designed Regent’s Park terrace was now officially Dillon’s property, but they remained wholly cordial about it and anglophile Fawn regularly stayed there for weeks at a time, much to Nell’s discomfort. Six-year-old Pom and four-year-old Berry, already wholly accustomed to life spread between several sites, were more than happy to rattle straight off the LA flight into a car chauffeuring them to the Cotswolds while their mother headed towards North London alone.
Nell, by contrast, felt profoundly disorientated and ill at ease after just three weeks in the States.

Coming back to find the UK in the grip of Olympic fever didn’t help. It was just days away from the opening ceremony and the whole country had gone Olympics mad. On reflection, she guessed it was safest to stay at home. But Dillon’s beloved West Oddford Farm felt more like a love rival than home, and he was clearly still a long way off asking her to share it with him for more than a night at a time.

Ever the rolling stone, who now had her own pet rock star, Nell was much happier living in hotel rooms and well-staffed holiday houses, where there was room service on tap and one could just as equally hang the Do Not Disturb sign on the door as walk out, slamming that door and driving away at the drop of a hat to let somebody else pick up the mess.

‘The farm will be full of people,’ she curled up to him. ‘I want you to myself just for one night.’

‘You’ve had me in the States for three weeks.’

‘I’ve hardly seen you!’

‘We’ve been together most nights.’ He didn’t want to get into the argument about Fawn again. Nell wouldn’t leave it alone, like an itchy rash. Asking her along to the States after the story about their relationship had gone public had been a last-minute, hot-headed decision that Dillon had regretted in hindsight. He’d wanted to protect her from all the press attention in the UK, but instead he had almost suffocated her with his own commitments in America, a schedule of work, plus delicate family politics, that had been planned for many months and took no account of a girlfriend accustomed to long walks together, lost weekends and lazy lovemaking that sometimes stretched over several hours.

‘I had to work, Nell. You knew that was the deal when I asked you along.’

‘You didn’t exactly spell out that the only private time we’d get was a few lousy hours each night sharing a bed in a strange hotel with the air-con switched off, a wake-up call booked for six and a your BlackBerry vibrating every ten minutes. And now we’ve got your kids coming, then you’re off to Italy in less than a week. I think I deserve
one
night of your undivided attention, don’t you?’ She licked her lips playfully.

Dillon stifled a yawn and wrapped his arm tightly around her, knowing that she was attention seeking because she had been neglected and was totally unaccustomed to it. He couldn’t deny it; his schedule was so punishing that he was neglecting everything.

‘Two Souls’, the song that had relaunched his career, had been Number One in the UK for over three months now, as well as topping charts all over Europe and the Far East. It was now also Number One in the States and, with maximum airplay and downloads, the album had already gone platinum and promoters were howling for a stadium tour.

Dillon was exhausted and strangely depressed, hating himself for his lack of gratitude but unable to stop the resentment crawling all over him. His comeback had been a huge success, exceeding all expectations in every possible way except one – his own euphoria had not returned. He had no sense of that giddy, grateful, boy-in-a-magical-toyshop feeling that he’d once relished when out-selling every recording artist in the world, including his father. He simply felt strained, homesick and appalled at the apple-polishing, toadying and freeloading he encountered everywhere he went.

He found himself continually questioning why exactly had he staged a comeback when the place that he had escaped to was so good?

Despite having lived in some of the most prestigious addresses in the world, West Oddford Farm, a lopsided pile hidden at the end of half a mile of drive, tucked in a discreet fold between two hills as plump and soft as matronly breasts untouched by silicone, was the only home in which he truly felt content. A working farm, managed by a great team in his absence, it had become Dillon’s major project and
raison d’être
after the simultaneous collapse of his marriage, career and mental health. It had helped him through a prolonged breakdown and crippling writer’s block. He had bought the farm on a whim, more because he needed a bolthole away from the media glare than because he wanted to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty, but his interest in food had soon sparked an interest in farming. Once a dairy farm, West Oddford boasted three hundred acres of wood-skirted land with no rights of way crossing it, ensuring complete privacy. It also came with vast tracts of outbuildings that Dillon had soon bored of wandering around with a shotgun picking off crows and rats and started to want to bring back to life. Rare
sheep, cattle and pigs were soon installed, initially for decoration but then for produce. He became interested in butchery and husbandry, in meats and cheeses, in nurturing the kitchen gardens that sheltered a burgeoning vegetable plot, filling the glass houses and soft-fruit frames, in maximising yield in his ancient orchards and nuttery, all of which were brought back to life by endless tranfusions from his dwindling savings. Gaining organic status became an obsessive mission, later transcended by setting up a farm shop and, more recently, the marketing of a whole range that sold in exclusive food halls and delicatessens across the world.