Power Games (16 page)

Without thinking twice, he tore it up. It meant nothing without Angela.

‘Let me talk to her. I can explain.’

‘She’s not here.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘Angela knows about the money. She asked me to give it to you. She never wants to set eyes on you again and I don’t blame her. How do you think she feels?’

Noah could only imagine. Knowing he had hurt her was unbearable. More than that, he had lost her respect, her love, her trust. The terrible things she must think about him. Angela’s opinion mattered to him above all others.

‘Tell her I don’t want it.’ He stood.

Donald laughed. ‘Can’t you see? A girl like Angela would never enter into anything serious with you. She said as much. You were fun for a while but she wants more from her life. She wants money, and security. She wants a solid family name, not a useless band of heathens. She hates you. She wants you gone.’

‘I have to hear her say it.’

‘After what you’ve been getting up to, do you think she so much as wants to share the same air as you, let alone look you in the face? Think about it, Lawson. You don’t belong with us. You can’t give Angela anything she doesn’t already have. You’re wasting your breath. You’re nothing compared with her.’

The words were a blow to his gut. For the first time, Noah’s confidence faltered. Donald’s tirade cemented what a part of him already knew but had been hiding from: that Angela would always be too good for him. Even if she did hear him out, even if she did get his reasons, it was only a matter of time before she wised up and saw him for what he was. Her prospects were sky high. She could do—and be—anything. He was a waster with a drunk for a mother.

Donald wrote a second cheque and forced it into his hands.

‘If you truly care about my daughter,’ he said quietly, ‘you’ll do the right thing and get as far away from Boston as you can.’

The door slammed.

Noah didn’t quit town right away. He kept Donald’s cheque in a drawer and despised himself for not being able to destroy it. He thought of everything he could use it to become—and that one day, maybe, that might mean he could earn back Angela.

One afternoon, he spent every dime he had made from the housewives on a silver ring. It would be nothing against the finery she was used to, but he meant every cent. He put it in her mailbox the next and last time he passed the mansion gates, together with a note.

At dawn, he left for LA. There was nothing to stay for. Noah hitched his way to California, where fortune decided he was long due a break. Inside a week he was signed with La
Lumière models. Inside a month, he had snagged his first TV role.

It was a year before she made contact. She had read his note, and against her judgement could ignore him no longer. It wasn’t the women that upset her, she said. It was that Noah had taken the hush money, that covert exchange at the heart of all she despised, the tyranny and suffocation of her father’s rule. Even now, Donald’s stance was unchanged. See Noah Lawson and she could forget all about the Silvers Empire.

In secret they rekindled their love. Both felt it, brighter and more brilliant than ever before, but it was stained by the confusions of the past.

Noah Lawson never recovered from the suspicion that he had done the wrong thing all those years ago. That his whole career was built on a cheap trick for which he should never have fallen. That he should have torn up that second cheque, he should have torn up a hundred cheques, and run for Angela Silvers like his life depended on it. He should never have given her up.

21

Los Angeles

‘S
he was
fifteen
, Kevin!
Fifteen!
’

In a bubbling hot tub that Cut N Dry Records had had specially installed in the studio basement for their number-one protégé, Kevin Chase reclined in the churning froth, ramped his arms across his chest and scowled dangerously.

‘I didn’t know that, did I?’ he grumbled.

Shame engulfed him. He felt terrible about the whole thing: poor Marie with her quivering lip and big, trusting eyes, his failure to launch, his harsh dismissal …

Not that he was going to admit that to Sketch—or to his mom.

‘What were you doing anyway,’ Sketch raged, ‘making out with a fan in your dressing room? Are you insane? These people go crazy for you. She could have been anyone; she could have had a fucking psycho boyfriend hanging out in the closet!’

‘Whatever.’

‘No, not
whatever
, Kevin: not this time, buddy. This time it’s serious.’

‘We didn’t
do
anything.’

‘That’s not what’s she’s saying. She’s saying you were all
over her. That she tried to get away but you forced her, and it was only when she escaped—’

‘She’s lying!’ Kevin struck the roiling surface of the water with both palms, prompting an almighty splash to surge over the sides of the pool and splatter his manager in the face. ‘It was her who was coming on to me—!’

‘OK, stop right there.’ Sketch ran a weary hand over his brow. ‘That is not going to wash. That is not going to stand up in a court of law or with the biggest jury of all—the public. The
fans.
Christ!
US Weekly
has already got hold of it.
Life & Style
called this morning.
Star
wants your first interview on the matter. Do you understand what this means for the brand?’ His voice skittered up two octaves. Kevin had never seen him like it. ‘After this, there
is
no brand!’

‘Quit overreacting,’ supplied Kevin. ‘I’ll make a statement.’

‘Do you think I trust you to do any such thing after this?’ In the background, Kevin’s mother Joan was wringing her hands. At last she spoke up. ‘The gala prize might help?’ she ventured tentatively.

Sketch was too irate to string a sentence together.

‘What?’ Kevin exploded. ‘Don’t tell me I actually have to
do
that piece of shit day trip, do I?’

Two wealthy middle-aged sisters had bid for the honour of Kevin’s company: a morning of shopping, lunch at Nobu Malibu and an afternoon of play at the dolphin sanctuary. The auction had fetched close to half a million dollars. The thought of going through with the pantomime made Kevin want to curl up in a tiny ball and die.

Quietly Joan began: ‘It’s been paid for, darling—’

‘With those fat old crones?’

‘It’s one day, I’m sure you can rise to the occasion.’

Rise to the occasion …
That would be a first.

‘Sure, so it’s one day here and one day there and d’you know the thing about days, Mom? Days add up to weeks, and weeks add up to months, and months add up to years, and before I know it my whole fucking life’s been shot down the drain!’

‘Kevin, please! Your language!’

‘Mom, please! Your
face
!’

‘Sketch! Do something!’

Kevin’s manager turned. There was thunder in his eyes. ‘You haven’t been taking your pills,’ he said menacingly. ‘Have you?’

‘I have so.’

‘Every day, like we made you promise?’

‘I said I was, didn’t I? What more do you want?’

‘Those pills are meant to calm you, Kevin.’

‘Yes,’ parroted Joan, ‘they’re meant to help—’

‘Well they’re not fucking working, then, are they?’

Unable to continue the conversation for fear of bursting into tears, Kevin pinched his nose and vanished beneath the water. The tub boiled and foamed. A pair of bony hairless knees broke the surface. Sketch and Joan looked at each other.

‘Right—that’s it.’ Sketch leaned in and hauled his client out by his elbow. ‘You’re doing the gala prize and that’s not all. Bethan?’

Sketch’s assistant approached, her high heels click-clacking on the spa floor. She produced a square of black card and handed it to Sketch.

Kevin was drenched and sullen. ‘What’s that?’

‘We received it this morning. If you want my opinion—and Jesus H., pal, I would urge you to take it—you accept this invitation without a backward glance.’

‘Invitation to what?’

Kevin snatched it. His wet paw prints marred the edges of the card, making them damp. He scanned the text. It was written in gold script, with an official stamp emblazoned across the top: CANE ENTERPRISES—FOR THE BEST YOU CAN BE.

‘What is this?’

‘It’s a call to arms. For the Salimanta crisis.’

‘The what?’

It had been too much to hope that Kevin read the news. As patiently as he could, Sketch illuminated. In January, the Salimanta coastline in Indonesia had suffered a giant tsunami. Entire families, their homes and livelihoods, had been wiped out. The devastation was titanic, the suffering terrible, and the aid effort thwarted by bureaucracy. The solicitation was the first of its kind. Kevin would become part of a never-before-seen crew who would fly out to the region and, through a global-scale PR mission, break down those barriers. It was a humanitarian crusade of the highest order, and it was hoped that each of the seven personalities invited to take part would have big impact on the crisis and its recovery.

‘We’ve checked it out,’ said Sketch, ‘it’s legit.’

‘Why don’t they just hand over the cash?’

‘With the right PR they’ll treble their money.
You’re
the PR.’

‘I’m not doing it.’

‘You have to.’

Kevin’s head snapped up. He’d never heard his manager use that tone before.

‘No, I don’t,’ he replied carefully, reminding Sketch who was boss.

‘Imagine how it will look if you refuse.’

Kevin spoke slowly. ‘I. Am. Not. Doing. It.’

Joan rummaged in her purse for a Valium. There was a pause, before Sketch crouched down, located the controls to the hot tub and turned off the foam.

The water became cooler, and clearer, and Kevin brought his knees to his chest, looping his arms round them. Still he sulked, but with less bravado.

‘You will do this, Kevin, because there is no choice. Without this, you can consider your career at the beginning of the end. God knows, I have been patient with you. We have all been patient with you. But this is where it stops. This is time for you to give something back. Your image, as it stands, is nothing short of a train wreck. You want to salvage it? Then you bite this Cane guy’s arm off for a piece of the pie. Stars just like you wait a lifetime for this kind of save. Wake up to the facts. The way we’re seeing you right now at Cut N Dry isn’t the best. We’re close to the edge. We’re working for you, Kevin, but you’re not working for us. We
believe
in you. We always have. Only I don’t know if you believe in you any more.’

Humiliatingly, Kevin’s eyes sprang with tears. He felt very young and very old at the same time. Goosebumps prickled his skin.

‘Show us that you still care,’ urged Sketch. ‘Do this. Say yes. And I guarantee if you perform well then we’re back at the top. We’re right back up there. It’s this,’ Sketch took a dramatic pause, ‘or it’s nothing.’

The inference was clear. Even Joan got it. Kevin had been thrown an ultimatum. Get flown out to Indonesia—or get dropped.

Kevin picked up the soggy card again. Beneath the summons was a list of six other VIPs.
Accompanying you will be …

It was quite a selection. Maybe this was his chance. Maybe
this was where he got to put his stamp on the world, to do something meaningful, that mattered.

Take your place and make a difference.

He prayed for a difference to his own life. Get out of LA. Leave the fans. Leave the paps. Leave the commitments. Leave the airplane nightmares that roused him in a hot, sick sweat and had him reeling for days. Leave his mom. Leave Sketch.

Kevin was ready. Whatever was in store, it had to be better than this.

‘Fine.’ He hauled himself out of the water. ‘When do we leave?’

22

London

E
ve sat across the table from the father of her child. She said what she had to say and then she waited for his response. It was a long time coming.

‘You’re serious,’ he said eventually, his fork hovering over a rare veal shank. Pink blood was leaking from the meat and staining his potatoes.

‘I am.’

Orlando leaned back in his chair at The Ivy and wiped his mouth with his napkin. The waiter came to refill their glasses. The silence was brittle. Their date had been impromptu, a rare occasion for them to be out, but he had insisted. Maybe it was his way of making it up to her: take her for a meal, expensive food, expensive wine, buy her into forgetting, see if they could pick up where they left off …

‘But I thought …’ He stopped. ‘Everything you said—’

‘I’m not getting rid of this baby. I can’t.’

Orlando’s dark eyes were trained on the tablecloth.

‘The other guy,’ he said, ‘are you still seeing him?’

The question, of all the questions he might have asked, took her by surprise. It was a second before she placed what he meant. That stupid lie she had thrown at him in her flat.
Cheap shots and petty vengeances—was that all they had become?

‘No.’

He watched her. ‘So where does this leave us?’

‘Us?’

‘We made this baby, didn’t we?’

‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

Without warning he balled his napkin and slammed it onto the table. Heads turned, alert at the disturbance. Orlando leaned in, fighting to keep his voice down.

‘Why does everything have to be so cold with you?’

‘I’m not cold. I’m practical.’

‘Then quit being practical for a second—don’t you have feelings?’

Eve sipped her water. ‘Feelings are what led me here in the first place. This isn’t a decision I’ve taken lightly.’

‘It isn’t a decision I’ve had a say in at all.’

‘Why should you have a say? We’re not together.’