The Vanishing Point (14 page)

20

I
really tried to get out of holding Leanne’s hand while she told Scarlett the tacky truth about her husband. But gradually I realised that if I wasn’t there to lend moral support, Leanne was going to bottle it. I can’t say I blamed her. The news she had to deliver was the sort of thing nobody wants to hear. When Marina came back from the toddler group, I dug into my wallet and paid her extra to take Jimmy up to his nursery for the evening.

It was almost seven when the studio car brought Scarlett home. She was on a high after an afternoon of being pinned and tacked into a succession of sexy dresses. My presence was a bonus, she said, heading straight for the fridge and opening a bottle of Prosecco. She poured three glasses in spite of my protestations and gave me a kiss on the forehead as she handed mine to me. ‘Chill, sister,’ she said. ‘You can always stay over if you want to have a drink with me and Leanne. Right, Lee?’

There was no point in holding back. This was not a conversation that would improve with keeping. ‘You might not want either of us in the house when you hear what we’ve got to say,’ I said.

Scarlett stopped in her tracks and frowned. ‘That doesn’t sound good.’ She looked from me to Leanne and back again. A flare of panic lit her eyes. ‘It’s not Jimmy, is it? I mean, I’m assuming he’s gone down for the night, yeah?’

‘No, Jimmy’s fine. Marina’s got him up in the nursery. We didn’t want him to see you upset.’

‘That only leaves Joshu.’ She sat down heavily, her mouth a hard line. ‘Spill it, then. Has he wrapped that stupid bloody car round a tree?’

‘No, nothing like that.’ I looked at Leanne. ‘Though you might wish he had by the time we’re done.’

‘Spit it out, then. Jeez, Steph, it’s not like you to beat around the bush.’

‘OK.’ I took a deep breath. Like that ever made anything easier. ‘It looks like Joshu’s been putting it about a bit.’

Scarlett didn’t move a muscle. She sat, frozen, staring straight ahead, not even blinking for what felt like an impossible length of time. I could only imagine the hurt. She’d been serially let down by every adult who owed her care and love. And still she persisted in loving. I found it impossible not to admire that.

At last, she looked away, delicately wiping her mouth clean of lipstick with her index finger. It was a curious gesture, as if she was removing the very taste of him. ‘Tell me what you know,’ she said, hard-edged Yorkshire to the core.

So Leanne told Scarlett what she’d already told me. Halting and nervous, she got through her story. Scarlett sat stony-faced throughout, sipping metronomically from her glass. At the end, Scarlett’s face twitched once, a momentary lapse of control. Then she was back in charge. ‘Do you know who she was, this slag?’

‘I think I heard somebody call her Tiffany. But I couldn’t swear to it.’

‘Ha!’ Scarlett’s cry was bitter. ‘Not Tiffany – Toffany. Stupid fucking made-up name. Toffany Banks. She’s always wanted him. Well, she’s welcome to him. Come on, girls. We’ve got work to do.’

That night, Scarlett confirmed what I’d believed for some time. She was not a woman to mess with. First, cool as a cucumber, she called Joshu. ‘Hey, babe,’ she said. ‘Are you working tonight?’

When she came off the phone, she said, ‘He’s running the decks at Stagga. Then he’s going on to a party in Fulham. So the night is ours.’

Next she called a local van-hire firm that Joshu had an account with. ‘He uses their vans for festivals and private gigs,’ she explained. She arranged for them to drop off a Transit at the hacienda on Joshu’s account. Then we headed upstairs to the bedroom with a roll of black bin liners. Scarlett threw Joshu’s clothes out of wardrobes and drawers and we filled the bags. As soon as the bags were full, she’d tip in a bottle of cologne or aftershave lotion or one of the other expensive toiletries that colonised Joshu’s half of the bathroom. ‘He always likes to smell nice,’ she said with grim satisfaction as we carried the reeking bags down to the garage.

When the van arrived, we loaded up all the equipment from his studio, his boxes of CDs and vinyl and the bags of clothes. It took us till gone one in the morning, but we’d been through the entire house and cleared it of every trace of the two-timing little shit. ‘Where to now?’ I asked, wiping my hair out of my eyes.

‘It’s on his account,’ Scarlett said. ‘I think we should drive it down to Stagga and leave the keys with one of the lads on the door. What do you think, Steph?’

‘Sounds good to me. You drive the van, I’ll follow in your car and bring you back here.’

‘I’ll go in the van with you,’ Leanne said. ‘Keep you company.’

We both gave her an incredulous stare. ‘I don’t think so,’ Scarlett said. ‘We don’t want the doormen thinking they’re seeing double.’

Leanne slapped herself on the forehead and burst out laughing. ‘Shit, I forgot. What am I like?’

‘Mental,’ Scarlett giggled. ‘Come on then, Steph. Let’s get going.’

It went without a hitch. Scarlett parked the van on double yellows outside the club and spoke to the gorillas on the door. ‘Joshu asked me to drop his gear off,’ she said. ‘Can you give him the keys?’ She gestured at her joggers and muscle vest. ‘I’m not dressed for it. I don’t want to ruin my reputation.’

Scarlett didn’t say much on the way back. ‘I left him a note propped up on the steering wheel,’ she said. ‘Told him to fuck off to Toffany’s if he wanted a bed for the night and not to bother coming back.’

‘You’ll have to talk to him about access to Jimmy,’ I said.

‘That’s what lawyers are for,’ she said. ‘He’s been no kind of father to Jimmy while he’s been under the same roof. He can see his son, but he’s not having no fifty-fifty deal. Nor nothing like.’

A few traffic lights went by. ‘He’ll try and screw you on the money too.’

‘Let him try. My accountant’s got most of my assets where he can’t get his hands on them. Plus we did a pre-nup. He keeps what’s his and I won’t come after him for maintenance.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe he did that to me. Toffany fucking Banks. That’s really insulting, you know that? She hasn’t got the brains God gave a goldfish. She makes me look like Jeremy bloody Paxman.’ Then her face crumpled and she began to cry. Great howling sobs and shuddering moans ripped through her, filling the car with terrible noise.

I didn’t know what to do so I just kept driving. After a few minutes, Scarlett began to run out of steam. Her face was a mess of tears and snot. She rubbed her eyes with her fists and sniffed, then wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘That’s all the bastard gets from me.’

It was a wildly over-optimistic assertion, but I suspect it made her feel a bit better in the moment. Over the months that followed, Scarlett shed plenty of tears for Joshu. In spite of everything, she had loved him and it had cut the ground from under her feet to be so thoroughly betrayed by him. But that night she was determined to hold firm.

‘Will you stop with us for a few days?’ she said. ‘He’ll be round, he won’t take it lying down. And then there’ll be the media. I could do with a bit of back-up.’

I couldn’t refuse her. In Scarlett’s shoes, I’d have wanted one of my mates in my corner. I didn’t realise that supporting her would put me just there. In her shoes.

21

W
e didn’t have long to wait. Joshu turned up shouting the odds about an hour after we got back to the hacienda. He had to shout because Scarlett had changed the access code on the electric gate and turned off the intercom. We were sitting in the kitchen drinking tea, too wired for bed, when we heard the van draw up. ‘Here comes trouble,’ Leanne said.

The sound of the van’s horn blasted through the dawn. ‘Neighbours won’t like that,’ Scarlett said. She sniffed. ‘Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.’

‘I think you should talk to him,’ I said. ‘Even if it’s just to tell him you’re done.’

Scarlett gazed out of the window at the garden with a hundred-yard stare. ‘I really can’t be arsed,’ she said. But she slid off her stool and headed for the door. She turned and summoned us with a jerk of the head. ‘Come on. I need witnesses. So I don’t cave in at the sight of his pretty face.’

Leanne and I exchanged glances. She looked about as thrilled as I felt. Getting between a warring couple is never a good place to be. I had a feeling this was going to be like a Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner film, but without the laughs. So we followed along, Leanne automatically twisting her hair into a ponytail and shoving it through the back of a baseball cap. A minimal disguise, but it had proved effective enough.

At first glance, the scene was mildly laughable. Whoever Joshu had talked into driving him out here had parked the nose of the van bang up against the gates and Joshu had clambered on to the sloping bonnet. He was leaning on the gate, his wrists between the metal spikes that adorned its top edge. ‘About time, bitch,’ he shouted, weaving slightly from side to side. He sounded stoned. Probably because he was. True to form, he’d been drinking and ingesting assorted substances for hours. The only positive aspect of the whole scenario was that it was the middle of the night and the long-lens jackals were all in their lairs, asleep.

‘You think that’s the way to sort this out?’ she yelled back at him. ‘Coming round here off your tits and calling me names?’

‘What the fuck is this all about?’ he demanded, all injured innocence.

‘It’s about you sticking your dick where it doesn’t belong. I’m through with it. I thought becoming a dad had changed your ways, but that’s not what I’m hearing. You dirty bastard. Shagging that cow Toffany then coming home to me? Now I’m going to have to get tested for every bloody sexually transmitted lurgy under the sun. You are a complete and utter prick.’

Joshu kept trying to get a word in, but it wasn’t happening. Scarlett was off and running and she wasn’t giving him a chance to change her mind. ‘I packed up your stuff and now you can sling your hook. I’m not having you back here – I want a divorce. I want nothing to do with your skanky arse ever again.’

‘You can’t do this,’ he finally howled when she paused for breath.

‘I already have, dickhead.’

They glared at each other. ‘It’s a lie, what Toffany said,’ he tried.

‘You are pitiful,’ Scarlett countered. ‘You think I’m going to fall for the oldest line in the book? You think I’m stupid?’

‘You can’t throw me out. What about the boy? I’m his dad.’

‘His dad? You can barely bring yourself to call him by his name because you didn’t get to choose it. You think I haven’t noticed how he’s always, “my boy” or “the kid” or “junior”? His name’s Jimmy, dickhead. And he won’t even notice you’ve gone. He misses Steph if she’s not around for a few days. Or Leanne. But he doesn’t ever miss you.’

‘Oh yeah, he misses Steph.’ His lip curled in a sneer, his voice mocking her. ‘Your fucking lezza girlfriend Steph.’

My mouth fell open. It did. Literally. I couldn’t have been more taken aback.

Scarlett roared with laughter. ‘You are so pathetic and so predictable. You’re all the bloody same. The only possible reason there could be for us not fancying a he-man like you is that we’re big old lezzas. That’s what you have to tell yourself, because you can’t face the truth. Well, here’s the truth, little big man. I don’t fancy you because you’re always drunk, or fucked up on drugs, or you stink of sweat and fags. It’s because you’re disgusting that I don’t fancy you, not because you’re a man. It’s because you’re not enough of a man, as it happens.’

His eyes widened in hurt. She’d got through his addled state and scored a bull’s eye on his self-esteem. ‘But I love you,’ he said, his pitch cracking like a teenage boy.

‘And I don’t love you.’ Scarlett spoke in a low, choked voice. ‘You killed it, Joshu. You killed it.’

‘You can’t do this, Scarlett.’ Now his eyes were wet. I almost felt sorry for him, then I remembered how much I disliked him.

‘I have to. Being with you, it’s one big recipe for misery. And I won’t put Jimmy through that. He’s better without a dad than stuck with a deadbeat like you.’

He gripped the top of the gate. ‘You bitch. You think you can lay down the law to me? You’ve got another think coming.’ It was striking how, under stress, the affectation of street speak had fallen away, leaving Joshu sounding exactly what he was – a well-educated middle-class lad.

‘You don’t scare me, Joshu. I’m not the same woman who fell in love with you.’

Now it was his turn for scorn. ‘Listen to you. You’ve got no idea. You need to remember who knows your secrets. How do you think your precious fans will like it when they find out you’ve been taking them for a ride this past year? You and your airhead cousin – you won’t last five minutes when I tell my story.’

From where I was standing, I could see Scarlett stiffen. For a moment, I thought he’d trumped her ace. But yet again, I’d misjudged her. She took a couple of steps closer to the gate and tipped her head back to look Joshu in the face. ‘You think? It’s me the public loves, not you. They’ll totally get that I had to deal with your scumbag behaviour. You’ll be the one who gets savaged for being a pig. And don’t forget, your hands are as dirty as mine. You’re the one who’s been touting Leanne all round town as your missus. Either you were in on the whole thing, in which case you’re as bad as me. Or you’re too fucking dim to know the woman you’re out on the razz with isn’t your wife. So don’t you dare threaten me, you worthless piece of shit.’

He tried to launch himself at her over the gate. But the sloping bonnet of the Transit was too much for him and he slid out of sight, swearing. There was a clatter and a crash and a yelp then more swearing. ‘I’m not done with you, bitch,’ he yelled from the other side of the gate. The van door slammed, the engine raced and the tyres screamed on the road. Within seconds, the usual early morning sounds of birdsong and the distant hum of traffic were the only soundtrack.

Scarlett kicked out savagely at the gate. ‘Bastard,’ she spat. She turned back to face us and gave a crooked smile. ‘First blood to the bimbo, I think.’

First blood, but not the last.