Tough Love (15 page)

Jay mouthed ‘
What
?' at her.

‘That nanny, Jeanine. Whatever credential checks you did weren't good enough. She's gone to the
News of the Screws
. “My Life with the Leightons” – some bullshit eight-pager.'

Lisa's jaw nearly hit the floor. ‘Oh my God.' There was no way she'd thought Jeanine would go to the papers. She'd seemed like such a nice woman, such a
private
woman.

‘What?' Jay demanded.

‘The nanny, Jeanine. She's gone to the papers.'

‘Shit! Shit! Shit!'

Lisa ignored him. ‘Tell me everything,' she said to Steve.

‘Right, page one in a nutshell, you don't know one end of a baby from the other and Jay's never there. You have two nannies – which, of course, is played out as pure decadence …'

‘We've got two
part-time
nannies because we couldn't get a full-timer … fuck! What else?'

‘You and Jay barely speak. He's got a roving eye, looked at her a few times –'

‘Looked at her a few times? Even I know he didn't do her! She's old enough to be his fucking mother!'

‘She said I was looking at her? Fuck me, don't flatter yourself, you old dog,' Jay said.

‘What else?' Lisa needed to know it all. She wanted to get the embarrassment out of the way, then deal with the fall-out.

‘You have a loveless marriage and everything you do is for show.'

‘That is such bullshit!' Lisa said, without realising the irony of what she had said.

‘And you tolerate Jay's indiscretions because you know that without him you're nothing. Sorry about all this, Lise, bearer of shit news and all that.'

Lisa was wounded. ‘She only worked for us for two minutes. She didn't even know if I took milk in my tea! How the hell could she pretend to know all this?'

‘She's also left a tidy little cliff-hanger …'

Lisa felt every muscle in her body tighten. ‘Go on.'

‘She's said she knows something you did this week that'll blow the lid on your marriage. I've done some digging at the paper, but no one's giving an inch. What've you done?'

‘I ain't done nothing!' Lisa squawked. She racked her brains. What
had
she done? She never did anything. It was Jay who dropped them in it all the time, not her.

‘Well, you've nothing to worry about, then, have
you? It'll just be some cobbled-together rubbish, no doubt.'

‘Oh, shit!' Lisa moaned. ‘I met fucking Leanne Crompton in a park in shit-tip Bradington.'

‘Well, why don't you get a gun and shoot yourself?' Steve asked helpfully.

‘Well, I don't know if that's what she means.'

‘Right, sweetheart, let's run through this. Jay has a kid with a glamour model. The only people who know this to be a hundred-per-cent fact, as far as we're aware, are you, Jay, me and Ms Crompton. You've denied every rumour that's ever suggested they went near each other because you want everyone to believe your marriage is monogamous and that you and Jay are as besotted with one another as you were ten years ago. So, what do you do? You meet fucking Leanne Crompton. 'Scuse me if I don't give you a Mexican wave, darling, but I'm not that pleased to hear it. D'you wanna make my job any harder?'

‘I just wanted to talk to her and ask what she was doing for money.'

‘And I just want to talk to Nelson Mandela and ask him what makes him tick but it ain't going to happen.' Steve sighed heavily. ‘Right. This is what you do. Before anything appears in any paper I'm going to set up a photocall for you and Jay tomorrow. I want you looking like the fucking Waltons. Piggybacks for that new kid of yours, the works. Then I'll arrange an exclusive with a rival newspaper
next week, and you're going to bare your soul.'

‘But I don't do tabloid interviews,' Lisa bleated.

‘You do now,' Steve said harshly. ‘I'll make some calls and be back in ten.'

‘What we going to do?' Jay whinged. ‘We've got to show it's bullshit.'

‘Oh, shut up, Jay, for God's sake. You make me sick,' Lisa said, and marched out of the room.

*

Jodie was standing in Brian Spencer's dusty studio. She had finally plucked up courage to call the ‘talent manager' who had given her his card in the Beacon a few weeks ago. He had asked her to come along at midday on Monday in something skimpy. He had met her at the door. Then, flattening down his comb-over and falling over himself, he ushered her upstairs. As Jodie looked around, she wondered if it would have been a good idea to ask Leanne what she could expect from a first photo shoot. But she didn't want her sister to know what she was up to. She wanted to succeed by herself without Leanne's help. It had never worked in the past, though. Now she was wishing she'd said something to her sister. If only so that someone knew where she was.

‘Right, love. Go over there and take your top off,' Brian said, waving at a pile of furniture covered with a dust sheet.

‘What? Just take it off?' Alarm bells rang. Jodie knew that when Leanne had done her first shoot she had been made to feel comfortable first, not ordered to whip off her top.

‘That's right,' Brian said, producing a camera that looked like it had only ever been used to take holiday snaps.

‘Can I see your portfolio before we start?' Jodie asked. She knew that if he was genuine he'd have photos of the girls he represented.

‘My whatio?' Brian said blankly.

‘Brian?' Jodie said, cocking her head to one side.

‘Yes, love?' he said distractedly.

‘Are you an old perv who gets young girls up here so you can see their tits?'

Brian's face went a funny colour. ‘You cheeky little whore!' he shouted.

Jodie grabbed her bag and shot past him. ‘Dirty fucker!' she yelled over her shoulder and barged through the fire door, running down the steps on to the street. There was no way she'd let him catch her. At the main road she saw someone coming out of a sandwich shop, dressed in a suit. It was Leanne.

‘Bloody hell, look at you!' Jodie gasped, breathless.

‘Look at me? Look at you more like! You on the run from the coppers?' Leanne was laughing.

‘Worse. Fancy a drink?' Jodie asked. She could murder a G and T.

*

Leanne and Jodie were in a Bradington bar. Leanne had already received at least twenty nods of recognition, and a group of women behind Jodie were whispering about her. Jodie turned and gave them one of her best evil glares. They shut up.

‘Doesn't it bug you? People talking about you everywhere you go? I'd go mad,' Jodie said, making sure the women could hear her.

‘You get used to it.'

Jodie didn't think she could. She'd have a right go at anyone who sat in a bar whispering about her.

‘So who were you legging it from?' Leanne asked.

Jodie began to tell her about Brian Spencer. When she'd finished, Leanne said, ‘Why didn't you tell me? I could have helped you.'

Jodie shook her head. ‘Remember last time? That witch manager of yours bawled me out of her office.'

‘But you're so much more mature now.'

‘You mean I don't look as much of a dog?'

‘Bloody hell, Jode, you're your own worst enemy. First, you never pay someone for photos. If you're good, they'll take them for free. Second, managers don't take their own pictures, they have photographers for that, so you're right in assuming that Brian is a perv. Best thing to do is to have a
couple of pictures done and I'll send them to an agency for you.'

‘Would you?' Jodie asked eagerly. She really had changed in the last couple of years. She knew she was far more like the girls she saw in the lads' mags and the tabloids than she had been when she'd first set foot inside Figurz Management.

‘Course I will. No problem.'

Leanne didn't see Jodie's face drop as she looked at the news report on the big-screen TV positioned behind her. The Witches of Eastwick were cackling again. ‘Leanne,' Jodie said, nudging her and nodding at the screen. Leanne turned and stared. Jay and Lisa Leighton were in a public playground, pushing their poor child on a roundabout.

‘Jesus,' Leanne said.

‘The kid can't even hold its head up, it's that small, and they're doing that to it?' Jodie said, disgusted, waiting for her sister's reaction.

‘Poor little thing,' Leanne said quietly.

‘Leanne …' Jodie began. She had never had the courage to ask her sister if the rumours about her and Jay were true.

‘I don't want to discuss it, Jodie.'

Jodie knew she meant it. She sipped her drink and tried not to look at the TV screen on which the banner headline read, ‘Leightons Quash More Rumours About Their Private Life.'

‘Bend forward and pull your top down,' Karina said. Jodie wobbled unsteadily on her high heels. ‘Bloody hell, Jode! What's that?' Karina couldn't believe the face her sister was pulling. She looked like she'd been asked to do an impression of a sucker-fish and she was pushing her boobs together in a very unflattering pose.

‘What's what?' Jodie asked, sounding put out.

‘That! The whole thing! Big fish lips and the thing with your tits. No one asked you to push 'em together till your nipples touched.'

‘Oh, and you know all about modelling, I suppose?'

‘I know what a complete knob looks like.' Karina scowled at her sister, then took the silver ornament that hung round her neck, put it to her nose and sniffed. Gaz had bought her a coke pendant. It looked like a spherical locket but when it was tipped up and down it dispensed a snifter of
cocaine, and allowed Karina to drip-feed herself her favourite drug without the nasty business of racking up lines and snorting off toilet lids.

‘Is that what I think it is?' Jodie asked.

‘It's my snowstorm,' Karina said proudly.

‘Shit-storm, more like.'

‘That doesn't make sense, does it?'

‘Course it does,' Jodie protested. ‘As in you'll cause a right shit-storm if you keep using so much coke.'

‘Yeah, but I said, “It's my snowstorm,” and you said, “Shit-storm, more like,'' and that doesn't mean anything. Now if you'd said, “Snowstorm? There's gonna be a shit-storm if you keep on using it,” that would've made sense.'

‘Jesus Christ, Karina, will you wind your neck in and take some fucking pictures?' Jodie said, throwing her hair over her shoulder.

Karina positioned herself professionally behind the disposable camera Jodie had bought that morning. ‘Why's our Leanne not here, anyway? She's the expert.'

‘Because she's working for our Markie and I didn't want to wait. I'll get them developed and then show her. That's if we ever get them bloody well done.'

‘All right.' Karina decided to take matters into her own hands and give her sister some advice. ‘You need to raise your eyebrow slightly and look
straight at the camera, like it's just walked into the Beacon and is about to tip all night.'

Jodie gave the camera a smouldering, sultry look and Karina took the picture. ‘Bingo,' she said, delighted. ‘A couple more, and I think you're on to a winner.'

Karina had managed to get twenty-four shots, three or four crackers that Leanne could definitely send off to management companies. She was sitting on her settee smoking a cigarette as Jodie changed back into her jeans and T-shirt.

‘I saw Leanne earlier, actually. Had a drink with her.'

‘Really?' Karina said. She'd hardly seen Leanne since her return to Bradington.

‘Yeah, she's all right, I think, despite everything.'

‘Despite what?' Karina asked, with a sneer. ‘Despite having had the life of Riley for the last seven years? Despite everyone thinking she's ace?'

‘Fucking hell, what's she ever done to you? She always got us in free to places, took us abroad, looked after us when we went down to London, and all you do is bitch about her.'

‘Oh, and you never have? You called her all the cunts under the sun when you came back from London that time and didn't get that modelling job.'

‘That was ages ago. Bloody hell, Kar, life's hard enough as it is without us all back-biting. She's all
right, Leanne. I've been jealous of her in the past but so what? I'm older now. Let bygones be bygones.'

‘Very noble,' Karina said, stubbing out her cigarette. ‘So, go on, “despite everything”.'

‘Well, we were sitting there and this thing came on the news with those two divs Lisa and Jay Leighton prancing around with that kid they've robbed from China. And I just wanted to crawl under the table.'

Karina threw back her head and sighed. ‘Has Leanne ever told you that Jay Leighton's Kia's dad?'

‘No, but –'

‘No but nothing,' Karina yelled. ‘I'm sick to the back teeth of this is-she-isn't-she bullshit. If I wasn't with Gaz I'd still say he was Izzy's dad. I wouldn't be going round all tight-lipped about it, not to family. What's the point?'

‘Well, maybe,' Jodie suggested, ‘she thinks someone'll go to the papers.'

‘One of us?'

‘God, I know,' Jodie said sarcastically. ‘Imagine one of us selling a story on Leanne to the papers to earn a coin. That'd never happen.'

Karina huffed and flopped back in the chair. She'd sold a few stories, and they'd always been fairly mild. She hadn't caused Leanne much heat, but she'd earned a couple of grand without her sister knowing, and that, Karina thought, was fair enough. ‘Well, so what if Jay is Kia's dad. I don't
get what all the fuss is about,' Karina fibbed. Of course she knew what all the fuss was about.

‘The most famous married man in the country and you don't know what the problem is?'

‘Well, all right. But if he is, and Leanne says he is, it'll blow over soon enough,' Karina said, taking a bottle of midnight blue varnish and applying it to her chipped nails.