Tough Love (6 page)

A car pulled up outside. ‘She's here!' Jodie shouted.

They all gathered in the kitchen. Tracy poured herself a tumbler of vodka and added the tiniest
dash of Coke to the top. Jodie couldn't believe it: her mum would be on her backside before tea-time. She gave her a disapproving look.

‘If I can't celebrate my girl coming home, what can I celebrate?' Tracy said, and had a swig.

The door opened and Leanne came in. ‘Hello,' she said, in a tiny voice.

‘Welcome home!' they chorused. Jodie ran over to hug her sister, Tracy put ‘Welcome Home' by Peters and Lee on her stereo, Charly stood up, tugged at her skirt and slid over to give Leanne a peck on the cheek, and Scott hugged Kia. Leanne smiled at them and burst into tears.

*

Leanne was still in shock. She was sitting in the Kathmandu restaurant, Bradington's best curry house, as her family talked over her. Karina and Tracy were as drunk as lords and Tracy was speaking to the waiter as if he had just stepped off a plane from Nepal. Scott was fiddling with Charly's jacket, trying to take it off for her while she made a half-hearted attempt to talk to Kia. Then the door opened and Markie walked in. Leanne's heart leapt. She jumped to her feet and ran to her brother. ‘Markie!' She flung herself into his arms.

Markie hugged her. ‘Welcome back, darl.' He kissed the top of her head. ‘You don't want to be in
London, you want to be up here where the action is,' he said, with his tongue in his cheek.

‘That's why I came. It got a bit quiet in London. Not enough parties, you know how it is.'

‘You're over the hill, but we don't care, do we?' Tracy shouted from the other end of the table. Kent looked mortified and whispered something in her ear. ‘Oh, “sssh” yerself, yer great big girl,' she slurred.

‘Hello, Uncle Markie,' Kia said, as Markie walked over to kiss her. He chatted to her for a minute or two, then went to sit in the spare seat next to Leanne.

As everyone else resumed their conversation, Leanne turned to Markie and said, ‘How was … er … the last two years?'

‘Prison was shit.'

‘Markie, I wanted to visit more than I did …'

‘If I had a penny for everyone who's said that to me …'

He wasn't trying to lay a guilt trip on her, she knew that, he was genuinely perplexed as to why she hadn't been more often. Leanne didn't really have an answer. ‘I just don't like prisons,' she said lamely.

‘Well, that makes two of us. Difference is, I didn't have a choice about visiting.' Markie waved the waiter over and ordered a beer.

Leanne hung her head. ‘I'm really sorry.'

Mark half smiled. ‘Don't worry about it, darling. You've not been having the best time, have you?'

Leanne was about to explain the last couple of weeks to him when all hell broke loose at the other end of the table. Kent was holding Tracy in something very similar to a half-nelson and one of the waiters was saying, ‘You must all leave now!'

‘What did I say? I didn't say nowt!' Tracy was shouting.

Scott was yelling to another waiter, ‘Come on then, mate, start on a woman, think you're hard? Have a go at a real man.'

The waiter took Scott at his word and lifted him off the ground by the scruff of the neck. Markie stepped in. ‘Put him down.' The waiter dropped him like a hot stone. ‘We're leaving,' Markie said. Tracy was now out on the street trying to get past Kent to come back inside. ‘Whatever she or he said, I'm sorry.' He threw a bunch of tenners on to the table. ‘Have a nice night.'

Leanne had grabbed Kia's hand, expecting her to cry but she seemed mesmerised. She led her out of the restaurant. She couldn't believe that their first night back had ended in a brawl. ‘What did you say?' she asked her mother.

‘I didn't bloody say anything! He was giving me the eye!' Tracy shouted. Leanne doubted that that was the case. Tracy gave the restaurant a one-fingered salute, then stomped up the street. Everyone trudged after her.

‘Nothing changes, eh?' Markie said to Leanne.

Leanne smiled wryly at her brother. But something
had
changed. A few years ago Markie would have piled in with Scott but not now: he was far calmer, more measured. She wondered how long it would last.

Lisa was sitting in her first-class seat on the flight back to the UK from Thailand, enjoying a foot massage. She and Jay had been away for a week and now they were returning permanently to the UK. Lisa wanted to reclaim her crown as the country's number one celebrity. She had found it hard to maintain that status in Italy even though she had constantly fed pictures to the press. Anyway, it was all part of her plan. They were renting a mansion in Alderley Edge and Jay would return for his swan song at Manchester Rovers before bowing out to national applause.

The trip to Thailand had been billed in the press as a romantic gift from a besotted husband to his wife for their tenth wedding anniversary, which was great PR even though they had been there mainly on business. Lisa looked through the photos in her lap. She couldn't quite decide: a little girl to take shopping, dress up and be friends with
when she was older, or a little boy who'd love his mum unconditionally. Boys were less complicated than girls, Lisa thought.

‘What d'you think?' she asked, holding up a picture of a pretty little girl to the woman massaging her feet.

‘She's beautiful.' Lisa nodded. She was. She put the picture to one side and picked up that month's edition of
Vogue
, which had a picture of her and Jay on the cover. He was standing upright and she was draped around him. The only thing saving their modesty was a strategically placed Union Jack. She liked it. Mario had done an amazing job. It was part of the campaign for Jay's return to the UK. He was thirty now, and in football that was virtually geriatric. Lisa had her eye on their future career. She had invested in her own swimwear and underwear line, which was only being stocked in upmarket stores, and Jay had signed a five-year deal with a large men's clothing firm. He was also awaiting confirmation of a number of lucrative sponsorship deals for everything from aftershave to hats.

Lisa was fairly sure that her efforts to place Jay in the national consciousness as the man whom other men wanted to be and women wanted to be with had worked. Now the brand needed managing. And she was the woman to do it.

Just then Jay came out of the toilet. He flattened
his shirt with his palm and stared at the floor. Lisa's eyes bored into him as he came back to his seat. In the background one of the male cabin crew was staring at him. Lisa turned on him the glare she'd had fixed on her husband. The young man pretended that another passenger somewhere behind Lisa and Jay had caught his eye. When he bustled past, Lisa said, ‘Nice arse.'

The woman who was massaging her feet glanced up, obviously trying to figure out why there was such a frosty atmosphere between the golden couple.

‘Do you have to?' Jay said curtly, grabbing a copy of the in-flight magazine and pretending to leaf through it.

‘No. I don't
have
to. And neither do you, but you do.'

‘Leave it.' Jay jerked his head at the masseuse, indicating that he didn't want to have such a conversation in front of her.

‘Fine,' Lisa snapped. ‘Here.' She thrust the pictures of the Thai kids at him. ‘Choose one of those.'

Jay began to shuffle through them. Lisa gazed out of the window at the foothills of the Himalayas below. Five years ago this sort of argument would have upset her and she would have been running to the toilets to have a good cry, but not any more. She couldn't work out if she'd become used to her
relationship with Jay or tired of it. Either way, there was no chance she was going to demand a divorce as she had in the early days: she was too long in the tooth for all that drama. She knew how the fame game worked and played it to her advantage, rather than being its victim. She peered at the lush green landscape and wondered about the life going on 30,000 feet below her. How many people have heard of me down there, she thought, then settled back in her seat and fell asleep.

*

Hanley Farm Estate on the outskirts of Bradington wasn't the sort of estate that the Cromptons were used to. It was the closest thing that Bradington had to a stately home, and for the past eighteen months Mandy had been in her element organising the wedding of the decade. The small fact that her husband-to-be, Markie, had been banged up for the last two years hadn't bothered her too much: if he'd been around he'd only have got in the way. He had been restricted to telling her where to get the money from when she needed another injection of cash for two hundred metres of pink taffeta or a fairytale-castle cake.

Jodie had watched all of this with bemusement. As chief bridesmaid to nine others, she had to help Mandy with the arrangements. Mandy and
Markie had been together for years. They had first met when she was at school, but now, at the age of twenty-five, Mandy was champing at the bit to become Mrs Crompton. Jodie knew that Mandy and Markie had a fiery relationship: she was all mouth and he was all temper. A bit of Jodie wasn't even sure why they were getting married, other than for the day out, but she was as guilty as anyone of wanting to play along with it.

She had been taken aback when Mandy had asked her to be chief bridesmaid, but she suspected it was because Mandy's sister, Chanese, was such a troglodyte that she'd make the pictures look bad and Mandy wanted them in the
Bradington Gazette
. Chanese had been relegated to ordinary bridesmaid status, which wasn't much of an honour considering there were so many others.

It was 7 a.m. and Jodie and Mandy were at Hanley Farm putting the finishing touches to the wedding tables. Mandy was wandering around the place settings in a pink tracksuit with her hair in curlers, her face black with the San Tropez spray tan she had yet to wash off, checking that everything was in order.

‘Who put Tamsin next to Billy?' she shrieked. ‘She'll go off her fucking head!'

Jodie bit her bottom lip. That
was
a cock-up. Billy, Jodie's cousin, had slipped Tamsin, Mandy's cousin, some acid a few years ago and she'd
finished up sectioned with drug-induced psychosis. His defence had been ‘I thought it'd be a laugh.' Tamsin wasn't laughing when the police found her up a tree naked, stroking a grapefruit. Mandy picked up Tamsin's place card and swapped it with her other cousin Dale's from another table.

Jodie watched what she was doing and thought carefully about the consequences. ‘Won't it kick off with Dale and Billy if you put them together?'

Mandy rolled her eyes and slammed down Dale's place card. ‘Well, if it does, they'll have me to fucking answer to.'

Jodie decided to remain silent. She didn't fancy rocking the boat with Mandy on her big day. She was volatile at the best of times, but today Jodie knew she'd go off like a rocket if riled. Mandy stood back and huffed in satisfaction. ‘It looks mint, doesn't it?'

Jodie nodded. ‘Yeah, top.' And indeed it did, Jodie thought.
Over the
top. But she wasn't about to say that to Mandy. The best thing she could do was keep her head down and nod when spoken to. Which would be a bit hard for Jodie, who was used to telling everyone exactly what she thought. Tomorrow she could tell Mandy what a colossal pain in the arse she'd been, but today Jodie was keeping it buttoned. And when the speeches and pretend crying were out of the way she could get as pissed as a newt and finally relax.

Mandy folded her arms and smiled. She pointed to her head. ‘Hair extensions – a grand. Chocolate fountain – four hundred quid. Ceramic swans – six hundred quid. Marrying Markie Crompton – priceless.'

Jodie forced a smile. She wasn't sure she'd make it through the day without vomiting. Not because of the tack, she wasn't afraid of a bit of tack – she worked at the Beacon, for God's sake – but at Mandy thinking she and Markie were so perfect. Give me a break, Jodie thought. She knew her brother was the furthest thing from husband material in the north of England. But Jodie wasn't the one to spill the beans: she was sticking to her role of nodding dog for the day. If Mandy was ever to find out about Markie, it wasn't going to be from her.

Markie peeled his head off the pillow and looked at his alarm clock: 11.15. ‘Shit!' he said, jumping out of bed. ‘Swing?' he shouted. There was no reply.
Where the bloody hell is that numbskull?
Markie was meant to be at Hanley Farm at twelve but here he was, stinking like a brewery.

Last night he and a few of the lads had gone out in Manchester for his big send-off. They had ended up back at Pandora's and Mac ‘The Knife' Derbyshire, Markie's sometime business partner, had ensured that four girls had been waiting for Markie when he arrived. As a result he was shattered. He looked at his reflection and wondered if maybe he was getting too old for all this. He was thirty-two now; probably for the best that he was getting married. Not that he was about to throw in the towel, but four birds in one go was a bit much, even by his standards.

Markie hopped into the shower and washed
quickly. He knew he'd have to shave his stubble. Mandy wanted him to look like Brad Pitt today and he'd have to pull something out of the bag sharpish if he was going to look that good.

He slammed the shower on cold, wincing as the icy water hit his skin. Two minutes, he told himself. That'd sort him out. He stood and took the pain, hoping it would be worth it.

Markie towelled himself dry, then ran some Brylcreem through his short dark brown hair, tore into the bedroom and threw on his morning suit. He heard the door open and close downstairs.

‘You up, you lazy bastard?' Swing shouted from the hallway.

He grabbed his shoes and went down to find Gaz, his dad Paul, his brother Scott, and Mouse, Fuzzy, Tony and Swing, four of the doormen who worked for him, in their morning suits eating bacon sandwiches.