TILLY BAGSHAWE
Friends and Rivals

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012

Copyright © Tilly Bagshawe 2012

Tilly Bagshawe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

FIRST EDITION

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Source ISBN: 9780007326532

Ebook Edition © September 2012 ISBN: 9780007341894

Version: 2016-08-31

For my children: Sefi, Zac, Theo and Summer.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Part Two

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Part Three

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Tilly Bagshawe

Keep Reading page for THE INHERITANCE

About the Publisher

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Catriona Charles sucked in her stomach as hard as she could and yanked on the zip of her burgundy velvet dress. It had fitted her perfectly when she’d bought it in Oxford four weeks ago, but now voluptuous folds of flesh seemed to be creeping out everywhere, like excess pastry flopping over the top of a pie dish. Tomorrow, without fail, she would go on a diet. No more Hobnobs. Or cheese. And she would cut out booze for a month. Well, perhaps not a whole month. Two weeks would probably be enough to make a difference.

‘Can I help? Two hands are better than one.’

Ivan Charles, Catriona’s husband of fifteen years, walked up behind her. Pulling the two sides of fabric together, he pulled the zip to the top and fastened the hook and eye.

‘There.’ He smiled triumphantly. ‘You look gorgeous.’

He was right. With her tangle of honey-blonde hair, full, sensual lips and intelligent green eyes, not to mention a pair of breasts that many girls half her age would have given their eye teeth for, at thirty-eight Catriona Charles was still an extremely attractive woman. Admittedly two kids, a fondness for gin and tonic and cheese on toast and a loathing of physical exercise in all its forms had allowed her figure to blossom a little too much in recent years. It would be fair to say Catriona looked better in an evening dress than a bikini. But men had always found her Nigella-esque, just-rolled-out-of-bed look a turn-on, and couldn’t understand Catriona’s own insecurity about her looks.

‘Really?’ she sighed. ‘You’re sure I don’t look like a lump of cookie dough squeezed into a wine bottle?’

Ivan laughed, kissing her on the back of her neck. ‘Mmmm. Cookie dough and cabernet. Two of my favourite things. And here are two more.’ He squeezed her breasts. ‘Happy Birthday to me, eh?’

Tonight was Ivan Charles’s fortieth birthday party, an event that had consumed every waking hour of his wife’s time for the past three months. As co-founder and owner of Jester, a successful music management company, Ivan Charles was one of the most well-connected men in the record business. Ivan’s ‘friends’ were so numerous they could have banded together and formed their own country. Even at Oxford, where he and Catriona had first met, and where Ivan had also met his Jester business partner, Jack Messenger, Ivan was infamous as a bon vivant and all-round party animal. With his model good looks (dark hair, blue eyes, toned rower’s physique) and immense personal charm, he was also well known as a ladies’ man. Hundreds of hearts were broken the day that Ivan Charles walked down the aisle with Catriona Farley. Though the marriage had been stormy at times, they had had two gorgeous kids together and were still going strong the better part of two decades later. Ivan Charles congratulated himself on that. Then again, Ivan Charles congratulated himself on a lot of things for which he was not, in truth, responsible. For all his wit and charisma, beneath the dazzle, Ivan Charles was a deeply arrogant man.

He’s so bloody handsome still, thought Catriona, watching her husband adjust his bow tie and flick a piece of lint from the lapel of his dinner jacket. How lucky I am to be married to him.

Ivan looked at his vintage Omega watch, a gift from a grateful client. ‘Six o’clock. Shall we have a sneaky glass of champagne before the locusts descend?’

‘Are you joking?’ wheezed Catriona. She could barely breathe in the dress. ‘I still have all the place cards to do, the caterer’s having a cow because only half the mixers got delivered and the playroom looks like a bloody bomb’s hit it.’

‘Who’s going to be going in the playroom?’ said Ivan reasonably. ‘Come on, Cat. One drink.’

‘Muuuuuuuum!’ A wild, animal shriek echoed along the hallway. Catriona recognized it as her twelve-year-old daughter, Rosie. ‘Hector put food colouring in the shampoo bottle. My hair’s gone fucking BLUE! It won’t come out!’

‘Don’t fucking swear,’ Ivan bellowed back, earning himself a reproving look from Catriona. ‘What? She needs to be told. Both the children swear like bloody truck drivers.’

‘I wonder why!’

‘Muuuum! I need you! Now!’

Catriona rolled her eyes to heaven. It was going to be a very long night.

Jack Messenger turned his Bentley Continental off the A40 onto the single-track road marked ‘Widford’. He’d first come to this part of the world in his teens, when he’d won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, and it had always occupied a special place in his heart. To Jack, an American, the Cotswolds were like something out of a theme park or a Disney cartoon. The ancient churches and cottages, the crumbling dry-stone walls, the welcoming pubs and lush meadows dissected by rivers whose names conjured up a romantic, lost England: Leach, Churn, Dun, Windrush, Evenlode; all of them delighted him and inspired a sense of wonder that he’d never lost.

Since founding Jester with Ivan Charles, his best friend from those halcyon undergraduate days, Jack Messenger had lived most of his adult life in Los Angeles. Jack ran Jester’s LA office, managing primarily pop acts, while Ivan oversaw the London operation. Ivan’s clients were mostly classical artists, although in the last three years he’d made a concerted effort to diversify his list. Back in the early days, when they were still building the business, Jack made regular trips back to Blighty to see his old friend. With his wife, Sonya, he’d enjoyed countless boozy suppers at the Charleses’ London house – Ivan and Catriona had lived in Battersea at the time. Jack remembered those evenings fondly: Catriona the ever-welcoming hostess, Ivan rattling off anecdote after anecdote until Sonya had literally collapsed with laughter at the table.

They felt a long way away now.

Sonya Messenger, Jack’s adored wife, had died three years ago of breast cancer. For Jack, the laughter had died with her. After three months spent sobbing in bed, he had finally got up one morning and gone into work. The joke at Jester was that he had been at his desk ever since. The president of the United States had more downtime than Jack Messenger, whose workaholic habits were famed throughout the business; in stark contrast to those of his business partner Ivan Charles.

The conventional wisdom was that Jack and Ivan had grown apart, but in fact the two men had always been very different, the most unlikely of friends. Even as a young man, Jack Messenger had come across as earnest and serious. His nickname at Balliol had been ‘Sam Eagle’ after the pompous, all-American character from The Muppet Show. Despite his good looks (Jack was blond and tall with long legs and a straight, almost military bearing), he had never enjoyed Ivan’s success with girls, most of whom thought him arrogant and aloof. In fact, Jack was neither of these things. He was shy; something that only a few close friends, like Catriona and Ivan, fully recognized. And Sonya, of course. Jack’s wife had done wonders for his confidence, coaxing out his wry sense of humour, encouraging him to be more open in public, more relaxed. Marriage suited Jack Messenger. When Sonya was alive he had flourished like a sapling in the sunshine. But her death had blighted everything. Annihilated by grief, Jack retreated further into his shell than ever. Even old friends struggled to reach him, though Catriona kept trying, inviting him on family holidays (Jack was godfather to her and Ivan’s son, Hector) and to stay with them at Christmas.

Meanwhile, after a few months of genuine sympathy, Ivan started to grow tired of his partner’s mood swings. ‘I understand him being sad,’ he complained to Catriona. ‘I know how much he loved Sonya. But he’s so bloody self-righteous at work, it’s driving me crazy. He’s always breathing down my neck about the accounts or new business or how I need to put more “face time” in at the office. It’s my bloody office! And what the fuck is “face time” anyway? I ask you. Just because he uses work as a crutch doesn’t give him the right to preach to the rest of us.’

In fact this was a heavily edited version of Jack’s professional battles with Ivan. As Jester became more and more successful, so Ivan grew more arrogant, lazy and entitled. He often told friends that the London office ‘ran itself’. The truth was that Jester’s underpaid junior staff ended up carrying ninety per cent of the workload while Ivan swanned around the South of France ‘networking’. And that wasn’t the worst of it. Now that he was rich, Ivan had sold the villa in Battersea and bought The Rookery, an idyllic Elizabethan manor house in the Windrush Valley, complete with stables, dovecotes, peacocks and a four-hundred-year-old maze. It was Catriona’s dream house, and she and the children lived there full time while Ivan commuted to a smart bachelor flat in Belgravia, where he proceeded to bed a string of Jester’s young, female interns, along with a fair number of the prettier clients. Jack was livid.

‘It’s un-fucking-professional.’

‘Nonsense,’ quipped Ivan. ‘I’m committed to closer client liaison, that’s all. And it’s important to stay on top of one’s staff.’

‘It’s not funny,’ snapped Jack. ‘What about poor Catriona? She’d be heartbroken if she knew.’

Ivan’s voice hardened. ‘Yes, well, she doesn’t know. And as long as you keep your mouth shut, there’s no reason she ever should. Look,’ he added, ‘I love Catriona, OK? But it’s complicated. She knew I wasn’t a saint when she married me. There are a lot of temptations in our line of work.’

‘Horseshit,’ said Jack succinctly. ‘I’m not banging every secretary or starlet that walks through the door in LA.’

‘Well maybe you should be,’ said Ivan, irritated. ‘A good fuck might lighten you up a bit, you miserable sod. Just because you’re gunning for a sainthood, doesn’t mean the rest of us have to. If I want marriage guidance, I’ll ask for it.’

That conversation had been over a year ago now. Since then, Ivan’s midlife crisis, if that’s what it was, seemed to have cooled. He and Jack had repaired their working relationship, but the easy friendship of old was gone for good. Catriona had invited Jack to numerous parties and events but he’d managed to wriggle out of almost all of them, using work and the long LA–London flight as an excuse. But Ivan Charles’s fortieth birthday party would be the biggest music industry bash in England for almost a decade. There was no way Jack could skip it without raising serious eyebrows as to the state of the union at Jester. That was the last thing Jack wanted.

As soon as the Bentley dipped down into the valley, Jack heard the distant thump, thump of music drifting on the warm summer air. It was only eight o’clock, and still light, but it sounded as if the party was already in full swing. The Rookery was approached via a long, winding drive, which one entered through old, lichened stone gates. Jack had been to the house before, of course, but had forgotten how ravishing it truly was, with its formal gardens, leaded windows and wisteria-covered façade. Catriona was a natural-born homemaker, and had made it look even more magical tonight, with candles in glass pots hung from the trees, and wooden tables outside covered in a mismatched patchwork of cloths, each one sporting a jug stuffed to the brim with wild flowers.

The paddock was already heaving with cars. Jack parked his Bentley next to a filthy Land Rover and headed into the house. He hadn’t got past the hallway when a very pretty, very drunk Asian girl ran up to him giggling and literally threw herself into his arms.

‘I’m a damsel in distress!’ she slurred. ‘The zip on my dress is broken. Can you help me fix it, pleashe? Ivan says he won’t.’

Something about her dress was certainly broken. It was barely bigger than a handkerchief anyway, a wisp of red silk, but what little of it there was kept slipping off the girl’s tiny frame and revealing more than Jack wanted to see.

‘Joyce!’ Ivan’s voice boomed out from the drawing-room doorway. Jack looked up to see his partner grinning like the Cheshire Cat. ‘Put Mr Messenger down, darling. You’re scaring him.’

The Asian girl released Jack and scurried over to Ivan, who slipped an arm around her tiny waist. Jack looked at her face more closely. Good God. It was Joyce Wu, the virtuoso violinist, one of Jester’s most successful classical artists. Known for her awesome discipline and focus, Joyce Wu was still only nineteen. Her publicity pictures showed a serious young woman, usually dressed in a polo neck and long skirt, clutching a Stradivarius. It was hard to connect that girl to this one, drunkenly trying to cover at least one of her breasts while Ivan idly ran his fingers through her silken black hair.

‘Good to see you, Jack. Can I get you a drink?’ Ivan stopped a passing waiter with a tray of cocktails.

‘I’ll have a Diet Coke, please.’

‘No you won’t. It’s a party,’ said Ivan, thrusting something colourful and umbrella-ed into Jack’s hand. Before he had a chance to protest, Jack was accosted by both the Charles children, leaping up at him and yapping like a pair of puppies. Rosie, at twelve, looked distinctly pre-teen in her ‘sophisticated’ Monsoon evening dress and blue-streaked hair. But Hector, her younger brother and Jack’s godson, was still very much a child at eleven. Physically, he was a carbon copy of his father, dark-haired and handsome with a deliciously naughty twinkle in his eye. But in temperament, Jack had always thought of him as more like Catriona. Laid-back, gentle, sweet.

‘Did you bring me a present?’ he asked Jack, guilelessly.

Jack grinned. ‘I might have. I guess it depends. How well behaved have you been lately? Do you deserve a present?’

‘He’s been bloody awful,’ said Ivan, letting go of Joyce Wu and grabbing his son affectionately by the arm. ‘Kicked out of St Wilfred’s. Catriona’s at her wits’ end.’

‘I got my green belt in karate, though,’ said Hector cheerfully. ‘Anyway, I know you’ve got me a present, because you always do. Is it an iPad 2?’

‘If it is, I’m confiscating it,’ said Ivan, shoving both his children towards the playroom where various kids were watching movies and gorging themselves on salt-and-vinegar crisps. ‘Now sod off, would you? Uncle Jack has people to see.’

Ivan led Jack through the heaving drawing room, stopping every few seconds to introduce him to new clients and remind him of the names of the old ones. The room itself was beautiful in an old English sort of a way. The walls were panelled in original dark oak, worn to a rich gleam over centuries of use, and the fireplace was a vast, baronial effort in rough-hewn Cotswold stone, tall enough for a woman to stand up in without stooping. In the wintertime, huge pine logs crackled and spat in the hearth day and night. Tonight, however, the flags were swept clean and an absolutely enormous display of white flowers exploded in its centre: roses and lilies and freesias, all of them so powerfully scented that a passing bee would have fainted if it had come within a yard of them. Above the fireplace, where one might have expected to see a giant mirror or an oil painting of some illustrious ancestor, one of Catriona’s photographs hung in pride of place. A brilliant amateur snapper, her specialty was portraits, but this piece was a landscape shot of the Windrush Valley in winter. To Jack it conjured up nothing so much as the forest of Narnia; a magical, snowy wonderland too strange and beautiful to be of this earth. He’d offered to buy it countless times, but neither Ivan nor Catriona would contemplate letting it go.

‘Joyce Wu seemed a little unhinged earlier,’ Jack whispered in Ivan’s ear as they made their way towards the bar. ‘Is everything OK there?’

‘Joyce is fine,’ said Ivan breezily. ‘Better than fine actually. Polygram just made her a whopping two-album offer.’

‘That’s not what I meant. I meant is she coping OK with the fame, the pressure? She’s still very young.’

Ivan put a hand on Jack’s arm. ‘Jack. She’s fine. As you say, she’s young. She’s letting her hair down at a party, that’s all. It’s called having fun. You should try it some time.’

They emerged onto a stone terrace. It was twilight now, and the view of The Rookery’s gardens with the meadows and river beyond was unutterably lovely. Jack sipped his cocktail and soaked up the beauty of it all. Ivan’s right. It’s a party. I should try and relax.

‘Speaking of unhinged clients,’ said Ivan, ‘ how’s Kendall?’

Jack felt the tension surge back into his body. Kendall Bryce, a twenty-three-year-old pop sensation with Kim Kardashian’s body and Aretha Franklin’s voice, was probably Jester’s most famous client. She was also Jack Messenger’s personal protégée or, as he preferred to think of it, the cross he had to bear.

‘Kendall is Kendall. She’s difficult.’

‘Is she using?’ Ivan asked bluntly. Kendall Bryce’s cocaine problems were as well documented as her love life. She was a good kid deep down and Jack was very fond of her. But she was insecure as all hell.

‘No. I’ve got her doing tests weekly. She knows if she slips up again she’s off our books for good. I meant to talk to you about that, actually. I need you to make sure she keeps up with the drug tests in London. Every Friday, without fail. And she’s not supposed to drink either.’

‘Sure,’ said Ivan. But he said it with a nonchalance that made Jack profoundly uneasy. Kendall was due to perform six concerts at UK venues over the next three weeks, a thought that filled Jack with dread and relief in equal measure. Relief because it meant he got a three-week break from playing bad cop. Policing Kendall Bryce’s lifestyle was becoming a full-time job. But dread because he had no control over what she might do once let off the leash.

‘Jack!’ Catriona Charles came running across the lawn, her face flushed with happiness, tendrils of dirty-blonde hair escaping from pins in all directions. Jack had a sudden flashback to Oxford, and Catriona tearing barefoot around the quad at Magdalen on the night of the ball. Give or take a few laughter lines around the eyes and the odd pound of extra weight, she hadn’t changed. ‘You made it!’

‘Of course I made it. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world,’ lied Jack.

‘We’ve been catching up,’ said Ivan, swapping his empty glass for a full one. ‘Discussing our most badly behaved clients.’

‘Well, I hope you aren’t going to be boring and talk business all night,’ Catriona said firmly, taking Jack’s hand. ‘Come on. Loads of the old gang are here.’

By ‘the old gang’ she meant Oxford friends. Old turned out to be the operative word. For the next hour Jack found himself shaking hands and reminiscing with a series of paunchy, balding men, none of whom he’d have recognized had Catriona not told him their names. It was depressing.

‘We’ve aged,’ he said to Catriona, once he finally managed to get her alone. ‘Jamie Grayson looks as old as the fucking hills.’

‘Poor Jamie,’ Catriona frowned. ‘He’s had a rough year, what with the divorce and everything. Anyway, you haven’t aged. You and Ivan both look disgustingly young and handsome.’

Jack laughed. ‘Ivan maybe. Not me. How is he, anyway? How are the two of you?’

‘We’re fine.’ Catriona smiled, hoping it didn’t look as forced as it felt. Jack was too tactful to spell it out, but she knew what ‘how are the two of you?’ meant. About five years ago, she’d discovered Ivan had been having an affair with one of the girls at Jester. He’d broken it off, and seemed genuinely remorseful at the time. But then a year later, she’d caught him at it again. Since then, things had been a lot better. When Ivan was in London he called every night to say goodnight to her, and to reassure her he was alone. He’d started going to therapy, and talking to Catriona more openly about his insecurities. Turning forty, in particular, bothered him, but rather than boosting his ego with another fling, he’d started spending more time with the children, especially Hector who worshipped his father like a god.

‘I think Ivan’s finally growing up,’ Catriona told Jack. For some reason she felt the need to expand on ‘we’re fine’. ‘I don’t mean that nastily. It’s just that, you know, he’s struggled with his age and the changes in our lives. But he seems more peaceful now. More content.’

‘Who’s more content?’

A pretty American woman in a shapeless Ali Hewson black dress sidled up to them. Jack’s heart sank. ‘Hello, Stella.’

Stella Bayley was the wife of Brett Bayley, lead guitarist of supergroup The Blitz. Brett and his bandmates were clients of Jack’s in Los Angeles, but were currently halfway through a European tour, so Brett and Stella were temporarily based in London. Brett was thick as a plank with an ego the size of Kansas and, if the groupies were to be believed, a dick to match. His wife, oblivious to Brett’s affairs but accepting of his long absences, had devoted her free time to becoming a tireless (and tiresome) eco-campaigner. Her blog, Stella’s World, in which she doled out lifestyle and parenting advice to the masses, was an inexplicable hit online. Inexplicable because anyone who had actually met Stella Bayley knew that her entire life was run by a fleet of exhausted staff, and that she herself had about as much maternal nous as a banana skin.

‘How are you liking England?’ Jack asked politely. ‘Are you settled in yet?’

‘Settled in?’ Stella gave her trademark tinkling laugh. ‘If you call living out of packing cases settled in, then yeah. You know the other day, Miley comes up to me and she’s like “Mommy, Mommy, can we have a picnic?” And of course it was raining outside, so I got some sheets and draped them over two of these damn cases, like a little tent, you know? And we had an indoor picnic! How cute is that? A little quinoa, some rice cakes and raisins made to look like smiley faces. I put it on the blog and my readers were like, Oh my God that is so cute. And I’m like, I know. I love England! I love the rain! You should hear Miley’s accent. I swear she sounds like Princess Diana, doesn’t she, Catriona?’

‘Erm …’ said Catriona. She had only met Miley Bayley once. As she remembered, the three-year-old barely spoke, but when she did she sounded like Mickey Mouse on helium.

Stella prattled on. ‘I’m always telling my readers: having fun with your kids doesn’t have to mean spending a lot of money. Brett and I are all about the simple things.’ She tossed her expensively highlighted mane of blonde hair and flashed a new set of porcelain veneers in Jack’s general direction. ‘But anyway, enough about me. I came over to talk to Catriona about this fabulous new personal trainer I’ve found – Morten. He’s based in Primrose Hill, but he has lots of clients in the country. Morten’ll help you shed those excess pounds faster than you can say colonic irrigation. I’ll give you his number.’

Eventually Stella fluttered off to share her words of wisdom with Ned Williams, a well-known tenor who lived locally and was another of Jester’s clients. The look of wild-eyed panic as Stella approached was enough to make even Jack Messenger chuckle.

‘Maybe I should get a trainer,’ sighed Catriona, looking down at her escaping bosom and yanking up the bodice of her dress.

‘And shrink the best bust in England? Don’t you dare,’ said Jack, kissing her on the cheek. He could have strangled Stella Bayley. ‘Don’t ever change, Cat. Especially not on the advice of that ridiculous woman.’

‘She means well.’

‘She’s horrendous. You’re wonderful.’

He says the nicest things, thought Catriona, watching him weave his way back into the house. She so hoped he and Ivan managed to patch things up.

Inside, Jack suddenly realized he was famished. Ignoring the dainty silver trays offering caviar blinis and mini vol-au-vents, he headed straight for the kitchen and helped himself to a large peanut-butter sandwich and two mugs of tea, ignoring the death stares from Catriona’s catering staff. The Rookery kitchen was a cosy, welcoming room, dominated by a pink six-oven Aga and a gnarled old farmhouse table that looked as if it hadn’t been moved for centuries. Hector and Rosie’s artwork covered most of the available wall surfaces, with the remainder given over to family photographs, all taken by Cat. Hector as a baby, his chubby face smeared with chocolate cake. Rosie, aged seven, on her first pony, beaming a gap-toothed grin as she held up her ‘Highly Commended’ rosette. Jack was ashamed to feel a stab of envy. He and Sonya had never had children, though they’d both wanted them. Sonya was halfway through her first round of IVF when her cancer was diagnosed, poor darling. Am I tougher on Ivan because I’m jealous? Because he has a family and I don’t? It was an uncomfortable thought.

Pushing it from his mind, Jack went upstairs in search of a bathroom. The queue for the downstairs loo was enormous and all that Earl Grey had gone straight to his bladder. There were two sets of stairs at The Rookery: the grand, sweeping mahogany staircase that led up to the principal bedrooms and that tonight was lit by simple white candles and bedecked with yet more flowers and greenery from the garden; and the back, servants’ stairs, a narrow, steeply winding passage that spat one out into a long corridor, giving on to a series of smaller, pokier rooms. Vaguely remembering there was a guest bathroom at the end of this corridor, Jack took the back stairs. Pushing open the last door, he stopped dead.

‘Jesus!’

Ivan was standing at the foot of the bath with his pants around his ankles. Joyce Wu was bent over the bath, spread-eagled and moaning as he took her from behind, thrusting so hard that Joyce’s tiny apple breasts quivered like twin jellies with each jerk of the hips. The young girl’s eyes had a familiar, glazed look. Sure enough, when Jack glanced at the sink, a fine line of leftover white powder was clearly visible.

It took Ivan Charles a second to realize that they had been interrupted. Joyce, lost in her own world, took longer, only registering Jack’s presence once Ivan stopped moving. She opened her mouth to scream, but Ivan lunged forward, covering her mouth with his hand.

‘Now, now, darling. We don’t need a bigger audience. One’s enough.’

Shaking, Joyce grabbed her red dress off the floor and held it protectively over her naked body. Jack Messenger held open the bathroom door. ‘Go home,’ he said quietly.

Joyce darted into the hallway, sobbing. Ivan, meanwhile, looked distinctly unruffled. He’d pulled up his pants and was busy smoothing down his hair and removing lipstick marks from his face and collar with a damp flannel.

Jack spoke first. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘I don’t know,’ drawled Ivan. ‘Am I?’

‘Anybody could have walked in!’

‘Indeed. But it had to be you who actually did, didn’t it Jack? You’re like an old housemaster, prowling the dorms looking for miscreants. And lo and behold, you found me.’ He held out his hand in mock supplication. ‘Go ahead, whip out your cane. I’m used to it.’

Jack’s stomach turned. ‘You think this is funny.’

‘Well, I don’t think it’s tragic, let’s put it that way,’ Ivan shot back. ‘OK, so I’ve been a naughty boy. But nobody knows, so there’s no harm done.’

‘No harm?’ Jack spluttered. ‘She’s a client!’

‘So?’

‘She’s a teenager!’

‘Only just,’ said Ivan, cleaning up the cocaine remnants before swigging from a bottle of mouthwash and spitting into the sink. ‘It’s my birthday. Joyce was my present. Oh for God’s sake, stop looking so thunderous. It was a one-off, all right? It won’t happen again. Jack. Jack!’

But Jack had stormed off down the corridor, ignoring Ivan’s shouts. The servants’ stairs were blocked by a kissing couple so he veered left, practically running down the grand main staircase, so eager was he to get out of there. Bloody fool. I should never have come tonight. So much for Ivan turning over a new leaf.

‘Oh, there you are.’

Jack was so caught up in his own thoughts that he almost knocked Catriona flying.

‘You’re not leaving already, are you?’ Her face fell. ‘We haven’t even had the fireworks yet. You must stay for those.’

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled awkwardly. ‘Something’s come up. I have to get back to London.’

Goddamn Ivan for implicating him in his bullshit. Now Jack was forced to stand here and lie to one of his oldest friends.

Catriona tried to be understanding. ‘Oh. Well, I suppose if you have to. Anyway, before you go, I just wanted to let you know that I’ll look out for Kendall when she comes over. As you know, lots of Ivan’s clients come up here to stay when they’re burned out or stressed or whatever. We’ve become quite the heartbreak hotel, haven’t we?’ she laughed. ‘I doubt even Miss Bryce can get into too much trouble in the bright lights of Widford on a Saturday night.’

‘Thank you. Really. That means a lot.’ Jack looked at Catriona, then hugged her tightly, squeezing as if he might never let her go. ‘You’re a good woman, Catriona Charles. Ivan doesn’t deserve you.’

Catriona smiled wryly. ‘He probably doesn’t deserve you either, Jack darling. I know he must be difficult to work with. But don’t give up on him. For my sake.’

Speeding back towards London half an hour later, Jack Messenger felt as depressed as he had in months. Every time it seemed as if Ivan might finally have turned a corner and developed some scruples, he went and did something so shatteringly stupid and selfish it beggared belief.

Jack wished he could give up on Ivan. But after fifteen years as partners in Jester, their lives and interests were irrevocably intertwined. Being in business with Ivan Charles was like walking through life with a bomb strapped to your chest. The unpredictability, the selfishness, all wrapped up in a lethally charming package.

Come to think of it, Ivan Charles had a lot in common with the other giant headache in Jack Messenger’s life. But, he reflected with relief, at least she was safely ensconced in his Brentwood guesthouse under the watchful eye of her twenty-four-hour sobriety coach.

Not even Kendall Bryce could get into too much trouble in those circumstances.

CHAPTER TWO

‘Harder! Oh my God, what is the problem? Why do you keep stopping?’

Kendall Bryce looked over her shoulder at her red-faced sobriety coach with withering disdain. Weren’t these sober health-freaks supposed to be fit? This guy screwed like a grandfather.

‘My electric toothbrush makes me come faster than this. Come on, Kevin. Do it!’

Kevin Dacre closed his eyes and tried to recapture any of the sexual excitement he’d felt when Kendall Bryce, the Kendall Bryce, had opened the front door to him half an hour ago in nothing but a pair of Trashy Lingerie panties. Half an hour ago, Kevin was worried he might come before he got his pants off. Now, after being ordered into countless different positions, with Kendall berating him for his poor performance like a particularly ticked-off drill sergeant, all Kevin wanted was to be allowed to go home. That, and for Kendall Bryce not to tell his employer, Jack Messenger, what had happened this evening.

The worst part was that Jack had warned him, in so many words: ‘She’ll try anything in the book to get you off her case. If she wants drugs or a drink she’ll stop at nothing to get them. She’ll probably offer to sleep with you, and let me tell you, Mr Dacre, Kendall’s offers can be tough to refuse.’

‘I’ve worked with Charlie Sheen, Mr Messenger,’ Kevin had replied confidently. ‘If I can keep him clean, I’m pretty confident I can handle Kendall.’

Now Kevin Dacre knew better. Nobody ‘handled’ Kendall Bryce. She was a force of nature, as impossible to resist as a twister or a riptide. And she had him by the balls, literally as well as metaphorically. If Messenger heard about this – if anyone heard about it – Kevin’s career was finished.

At last, with a wild moan and arch of her back, Kendall climaxed. Kevin Dacre whimpered with relief. Easing himself out of her, he slumped down on the bed, exhausted.

‘I’ll order some pizza,’ Kendall announced cheerfully. ‘We can wash it down with a couple of bottles of Jack’s Mouton Rothschild, and then we can go again.’

Again? Kevin started hyperventilating. ‘Kendall, come on. This was fun but we both know it shouldn’t have happened. And we also both know I can’t let you drink.’

Kendall laughed loudly. ‘Let me? I like that. That’s a good one. Besides, it was coke I went to rehab for. I’m not an alcoholic.’

‘That’s not the point,’ said Kevin. ‘You’re an addict and you’re in recovery. No substances means no substances. You know that.’

Kendall’s eyes narrowed. ‘All I know is that you’re gonna break into the main house and raid Jack’s wine closet for me. Because if you don’t, you know I’m gonna pick up the phone and tell him about the great sex we just had.’

‘I thought you said the sex was terrible?’

Kendall looked at him pityingly ‘It was terrible, Kevin. I was trying to be kind. But you know what they say: practice makes perfect. Now, how about that drink?’

Kendall Bryce had first come to prominence in her teens as the breakout star of reality show, Hollywood High. Small but perfectly formed, her body had the exaggerated, pneumatic curves of a porn star. Her waist was waspishly narrow, her breasts cartoonish in both their size and gravity-defying perkiness, her butt was as high and tight as a male baller-ina’s. But it was Kendall’s face, a perfectly defined set of smooth planes illuminated by neon green cat’s eyes, as well as her attitude, that ensured her swift rise to fame. Kendall Bryce was brattish – certainly – and spoiled; Hollywood High was a show about movie-industry kids, so those two attributes were prerequisites. But Kendall could also be devastatingly funny. Her pithy put-downs of contemporaries rapidly became the stuff of legend and she was embraced as a sort of young, insanely hot Joan Rivers.

What Hollywood High failed to show was Kendall Bryce’s deep, searing insecurity, and the terrible loneliness of her home life. Kendall’s father was the producer Vernon Bryce. He divorced her mother when Kendall was twelve, and since then had laid eyes on his eldest daughter a grand total of three times. Two of those occasions were court appearances, for DUI and cocaine possession respectively. The third was for Kendall’s twenty-first birthday, when Vernon showed up for the cameras with a ribbon-wrapped pink Maserati complete with Ken 1 number plates, but was too busy to stay for dinner, insisting he had to rush back to his younger kids, Donny and Aiden, the twin boys he had with his new wife and whom he unashamedly adored.

Kendall’s mum Lorna was a sweet, pleasant woman, but she knew nothing about her daughter’s wild lifestyle, or if she did she was too weak to do anything about it. The truth was, Lorna Bryce was afraid of Kendall. Her younger children, Holly and Joe, were both so much easier to handle. They hadn’t been affected by Vernon’s abandonment the way that Kendall had. That was the problem. From babyhood, Kendall Bryce had always been a daddy’s girl.

Hiding her pain behind the twin masks of her extraordinary looks and her razor-sharp tongue, Kendall was determined to prove her worth to the father who had dumped her, and to the rest of the world. TV success was a start. But she wanted more than that. She wanted lasting, global superstardom. She wanted to walk on stage in packed stadiums all around the globe and hear people chanting her name.

No one was more surprised than Jack Messenger to discover that Kendall Bryce could sing. Her agent had practically laid siege to Jester’s LA office on Beverly Glen until Jack agreed to see her. Reality stars releasing records was really not Jester’s thing. Plus the Bryce girl had only just got out of jail for cocaine possession. Too much trouble by half. But Kendall’s agent was so persistent that Jack relented one Friday afternoon, and gave the kid five minutes. There was an upright piano in Jack’s office. He’d been an exceptional pianist in his youth and still found that playing calmed his nerves and cleared his head. He sat down and, rather meanly, started playing Christina Aguilera’s Genie in a Bottle, an astonishingly difficult song for an untrained vocalist. Kendall Bryce didn’t miss a beat. She opened her mouth and belted it out, pitch perfect and with the power and depth of a seasoned Gospel singer. Her voice ricocheted around Jack’s office like a sonic boom. After fifteen years in the music business it took a lot to surprise Jack Messenger. But Kendall Bryce had done it, in about two and a half bars.

That meeting was two years ago now. Since then, under Jester’s management, Kendall Bryce had gone on to become one of the best-known and biggest-selling female artists in America. But she had also had to submit her entire life to Jack Messenger’s control. He’d refused to sign her unless she quit cocaine and alcohol cold turkey, and underwent regular drug testing. She had to join a gym, stop going to nightclubs unless someone from Jester accompanied her, and agree to make no comments to the press whatsoever, unless Jack had personally authorized them. The one and only time she was caught breaking one of these rules (she was photographed drunk on an unauthorized trip to the Chateau Marmont) Jack had forced her to give up the lease on her apartment and move into his guesthouse in Brentwood until her second album was in the can. Needless to say, Kendall had bucked and chafed against such draconian restraints. But she put up with them for two reasons.

One was that she knew Jack Messenger could not only get her to the top but keep her there.

The other was that she was madly, passionately and utterly hopelessly in love with him.

Jack was everything that Kendall’s own father was not: decent, honest, loyal, kind and strict. He was tough on her because he cared, and though she fought against him tooth and nail, and was often so infuriated with him she wanted to cry or hit him or both, deep down she felt safe for the first time since she was eleven. Jack was also the first man who, maddeningly, appeared to be totally immune to Kendall’s celebrated physical charms. Since the age of fifteen, Kendall Bryce had been used to enslaving any and all men to her will – boys at school, teachers, producers on her show. In Jack Messenger, for the first time, she encountered indifference. Her initial reaction was to assume that he was either grieving too hard for his dead wife, or secretly gay. But, especially since moving onto his property, she’d been forced to abandon both these theories. Jack had a girlfriend, Elizabeth, an attractive, professional woman in her thirties who was about as far removed from Kendall as it was possible to be: discreet, together, undemanding. In short, a grown-up. Jack was never pictured with her in public, but Elizabeth seemed unfazed by this apparent lack of commitment. Nor did she complain about the fact that he still wore his wedding ring, and spent every Saturday afternoon without fail at his wife’s grave at Forest Lawn. If this was the sort of woman Jack was looking for, it was little wonder he failed to notice Kendall. But it still hurt.

As with her father, Kendall tried to get Jack’s attention by acting out, in particular bedding a string of Jester’s male acts to try to make him jealous. As with her father, the strategy failed miserably. In recent months things had hit an all-time low between the two of them. Consumed with longing and frustration and fury, Kendall had started drinking again. Two weeks ago she was breathalysed on Sunset and slapped with another DUI, her fourth. She was lucky to escape jail time. Jack, needless to say, was furious, refusing to allow her to fly with him to London for Ivan Charles’s party, an event he knew Kendall had been hugely excited about, and forcing her to stay home with a sobriety-coach-slash-jailer instead.

One day he’ll see what’s right under his nose, thought Kendall, bitterly. He’ll realize he loves me; that I’m the one who can help him get over Sonya. He’ll learn to love again. We’ll learn together.

Until that day, however, she wasn’t about to let Jack push her around. In a week’s time she’d be in London anyway, performing, and there was nothing he could do to stop her having the time of her life. Meanwhile, Kendall had no intention of joining a nunnery just to make Jack happy. Sex with her sobriety coach might not have been spectacular. But it was two fingers to Jack holier-than-thou Messenger. That alone made it worth it.

The next morning a perfect clear, blue-skied dawn broke over Los Angeles, just as Lex Abrahams was brewing his second pot of coffee on the stove. Lex rarely slept more than four or five hours a night and was always up before six. Years spent on the road as a photographer, flying from continent to continent at the whim of his famous, rock-star clients, had left him immune to jet lag and to exhaustion generally. Which was a good thing, as he now worked for Jack Whip-Cracker Messenger as Jester’s in-house photographer; a dream job as long as you didn’t mind insane hours, capricious artists and a pay packet that barely covered your rent and bills.

Happily, Lex didn’t. Photography was his life, music his business, and Jack Messenger one of the nicest, most decent men he had ever met. All in all, Lex Abrahams considered himself one of the luckiest twenty-eight-year-olds on the planet.

Especially this morning. This morning he got to see Kendall, to show her the first images from last week’s shoot for her new album cover. If Lex did say so himself, the pictures were awesome. For once in his life, he was actually going to impress Kendall Bryce. And, as Lex Abrahams knew perhaps better than anyone, that took some doing.

Pouring molasses-thick coffee into a red tin mug, into which he had heaped four spoons of sugar and a generous dash of Coffee-mate, Lex wandered out onto his patio. He loved it out here in the early mornings. It was a small space, basically just a gravel courtyard with a table, two chairs and a lone orange tree, but it was a sun-trap and it made his bijou one-bedroom apartment feel twice its actual size. At Kendall’s suggestion, Lex had recently screwed a vintage mirror to the rear patio wall, to make the garden look bigger. He peered at his reflection in it now, not out of vanity but because it was there, and saw what he always saw: a stocky, slightly too short Jewish man with dark curly hair, a long but not unattractive nose, and light-blue eyes that looked as if they’d been stolen from somebody else, somebody Swedish and blond … a surfer, maybe. If it weren’t for the eyes, Lex Abrahams would have been the most Jewish-looking Jew he knew. Ironically, given that he’d been raised in a totally non-religious household, wasn’t remotely kosher, and didn’t know the inside of a synagogue from a packet of peas. Still, as a photographer with a rare gift for capturing the idiosyncracies and beauty of the human face, Lex was glad he had ‘a look’. Occasionally he wished it were more the sort of look that girls like Kendall Bryce swooned over. A taller, blonder, more regular-featured look. But, generally, Lex Abrahams was comfortable in his skin, a fact reflected in his never-changing wardrobe of faded Levi jeans, white T-shirt and Target flip-flops.

Kendall’s pictures were on the patio table. In between sips of coffee, Lex leafed through them, trying to choose the best three for her perusal. Ever since his first job for Maroon 5, aged nineteen, Lex had learned never to give a client more than three images to choose from, especially for an album cover. Large files of JPEGs had a habit of causing major brain malfunction amongst musicians. They engendered indecision, irascibility and panic. Lex was a firm believer in physical prints laid out on a table, one, two, three. Of course, Kendall was a slightly different case. For all the dysfunction and imbalance of their relationship, Lex and Kendall were genuine friends.

Friends. How Lex had come to loathe that word. The truth – the tragic, pathetic, undeniable truth – was that Lex Abrahams was in love with Kendall Bryce. Of course, he had never declared his love and never would. To do so would be as futile a gesture as shouting at the TV when your team was losing, or calling up Graydon Carter and suggesting he forget about Leibovitz and hire you to do Vanity Fair’s next editorial shoot with the Obamas. Wishing it were so was one thing. Announcing your hopeless pipe dreams to the world was quite another. Kendall was as far out of Lex’s league as an NFL career was out of the reach of your average high-school footballer. Friends were as much as they would ever be. He should be grateful.

But, even as a friend, Lex yearned for Kendall’s approval. Deep down, part of him clung to a belief that if she truly valued him as an artist, a real talent, she might one day look past his mediocre exterior and see someone worth loving, worth being loved by.

The three photographs he plucked from the pile were unquestionably works of art, although Lex hesitated to take full credit for them. Who, after all, could make Kendall Bryce look anything other than perfect? The first two were body shots. Taken in the desert at dusk, beside a lone thorn tree, Kendall’s torso and arms were twisted in a mirror image of the tree’s trunk and branches. You could make out her face in profile, but the key to the image was her bare back and the billowing plumes of black hair cascading over her shoulders. The third picture was a straightforward head shot. Shot on old-fashioned film, in black and white, it captured a side of Kendall not generally glimpsed by the public. With her eyes wide and her face free of make-up, she looked young, vulnerable, emotionally naked. This was Lex’s favorite, but he doubted Kendall would pick it and Jester wouldn’t force the issue. Subjects rarely liked the portraits that dared to tell them the truth.

Lex walked back inside. Slipping the three prints into a fresh envelope, he carefully filed the rest and sat down to work on some editing. It would be four hours at least until Kendall was awake and up to receiving visitors, so he might as well get some work done.

By the time he next looked up, it was noon. How the hell had that happened? Quickly brushing his teeth and spritzing on some aftershave (Kendall had once mentioned that she found CK One a sexy scent, and Lex had worn it religiously ever since, to no noticeable effect), he jumped in his leased Nissan and headed towards Brentwood.

For once traffic was good. Ten minutes later, Lex turned the corner into Brentwood Park. Jack Messenger’s house was on a private road, but the security guard at the gate knew Lex well and waved him through. Every time he came here, Lex was reminded of the immense financial gulf that existed between music managers and photographers. Like Jack, Lex was at the very top of his profession, one of the most well-respected snappers in the record business. As well as countless iconic album covers, he’d shot Pepsi commercials and award-winning live concert footage for bands as diverse as Aerosmith and The Dixie Chicks. But somehow the great music industry money tree failed to drop riches on Lex Abrahams’ head the way it rained them down on the likes of Jack Messenger and Ivan Charles. And Kendall Bryce, of course, although nobody doubted that the artists would do well. They were the talent, the raison d’être.

Kendall’s my raison d être, Lex thought idly as he pulled up outside the Messenger mansion. Jack’s house was an Arts and Crafts beauty, half-timbered and covered in climbing roses and wisteria, like an English manor house. The guesthouse was more open-plan, a converted barn separated from the house by a vast expanse of lawn and set back behind neatly trimmed topiary hedges. It opened directly onto the pool, which twinkled brilliant azure blue beneath the blazing midday sun as Lex walked by.

‘Knock knock,’ he said cheerfully, pushing open the unlocked front door. ‘Kendall? I brought over some pictures from the shoot. You’re gonna love—’

The words died on his lips. Kevin Dacre, the sobriety coach Jack had hired for an extortionate fee to babysit Kendall while he was in England, staggered sheepishly out of the bedroom with a towel wrapped around his hips and two empty wine glasses in his hand. Behind him a visibly hungover Kendall, in a crotch-skimming kimono robe, carried an armful of empty bottles.

‘Oh, hi, Lex,’ she growled, her voice hoarse from the night’s excesses. ‘Lex, Kevin, Kevin, Lex. Kevin was just leaving.’

The sobriety coach did at least have the decency to blush scarlet, scurrying past Lex with a pleading ‘I couldn’t help it. Don’t tell!’ look in his eyes. Lex felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. Sometimes it seemed as if Kendall was determined to sleep with every man in Los Angeles other than him. Rock stars and actors were one thing, but this dweeb wasn’t even good-looking. It wasn’t until the sound of Kevin’s squealing tyres had died away that Lex recovered sufficiently to speak.

‘Jack’s gonna go ballistic. He’s not kidding about kicking you off the books, you know. He’ll do it if you keep pushing him.’

‘Screw Jack,’ said Kendall, lighting up a Marlboro red. ‘Managers are a dime a dozen.’

‘If you really felt that, you wouldn’t be living in his guesthouse,’ said Lex, grabbing the cigarette from between Kendall’s fingers and stubbing it out in one of the wine glasses. ‘Smoking fucks your voice. Don’t be an idiot.’

Kendall pouted but didn’t protest. Lex Abrahams was her best friend, one of the few people she’d allow to boss her around. Besides which, she didn’t want to fall out with Lex today and risk having him spill the beans to Jack. For all her bravado, Kendall had woken up this morning feeling guilty and nervous. What if Jack got home early? She’d better replace the wine she’d stolen. And buy some mouthwash and air fresheners.

‘Go take a shower,’ said Lex, wishing he weren’t able to smell the sex on her body. ‘And open some windows up there. I’ll clean up this mess.’

Kendall wrapped her arms around him. As she lifted them, the hem of her silk robe rode up, revealing two perfectly smooth peach buttocks. ‘You’re an angel, Lexy. I love you.’

It was all Lex could do not to weep.

An hour later, Lex dropped the car with a valet and he and Kendall walked into Joan’s on third. A well-known Hollywood hangout and brunch venue, Joan’s was a scene and the last place Lex would have chosen for their lunch date. But Kendall insisted, and when Kendall insisted, Kendall got.

‘I’ll have a big pot of coffee, cinnamon French toast and a side of bacon. And a blueberry muffin. And some frittata.’

In black Ksubi jeans, a black L’Agence T-shirt and ultra-dark Oliver Peoples shades, Kendall looked even tinier than usual. It was hard to imagine how so much food was going to fit into such a bird-like frame.

‘And I’ll have an egg-white omelette,’ said Lex. ‘Thanks.’

‘Health freak,’ grumbled Kendall. ‘You’re just showing off to make me feel bad.’

‘You already feel bad.’

Kendall groaned. This was true. Her face had turned a sickening shade of pale-green, her palms were clammy and her stomach kept flipping over like one of those wind-up toys kids get in their Christmas stockings.

‘You have to stop drinking, you know,’ Lex said seriously. ‘You can’t control it.’

‘I know, I know. And I will. I mean, I have. Last night was a one-off. You won’t say anything to Jack, will you?’

Lex looked hurt. ‘Why do you think I cleaned up your entire house? So he could catch you?’

‘Thanks.’ Kendall reached across the table and squeezed his hand. Through the window, a lone paparazzi snapped the moment.

‘Fuck off,’ snarled Lex. He knew they shouldn’t have come to Joan’s.

‘Oh my God, that’s so funny!’ Kendall laughed. ‘Now US Weekly’ll run a story saying the two of us are together. How hilarious is that?’

The food arrived and Kendall fell on it, shovelling down forkfuls of frittata and French toast like she hadn’t eaten for weeks. Lex watched her, picking intermittently at his omelette.

‘So,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘Are you ready for London?’

‘Sooo ready,’ mumbled Kendall through a mouthful of blueberry muffin. ‘I can’t wait to do those gigs, and I can’t wait to meet Ivan Charles. Everyone says he’s way more fun than Jack. Not that that’s hard. Root-canal surgery is more fun than Jack.’

Lex was used to listening to Kendall complain about the man who had made her a mega-star. But over the years he had also provided a shoulder to cry on while she sobbed her heart out about her unrequited love for Jack. Lex knew that Kendall’s bitching was just displaced adoration. He sympathized. Unrequited love sucked.

‘I’m not sure there’ll be too much time for fun in your schedule,’ said Lex. ‘You’re rehearsing every day you’re not performing.’

Kendall shrugged. ‘I’ll make time. I wanna see Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London. And I wouldn’t mind sleeping with Brett Bayley either.’

‘Brett’s married,’ said Lex disapprovingly.

‘Tell that to him,’ grinned Kendall. ‘How mad do you think Jack would be if Brett and I got together? We’re both Jester acts, after all; both Americans in London. Our paths are bound to cross.’

‘Stop being provocative,’ snapped Lex. Reaching into his messenger bag, he pulled out the photographs he’d brought her. ‘Take a look at these. You need to pick one for the album cover.’

‘Ooooo.’ Kendall leaned forward excitedly. ‘Has Jack seen them?’

‘Not yet.’ Jack, Jack, Jack. If only she knew how transparent she was.

‘Well, we can’t use this one.’ Kendall handed back the portrait shot. ‘I don’t look anything like myself.’

‘That’s exactly what you look like,’ said Lex. ‘The camera never lies, remember?’

‘Says the man who just had a sense of humour failure about the paparazzi,’ Kendall shot back. ‘I look like a twelve year old with TB. That’s a no.’

‘You look beautiful.’

‘Yada yada yada. Oh, now this I like.’ She picked up one of the thorn tree images. ‘Both of these. They’re sexy but classy. Like art.’

‘Like art?’ Lex sounded horrified. ‘They are art.’

‘You know what I mean,’ said Kendall. ‘They’re arty and commercial. The label’s gonna love them.’

‘Do you love them? Lex hated himself for the tentative, hopeful tone he heard in his own voice. With other clients he was confident in his work. With Kendall, he never stopped feeling as though he was auditioning for her approval. Pathetic.

‘I do.’ Kendall beamed, leaning across the table to kiss him. ‘I love them and I love you. Where would I be without you, my lovely Lex?’

Lex’s heart beat so fast as she pressed her lips to his that he worried it might jump out of his chest and start throbbing away on the table. He closed his eyes, let the happiness rush through him and immediately heard the click click click of a camera shutter. This time it was Kendall who spun around, shaking her fist through the café window.

‘He’s my friend, asshole, OK? You can quote me on that. Read my lips: We are just fucking friends.’

Lex’s happiness drained away like pus from a lanced boil.

One day they’ll carve it on my tombstone: Just Fucking Friends.

Jack Messenger pushed open his front door with a sigh of relief. It was good to be home.

Jack didn’t enjoy travelling at the best of times, and this trip to England had been particularly stressful. He’d spent the entire eleven-hour flight home unable to concentrate, or to banish the vomit-inducing image of Ivan pumping away at that teenage violinist from his mind. Poor Catriona. A midlife crisis was embarrassing enough to watch, but Cat had to live with it. Or rather, she chose to live with it. That was the part that bothered Jack the most. The fact that even after all the betrayals, all the slip-ups and lies and bullshit, Catriona Charles was still in love with her husband. She still saw the Ivan she’d fallen in love with at Oxford. Whereas for Jack, that person, his friend, was all but gone.

Dropping his suitcase on the floor, he wandered into his study. As usual it was immaculate, an oasis of calm and order in the frantic chaos of Jack Messenger’s professional life. He and Ivan used to joke that running a music management business was the best on-the-job training a psychotherapist could have. As managers they were part mentor, part friend, part boss, part life coach to some of the most talented, spoiled and rampantly fucked-up individuals on the planet. Life at Jester was equal parts exhausting and rewarding, but it was never dull. Jack loved it. But he also loved leaving it behind in the evenings and retreating behind the walls of his tranquil fortress.

Sonya had designed and decorated the house, and her presence was still everywhere. Jack limited photographs of his wife to the master bedroom. He’d learned that having them around the house made some people feel uncomfortable, and prompted others to try and talk about his loss, something Jack was congenitally incapable of doing. But you couldn’t pick up a cushion or switch on a lamp, without being reminded of Sonya’s subtle, feminine taste, her love of colour and texture, her warmth. That was the one thing Jack Messenger missed most about his wife. The world was a colder place without her.

Flipping open his calendar (Jack was still a pen and paper man where possible), he groaned. He’d totally forgotten he had a dinner date with Elizabeth tonight. Elizabeth Grey was Jack’s female companion of the moment. Nominally his ‘girlfriend’, though that wasn’t a word Jack himself ever used. She was a senior exec at Paramount – smart, funny, independent and kind, as well as beautiful in the classy, understated way that Jack liked: long hair, minimal make-up, slim without being scrawny. There was absolutely nothing wrong with Elizabeth, not one complaint that Jack could level at her. Except the fact that she wasn’t Sonya.

Dialling her number, Jack was relieved to get the voicemail. ‘Hi, Liz. Listen honey, I’m sorry, I’m gonna have to bail on tonight. I’m totally wiped after my trip. I’ll call you tomorrow, OK? OK thanks. Sorry. Goodnight.’

He hated how awkward he sounded. Somehow he couldn’t shake the feeling that dating at 40 automatically made you a jerk. Switching off his phone so Elizabeth couldn’t call him back, he padded into the kitchen for a snack when something caught his eye. The door to his wine cabinet was ajar. No bottles were missing. Everything else was as it should be. But Conception, Jack’s housekeeper, always locked that particular cabinet.

Kendall.

Kendall was curled up on the couch watching Two and a Half Men with Lex Abrahams when Jack burst in with a face like fury.

‘Have you taken wine from my house while I’ve been gone?’

Kendall didn’t look up from the screen. ‘Hi, Kendall, hi, Lex. How are you? Nice to see you again,’ she said sarcastically.

‘Answer the question.’

‘Of course not! Jesus, so what, I’m a thief now?’

‘Not a thief. You replaced it,’ said Jack. ‘But you forgot to lock the wine closet afterwards. Where’s Kevin?’

‘He wasn’t feeling too good,’ said Kendall blithely. ‘So I sent him home and called Lex to come over and save me from my deepest, darkest urges. So far it’s going great.’ She raised a glass of Diet Coke in Jack’s direction. ‘How was England?’

‘Don’t change the subject,’ snapped Jack. ‘How much did you drink?’

‘It wasn’t Kendall,’ Lex piped up from the couch. ‘It was me. I’m sorry, I, er, I had a few friends over on Friday and I needed some decent vintage stuff, so I, er, I borrowed a couple of bottles. I replaced them at the wine merchant’s today. I must have forgotten to lock the, er, the closet.’

Jack sighed. He liked Lex and was an ardent admirer of his work. But when it came to Kendall, he couldn’t be trusted. ‘Do yourself a favour, kid. Never go into acting. You suck at it.’

‘No, really …’ Lex protested.

‘Go home,’ said Jack. ‘Before I fire the both of you.’

Lex left. Kendall continued watching TV defiantly until Jack picked up the remote and turned it off.

‘Hey! I was watching that!’

‘No you weren’t. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kick you off my books and out of my guesthouse right now.’

‘I’ll give you three,’ said Kendall. ‘I make you a ton of money. I’m the best female artist Jester has. And I didn’t take your stupid wine.’

‘You’re a liar.’

Kendall tried not to show how hurt she was. Even after a long flight, in a crumpled shirt and chinos, Jack looked so insanely handsome it was torture. It was bad enough that he didn’t want her. But that he should disapprove of her too was more than she could bear. The fact that she’d brought it on herself was no consolation.

‘OK, fine. I was pissed at you for not taking me to Ivan’s party. I should have been there.’

‘You’ve never even met Ivan,’ said Jack.

‘So? I was invited.’

‘And you would have gone if you hadn’t proved once again that you can’t be trusted. You cannot drink, Kendall, OK? Some people can take their liquor. Others cannot.’

He sounded exasperated because he was. Though she might not realize it, Jack was immensely fond of Kendall Bryce. He’d seen addictive personalities like hers before. They couldn’t do moderation. Kendall could no more stop at one drink than stop at one breath. It was all or nothing.

‘I’ve got to be honest with you,’ he said. ‘At this point I have serious reservations about letting you go to London next week.’

‘Yeah, well, get over them,’ snarled Kendall. ‘I’m a professional. I have commitments and I meet them. I’m not about to let my fans and record company down because you’ve got an overdeveloped father complex. I’m twenty-three fucking years old, Jack!’

‘Then act it. Stop behaving like a spoiled teenager. And stop letting poor Lex lie for you. Unlike you, my dear, he’s no good at it. I’m going to bed. We’ll discuss this further in the morning.’

After Jack had gone, Kendall went to bed and lay awake for hours, staring at the ceiling.

It’s all so wrong. I’m in bed alone. He’s fifty yards away, in bed alone. Why aren’t we holding each other?

One day, they would be. One day, Kendall Bryce would become Kendall Messenger, and all Jack’s grief and Kendall’s longing and frustration would be things of the past. It will happen. It has to happen. It’s fate.

Who knew, maybe this trip to London would be the start of a new phase in their relationship. Maybe Kendall’s absence would make Jack’s heart grow fonder?

Stranger things had happened.

CHAPTER THREE

Ivan Charles kept a firm grip on Joyce Wu’s hips as she bucked and moaned in pleasure. As well she might, thought Ivan, who’d spent the last fifteen minutes with his head between his teenage lover’s legs, trying to bring her to climax. Generally he wasn’t much of a one for oral sex – giving it, that is; receiving it was naturally an entirely different matter – but he made an exception for Joyce. Partly because she begged him to. Ivan Charles did enjoy a bit of begging. And partly because her smooth, hairless Asian pussy made him feel like he was doing a porn star, not a virtuoso violinist from a strict Chinese family. Although that was kind of horny, too.

Even so, fifteen minutes was enough to give anybody jaw ache. His own orgasm already felt like a long time ago and he’d spent the last five minutes at least thinking exclusively about his meeting at ITV tomorrow and whether the blue or the green Paul Smith shirt would make him look more telegenic.

‘I’m coming!’ Joyce gasped, unnecessarily. Her twitching thighs had already imparted this information forcefully to the sides of Ivan’s head. Finally she stopped moving and slumped, exhausted, back against the chaise longue, panting. Ivan, also panting, headed to the kitchen for a much-needed glass of water.

Ivan loved his Belgravia flat. Loved it. The lateral, two-bedroom apartment on Eaton Gate was his own private lair, his 1,500 square foot kingdom where he could do what – and whom – he pleased. Of course, The Rookery was home and he loved that too. In Oxfordshire, with Catriona, he was grown-up Ivan, husband Ivan, daddy Ivan. The unfortunate incident that Jack had witnessed in the bathroom on the night of his birthday was an anomaly. Usually, Ivan Charles made a point of keeping his two lives, and two selves, utterly separate. Here, in London, he was Ivan the player, Ivan the music mogul. He was, as one of Jester’s interns had rather brilliantly named him, after a brief but passionate affair, Ivan the Terrible. And the Eaton Gate flat was his palais d’amour.

Every room was filled with mementos of his triumphant career. Here, in the kitchen, two Grammys and a Brit Award gleamed proudly on a shelf above the sink. The drawing room, an elegant Georgian reception space with double-aspect sash windows and original parquet flooring, was littered with framed photographs of Ivan with music industry greats. Ivan and Burt Bacharach hugged on top of the piano, Ivan and Alfie Boe laughed on a yacht on the antique side table. On the wall above the chaise longue, where Joyce Wu lay sprawled in postcoital contentment, Ivan had a paternal arm wrapped around Charlotte Church back in her gawky teenage days.

Secretly, Ivan longed to be able to line the walls with a different kind of star. The kind of artist that Jack represented for Jester almost exclusively. He wanted to have his picture taken with Will Smith and JLS and Justin Bieber. With Katy Perry and Britney and Kendall Bryce. He wanted to be in the pop world, to be young and contemporary and relevant. Most of all, he wanted to lead Jester out of the dark ages of old school music management and into the new era of reality television, of YouTube virals and multimedia world domination. It was a terrible irony, a travesty really, that he, Ivan, who ‘got’ the pop scene and was excited by the brave new world of free downloads and webcam concerts, should be stuck with an overwhelmingly classical list, while Jack ‘Sam Eagle’ Messenger, he of the paper diaries and computer phobia and all-American family values, should represent such cutting-edge acts as The Blitz and Kendall Coke-Head Bryce. The fact that Ivan’s list made more money than Jack’s was insufficient consolation. Classical fans still bought albums. Pop fans downloaded (aka stole) them. But if only Jack weren’t so pig-headed about Jester diversifying, into the TV world and beyond, Ivan was sure their rock and pop business would blossom exponentially. Tomorrow’s meeting with ITV would be Ivan’s first concrete step into these choppy waters, a step he was taking without his partner’s knowledge, still less his permission. Ivan had a lot riding on it.

‘Sweetheart, I hate to do it, but I’m going to have to ask you to skedaddle.’ Walking back into the drawing room he passed a still-naked Joyce her clothes. ‘I’ve got a ton of work to do this afternoon. Plus the cleaner’s coming in twenty minutes. We wouldn’t want her to find you here and spill the beans to the missus, would we?’

Poor Ivan, thought Joyce, pulling a lemon-yellow sundress over her head and stuffing her knickers and bra into her handbag. Imagine being saddled with an old frump like Catriona and having to sneak around behind her back, just for the sake of the kids. He really is such a good father.

‘Of course not,’ she said solemnly, scooping up her violin from a red brocade armchair in the corner. ‘Don’t worry, darling. You can count on me to be discreet.’

Ivan watched her leave, noticing for the first time how short her legs were for her body and how unsexy her walk was from behind, knock-kneed and gawky. The time had come to end things with Miss Wu. He would disengage gently, as he always did, with expensive jewellery and flowery apologies, citing family commitments for his reluctant change of heart. Ivan prided himself on the fact that not one of the clients he’d shagged then grown tired of had ever left Jester, or fired him as a manager. Women were marvellous creatures. They’d accept just about anything from a man, as long as it was done with charm, and a few choice trinkets from Asprey’s.

With Joyce gone, Ivan could begin his day in earnest. Farting loudly to kick things off, a triumphant trumpet sound heralding the dawn of male freedom, he turned on Test Match special and, blasting the sound through the flat’s state-of-the-art audio system, retired to the master bathroom for a shower. Afterwards, he laid out a variety of shirt and tie combos on the bed and began to give serious consideration to which made him look the most handsome. Ivan was, and had always been, terribly vain. But tomorrow’s meeting at ITV genuinely merited a careful attention to his appearance. He was effectively auditioning to become one of the judges on a new talent show, an updated version of X Factor that combined both classical and popular acts. Mike Grayson, ITV’s new head of programming, was flamingly gay and well known to have a soft spot for good-looking male presenters. Ivan Charles fully intended to flirt the socks off Grayson. Once he got the gig, he could begin a new charm offensive with Jack.

Holding a peach shirt and royal blue tie up to the mirror, Ivan started. Was that a noise downstairs? He turned off the cricket and listened. At first there was nothing. Then there it was again, a scraping, scratching sound, a bit like a … key! Oh my God, Catriona!

Frantically Ivan tore around the apartment, hiding evidence of Joyce’s recent presence. Catriona never came to London – never, and certainly not unannounced. But she was the only other person with a key to the Eaton Gate flat, for ‘emergencies’. This was rapidly becoming an emergency. It was too late to get rid of the fishy sex-odour that still hung in the air, but Ivan managed to pick up and throw away his used condom wrapper and lock Joyce’s Rampant Rabbit vibrator in the bedroom safe before the front door finally swung open.

‘Darling?’ he called out hoarsely. ‘Is that you? What a nice surprise.’

He heard the slam of the door and thud of a suitcase hitting the floor. Surely she wasn’t thinking of staying?

But it wasn’t Catriona.

Kendall Bryce looked amused to find Ivan Charles, red in the face and flustered, wearing nothing but his boxer shorts. Well, well, she thought, what have we been up to? Judging by the pervasive smell assailing her nostrils, Kendall could make an educated guess. As soon as he saw her, Ivan’s colour deepened.

‘How did you get in?’ he stammered. ‘I thought you were my wife.’

‘No,’ Kendall smiled knowingly. ‘Luckily for you, I’d say. Kendall Bryce.’ She extended a slender, diamond-encrusted hand. ‘Ivan Charles, I presume.’

‘I … I thought you were staying at the Dorchester,’ said Ivan, hurriedly pulling on a pair of jeans.

‘I was,’ said Kendall, ‘until Jack decided it was “unnecessarily extravagant”. He said that Jester had an apartment here and gave me the key. I had thought he wanted you to keep an eye on me. But perhaps it was the other way around?’

Ivan studied her properly for the first time. She was shorter than she looked in publicity shots, not much over five foot tall, and altogether tinier. In a skintight black minidress that left little to the imagination, Kendall’s waist was so doll-like that Ivan could have closed his hands around it. Her dark hair was pulled back in a messy bun and her stunning face looked uncharacteristically tired, with smudged purple shadows lying under each of her virulently green eyes like bruises.

‘If I’m in your way, I’ll happily check into the Dorchester,’ she announced blithely, lighting up a cigarette without asking Ivan if he minded. ‘But you’ll have to tell Jailer Jack it was your idea.’

‘No, no,’ said Ivan. He was over his embarrassment now, and could think of few things more delightfully distracting than having this wanton girl of Jack’s under his roof. ‘I wasn’t expecting you, that’s all. Jack never said anything. Let me show you the guest room and you can settle in.’

‘Actually,’ said Kendall, blowing smoke in perfectly formed rings, ‘what I really want right now is some food. The shit they served on the plane wasn’t fit for a dog. How about you take me out to lunch?’

Ivan took Kendall to The Wolseley. As he led her to their prestigious corner table, she was suitably impressed to see Kate Winslet enjoying a salad a few feet away and Prince Harry sipping a Bloody Mary with his latest squeeze at the bar.

‘Nice place,’ she said casually. Despite her own fame in the US, Kendall still got star-struck, especially around people who were well known globally.

‘You must have been here before,’ said Ivan, ordering champagne and oysters on the half-shell for both of them.

‘Uh uh.’ Kendall shook her head. ‘This is my first trip to London. First trip to Europe, actually. I toured Japan and the Far East last year, but other than that I’ve never really been abroad.’

‘My goodness. A Euro-virgin,’ Ivan said flirtatiously. He’s attractive, thought Kendall. Not as handsome as Jack, but there’s a definite devilish spark there. ‘Well, we’ll have to do something about that. I’ve got three weeks to introduce you to the delights of the Old World. Not long, but I’ll do my best.’

‘I bet you will,’ Kendall flirted back.

‘Seriously, your parents never travelled with you when you were younger? Wasn’t your old man fabulously wealthy? I’m sure I remember Jack saying—’

Kendall’s pretty face instantly darkened. ‘My dad was never around. He probably took his new family to Europe, for all I know. But not me.’

Aware he’d touched a nerve, Ivan changed the subject. ‘So you’re here for the gigs, obviously. Jack sent me the scheduling for rehearsals and sound check. And you want me to organize some media appearances? I thought we could shoot for Graham Norton, and maybe Radio One Breakfast.’

Kendall inhaled an oyster and took a big slug of champagne.

‘To be honest, I don’t give a fuck,’ she told Ivan. ‘Jack’s the one who keeps harping on about building my UK profile. He seems to think that breaking into the market in London will open up all the other European territories.’

‘You don’t agree?’

Kendall shrugged. ‘What do I know? I’m just the talent, right? I wanted to sign with Sony, but Jack insisted I stay with Matador. He said a small label would give me more focus. So now I’m with this tiny, local LA record company with, like, zero global presence, and suddenly Jack wants me to fly all over the world and “build my profile” from scratch. Go figure.’

Ivan digested all this with interest. While Kendall perused the menu for a main course, intermittently exchanging shamelessly suggestive smiles with Prince Harry, Ivan considered the pros and cons of Jack’s strategy. On the one hand, it made sense, keeping a relatively new artist like Kendall with a small label that would be guaranteed to prioritise her. Matador had a good reputation and had certainly done well by Kendall so far. On the other hand, Ivan could smell this kid’s ambition through her pores. She wanted Sony because they were the biggest, and for Kendall Bryce, biggest meant best. She was impatient to make it to the next level, demanding superstardom like a screeching baby cuckoo demanding to be fed. Clearly, Jack’s organic, slow-build approach to her career was frustrating her and driving a wedge between them.

Equally clearly, for all her bitching and moaning, Kendall plainly idolized Jack Messenger. In the cab on the way over to The Wolseley, she must have dropped his name into the conversation a good fifteen times. Jack thinks this, Jack says that, Jack wants the other. Ivan sensed an opportunity here. He wanted to make the move into pop, and what better way to start than with Kendall Bryce, a rising US star with ambitions in his, Ivan’s, home market? But if he were going to prise her away from Jack, he would have to tread very carefully indeed.

‘Listen,’ he said, once Kendall had ordered a large plate of lobster thermidor with a side of fries and Gustavo had brought them a bottle of perfectly chilled vintage Chablis, ‘I want you to relax here in London and leave all the work shit to me. Try and think of it as a vacation.’

‘With a couple of live performances in front of thousands of people thrown in, right?’

‘Right,’ grinned Ivan. ‘The gigs’ll be a piece of cake.’

‘I hope so,’ sighed Kendall, biting her lip, the first hint of anxiety she’d betrayed so far. ‘I only have a few days to rehearse before the show at the Hammersmith Apollo on Thursday.’

‘You’ll do great. Just focus on all the fun stuff you’ll be doing as soon as it’s over.’

‘Like what?’ Kendall said morosely. ‘I don’t know a soul here. Jack gave me a list of friends of his I can call, but they all sound boring as fuck. I swear to God one of them was called Sister Mary Theresa. Maybe the two of us can go to matins together. Fun!’

Ivan laughed. He liked this girl.

‘Look. I have to be in town tomorrow for a meeting on the Friday after your show,’ he said, ‘but I’ll be done by four. After that I’m driving down to my country house for the weekend. Why don’t you join me?’

Kendall looked doubtful. ‘I don’t know. Thanks for the offer, but I wouldn’t want to impose on your family time. Besides, I’m not exactly what you’d call a country girl. I’m high maintenance.’

Ivan raised his glass to hers. ‘So am I, my dear. So am I.’

CHAPTER FOUR

‘Oh Jesus. I can’t go out there. Seriously, I can’t.’

Kendall hovered backstage at the Hammersmith Apollo, holding Ivan’s hand so tightly she’d cut off the circulation to his fingers.

‘The place is half empty. No one knows who the fuck I am over here.’

It was strange, but for some reason the smattering of vacant seats made Kendall feel infinitely more nervous than the packed stadiums she was used to back in the US. Having ten thousand people watching you was like being alone. With that size of audience, and the stage lights blinding you, there were no individuals to worry about, just a screaming, adulatory wall of noise. Here, in this gloriously old-fashioned 1930s theatre, you could look out from backstage and see individual faces. A middle-aged woman here, a pair of teenage boys there. Real people, who’d paid real money to hear you sing. It was terrifying.

‘Everyone knows who you are,’ Ivan reassured her, not entirely truthfully. ‘And remember, you’re here to support Adele. You think people don’t know who she is?’

‘I guess not,’ said Kendall through chattering teeth.

‘Exactly. The venue’s sold out, with a line outside as long as your arm. It’s only ten to eight. Trust me, there’ll be no empty seats by the time they call you.’

He’s right, Kendall told herself. Calm down. Pacing up and down in a skintight PVC leotard and thigh-high silver boots, a tribute to the great Ziggy Stardust, who’d performed his final concert at the Apollo back in 1973, she knew she looked the part. Adele might be a mega-star with the best voice since Aretha, but no one nailed superstar raunch like Kendall Bryce. If Jack were here he’d have expressly forbidden her outfit. ‘Don’t cheapen yourself,’ was one of his favourite catchphrases. ‘You don’t have to dress like a hooker, or a poor man’s Britney, to get people to buy your records.’ But Jack, thankfully, wasn’t here. While it was true her profile was lower in the UK, the purpose of tonight’s concert was to raise it. She wasn’t going to do that by dressing like Karenfrikking Carpenter.

Suddenly the lights dimmed and the low bass boom boom boom of Kendall’s backing track began to thump around the auditorium. Ten minutes had passed already? How was that possible? She turned around to look for Ivan but he was gone. In his place were two distracted-looking sound-check guys and the four male backing dancers Kendall had been rehearsing with all week. All of them looked white as sheets, but ironically their nerves calmed Kendall’s own.

‘Smile, guys,’ she said confidently. ‘We’re gonna have fun out there, right? Right? Because if we don’t, nobody else will.’

The curtains lifted. There were a few whistles and whoops from the audience as, still in pitch darkness, Kendall and her dancers took their places. Kendall just had time to tap her headset and nod curtly to the sound engineers that her mic was working properly when the lights exploded into life and the track to ‘Shake It Loose’, her biggest hit to date, erupted into the theatre to wild shrieks of applause.

After that it was easy. Leaping and gyrating her way through three tracks straight, belting out the lyrics that were as familiar to her now as breathing, Kendall drank in the high of the crowd’s approval like a drug addict plunging the needle into her vein. Watching from backstage, Ivan was entranced. She was a different person onstage, radiating energy and excitement and joy like a one-woman power plant. The music was unremarkable – basic, hip-hoppy, commercial pop of the sort that hundreds of young artists were churning out all over the world. But in live performance, Kendall took it and transformed it into something unique. Her voice, her body, her angel’s face, but most of all her stage presence, screamed one thing and one thing only: star. No wonder Jack was so focused on her as a client. Managing her must be like trying to hold a flame in your hand.

‘Good evening, London!’ Kendall shouted hoarsely after the third track, leaning on her mic stand for support and swigging from a water bottle. ‘I gotta tell you, it is wild to be here.’

The audience cheered and wolf-whistled loudly, although at this point Ivan suspected that they would have applauded the shipping forecast if it had come out of Kendall’s ridiculously sexy, rosebud mouth.

‘I know you’re all here to see Adele.’ More applause. ‘So I won’t keep you in suspense too much longer. But I’m gonna perform one more track. It’s from my last album, and some of you may know it. It’s a little song called “Whipped”.’

The most explicit track she had yet released, ‘Whipped’ was famous largely due to the fact that it had been banned from the airwaves in a number of US states due to its risqué lyrics. In her live routine, Kendall and her dancers hammed up the ‘naughty’ element, with Kendall at one point engaging in a simulated orgy with all four of her leather-clad boys. Yes, it was cheesy, but it was also sexy as all hell. The audience lapped it up like cats in a room full of cream. Even Ivan got a hard-on watching her. When Kendall finally bounced backstage, her faced flushed with adrenaline and triumph and her hair tangled wildly down her sweat-soaked back, it was all he could do not to jump on her then and there.

‘What’d you think?’ she panted, her green eyes gazing up into his, searching for approval. ‘It was good, right? They liked me?’

‘They loved you,’ said Ivan truthfully. Pulling her into a bear hug, he started to laugh. ‘Poor old Adele. Talk about upstaging the star! I’ll bet her people are spitting blood right now.’

Despite herself, Kendall grinned. ‘D’you really think so?’

‘Definitely.’

‘Jack would have hated all the sexual stuff,’ said Kendall. ‘But I think it worked, don’t you?’

‘Everything worked,’ said Ivan. ‘And if Jack can’t see that, he’s an idiot.’

He’s an idiot anyway, for leaving you here with me.

Tonight confirmed what Ivan Charles already suspected. Kendall Bryce was more than just a pretty face. The girl had something very, very special. Something Ivan wanted, very, very badly.

Boy was he looking forward to this weekend.

‘I don’t understand it.’ Ned Williams ran a hand through his floppy brown hair and sighed. ‘How can she prefer that tosser to me? The new bloody Pavarotti indeed! Just because he’s fat. Badger can do a better Don Giovanni, can’t you boy?’

The scruffy springer spaniel thumped his tail loyally on The Rookery kitchen floor.

‘Armando bloody Lucci, I ask you, Cat. He’s a lard-arse, he’s boring and he’s as old as the hills.’

‘He’s forty, Ned.’

‘Exactly. What on earth does Diana see in him?’

‘Erm, well …’ Catriona was too kind to say that perhaps Diana Grainger, Ned’s ex, saw a private jet, an exquisite palazzo in Tuscany and a Tiffany diamond the size of a cobnut on her finger. Whereas Ned’s idea of a romantic gesture was a day spent in the woods gathering actual cobnuts. Catriona had never much liked Diana. She was very beautiful, of course, but she’d always seemed to be on the lookout for what Jack Messenger referred to as a BBD – Bigger Better Deal. Apparently, in Armando Lucci, the biggest-selling tenor in the world, she’d found it. ‘I expect she just wasn’t ready to settle down, darling. She’s only twenty-two, after all.’

Ned nodded glumly, helping himself to another industrial-sized slab of Catriona’s home-made fruit cake. A broken heart did not appear to have put him off his food.

Only twenty-four himself, Ned Williams was another of Ivan’s clients, one of the few who lived locally. An immensely talented tenor, Ned was still in the early stages of a promising career. He was already well known in England as a pretender to Alfie Boe’s crown, and his debut CD had peaked at a respectable number six in the UK classical charts. But he was not yet in Armando Lucci’s league. So far his modest success had afforded him a charming but distinctly tumbledown cottage in Swinbrook, a battered old MG sports car that was older than he was, and Badger, his wildly unkempt and poorly trained springer spaniel, which accompanied him absolutely everywhere. Handsome in a dishevelled sort of way, Ned’s most striking feature was his height. At almost six foot five, he towered above other opera singers, and never seemed to quite know what to do with his ridiculously long limbs on stage – or anywhere else for that matter. Catriona adored him, but even she could have done without playing agony aunt this afternoon.

It had been a long day. Starting at eight o’clock this morning, when Rosie had announced she didn’t feel very well then, seconds later, projectile-vomited Frosties right across the breakfast table, Catriona had been fighting one fire after another. In between frantic trips to the doctor’s surgery in Burford and Waitrose in Witney, she’d been called in to Hector’s school for the second time in a month after he’d super-glued a sleeping classmate’s hair to his desk and the boy had ended up having to have a crew cut.

‘Why do you do these things?’ an exasperated Catriona asked her son on the short drive home. ‘Do you want to get kicked out of St Austin’s?’

‘Wouldn’t mind,’ Hector shrugged. ‘Have you told Dad?’

‘Not yet.’

Catriona couldn’t tell if Hector wanted Ivan to know, or dreaded it. Certainly his attention-seeking antics seemed to be aimed more at his father than at her. Now that Ivan spent so much time away in London, and increasingly took work calls and meetings even when he was home, he had less time than ever for the children. Rosie, at nearly thirteen, had bigger fish to fry than hanging out with her old man. But eleven-year-old Hector clearly missed his dad. Ivan knew it, and felt guilty, but as a result both he and Catriona were loath to punish the boy, and the bad behaviour got worse. This weekend, Ivan had absolutely promised to take Hector fishing, and assured Cat that he wouldn’t pick up his BlackBerry or see a single work-related person for two whole days. But at two o’clock this afternoon, he’d blithely rung home to announce that he was bringing Kendall Bryce, Jack’s problem client, back with him, and could Catriona please make up the blue bedroom?

‘You arse!’ she shouted at him, losing her rarely seen temper. ‘You promised Hector it would be just the two of you.’

‘Oh, Hector won’t mind,’ breezed Ivan. To his astonishment, Catriona hung up on him. Then Ned had arrived, slump-shouldered and morose, and before Cat knew it was six o’clock, she hadn’t even begun making supper, and the blue bedroom remained as sheet-less and towel-less as it had been four hours ago.

‘Can I stay for supper?’ asked Ned, through a shower of cake crumbs. ‘I can’t face going back to the cottage on my own. All Diana’s horrible vegan food’s still in the fridge.’

‘Well throw it out,’ said Catriona, ‘and of course you can stay for supper, as long as you help me make it. Ivan’s bringing someone up from London with him so we’ll be six with the children. Do you know how to stuff a chicken?’

In the end, inevitably, Friday-night traffic on the M40 was grizzly and Ivan and Kendall were more than an hour late. By the time they staggered through the door at nine, Catriona and Ned had already polished off a bottle of Montepulciano and ‘tested’a good half of the roast potatoes. Rosie – who’d made a miraculous recovery once she heard Ned’s voice in the kitchen – and Hector had both decided they were too hungry to wait, and had polished off a family pack of Hula Hoops in front of The Simpsons. Despite the beautifully laid table and enticing smell of rosemary chicken wafting down the hall, the overall atmosphere that met Ivan and his young VIP guest was one of semi-drunken chaos.

‘Oh, there you are,’ Catriona giggled, tripping over a snoring Badger as she came out to greet them. ‘We’d almost given up hope. You must be Kendall. Welcome.’

‘Thanks for having me.’ Kendall smiled sweetly. ‘I’m sorry to gate-crash your weekend like this.’

‘Not at all, we’re thrilled you could come. I hear your concert was a huge success.’

Kendall smiled, gratified. ‘Thanks. I’m relieved it’s over, but I actually really enjoyed it. Ivan’s been so supportive.’

Jack had described Catriona Charles to Kendall as some sort of goddess, as kind and funny as she was beautiful, and ‘far too good’ for Ivan. He’d waxed so lyrical about her, in fact, that Kendall couldn’t help but feel a little bit jealous. So it was a relief to find that, while Catriona certainly did seem kind, she was actually a rather blowsy, red-faced, middle-aged woman.

Ivan kissed her on the cheek. After the hanging up incident earlier, he wasn’t sure what reception he’d get, but Cat seemed to have forgiven him over the Hector thing, or was at least prepared to let bygones be bygones until they were alone. ‘Shall we eat?’

Dinner was delicious. One of the few talents Jack Messenger hadn’t credited Catriona with was cooking, but Kendall didn’t think she’d ever tasted such succulent chicken or such meltingly soft sweet potatoes. But it wasn’t just the food that delighted her. The Charleses’ house was utterly charming, from its crumbling, wisteria-clad Cotswold stone walls to its warm and inviting shabby-chic interior. Even the dining room, often the coldest and most formal room in a house, was full of colour and life, with overflowing jugs of wild flowers plonked on the table and sideboard, mismatched floral china glinting in the candlelight and Catriona’s exquisite photographs hanging on the walls instead of stuffy old oil paintings. Ivan and Catriona’s children were adorable too, funny and chatty without being precocious, and the other dinner guest, Ned, seemed charming. It was exactly the sort of noisy, happy, close-knit family atmosphere that Kendall had longed for when growing up. She hadn’t been sure about accepting Ivan’s invitation, but now she was delighted she’d come.

‘Did Cat tell you,’ Ned asked Ivan, ‘the record company want to talk to me about doing an album of duets?’

‘Not a bad idea,’ said Ivan, helping himself to the last roast potato. ‘Did they have someone else in mind?’

‘I think it would be a variety of people. Other tenors, maybe, or sopranos. Solo instrumentalists too. Sort of a “rising stars” thing. They mentioned Joyce Wu. She’s with Jester, isn’t she? Have you seen her recently?’

‘Joyce? No. Not recently.’

Was it Catriona’s imagination, or did Ivan seem uncomfortable all of a sudden?

‘Isn’t she the violinist you were telling me about?’ Kendall said innocently. ‘The one who left her music at the flat?’

‘That’s right,’ Ivan said evenly. From the stiffness in his jaw, Kendall realized too late that she’d put her foot in it. Remembering the sex smell at Eaton Gate and Ivan’s evident discomfiture when she’d shown up unannounced, she put two and two together.

Ivan smiled at Catriona. ‘Joyce came over weeks ago to talk about renegotiating her contract. The silly girl left some sheets of one of her concert pieces behind. I haven’t had a chance to return them.’

‘Oh. I see.’ Catriona smiled back, stamping down her creeping sense of unease as she cleared away the plates. It had been years since Ivan had last cheated on her – those days were behind them – but old anxieties took a long time to fade. Catriona’s own parents had divorced bitterly when she was eight, and the thought of anything threatening her own marriage filled her with utter dread. Still, Joyce Wu was hardly more than a child. I’m being ridiculous.

Ned caught Kendall’s eye and gave her a sympathetic smile. She seemed like a nice girl, and was certainly drop-dead gorgeous. How was she to know that Ivan Charles was a philandering prick?

‘Kendall … er, do you like riding?’ Hector asked shyly. Ivan and Catriona’s eleven-year-old son had been in an almighty sulk about his father bringing a ‘work person’ home, until he’d laid eyes on Kendall, since when he’d barely been able to stop drooling into his chicken. Cat didn’t think she’d ever seen Hector blush in his life, but he was certainly making up for it now.

‘I do,’ said Kendall, grateful for the change of subject. ‘I used to ride all the time in Malibu when I was a kid. I adore horses.’

‘Great,’ Hector beamed. ‘We can go for a hack tomorrow then. You can ride Sparky if you like. He’s Rosie’s pony but he’d be the right size for you.’

‘Hey. Don’t offer people my pony,’ said Rosie on autopilot. Then, realizing she might have been rude, added to Kendall, ‘You’re welcome to take him, though, if you’d like. And you can borrow my riding gear too.’

‘But, darling, you and Dad were going to go fishing tomorrow, remember?’ said Catriona, handing out bowls of raspberries and cream. ‘Right, Ivan?’

‘That’s right,’ said Ivan dutifully. ‘Looking forward to it.’

‘Oh, that’s OK,’ said Hector, gazing at Kendall adoringly. ‘It’s more important to make our guest feel welcome. Dad can come riding too if he wants,’ he added magnanimously. ‘Although don’t feel you have to, Dad. Kendall and I’ll be fine on our own.’

Catriona and Ivan looked at one another and grinned. Apparently Kendall Bryce’s surprise visit wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

At eleven the next morning, Kendall waited with Hector and Ivan outside the stable blocks while Irene, the groom, saddled up Sparky.

It was a glorious day. A pale summer sun blazed down on the yard and the sweet, heady scent of buddleia bushes and honeysuckle filled the air, mingled with the delicious smell of horsehair and leather. To the left, across the valley, you could see the steeple of Burford’s ancient medieval church. To the right the rose garden erupted in a riot of white and yellow and pink in front of the newly mown lawn, as perfectly striped as a man’s bespoke shirt. Behind it, The Rookery looked even more picture-perfect than it had last night, with its elegant sash windows and flagstoned front path, flanked on either side by rows of lavender bushes, like a purple guard of honour.

Despite the beauty of her surroundings, Kendall struggled to shake off her bad mood. Jack had called at eight o’clock this morning, midnight his time. Despite herself, Kendall’s heart had soared when his name flashed up on her cell phone. It wasn’t like him to call so late. Was he missing her? Had he realized, finally, after dinner with another one of his thirty-something floozies, that she, Kendall, was the one he truly loved? The only one who could make him happy?

Apparently not. After a couple of perfunctory questions about her flight and whether she was settled in London, and the most cursory of congratulations on her performance supporting Adele in Hammersmith, he proceeded to lecture her on not ‘overburdening’ Catriona Charles.

‘She’s run ragged as it is, babysitting half of Ivan’s acts and being everybody’s shoulder to cry on.’

‘I didn’t ask to come down here, you know,’ Kendall said stiffly. ‘Ivan invited me. He thought I needed to unwind after the Apollo gig.’

‘Without asking his poor wife first, I dare say,’ said Jack. ‘Look, it’s fine you’re there. Not even you can get into too much trouble in Oxfordshire.’

‘Thanks a lot!’

‘Just make sure you clean up after yourself and treat the place with respect, OK? It’s really kind of Catriona to have you.’

Kendall liked Catriona, but she was beginning to get tired of hearing what a saint the woman was. So she had the occasional house guest. Big deal! The way Jack banged on about it you’d think she was Mother fucking Teresa. The conversation deteriorated further when Jack started lecturing her about her rehearsal schedule, and making sure she ‘knuckled down’ and didn’t let Ivan Charles distract her. If he didn’t want her spending time with Ivan, why on earth had he insisted that she stay at the Eaton Gate flat? At least Ivan knew how to enjoy himself, and didn’t spend twenty hours a day chained to a desk and the other four bitching at his acts.

At last Sparky was led out into the yard, tacked up and ready to go. A barrel-chested grey with a distinctly mischievous look in his eye, he wasn’t the most elegant of mounts, but Kendall vaulted onto his back in better spirits. A gallop through the English countryside was just what she needed to blow Jack Misery Messenger out of her hair.

‘Ready?’ said Ivan. He looked especially handsome this morning, Kendall thought, in dark-green corduroy trousers and a tweed hunting jacket, his blue eyes sparkling happily as he chatted to his son. Whatever else Ivan might be, he was clearly a devoted father, as happy to be with Hector as the boy clearly was to be with him. Kendall thought of her own, distant father and felt an unworthy pang of envy. But Hector was too cute a kid to dislike, especially as he clearly had a thumpingly huge crush on her and was too young and naïve to know how to hide it.

‘Race you to the river!’ he shouted, taking off through the yard gates like a bat out of hell.

‘Is he always this keen?’ laughed Kendall.

‘Actually no,’ said Ivan, riding up beside her and casually resting a hand on her jodhpured thigh. ‘It’s you, sweetheart. You overexcite him.’

‘You think so?’

‘Definitely.’ Ivan’s thumb traced a languorous circle on her leg.

Kendall felt a jolt of desire run through her. It was nice to be flirted with. ‘I’m sorry about last night,’ she blurted. ‘The Joyce Wu thing. I wasn’t thinking.’

‘That’s all right,’ drawled Ivan. ‘I dare say I’ll think of a way you can make it up to me.’ Digging his heel into his horse’s side, he cantered off after Hector before Kendall could respond.

It was a wonderful day. After two hours exploring the valley, riding through the woods towards Aston then doubling back along the Roman road towards Shipton-under-Wychwood, they stopped at a gorgeous riverside pub for a late lunch of pâté and bread, washed down with refreshing home-made lemonade. Ivan made a few work calls while Kendall and Hector played about a hundred rounds of rock paper scissors, much to Hector’s delight.

Watching Kendall Bryce kidding around with his son, her dark hair wild and tangled and her face flushed after the morning’s ride, Ivan decided definitively that the girl was a knockout. He knew he had to tread carefully if he was going to prise her away from Jack. Poaching Kendall as a client was the ultimate goal. Bedding her would merely be a fringe benefit, although watching her walk over to her horse, her delectable arse shrink-wrapped to perfection in spray-on white jodhpurs, he wasn’t sure how long he’d be able to wait.

Back at the house, Ned Williams had brought Catriona some flowers as a thank-you for last night’s dinner. Hovering in the kitchen while she made tea, he looked distracted.

Catriona said knowingly. ‘If you’re hoping to see Kendall, she’s out riding with the boys. I’m expecting them back any minute.’

‘Kendall? Don’t be silly,’ Ned blushed. ‘I came to see you. I think I was frightfully boring about Diana last night. You must tell me to sod off occasionally, you know. I’m a big boy, I can take it.’

‘In that case,’ said Catriona, ‘you can sod off down to the stables and wait for them. Tell Ivan to sort out the horses and bring Kendall and Hector in for some cake.’

It had struck her last night, belatedly, that Kendall Bryce might be just the distraction Ned needed to get over Diana’s sudden abandonment. She was about his age, very pretty, and she seemed a sweet sort of girl, not at all the spoiled madam that Jack had warned her about at Ivan’s birthday party. That is, if Hector would let poor Ned get a word in edgeways. Her son had been glued to Kendall’s side like a pre-teen, hormonal limpet since the moment the girl had arrived.

‘Go on,’ she said kindly to Ned. ‘Shoo!’

By the time Ned reached the yard, Irene already had all three horses on leading reins and was filling much-needed buckets of water. Hector, temporarily distracted from Kendall’s bodaciousness by a new delivery of hay bales, was leaping happily from the top of the barn into a makeshift crash pad when Ned arrived.

‘Don’t let your mum see you doing that,’ Ned shouted as Hector performed a dramatic commando roll onto the muddy ground. ‘And by the way, it’s tea time. Where’s your dad and Kendall?’

Hector nodded towards the tack room. ‘In there. Tell Mum I’ll be there in a minute.’

Tucking in his shirt and making a token effort to smooth down his hair, Ned walked into the tack room. ‘Knock knock,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’ve been sent to inform you that tea’s on the … table.’

The smile died on his lips. Ivan had Kendall pinned against the wall. They weren’t kissing, but his knee was pressed into her groin and his distinctly predatory face was less than an inch from hers. As soon as he heard Ned, Ivan stepped back, and did his best to act as if nothing had happened. ‘Jolly good,’ he grinned. ‘I’m famished. I’ll see you in there, shall I?’

Ned didn’t move as Ivan brushed past him. He was still looking at Kendall. Her dark-blue shirt was unbuttoned just low enough to show a hint of cleavage and was coming untucked from her tight white riding breeches. She looked tousled, sexy, and more than a little guilty.

‘Oh, come on,’ she said to Ned. ‘Don’t give me the evil eye. It was just a bit of harmless flirting. Nothing happened.’

‘It would have, though, wouldn’t it? If I hadn’t come in.’

‘Of course not,’ Kendall said brusquely. She always got defensive when she knew she was in the wrong. ‘Ivan’s a colleague.’

‘Ivan’s a shit,’ said Ned bluntly. ‘And Catriona—’

‘Oh, yes, I know, I know, she’s marvellous and he doesn’t deserve her. I’ve heard it all before.’

Ned frowned. Last night he’d got the impression of Kendall as a sweet, funny girl. A little vain, perhaps, but certainly not an out-and-out bitch. He was disappointed.

Registering the emotion on his face, Kendall shot back, ‘If he’s such a shit, and you’re so loyal to his wife, why do you let him represent you? Isn’t that a bit hypocritical?’

‘I’m not sleeping with him,’ said Ned.

‘Nor am I!’

‘Not yet.’ Turning on his heel, Ned left Kendall standing there.

Lex Abrahams was fast asleep when the phone rang.

After a gruelling, insanely long day’s shooting out in Palm Desert (Enrique Iglesias had seen the shots Lex had done of Kendall Bryce last month and decided he wanted a similar look for his own new album), Lex got back to LA to a mountain of editing and paperwork and hadn’t collapsed into bed until after three.

Glancing groggily at his bedside clock now, he saw it was ten o’clock. No doubt the call was from Jack Messenger, dumping another ten tons of work into Lex’s in-tray. There was a reason Lex Abrahams had agreed to work for Jester, but right now he couldn’t for the life of him remember what it was.

He picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?’

‘What’s wrong with your voice?’ Kendall asked accusingly. ‘You sound like you’ve been gargling with sandpaper.’

Lex cleared his throat, wishing he didn’t feel so stupidly elated to hear from her. ‘Late night.’

‘Partying? Lucky you.’

‘Working actually. How are you? How’s England?’

‘It sucks.’ Without drawing breath, she proceeded to moan about everything from having her Dorchester reservation cancelled, to her show and rehearsal schedule, to Ivan Charles’s ‘holier than thou’ clients presuming to try to tell her how to live her life. ‘As if I don’t get enough of that shit from Jack. How is he, by the way?’

Lex could hear how much effort she put into trying to keep her tone casual.

‘Jack’s fine, Kendall.’

‘D’you think he’s missing me a little bit?’

‘It’s only been a few days, honey,’ Lex said kindly. ‘How’s Ivan Charles? Is he as disgraceful as everyone says?’

‘Actually, he’s a good guy,’ said Kendall. ‘He’s fun. Good-looking too.’ Lex suppressed a pang of jealousy. ‘That’s probably why Jack hates him.’

‘I wouldn’t say he hates him,’ Lex yawned, stretching out his arms like a cat. ‘More like disapproves.’

‘I miss you, Lexy,’ Kendall said suddenly, her voice taking on the needy, little-girlish quality it often did when she was bored or in need of attention. ‘I wish you could have come with me. Can’t you ask Jack to fly you out?’

Lex felt his stomach flip over like a pancake. Deep down he knew she didn’t really want him there. Or, if she did, it certainly wasn’t in the way he wanted her. But every time Kendall threw him a straw of hope, he clutched at it like an idiot. If she had any idea how much he missed her, how constantly she filled his thoughts, she wouldn’t say these things and torture him. At least he hoped she wouldn’t. For all her many faults, Lex didn’t think of Kendall as deliberately cruel.

‘Sorry,’ he sighed. ‘I’ve got three albums and a ton of editing to do before you get back. I’ll be lucky if Jack gives me five minutes off to go to the bathroom. Anyway, you’re only there a few weeks. You should try and make the most of London while you can.’

At The Rookery, upstairs in the blue guest bedroom, Kendall gazed glumly out of the window. It had been a lovely day today, exhilarating and flirtatious and fun, until Ned Williams had come along and given her a guilt trip. Sometimes she felt as if Lex Abrahams was the only person in the world who was unconditionally on her side. If only he were a bit more attractive, and a lot richer, he’d make a perfect husband.

Well, almost perfect.

There would only ever be one Jack Messenger.

CHAPTER FIVE

Jack Messenger leaned back in his two-thousand-dollar ergonomic Therapod office chair and felt a warm rush of satisfaction.

He always enjoyed coming to work. Jester’s offices at the top of Beverly Glen, near Mulholland Drive, had some of the most spectacular views in Los Angeles. Jack’s corner office was almost all window. In one direction lay the shimmering blue Pacific with Catalina Island in the distance. In the other, the jutting skyscrapers of downtown LA were framed by a ring of perfect, snow-capped mountains, encircling the city like benevolent giants. It was hard to get depressed in Jack’s home city; in a space so flooded with light, so energized with sunshine and blue skies and astonishing natural beauty. Between the constant light and the equally constant flow of work, Jester was a place where Jack came to forget the pain of his home life. It worked.

Today he was in even better spirits than usual. In front of him on the desk were Lex Abraham’s album cover shots of Kendall. Even by Lex’s usual high standards, they were exceptional, exactly the sort of haunting, slightly unexpected images that drew the eye and translated into bumper sales. With visual media stimulation everywhere, it was becoming both harder and more important to grab an audience’s attention, to stand out in an ever-growing, ever more visually dazzling market. But Lex had done it, and he’d done it with understatement. Of course, Kendall was an unusually beautiful girl, even by the standards of an industry where exceptional beauty was considered the norm. But Lex’s shots had transcended her looks, conveying an innocence and intelligence and depth not typically associated with Kendall Bryce. Matador, her record company, were gonna love it.

Lex’s pictures weren’t the only reason for Jack’s good mood. It was two weeks since Kendall had left for England, and she wasn’t due back for another week. Her first gig had gone well, and the trip, miraculously, had been scandal-free, so far – a personal best for Miss Bryce. With Kendall out of his hair for the best part of a month, Jack finally felt able to relax at home and his productivity at work had shot up too. Brett Bayley and Kendall Bryce between them took up more of Jack’s time and energy than the rest of his client list combined. Like Kendall, Brett had on-off addiction problems (and on-on stupidity problems), especially when it came to dealing with the media and/or keeping it in his pants. But Brett’s band, The Blitz, were also in London on the first leg of their European tour. To have both his ‘problem children’ away at the same time almost felt like being on vacation. Jack hadn’t realized how stressed he was with the pair of them till Kendall had gone too and he’d finally had a chance to breathe.

Which wasn’t to say he didn’t miss her. To this day Jack didn’t know what it was that drew him to Kendall. On the surface she was everything he disliked in a woman: vain, selfish, attention-seeking, capricious. But there was a need in her that Jack responded to, a need for a father and for a friend, a true friend who didn’t blow smoke up her ass like the rest of her rich, spoiled Beverly Hills crowd. Since Sonya died, there’d been a void in Jack’s life that was more than just romantic. He hadn’t only lost his wife, he’d lost his family, his future, his reason to care. In some strange, undefined way, Kendall had filled that void. Not romantically, of course. As sexy as she was, Jack needed a relationship with Kendall Bryce like he needed a hole in the head. But, emotionally, Kendall mattered to Jack at a time when he’d feared that no one would ever matter to him again. In a bizarre way, taking care of her was a relief.

There were other things too. Kendall was powered by fear the way that a car was powered by gasoline. Jack Messenger understood fear. Beneath Kendall’s bravado and bullshit lurked a sweet, smart, funny girl with a good heart. Jack wanted more for that girl than career success. He wanted her to be happy, which was one of the reasons he’d kept her at Matador for so long, rather than let her swim with the sharks at one of the big global record companies. Eventually she would have to make the move to the big league. But Jack was in no rush to hurry her out of her safe little cocoon.

The intercom on Jack’s desk buzzed into life.

‘It’s Kendall for you. Line one.’

Jack’s smile broadened. Speak of the devil. ‘OK, put her on.’

Back at the Eaton Gate apartment, Kendall stumbled around the kitchen opening and closing drawers with one hand, while the other kept precarious hold on the neck of a bottle of Moët. Ivan’s phone was wedged between her shoulder and ear, playing Jester’s hold music. Beverly, Jack’s Rottweiler of a secretary, was ‘checking’ whether the great man was available to speak to her, and Kendall had decided to multitask while she waited.

‘I can’t find a fucking corkschrew,’ she called out to Ivan drunkenly. ‘Your fucking kitchen’s fucking dishorganished.’

Ivan, who’d drunk the best part of a bottle of Chablis himself at their celebration lunch, but who at twice Kendall’s body weight was doing a better job of holding his drink, walked in to a deafening clatter of cutlery. Kendall had upended the entire top drawer onto the tiled floor. Dressed only in a pair of knickers and a T-shirt – she’d stripped off as soon as they got back from Boisdale’s, declaring herself ‘boiling’ in her Hudson jeans, and Ivan’s flat ‘a fucking oven’ – she seemed to be attempting to search through the drawer’s contents with her bare foot.

‘You don’t need a corkscrew, angel,’ said Ivan, relieving her of the Moët and expertly de-corking it with the softest of pops. ‘It’s champagne.’

‘Ooooohhhh. Oops,’ said Kendall.

‘Now go and sit down next door and I’ll get you a glass, before you totally trash the place. Who are you calling?’ Ivan glanced at the phone.

‘Jack.’ Kendall hiccuped loudly, then collapsed into giggles.

Ivan’s eyebrow shot up. ‘Really? I’m not sure that’s the best idea.’

‘Courshe it is. Jack has to be the firsht to know. He’ll be happy for me, you’ll shee. He lovesh me really.’

Ivan didn’t know whether Jack loved Kendall or not. But he’d have been willing to put good money on him not being happy about today’s events.

The reason Kendall was so drunk was that she and Ivan had only just returned from a long, celebratory lunch. They were celebrating for two reasons. The first was that ITV had called last night and confirmed Ivan’s appointment as a judge on Talent Quest, their newest reality talent show. And the second was that at eleven o’clock this morning, Kendall had signed a huge, two-album deal with Polydor’s Fascination Records. Fascination were already huge in the UK, representing the likes of Cheryl Cole and Take That, but their big focus was on signing more big-name US acts, acts whose profile was still building and who were prepared to deal exclusively with the label. Kendall Bryce fitted the bill perfectly.

Financially there was no doubt it was a terrific deal. Not only would Polydor buy Kendall out of her remaining contract with Matador, they were more than tripling her upfront money, and had committed a huge sum to promotion of her albums and at least one live tour. It also fitted well with Jack’s strategy of broadening Kendall’s appeal internationally, and particularly in the crucial UK market. The problem was that Ivan had made the deal. And he had done so without consulting Jack.

Ensconced on Ivan’s suede couch, with a fresh glass of Moët in her hand, Kendall waited impatiently for Jack to come on the line. Perhaps she was a little tipsy. The grandfather clock in the corner was swaying from side to side like a metronome, and the swaying didn’t seem to stop when she closed her eyes. But if she couldn’t let her hair down today, when could she? Jack would be so proud when he heard about her deal. Perhaps now he’d finally believe that she was capable of great things? She was determined to show him she was mature enough to make good decisions, and that all the time and effort and money he’d invested in her had been worth it. Only once he stopped seeing her as a problem, a burden, would he be able to see her as a woman. The woman. His woman.

Coming to England had changed Kendall’s thinking about a lot of things. She’d agreed to move into Jack’s guesthouse because it meant being near him and seeing him every day, but she realized now that had been a mistake. She’d become too commonplace in Jack’s mind, too familiar, a part of the furniture. They needed some distance.

Plus the trip itself had been far more enjoyable than Kendall had ever imagined. Her first gig, at the Apollo, had been a blast, and had received gratifyingly glowing reviews. Meanwhile, Ivan had put together a media tour that had her racing from rehearsals to TV studios to radio stations twenty-four seven, but he managed to make the gruelling days feel like fun. That was the thing with Ivan. With his sharp, caustic sense of humour, his flirting and his love of a good party – and of mischief-making in general, he was more like a naughty frat boy than a management company chaperone. Kendall loved Jack deeply and totally. But being with Ivan made her realize how dull her life in LA had become. Jack was still in mourning. He was depressed. It wasn’t until she got away that Kendall realized that his sadness was contagious.

‘Hey, kiddo! How’s it going over there? I hear you killed at the Apollo.’

Kendall felt awash with happiness. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard such enthusiasm in Jack’s voice. Absence really had made his heart grow fonder.

‘Yeah, it was great,’ she gushed. ‘The Evening Shtandard said I sounded like Aretha Franklin.’

Jack went silent. When he spoke again, all the warmth had drained from his voice. ‘Have you been drinking?’

Kendall was about to deny it when a loud hiccup gave her away. She giggled. ‘Jusht a little bit. But I had a very good reason. You are talking to the new, frontline act for …’ She made a boom boom boom boom noise like a drum roll: ‘Fascination Records!’

She waited for Jack to respond. He didn’t. Holding the handset away from her ear, Kendall looked at the swirling keypad curiously. Had she accidentally pressed mute?

‘Are you there?’ she said eventually. ‘I think I losht him,’ she called to Ivan.

‘I’m here.’ Jack’s voice was icy cold now. It began to dawn on Kendall that all was not well. ‘I sincerely hope you’re joking.’

‘Why would I joke about a thing like that?’ Kendall asked, defensively. ‘I thought you’d be pleased. Aren’t you going to ask me how much it’s for?’

‘No,’ said Jack. ‘Because whatever damn fool agreement you’ve made, you’re gonna unmake. You are under contract with Matador.’

‘Not any more I’m not.’ Kendall felt her anger rising. ‘Polydor are buying me out.’ Why could Jack never, ever give her the benefit of the doubt? He was against this deal before he even knew what it was.

‘I assume Ivan’s behind this. Is he with you?’

‘Ivan was kind enough to set up the meeting. But it was my—’

‘Is he with you?’ Jack interrupted tersely.

‘Yesh. We’re at the flat,’ said Kendall.

‘Put him on.’

Ivan, who’d been hovering in the kitchen doorway listening to the conversation, smiled encouragingly at Kendall. ‘He’ll calm down,’ he reassured her in a stage whisper, before taking the handset. ‘Jack. It’s Ivan. How are you, mate? Your protégée here told you the good news? As of today, she’s officially Jester’s highest-paid client.’

Jack exploded. ‘What the fuck are you playing at?’

‘I’m not playing at anything,’ Ivan said smoothly. ‘I’m doing my job. Getting the best deal possible for Jester’s clients.’

‘Kendall’s my client!’ Jack roared. ‘I sent her to you for a few weeks to do a handful of concerts. And you go and blow up her record deal?’

‘Don’t be so melodramatic,’ breezed Ivan. ‘Nothing’s been “blown up”. Matador are getting their money. Kendall’s moving on to bigger and better things, that’s all. It happens all the time. Besides, you were the one who wanted her to raise her profile over here.’

‘I didn’t want her to move to a British fucking label!’

‘Why not? They’ve got The Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus.’

‘Yeah, as side deals! Not as their primary label.’

‘Which is exactly why they wanted Kendall. She’ll be the first big US act they’ve signed exclusively, and they’ve paid handsomely for the privilege. It’s a forty-million-dollar deal, Jack. If you’d pull your head out of your arse for five minutes, you’d realize this is a good thing.’

Ivan rolled his eyes at Kendall, who was looking increasingly tense and miserable on the couch. Whatever happened, he must not let Jack talk her out of this. This morning’s paperwork would take weeks or even months to finalize. If Kendall wasn’t committed, the whole thing would unravel, and any hopes Ivan had of making the move across to the pop market would be dead in the water.

‘You know, if you really cared about Kendall, you’d be happy for her,’ he said slyly. ‘Forgive me for saying so, but you seem mightily concerned about your own, personal interests here.’

Jack started yelling so loudly that Ivan had to hold the phone away from his ear. As a result, Kendall heard everything.

‘Kendall’s a child,’ he roared. ‘She’s spoiled and short-sighted and completely emotionally immature.’

Kendall blushed scarlet. Was that really what Jack thought of her?

‘She has no idea of the kind of risk she’s taking, walking away from a US record deal at such an early point in her career. She’s an addict, Ivan. She’s unstable and needy and she’s simply not ready for the kind of pressured environment you’re throwing her into.’

Ivan responded, fixing his eyes on Kendall as he spoke.

‘I disagree. I’ve found the young lady to be smart, savvy and very much in control of her own career decisions. I made the introduction at Fascination. But it was Kendall herself who’s been driving this thing.’

‘Bullshit,’ said Jack, again loudly enough for Kendall to hear. ‘Kendall’s no more capable of driving a deal than she is of staying off the booze. I should know. I’ve been wiping the girl’s nose for the last two years. She’s a walking disaster.’

Suddenly sober, Kendall got up and snatched the phone back from Ivan.

‘You listen to me, you smug asshole. You’re not my father, and you’re not my boss. You’re my manager. Which means that you work for me. I’m not going to be held back in my career just because your nose is out of joint that I finally made a decision without you. And it was a good decision.’

‘It was a terrible decision,’ said Jack, deadpan. ‘Let me speak to Ivan.’

‘No!’ said Kendall. She was angry, but she also felt close to tears. She was pleased about the money, of course she was, but what she wanted more than anything was Jack’s approval. She hated herself for wanting it, and she hated him more for not giving it. ‘I’m the client. You can damn well talk to me.’

Jack hung up.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Kendall spluttered. ‘Of all the arrogant—’

Ivan’s mobile rang. ‘Let’s talk about this calmly, OK?’ Cupping his hand over his mouth, Ivan walked back into the kitchen and pulled the door closed. ‘We’re supposed to be a team, Jack. Team Jester.’

‘A team?’ If it hadn’t been so outrageously hypocritical it might have been funny. ‘You got my client to sign a deal behind my back!’

‘Our client,’ corrected Ivan. ‘They’re all our clients, remember?’

This was one of Jack’s favourite catchphrases back in the old days. He wasn’t amused to have it used against him.

‘And it wasn’t done behind your back. It was an opportun-ity; it came up very quickly, and Kendall wanted to take it.’

‘You should have called me.’

‘It was the middle of the night in LA. I took an executive decision, as your partner. I genuinely thought it was what you wanted.’

Jack let out a mirthless laugh. These days, Ivan was about as ‘genuine’ as a plastic Rolex.

‘You know, sometimes I really think you’re intent on holding Jester’s European business back.’

‘That’s crap,’ said Jack robustly.

‘Is it? Then why are you so against me diversifying and pursuing our interests in reality television?’

‘Because they’re not “our” interests, they’re yours,’ said Jack. ‘You want to take time out from the clients to become a TV personality.’ He injected these last two words with as much disdain as humanly possible. Ivan, who’d been about to casually drop his ITV offer into the conversation – Kendall’s deal probably made this his best opportunity to ‘bury’ any other bad news – suddenly thought better of it.

‘And this bullshit with Kendall is all about you too,’ Jack ranted on. ‘You want to move into pop and you’re using her to give you a foot in the door. She may be too naïve to see through you, but I’m sure as hell not. I trusted you.’

‘No you didn’t,’ said Ivan bitterly. ‘You haven’t trusted me for years. Just because I don’t always see things exactly the way you do. Seriously, Jack, who died and made you God?’

In his light-filled office in Beverly Glen, Jack felt his fingers tighten around the phone. How he wished it was Ivan Charles’s neck. For Ivan to pull a stunt like this was bad enough. But to try to turn it around, as if it were somehow his – Jack’s – fault … The whole thing was beyond ridiculous. On the other hand, today’s confrontation had been a long time coming. Perhaps it was no bad thing finally to air their grievances openly? As a partnership, Jester couldn’t go on like this.

‘Kendall Bryce is my client,’ Jack said evenly. ‘I will decide what deals she signs and when. I want you to call Polydor and back out.’

Ivan laughed. ‘Come on, Jack. You know I can’t do that.’

‘Sure you can. Tell them Kendall’s had a change of heart.’

Ivan paused for a moment, then said, ‘But she hasn’t had a change of heart, has she? She wants this Jack. It’s you who’s out of step here.’

‘Either you undo this deal and send Kendall back to LA,’ Jack said slowly, ‘or I leave Jester.’

Back in London, Ivan leaned against the kitchen sink for support. Jack Messenger, leave Jester? Would he really go through with it?

The idea had some advantages, of course, not least among them that Ivan would no longer have to work with Mr Saintly himself, or be hamstrung in his TV and other ambitions by Jack’s stubbornly old-fashioned approach to the business. On the other hand, Ivan had built the London business by being able to promise his clients global reach. If losing Jack meant losing the LA office, he would struggle to attract new talent, and might even lose some of the clients he now had.

If …

But what if I didn’t lose the LA business? I prised Kendall Bryce away from Jack easily enough, and she’s in love with the guy. I already have a good relationship with The Blitz. What if I convinced them all to stick with Jester? To stick with me? My star’s on the rise, after all. Talent Quest’s going to make me a household name.

Buoyed up by the twin successes of the last twenty-four hours and the adrenaline of his fight with Jack, not to mention well over a bottle of good red wine, Ivan felt emboldened.

‘If Kendall wants to stick with Polydor, I’ll stand by her.’ He chose his words carefully. ‘And if you elect not to manage her at that point, then I will. Beyond that, what happens is up to you.’

A few minutes later, Ivan opened the kitchen door and walked back into the living room looking shell-shocked.

‘What happened?’ All Kendall’s earlier defiance was gone. She looked small and anxious curled up on the sofa, like a child who’d just overheard her parents arguing. ‘Did he back down?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Ivan. ‘He quit.’

Kendall’s jaw dropped. ‘Quit? What do you mean? That’s not possible. Jester means everything to Jack. It’s his life.’

‘He gave me an ultimatum,’ said Ivan. ‘Either I get you out of the Polydor deal and send you home, or he’d leave the business.’

Kendall tried to process this, her eyes welling up with tears. ‘You mean … this is my fault?’

‘No, angel, of course it isn’t your fault. Your fault for what?’ Ivan sat down and put his arm around her. She was drunk and emotional, but she looked so fucking adorable in her knickers and T-shirt, with smudged mascara streaking over her high cheekbones, he felt a familiar stirring of desire. ‘For signing a record-breaking deal? For making a real splash in London, like Jack asked you to? I know you’re fond of him. But I’m afraid Messenger’s being a stubborn arse. This is a power thing between him and me. You just happened to get caught in the middle of it.’

Nuzzled against his chest, inhaling the protective warmth of his body, Kendall suddenly felt strangely close to Ivan. For years she’d wanted Jack to hold her like this, to hold her at all, but he was as cold towards her physically as a statue. She had Lex, of course – Lex was an amazing hugger – and scores of lovers. But none of them felt as safe and strong and solid as Ivan Charles did at this moment. Ivan was handsome and funny and powerful and smart. He’d done more for her career in the last two weeks than Jack had done since he signed her. Equally importantly, he was fun to be around. With Ivan, life was unpredictable and exciting. With Jack it was boring and claustrophobic and … disappointing. The years of unrequited love had worn her down. Before she knew what she was doing, Kendall found herself reaching up and clasping her hands around Ivan’s neck. It was Kendall who made the first move, but Ivan responded instantly, kissing her full on the mouth with a force and passion that took her breath away.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ His hands caressed her thighs as he whispered in her ear, his warm breath tickling her neck.

‘You mean the deal?’ she whispered back. ‘Or this?’

‘Both.’ Ivan’s hands were beneath her T-shirt now, fumbling with the strap of her Elle Macpherson bra. ‘If you go back to Matador and Jack,’ he planted a slow, lingering kiss on her collarbone, ‘everything could go back to the way it was.’

Kendall closed her eyes. Ivan’s hands and mouth and body felt wonderful. Wrong but wonderful. She forced herself to think about Jack. If she did this deal she would never go back to his guesthouse. Would she even go back to LA? She wasn’t sure. Either way, Jack Messenger would no longer be her manager. He won’t be my friend either. Or anything more than a friend.

But then she remembered the things she’d heard him say to Ivan. ‘She’s spoiled … emotionally immature … a walking disaster.’ With friends like that, did she really need enemies? Maybe Jack needed to lose her – really lose her – to realize she was something worth having?

Or maybe not. Either way, Kendall wasn’t about to walk away from forty million dollars just to massage Jack’s ego. Not when there were so many more appealing things to massage. Reaching down, she tentatively touched the bulge in Ivan’s jeans. It was enormous and hard as a bullet. For a second she thought about Catriona, and about Ned Williams in the stables at The Rookery, giving her the third degree. But only for a second. Clearly Ivan made a habit of extramarital flings. One more was hardly going to make a difference.

‘I don’t want things to go back to how they were,’ she murmured, unbuckling his belt. ‘I want London. And Fascination. And you.’

It was all Ivan Charles could do not to punch the air in triumph.

CHAPTER SIX

The next morning, Catriona Charles came down to breakfast to find Miley Bayley, the three-year-old daughter of The Blitz’s lead singer Brett Bayley and his wife Stella, drawing on the walls in indelible marker.

‘Stella!’ she said, horrified, removing the pen from the little girl’s clutches to a cacophony of spoilt wails. ‘Look what Miley’s doing. It’s everywhere.’

‘Hmm?’ Stella Bayley looked up absently. Sitting in the middle of Catriona’s kitchen floor in the lotus position, her lithe, perfectly toned limbs folded over one another effortlessly, like bent pipe cleaners, she was clearly in a world of her own. ‘Oh, sorry, sweetie. I was meditating. Nothing gets through to me when I’m in the zone.’ She turned her attention to her whining daughter. ‘Hey, baybeeeee,’ she crooned. ‘Whassamatter? Did you get scared, Miley-Moo?’ Scooping the child up into her arms, she turned back to Catriona. ‘We try never to raise our voices to her,’ she said chidingly. ‘Brett and I are big believers in peaceful parenting.’

Catriona bit her lip and counted to ten. What had possessed her to say yes when Stella invited herself down for the weekend? She was a well-meaning girl at heart, and Catriona felt sorry for her, trying to create an illusion of the perfect family life while married to the vain, philandering Brett Bayley. Stuck at home with Miley while her husband gallivanted around Europe on tour with his band must be a lonely life. But, even so, having Stella as a house guest was tough work. She wouldn’t eat anything that wasn’t organic and cruelty-free and purified to within an inch of its life. She would only sleep in east-facing bedrooms – something to do with energy flow – and was terribly keen on ‘healing’ people by laying her hands on their heads. Rosie and Hector both found this hilarious, but the poor dogs were really quite frightened by it. Old Mr Carruthers, the gardener, had threatened to give in his notice last time if Catriona’s American friend didn’t leave him and his tomato plants well alone. But worst of all was the little girl. Catriona felt guilty actively disliking a child of three. But Miley was without doubt the most whingeing, overindulged, obnoxious brat she had ever encountered, the spitting image of her famous father, and obviously destined to be just as much trouble.

‘I’ll pay to get it repainted,’ said Stella, sensing that Catriona had perhaps been pushed too far this time. ‘But you mustn’t yell at Miley.’

‘I didn’t yell at Miley, Stella. I merely pointed out that she was defacing my walls and took away the pen.’

‘The problem is she’s so creative,’ sighed Stella, smothering her daughter with kisses. ‘Gifted children often struggle with boundaries. Don’t they, Miley-Moo?’

‘What the bloody hell happened in here?’

Ivan’s voice made both women jump. Standing in the doorway with his overnight case in his hand, he looked tired, unshaven, and distinctly grumpy.

‘Darling!’ Catriona’s face lit up. Ivan almost never came home early. ‘I wasn’t expecting you till tonight. How lovely you’re here.’

But Ivan evidently wasn’t feeling lovely. He’d forgotten Stella Bayley was down for the weekend, and was irritated to find her hanging around in his kitchen with her snotty toddler glued to her hip. ‘Who the hell scrawled shit all over my walls?’

Sensing a drama brewing, Miley secured her own starring role by bursting into noisy tears.

‘It seems Miley had a little accident with one of our permanent markers,’ explained Catriona.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Ivan turned on Stella. ‘Can’t you fucking control her?’

‘How dare you curse in front of my child!’ Stella shot back. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Sweeping past him, a sobbing Miley in her arms, she stormed out of the room. ‘We’ll be upstairs in our room if anyone wants us,’ she called over her shoulder to Catriona. ‘Packing.’

Catriona sat down at the table with her head in her hands. Suddenly she wanted nothing more than an aspirin and to crawl back to bed. ‘That wasn’t very diplomatic, darling,’ she said to Ivan. ‘You’d better go and apologize.’

‘Apologize? Look at this shit.’ He pointed to Miley’s artistic efforts, which extended right around the base of one wall and halfway up the side of another. ‘We only redecorated at Christmas. What the hell are they doing here again anyway?’

‘You knew they were coming,’ Catriona said wearily. ‘Brett’s away again and—’

‘I don’t care. Seriously, this place is turning into a fucking doss house. We never get a weekend to ourselves.’

Lovingly, Catriona reached out and stroked his cheek. He would have to apologize to Stella. They couldn’t have the wife of one of Jester’s biggest clients storming out of the house in high dudgeon. But secretly she was pleased that Ivan wanted more family time. It was what she wanted too, more than anything.

‘I came home early to talk to you,’ said Ivan. ‘A lot of stuff’s happened at work. It’s been an exhausting bloody week, you’ve no idea.’

‘I’ll put some coffee on and make breakfast,’ said Catriona, kissing him. Her week had been exhausting too, taxiing the children around from one engagement to another, filling in Ivan’s horrifically late tax returns and cooking for an apparently endless stream of house guests. Saying no had never been her strong suit. ‘You go up and smooth things over with Stella. Then we can talk.’

‘Do I have to?’ Ivan scowled. But he knew she was right. If ever there was a time to stay on the right side of Jester’s big clients, this was it. In the coming weeks, Ivan and Jack would be battling to the death over each other’s acts. Losing his temper with Stella Bayley was hardly the best start to Ivan’s charm offensive. ‘OK.’ He kissed his wife back. ‘Sorry for being such a grump. I’d like a bacon sandwich please, extra crispy. With ketchup.’

Catriona laughed. Grumpy or not, life was always much more fun when Ivan was around.

Half an hour later, having eaten humble pie and cooed grovellingly over the ghastly Miley, Ivan had mollified Stella Bayley sufficiently to be allowed to breakfast alone with his wife.

‘Alone time is so important in a love relationship,’ Stella said earnestly, ‘especially when you have kids. It’s a real hot topic on my blog: keeping the flame alive.’

Having spent the last twenty-four hours in bed with Kendall Bryce, indulging in a sexual marathon the likes of which he hadn’t attempted since his own early twenties, the only flame Ivan was interested in was the one beneath the frying pan cooking his bacon. But he did want to talk to Cat. He needed her advice about this business with Jack and Jester, and her approval of him taking the Talent Quest job. After fifteen years of marriage, he relied on Catriona’s opinion heavily. She was the only person on earth Ivan fully trusted, and it was a relief to be able to confide in her.

After two bites of his delicious sandwich and a gulp of Earl Grey tea, he got straight to the point.

‘Jack and I have had a row.’

Catriona frowned. ‘Another one? What’s it about this time? Honestly, I do wish the two of you would work it out. You’ve been partners for so many years, and friends for even longer.’

‘Yeah, well, not any more. He says he’s leaving Jester.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ said Cat. But one look at Ivan’s face told her he wasn’t joking. ‘You actually think he means it?’

Ivan shrugged. ‘It looks that way.’

‘But why? And leaving to do what?’

Ivan gave her an edited précis of his heated phone conversation with Jack, including heavily biased accounts of Kendall’s new deal with Polydor and his own offer from ITV.

‘Jack’s jealous,’ he concluded, ‘pure and simple. He’s ticked off because I was the one who brokered Kendall’s deal, even though we’re both getting paid on it. And he’s scared shitless of me taking Jester into the twenty-first century. I swear to God, he’d have all our acts putting out albums on vinyl if he thought he could get away with it.’

‘Hmmm. I’m not sure,’ said Catriona. ‘There must be more to it than that.’ The Jack Messenger she knew was the last person likely to be motivated by petty jealousy. She could imagine Jack to be more old-fashioned in his outlook than Ivan. He was in life, so why not in business? But to break up Jester, such a wildly successful business, over such differences seemed to be a gross overreaction.

‘I think you should talk to him,’ she said at last, thoughtfully sipping her own tea. ‘Or I can if you like. Don’t forget, he’s still grieving over Sonya. People in depression often don’t make the most rational decisions. I dare say he’s already regretting what he said.’

Ivan pushed his chair back from the table sullenly. ‘Why do you always take his side?’

Catriona’s eyes widened. ‘What do you mean? I’m not taking his side.’

‘Well, you could have fooled me. I thought at least you’d be pleased about the Talent Quest thing. It’s a huge opportun-ity for me, you know.’

‘I am pleased,’ Catriona insisted. ‘I told you I was pleased. I just think that Jack—’

‘Jack’s a stubborn bloody fool!’ Ivan said petulantly. ‘He’s arrogant and self-righteous and I’m tired of having him looking down his oh-so-moral nose at me. Why shouldn’t I take a job in television? I mean, what the fuck is so wrong with that? Jack talks about it like I’m selling my soul to the devil.’

‘But surely you can talk it through?’ persisted Catriona. ‘After all these years.’

‘I don’t want to talk it through,’ said Ivan. ‘Kendall Bryce is pissed off with Jack for treating her like a child and, you know what, I know how she feels. Nothing I ever do is good enough for him. I’m not the one who’s walking away from the partnership, Cat. Jack is. So it would be nice to think that my own bloody wife supported me, and wasn’t only concerned about Jack’s sodding feelings.’

‘Ivan, I do support you. I always support you.’ Reaching across the table, she grabbed his hand and looked him in the eye, willing him to believe her.

She’s still got the most beautiful eyes, thought Ivan. He knew he was being childish about Jack, that what had happened between them was at least half his fault. But it still made him jealous and angry hearing Catriona defend him. Ivan might betray his wife’s love, but that didn’t mean he didn’t need it, and her approval. They were like two sides of the same coin.

He entwined his fingers with hers and squeezed them tight.

‘Let’s go to bed.’

‘Now?’ Catriona giggled. ‘It’s ten o’clock in the morning!’

‘So?’

‘I thought you were exhausted.’

Ivan grinned. ‘I’ve rallied. Just don’t say another word to me about Jack Bloody Messenger.’

‘I won’t,’ said Catriona. And she didn’t. Upstairs, Ivan bolted the bedroom door, peeled off her dressing gown and pyjamas, and was out of his own clothes in seconds. Somehow having just come from Kendall’s bed made being here with his wife even more exciting. Catriona’s body was the exact opposite of Kendall’s – soft and warm and overflowing, like diving into a mound of soft pillows. If fucking Kendall was a workout, making love to Cat was like the massage afterwards: comforting and familiar and deeply pleasurable.

For her part, Catriona could barely conceal her delight. She and Ivan had a healthy sex life, but she couldn’t remember the last time they’d sneaked off like this for a quickie, especially in the middle of the morning. God knows what the children and Stella were up to. It all felt so illicit and joyful. Life affirming, as Stella would have said.

‘Oh, by the way,’ said Ivan afterwards as she lay in his arms, ‘Kendall Bryce’s going to be staying on at Eaton Gate for a while until she finds a permanent place in London. I hope that’s OK with you. She got caught in the middle of all this nonsense with Jack and I think she’s still feeling a bit fragile.’

‘Of course,’ said Catriona. ‘You should have brought her down here. She’s a sweet girl and Rosie and Hector both adore her. Especially Hector. I think he has a bit of a crush actually. It’s sweet.’

Ivan kissed her on the forehead. ‘No. We have to start ring-fencing our family time a bit more. I can deal with clients during the week, but weekends here are for us.’

A flicker of guilt, trying to make itself felt in Ivan’s chest, was quickly extinguished. What Catriona didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. As long as he kept his two worlds separate and compartmentalized, everything would work out just fine.

Jared Crane looked across the desk at his client and frowned.

He was not happy.

Jared Crane was the senior partner at Crane and Farrelly, one of the top corporate law partnerships in Beverly Hills. Wealthy, successful people paid Jared Crane an astronomical amount of money, by the hour, for legal advice. Having paid the money, it seemed to Jared only right and proper that they should then take the advice he had given them.

The client sitting opposite him today had a reputation for stubbornness. But he also had a reputation for caution, intelligence and good sense, which was what made today’s events even more distressing. The document he was about to sign was one that Jared Crane had drawn up for him, against Jared’s advice and at the client’s own absolute insistence. Jared Crane had told him in no uncertain terms that signing it was not in his best interests. But yet here Jack Messenger sat, directly across the desk from Jared, with a silver Mont Blanc pen in his hand and a look of grimly determined stupidity on his handsome face.

‘Where do I sign?’

‘Penultimate page. At the bottom. But, Jack, I wish you’d reconsider. Or at least cool off for a few days before I send Ivan his copy. Once he signs, it’s done, and can’t be undone.’

Jack dashed off a signature and handed his lawyer the document. ‘It’s already done, Jared. I can’t work with him any more.’

‘Fine, but you do understand it’s you who’s walking away from the Jester name. You’re effectively giving Ivan Charles the brand – a brand you’ve spent your entire professional life building.’

Jack shrugged. ‘It’s just a name. I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but clients are loyal to me, not to Jester. I’ll start a new company and carry on as before.’

It does sound arrogant, thought Jared Crane, or at least foolhardy. Brand names were important in any business, but especially in music, and they couldn’t be replaced overnight. In his enthusiasm for a fresh start, Jack Messenger was giving up his rights in something very valuable. And not to a friend, but to a man in whose interests it was to try and destroy him professionally.

‘Have you called your clients and discussed it with them?’

‘Not yet,’ said Jack.

‘Don’t you think you should?’

Jack frowned. He knew Jared Crane was looking out for his interests, but his mind was made up. ‘With respect, Jared, I know how to handle my clients. The one thing artists hate is uncertainty. Once I’ve formally split with Ivan, I’ll let people know where things stand. Day to day, nothing will change for most of them.’

Jared Crane watched Jack Messenger leave his office with a spring in his step, satisfied with the morning’s business. Jared hoped his own pessimism was unfounded and that things would work out all right for his client. Until today, he’d never put Jack Messenger down as impulsive, still less a fool.

He buzzed his secretary with a heavy heart. ‘Linda, I have a document here I need you to FedEx. Uh huh. Express delivery to London.’

‘Hey, Brett, it’s for you. Ivan Charles.’

Reluctantly Brett Bayley put down the lap-dancer and picked up the phone. His hotel room at the Georges V in Paris was littered with empty champagne bottles and wraps of coke, the remnants of which dusted the top of the coffee table like snow. So far The Blitz were enjoying the French leg of their tour immensely.

‘Whassup, man?’

‘Good morning, Brett. Has Jack called you?’ Ivan’s voice was low and rich, like slowly pouring honey.

‘Jack Messenger? No. Why would he?’

‘Well,’ Ivan cleared his throat, ‘he’s decided to leave the company and set up on his own.’

‘What?’

‘He didn’t even bother to call you?’ Ivan sounded surprised.

‘No,’ Brett frowned. ‘He didn’t. This is the first we’ve heard of it. I guess I should call him.’

‘That’s up to you,’ said Ivan casually. ‘I’m just calling to let you know how much we at Jester value The Blitz as clients. I hope you’ll consider staying with us.’

Brett hesitated. ‘I don’t know, man. Jack’s been with us from the beginning, you know? We kind of owe him.’

‘Do you think so?’ said Ivan. ‘Well, I must say that’s very generous of you. I’d have said that he owes you, after a decade of skimming twenty per cent off your top line.’

Brett had never really thought of it like this. ‘I guess he could have called us at least.’

‘Indeed,’ purred Ivan. ‘I should probably also mention that now that I’m running Jester, we’re going to be halving our commission for our top-tier acts.’

The lap-dancer was massaging Brett’s shoulders, her huge silicone breasts pressed against his back like beach balls. He struggled to concentrate. ‘Halving it, you say?’

‘Uh huh. Ten per cent.’

Brett Bayley was no Einstein. But a ten per cent commission rate was unheard-of in the music business. It would mean millions of extra dollars in his pocket every year. And, after all, he did have a wife and kid to think about now.

‘No pressure,’ said Ivan. ‘Have a think about it.’

Lex Abrahams sat at the bar at Cecconi’s on Melrose indulging in some surreptitious star-spotting. Out on the patio, Simon Cowell was holding court amongst a bunch of artists and record-company execs, including Gwen Stefani and David Alaia, the new head of Sony. Inside, Jennifer Aniston and a mystery man were huddled at a corner table, and Kobe Bryant, the Lakers hero, was enjoying a quiet dinner with his latest girlfriend, a Croatian model with legs like a giraffe and the brain power to match. As a music biz photographer, and longtime West Hollywood resident, Lex spent half his life amongst celebrities, but he was ashamed to admit he still experienced a small thrill when a beautiful actress or a brilliant sportsman sat down next to him. It was part of the buzz of living in LA and, although few people admitted to feeling it, it was one of the main reasons that celebrity hang-outs like Cecconi’s were fully booked all year round. It always made Lex laugh when pretty girls claimed they came here for the food. It was like saying you went to Hyde for the music, or the Chateau Marmont for the views.

‘Can I get you another margarita?’

The girl behind the bar reminded him of Kendall. She had the same glossy dark hair and angular cheekbones. Lex had successfully not thought about Kendall for an entire ten minutes, but now his mind wandered back to her. He’d only had one phone call from her since she arrived in London, which he assumed meant she was enjoying herself. As a general rule, Kendall only ever called him when she needed something – usually a shoulder to cry on about Jack. She’d be back in a few days and Lex was frightened by how violently he was longing to see her again.

He smiled at the barmaid. ‘Sure. Why not?’

Jack was late, and Lex had nothing much else to do. Having worked on back-to-back shoots for the last six weeks, he now found himself with the rare luxury of a few days off. He’d been thinking about driving down to La Jolla for a well-earned mini-break when Jack Messenger called asking to meet for a drink. He’d sounded excited on the phone, as if he had good news he wanted to share.

When Jack finally arrived, weaving his way through the tables towards the bar, Lex noticed how many female heads turned to look at him. Even in a restaurant full of famous, attractive men, Jack Messenger stood out from the crowd. Lex put it down to the fact that, unlike almost everybody else here, Jack genuinely didn’t care what sort of an impression he made. LA was crawling with good-looking men, but very few of them were so self-contained, so entirely without vanity. Jack Messenger didn’t play it cool. He was cool. Big difference.

‘Sorry. Crazy day.’ Sitting down next to Lex he ordered a gin and tonic and a charcuterie plate from the bar. ‘Have you eaten already?’

‘Yes,’ lied Lex, who couldn’t afford Cecconi’s prices. He’d mop up the alcohol with a big bowl of pasta when he got home. So what’s this all about? I’m intrigued.’

Jack took a deep breath. ‘I’m leaving Jester.’

His eyes sparkled with excitement. Lex wasn’t sure how to respond.

‘Wow,’ he said eventually. ‘That’s big news. Where are you going?’

‘I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right here.’

Lex looked puzzled. Had he had one margarita too many? ‘You mean you’re retiring?’

‘Noooo.’ Jack laughed. ‘Jesus, thanks a lot. I’m not that old. I’m splitting with Ivan, that’s all. It’s been a long time coming and I think it’s gonna be better for both of us. I’ll set up shop here in LA, and we’ll gradually regrow a European business. Ivan can reinvent himself as a reality star, or whatever the hell it is he thinks he does these days.’

Lex processed this information. He’d worked for Jester on and off for the last five years, and in all that time he had only met Ivan Charles twice. Nevertheless, he’d made a big impression. By far the more flamboyant of the two founding partners, it was Ivan who people most associated with the name Jester. Jack was the quiet, powerful engine that kept them going, but Ivan Charles was the face of the company.

‘What does Kendall think about all this?’

For the first time, Jack’s expression darkened. ‘It was Kendall who started this whole ball rolling,’ he said bitterly. ‘Not that I’m complaining. The way I see it, she did me a favour.’

He told Lex the whole story, how Kendall had reneged on her US record deal and signed with a British label behind his back. ‘She called me, drunk out of her mind. When I challenged her about it, she refused to call the thing off – or rather, Ivan refused on her behalf. No question he’s leading her by the nose on this thing. So Kendall’s with Polydor and I’m washing my hands of the both of them.’

Lex didn’t try to hide his shock. Not just that Kendall had taken such a huge step without even telling him; but that Jack would actually go so far as to cut her loose.

‘You can’t be serious. You’re going to stop managing Kendall?’

‘I’m perfectly serious. I’m prepared to manage Kendall, but only on my terms, which she refused.’

‘But Jack—’

‘Look, if Kendall wants to piss her career away in Europe in exchange for the first big cheque she’s offered, that’s up to her,’ Jack snapped. ‘She’ll see through Ivan soon enough. When she does, I dare say she’ll come crawling back.’

Lex flattered himself that he knew Kendall Bryce better than anyone. She and Jack were as stubborn and bull-headed as each other. It would be a cold day in hell before Kendall ‘crawled’ back to anyone. The pair of them were proud to a fault.

‘If you want to call it quits as well, I understand,’ Jack said sulkily. ‘Entirely your call. I know you and Kendall are close.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Lex. ‘Of course I’ll keep working with you.’ He considered Jack Messenger a friend but, far more pertinently, he relied on him for a solid sixty-five per cent of his income. It was typical of Jack’s unconscious arrogance that this simple economic fact had never occurred to him. ‘It’s very sudden, that’s all. Quitting Jester and dropping Kendall, all on the strength of one argument. You don’t think you’re overreacting?’

Jack’s frown deepened. He did not think he was overreacting, and he was tired of everyone telling him he was. So far the only person who’d been unconditionally supportive was Elizabeth, his on-again off-again girlfriend. Liz thought that breaking out on his own was an ‘awesome idea’. Jack put this down to the fact that she had seen first-hand how much stress Ivan Charles’s antics had caused him over the past year, and what a daily nightmare it had been babysitting Kendall Bryce. It didn’t occur to him that Elizabeth Grey was hopelessly in love with him and would probably have said anything she knew he wanted to hear.

Lex Abrahams was braver. ‘What if it doesn’t stop with Kendall?’ he asked Jack, who had downed his G&T and already ordered a second. ‘What if Ivan’s already out there now, trying to secure Jester’s other big acts?’

‘I can’t see him doing that.’ Jack sounded supremely unconcerned. ‘He has his list, which I have no intention of going after, and I have mine. It’s in the clients’ interests to make a clean break.’

‘Maybe, but since when did Ivan Charles put the clients’ interests above his own? He could be on the phone right now, making promises to half your acts. Either way, you ought to call people, man. Let them know what’s going on, reassure them. Have you spoken to Brett Bayley?’

‘No,’ said Jack, irritated. ‘Why would I?’

‘Because he’s in London right now, on Ivan’s home turf, and because The Blitz are your most lucrative act?’ offered Lex. ‘Kendall told me Brett’s wife spends a lot of time with Ivan’s wife. That could be dangerous.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Jack dismissively. ‘I’ve managed The Blitz since they were a bunch of high-school kids. I’m like a father to those boys. Brett Bayley’s not going anywhere. Besides,’ he added, worryingly from Lex’s perspective, ‘anyone who wants to go should go. I’m not interested in representing people who don’t want me as their manager. If Kendall thinks Ivan can do a better job than I have, then good luck to her. I won’t be begging anyone to stay.’

An hour later, Lex drove the few blocks back to his apartment in a state of high anxiety. He knew Jack Messenger to be a smart businessman. He had founded Jester, after all, and must comfortably be worth tens of millions of dollars. But this latest decision seemed totally out of character: risky, impetuous, the sort of thing that Kendall might do.

Kendall. It still hadn’t fully sunk in. Had she really traded in Matador for a niche European record label, and Jack for his charismatic partner? It all seemed so unlikely. And what did it mean? Was she going to stay in England now? To move there permanently? Surely she wouldn’t actually relocate to another continent without telling him. Lex needed to believe he meant more to Kendall than that. Jack might be ready to wash his hands of the troublesome Miss Bryce, but then he had the luxury of not being in love with her.

I’ll call her, get to the bottom of it. There must be two sides to this story. Once I know what she’s thinking, I’m sure I can get her to see sense.

Kendall woke alone in Ivan Charles’s bed. It was only six a.m., but there was no chance of getting back to sleep. Light was already chinking through the blinds in the Eaton Gate flat, and a particularly noisy removal van had inconsiderately decided to start unloading right beneath the master bedroom window.

Kendall officially still had her own room down the hall, but in the ten days since she and Ivan had become lovers, she hadn’t spent a night there. She felt surprisingly lonely when Ivan disappeared to Oxfordshire. It was a comfort to sleep on sheets that still bore the scent of him, and Kendall felt in need of comfort.

In the immediate, euphoric aftermath of her Fascination deal, and the unexpected thrill of beginning a new affair, she’d spared little thought for the long-term implications of her epic row with Jack. Now, as the days passed with no sign of bridge-building on either side, the true enormity of what she’d done was starting to sink in. The entire focus of her career and life had now shifted to London, a city she still barely knew and where she was living out of two suitcases. Ivan had made it all seem so fun. It was fun when he was with her, as if the rest of her life, the boring part full of ties and responsibilities and angry record-company execs, faded into a distant dream and only the thrilling present was real. But as soon as Ivan was physically gone, be it to work or home to his wife and family, Kendall felt like what she was: a stranger, alone and friendless in a foreign city. Forty-million-dollar deals were all very well, but she needed a life. The one she had right now revolved wholly and frighteningly around Ivan Charles, a man she had only met for the first time less than a month ago.

Reaching for her cell phone on the bedside table, she turned it on and checked for new messages. There were six, all from LA, but none of them from Jack. Five were business-related and one was from her mother, who had clearly forgotten Kendall was travelling and sounded irritated that she hadn’t stopped by the house since the spring. Depressed, Kendall was just about to switch the handset off when to her astonishment it rang. Number Withheld. It could be Ivan, from a payphone, although perhaps that was unlikely at this time in the morning. Or Jack, pleading with her to come back …

‘Hello?’

‘I just had dinner with Jack. What the hell’s going on? Why didn’t you call me?’

The sound of Lex’s voice burst Kendall’s hope-bubble like a pin in a birthday balloon.

‘Oh, hi, Lex,’ she sighed. ‘I meant to call you but it’s been totally crazy. Ivan’s got me on an insane publicity schedule. I’ve hardly had a minute to myself.’

‘So it’s true, then? You have dropped Jack for Ivan.’

Kendall bit her lip hard. Was that what Jack was telling people? That she had dumped him?

‘Are you out of your mind?’ Lex asked accusingly. ‘After all Jack’s done for you?’

‘OK, just hold on a minute,’ said Kendall. ‘First of all, Jack dropped me, not the other way around.’

‘After you signed a deal without discussing it with him!’

‘Discussing? With Jack? Come on, Lex, you know the man. Jack doesn’t discuss things with me. He orders me around like a child, and I’m sick of it.’

‘Kendall, you should have told him.’

‘Well maybe I would have if he ever called me,’ Kendall shot back, stung because she knew deep down that Lex was right. ‘Did he tell you what a great deal it is? I bet he didn’t.’ She filled Lex in on the numbers. He had to admit they were eye-popping and that Jack had failed to mention them.

‘Would you walk away from that kind of money just to keep Jack sweet?’

‘No,’ said Lex, ‘I wouldn’t. But I wouldn’t stab him in the back either. And I wouldn’t ignore his advice. Yes, it’s a lot of money, but it means turning your back on the US market, or at least shifting your focus at a crucial point in your career. Jack thinks that’s a mistake.’

‘Oh, bullcrap,’ said Kendall. ‘Jack’s just pissed because for once in his life he’s not in control. Ivan brokered the deal and Jack can’t stand it. He doesn’t care about my interests.’

‘How can you say that?’ Lex sounded genuinely shocked. ‘You know he cares. My God, Kendall, I don’t think you realize how serious this is. Jack’s leaving Jester over this. He’s breaking up the company.’

Kendall shrugged. ‘That’s his decision. Look, it’s not my fault if Jack’s decided to throw all his toys out of the crib. Ivan says he’s always had a spoiled, immature streak.’

Lex laughed bitterly. ‘Yeah, well, Ivan would know.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Kendall went on the defensive.

‘It means he’s a Machiavellian, self-centred jerk,’ said Lex. ‘If you don’t know that now, you soon will.’

‘You barely even know him,’ said Kendall.

‘Nor do you.’

A frosty silence settled between them. Lex broke it first.

‘And what about me? When were you planning on telling me that you weren’t coming back? Or was I supposed to read the press release like everybody else?’

Kendall had never heard him so bitter before. For some reason it made her want to cry.

‘I was going to tell you.’

‘When?’

‘I don’t know. Soon. It was a sudden thing for me too, you know. It’s not like I planned it.’

There was so much Lex wanted to say. When he’d dialled Kendall’s number he had a hundred and one reasons on the tip of his tongue why she should come home, why she should make things up with Jack and convince him to stay at Jester and put this whole, crazy episode behind them. But now Lex realized there was only one real reason he wanted her home. It was the same reason he had for calling, and for feeling betrayed that he’d heard Kendall’s big news from someone else, and not from her. And it was the one reason he could never, ever tell her.

I love you.

Please don’t leave me.

Out loud he said coldly, ‘All right then. Well … good luck,’ and hung up.

Thousands of miles away, alone in Ivan Charles’s bed, Kendall Bryce, Fascination Records’ newest mega-star, burst into tears.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Over the next three months, shockwaves from Jester’s sudden, unexpected implosion reverberated through the music industry. Although Ivan and Jack’s inner circle had known for some time that all was not well between them, to the business at large it was a shock to learn just how bitter and toxic their relationship had become.

More shocking still was how quickly, and catastrophically, Jack Messenger’s career nosedived. Jack had started this war but, for reasons nobody fully understood – perhaps out of some misplaced sense of gentlemanly conduct – he seemed intent on walking onto the battlefield unarmed and undefended. Ivan Charles was not so naïve. From day one he saw the break-up of the Jester partnership for what it was – a fight to the death – and set about annihilating his former partner. Without hesitation he called every one of Jack’s acts, offering them vast financial inducements to remain with Jester, as well as slathering on the charm. Jack was a brilliant manager, but he had never understood as Ivan did the cavernous depths of insecurity that fuelled most artists. Ivan validated and praised and gushed and ego-massaged until his jaw ached. Jack couldn’t bring himself to do it, and it was a reticence that cost him dearly. While Jack adopted a ‘business-as-usual’ approach up in Beverly Glen, Ivan spent entire days on the phone, like Jerry Maguire, relentlessly lobbying and cajoling for business. He flew to Paris to schmooze The Blitz and to New York to sign a new deal with Jason Kray, a young man Jack had been grooming to become the next Michael Bublé. He relentlessly leaned on all his contacts in the press, making sure that Kendall’s face was everywhere and that her picture never appeared without Jester’s name being mentioned. Meanwhile, as final preparations began for the launch of Talent Quest, Ivan’s own face and name began to become well known, at least in England. ITV and the production company, House of Cards, set up an endless stream of interviews for Ivan. He made sure to talk about Jester and his famous acts in all of them. If the show was a success, and especially if it was syndicated globally, the new Jester would be clinging firmly to its coat-tails.

For Catriona Charles it was a period of mixed emotions. On the one hand she was delighted for Ivan, of course. She hadn’t seen him this energized since Jester’s early days. In the first week or two after Jack left, Ivan had been terribly anxious, but the business now seemed to be going from strength to strength. Kendall Bryce, who had always struck Catriona as a sweet girl, not to mention incredibly beautiful and talented, was an almost overnight sensation. Bursting onto the British pop scene like a supernova, with her debut British single going straight in at number three and advertisers clamouring to work with her, Kendall had put Ivan firmly and instantly on the map as a pop manager. Much as Catriona loved Ned Williams and Ivan’s other, classical acts, she could see that managing Kendall had catapulted her husband into a bigger, infinitely more glamorous world. It wasn’t a world that particularly appealed to Catriona. But Ivan loved it, and she was thrilled to see him so happy.

But there was a price to pay for Ivan’s success. Despite his expressed desire to spend more time at home, and especially to focus on Hector, Ivan was travelling almost constantly. Catriona didn’t think she had ever known him work so hard. If he wasn’t at the TV studios, rehearsing – the pilot of Talent Quest was going out live, to an estimated audience of twelve million – he was promoting the show, or locked in a recording studio with Kendall, or flitting around the globe signing more and more acts to the ‘new’ Jester. In the last month alone, he’d had to double the size of Jester’s London workforce and move offices to an ugly but much larger space in Hammersmith, just to keep pace with demand. Meanwhile the demands of his family took second place, and Catriona found herself effectively a single parent. She tried not to mind for herself. Things would calm down with Ivan’s work eventually. But she did feel sorry for the children, especially Hector, whose behaviour was on a downward slide again and who clearly resented his father’s long absences.

And finally there was Jack. Though she did her best to hide it from Ivan, Catriona couldn’t help but feel guilty about her old friend, especially as all of Ivan’s current success seemed to have been bought at poor Jack’s expense.

‘It’s not my fault if his clients don’t have confidence in him,’ Ivan protested. ‘I’m not putting a gun to anyone’s head.’

‘But you are undercutting him,’ Catriona pointed out meekly.

‘I’m offering a competitive rate, darling. There’s nothing to stop Jack doing the same.’

All of which might be true. But it still made Catriona feel uncomfortable, watching Kendall Bryce on television telling interviewers how much she owed to Ivan and how happy she was in England. It was only back in the summer that Jack had cornered Catriona at Ivan’s party and asked her to keep an eye on Kendall. How could he see Kendall’s defection as anything other than a betrayal?

A week before Christmas, Catriona sat at the kitchen table at The Rookery, mindlessly peeling potatoes. Tonight at seven o’clock the first Talent Quest was finally going to air. Ivan was up in London, the show was going out live; though Catriona had offered to go with him, he preferred to do it alone.

‘I’m so bloody nervous as it is, I’ll fall to pieces completely if I know you’re there,’ he told her this morning. Standing in the bathroom, his face seaweed green, the poor thing looked as if he were off to face a firing squad. ‘Is this hair dye too obvious? I feel like the roots are almost orange.’

‘It’s fine darling, very natural,’ lied Catriona. Ever since he’d turned forty, Ivan had started obsessing about the signs of ageing, from the grey streaks at his temples to the faint fan of lines etched at the corners of his eyes. Since he’d been offered the television job, his anxiety about his looks had got exponentially worse. Catriona couldn’t understand it. In her eyes, Ivan was much more handsome now than he had been in his twenties. She was the one who was going to seed. But like all her husband’s foibles, she treated this one with kindness and equanimity, and did her best to bolster his confidence.

In the end, Ivan’s hands were shaking so much that Catriona had had to shave him, otherwise he’d have appeared on screen looking as though he’d just staggered out of Sweeney Todd’s. ‘You and the kids watch it here, and make sure you Sky+ it.’

‘Of course,’ Catriona said loyally. She’d have to ask Rosie to show her how the Sky+ worked again. Last time Ivan had asked her to record Entourage, she’d somehow ended up with six episodes of Ben & Holly instead. ‘Call us as soon as it’s over, won’t you?’

Ivan kissed her on the cheek. ‘I promise.’

That was nine hours ago. It was six o’clock now, an hour till kick-off, and Catriona was starting to feel unpleasantly nervous herself. Outside, the afternoon’s thin dusting of snow had turned into a full dump. Through the kitchen window, Catriona watched the fat, soft flakes fall in silent succession, illuminated by a brightly full winter moon. She loved all the seasons in Swinbrook, but winter was probably her favourite. The crisp blue skies and snowy river bank never failed to lift her spirits, but it was also wonderfully comforting to come in from the cold to The Rookery’s roaring log fires, or to brew up a saucepan of home-made mulled wine on the always hot Aga. Of course, the downside of the cold weather was the irresistible urge to eat biscuits and mince pies and buttery mashed potatoes and all other varieties of warming comfort food. When Ivan was around, Cat made more of an effort to restrain her appetite. But left to her own devices, and particularly when Hector or Rosie were playing her up, she found it nigh on impossible not to go for the extra spoonful of brandy butter. She spent her life wrapped up in baggy sweaters anyway, like Nanook of the North. It wasn’t as if anyone was going to actually see her expanding stomach, or the embarrassing red lines left by the waistband of her favourite elasticated tweed skirt.

Tonight, however, Catriona was too nervous to eat. She was only peeling the stupid potatoes for something to do, and because the alternative was going upstairs to try and reason with a sulky Hector, who was refusing to come and watch his father’s television debut. (‘Why should I care about Dad’s things? He never gives a shit about mine.’) The boy was getting more like a teenager by the day. Or comforting Rosie, who’d taken to her bed this morning in a paroxysm of grief because Ned Williams had announced he was abandoning his Widford cottage for Christmas and jetting off to Mustique instead.

‘Mustique!’ Rosie spat out the word in disgust. ‘It sounds like a bloody deodorant.’

‘Please don’t swear, darling.’

‘Why would he want to go to Mustique when he could be here with us in Burford? It doesn’t make any sense. And what about poor old Badger? I bet he pines to death. Dogs do that, you know. Then Ned’ll be sorry. How can he be so selfish?’

After an entire afternoon of the children’s histrionics, Catriona had given up and retreated downstairs. But as soon as she was alone, she found her own nerves began in earnest. Just thinking about poor Ivan going green in the Green Room – was that why they called them Green Rooms, because everyone felt so ill before they went on air? – was enough to turn her stomach in sympathy. Please, please let him be good. Let the show be a success.

Having taken the edge off with two large gin and tonics, Catriona poured herself a third for luck and went through into the drawing room to find the TV already on. Rosie had apparently tired of sobbing Ned’s name into her pillow and decided to watch her father’s television debut after all. Coiled up on the sofa with a big bowl of Quality Street, she looked happy as a clam. Oh, the resilience of youth, thought Catriona.

‘It’s still the adverts.’ Rosie scooched over to make room for her mother. ‘Should I go and get Hector?’

‘No, leave him,’ said Cat. ‘There’s no point forcing it. He can watch the recording later. Oh my God, it is recording, isn’t it? Daddy’ll kill me if I muck it up.’

‘Yeeees, Mum.’ Rosie rolled her eyes wearily. Catriona’s technological incompetence was legendary. ‘Ooo, oo, oo, it’s starting!’

‘Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome tooooo … TALENT QUEST!’

As the voiceover boomed out, the camera zoomed around a cheering studio audience. There were strobe lights everywhere and clouds of dry ice from which the show’s presenter, a generic blonde called Isabella James, emerged in a gold-sequined minidress. A cantilevered stage lifted her upwards, the cameras trained firmly on her lithe, gazelle-like legs, while a six-piece live band played the show’s theme tune to rapturous applause.

It’s very old-fashioned, thought Catriona. Almost like a seventies game show.

‘Cool!’ Rosie breathed rapturously. ‘I love the smoke.’

Isabella James rattled off her script from the autocue, briefly outlining the show’s premise – to find the best vocal talent from all sides of the spectrum, pitting classical against pop and jazz against opera – before introducing the judges.

First up was Stacey Harlow, lead singer of Heavenly, a hugely successful girl band. A natural performer, Stacey smiled and waved at the camera, as relaxed as if she were posing for a family photograph. Next was Richard Bay, a handsome American in his early thirties, better known for his string of celebrity girlfriends – Cameron Diaz, Scarlett Johansson and Amanda Seyfried to name a few – than for the fact that he had written and produced two of the most successful Broadway musicals of recent years. And finally Ivan, whom Isabella James introduced as ‘Britain’s top music manager and the man who brought you the sensational Kendall Bryce.’

The audience applause was clearly Ivan’s cue to acknowledge the camera with a nod and a smile. Instead he stared straight ahead, jaw rigid, beads of sweat clearly visible on his forehead. Catriona winced.

‘What’s wrong with Daddy?’ asked Rosie. ‘He looks awfully strange.’

Some heavy-handed make-up girl had gone overboard with the foundation, possibly in an attempt to hide Ivan’s nerves-induced pallor. The result was a ghastly, orange, waxen look that made him look ten years older – a plastic George Hamilton melting beneath the studio lights.

Isabella James sashayed down to the judging panel. ‘So, Ivan,’ she said chirpily, ‘how do you feel about meeting Talent Quest’s very first live contestants? Are you confident we’re going to unearth the recording stars of the future?’

The camera closed in on Ivan’s face. For a few awful seconds he said nothing, frozen like a rabbit in the headlights. Then, at a nudge from Stacey Harlow, he belatedly looked up at the autocue.

‘Very confident Isabel … er, sorry, Isabella. The standard in the audition rounds was extreme. Er … Extremely. Extremely high. I’m sure our quest will be a success.’

You could have cut the awkwardness in the studio with a knife. Poor Ivan! Catriona couldn’t bear it. Not only had he fluffed his lines, but his voice sounded terrible, a flat, lifeless monotone. Ivan was a brilliant speaker, a natural raconteur. It was as if the camera had reached inside him and sucked out all his charisma, replacing her bright, brilliant husband with a wooden puppet.

She prayed he’d warm up as the show got under way, but if anything things got worse. The acts were mediocre, with the exception of one eleven-year-old choirboy who sang ‘Pie Jesu’ quite beautifully and without any accompaniment. But while the other judges joked with the contestants and bantered easily with the presenter, Ivan continued to parrot his lines lifelessly, his body and manner both as stiff as a corpse.

When it was over, Rosie stretched out her legs, scattering Quality Street wrappers all over the carpet. ‘I thought that boy was brilliant, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Catriona. ‘Wonderful.’

Perhaps the rest of the show’s viewers had also been too focused on the competitors to notice Ivan’s lacklustre judging performance? She did hope so. Things probably seem worse to me because I’m his wife.

‘What the fuck was that? Late-onset fucking autism?’

Don Peters, Talent Quest’s executive producer, didn’t pull his punches when he saw Ivan after the show.

‘I know I wasn’t great,’ admitted Ivan, disconnecting his mic. Following Don into his office, he felt like a naughty schoolboy. ‘But it was my first live show.’

‘Not great? It was crap, Ivan. It was a fucking embarrassment.’

‘Oh, come on. I wasn’t that bad.’

‘You reckon?’ snarled Don Peters. ‘You wanna see the tape?’

Ivan didn’t want to see the tape. He wanted to go home, crawl under the covers and hide for the next six months. The irony was that he’d always assumed television would be so easy. Surely any monkey could stand up and read a few lines off a screen. He was so used to being around artists, performers who loved the stage and revelled in it like a drug, it hadn’t occurred to him that he might actually find a live audience intimidating. Nothing had prepared him for the stage fright he’d felt tonight: the sweating palms, racing heart and dry mouth that had crippled his performance. He’d made a fool of himself in front of twelve million people.

‘Look, I’m sorry, all right? I don’t know what happened. I’ll get it together next week, I promise.’

‘You’d fucking better,’ Don Peters growled. ‘You’re not irreplaceable, you know.’