Friends and Rivals

‘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.