Celebrity Bride (18 page)

'Your outfit's all wrong,' she says. 'Dahling, you look shameful. The sooner that weight falls off the better. Come here let me kiss you. My goodness, you have no make-up on. What? Why would you do that? What were you thinking? Maybe I'll kiss you when you've taken the time to put some make-up on.'

Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . how have I put up with this for three weeks? I can't do it any more.

'You are still taking the diet pills, aren't you?' she says, looking me up and down once again. The deeply shameful thing is that I
am
still taking them. I'm kind of hell-bent on losing weight because somewhere deep within me I'm convinced that this will make me more attractive to Rufus. I know that this is just nonsense I've absorbed from Elody, and the reality is that Rufus has told me time and again that he likes me curvy, but it's difficult to shift thoughts like that from your mind once they're lodged there, especially when you're in the sort of vulnerable position that I was in when I first came staggering and stumbling into this celebrity world. I also think there's a part of me that wants Elody's approval, which angers me. Why do I want her bloody approval? I don't need her approval.

'You can't come in. I'm busy,' I say. Then I add: 'Sorry,' because I hate having rows like this.

'What do you mean, I can't come in?' she says. 'I have your letters. Your precious letters that you were so desperate for. Anyway, it's not your house. I'll come in if I want to come in. It's Rufus's house and I'm always welcome here.' Elody's voice is laced with a truckload of aggression. 'You're the outsider here, you're the one who doesn't fit in, not me.'

'What? This is my home, Elody.'

'You have let me down. I have devoted weeks of my time to fixing you up and look at you. You are still fat and blubbery, your clothes cannot hang right when you have fat where there should be bones. You are making a fool of me. How can we be friends? How can this work properly? Do you not own a mirror of any kind?'

I say goodbye and shut the door. I don't need any more abuse from anyone, certainly not from Elody. I don't think I've ever done anything quite as bold in my whole life before, as shutting the door in someone's face. I'm standing there in a state of semi shock when there's an almighty clattering on the door: fists banging, a voice shouting and even kicking. I hear the staff behind me rush to see what's going on, and I realise I can't leave her out there. I open the door and Elody reaches in and grabs my hair. My first thought is that she's going to pull out the scrunchie and restyle it, but no . . . she drags me outside by my hair, pulling me so fast that I trip over the step and fall to my knees on the gravel.

'You bitch!' she cries, kicking me in the side of my thigh. 'You absolute evil bitch.'

'Get off me, get off me.'

I look up, and Henry is attempting to pull Elody away as she continues to lash out at me and at the ageing driver.

'I wanted you to be my friend. I needed you to be my friend,' she cries.

'I have been your friend,' I say to her, as I hold my hair protectively against any further assaults. 'But you're not treating me like friends treat each other.'

'Oh what? Like these friends?' cries Elody, tipping a pile of letters onto the gravel. All of them are penned in the familiar writing of Sophie and Mandy.

'Where have these come from?' I ask.

'Letters come every day,' she responds dismissively, with a shrug of her skinny, little shoulders. 'Every day these girls are writing or turning up at the gates and demanding to be let in to see you. Always calling, writing and turning up. Do they not realise you've moved on?'

Oh shit. All this time I thought the girls had forgotten about me and weren't bothered about staying in touch, and they were trying to reach me.

As I scramble around on the ground for the letters, Henry bundles Elody into the car. She looks back at me, tears staining her face, her hair flying everywhere. She looks scared and vulnerable and for the first time I notice that she's actually very pretty beneath her armour. 'You've got everything,' she shouts, as Henry starts up the engine. 'I wish I were you; I wish someone loved me. I wish Jon were here. He died two years ago today. Two years . . .' She screams through the open window as the car sets off on its way, 'I wish Jon were here.'

Pamela comes running out across the gravel and helps me to my feet.

'Are you OK?' she asks kindly. 'You aren't hurt are you? Here, let me help you. Gosh after all you've done for that woman she does this to you. You were so kind to her when everyone else refused to talk to her. Honestly.'

She helps me inside as the carpenter comes jogging down the stairs.

'Everything all right?' he asks. 'I heard the fight.'

'Yes, fine,' I say. I've now got Colin the carpenter, Pamela and two of the security guys who have arrived on the scene to check everything's OK standing round me.

'I'm fine, honestly. Just fine,' I keep reiterating.

'Where's she gone now?' the security guards ask, adding: 'Shall we go after her? None of us will have her treating our Kelly like that.'

'Everything's fine,' I reiterate. I don't want to make a big fuss out of this, and sending the security guards after her or phoning the police, as Pamela suggests, won't help at all. In my mind I keep seeing Elody's desperately sad and lonely face, the smudged make-up and the cries for help. I know that I don't want Elody here any more and, once Henry gets back, I'll tell him that he mustn't drive her around from now on. It's not that I wish her any harm but I think she needs more help than I can give her. Professional help, perhaps? Once things have calmed down, and I get the opportunity to talk to her rationally, I'll try to persuade her to talk to someone who can help.

'Right then, I'm done,' says the carpenter. I've been so busy watching the space from which the car departed five minutes ago that I'd forgotten he was there at all.

'Sorry. I was miles away,' I say.

'I just wanted to say that it's all fixed. No one will ever know it's been touched. Would you like to come and check?'

You know I really can't be arsed. I'm just sick of all this now. I can see Pamela looking at me quizzically.

'Don't worry, I'm sure it's perfect,' I tell him, and I smile at Pamela to tell her that everything's OK.

'Just one thing. This was inside it . . .' he says, and he hands me a small key and a bracelet with two large diamond covered stars on it. The bracelet is made of thick platinum but it's tiny; it would only fit round the smallest of wrists. There's no doubt that this bracelet was made to match Elody's necklace. Fucking hell.

'Shall I invoice you for the work?' says the carpenter.

'Yes,' I mutter, as we shake hands. In my left hand I'm holding the bracelet and the small key.

'It's like paradise here,' says the carpenter as he steps out of the front door.

'Sure is,' I say, but, you know, I'm not so sure.

I feel like an absolute shit. It's official. The letters from the girls are unbelievably warm and loving. I've spent hours just reading and rereading them, bursting into tears time and again as I'm reminded of what utterly fantastic friends I have. Christ. They say that they understand how busy I must be, but that they really hope we can all stay mates because they miss me so much. Bloody hell. If only they knew how much I'd missed them these past few weeks; I've been craving their company every day.

I desperately want to talk to them, but I still can't get hold of them. Sophie's mobile is never on, the home phone line just rings out, and I know they're both off work this afternoon because it's Thursday, so there's no point in leaving messages there.

As I pace around the sitting room, thinking about what to do next, there's a loud bang outside forcing my knees to buckle beneath me in fear. Fuck. What is it? Please tell me it's not Elody come back to attack me Oh God that woman scares me. What if she's come back clutching a hammer? Or an ice pick? Ah. She might have a gun! I need to get out of here. Fuck. I want to see the girls.

I peer out of the window to see what the sound is. Thank God. It's just Henry, back from dropping Elody off. I smile at him, grinning from ear to ear and forcing him to look at me quizzically.

'Thank God it's you,' I explain. 'I thought it might be Elody, back to beat me up.'

'No, she won't be back,' he reassures me, explaining that he took her to the Royal Institute of Fashion. I know Elody loves that place. It's where she first bumped into Jon many years ago, and where she goes to seek solace and to feel close to him whenever she's feeling low. With a bit of luck, she'll calm down after a few hours in there, and leave me alone.

'She seemed more relaxed when we got there,' confirms Henry. 'It's like she was almost in a trance when she drifted out of the car and into the building. Like a dream. I said goodbye and told her to take care but she didn't hear me. Most odd.'

'Well, thanks for taking her Henry.'

'You might be the only person in the world who ever says thank you to the staff here you know. We've all become very fond of you.'

'Thanks, Henry, that means a lot to me,' I say. Then I give him the news that I notice is very gratefully received; he won't be driving Elody around any more. 'I need you to do me a favour though,' I say, and he smiles and cocks his hat.

'That's what I'm here for, ma'am.'

'I need to go back to my old flat in Twickenham to see the girls. Do you remember where the flat is?'

'Ooooo . . . I'm sure I'll remember it when we get there,' he says. 'Is it in the town centre?'

'Yes. You know that terrible lap-dancing club?'

'Yes,' he says brightly, then changes his mind when he realises how that must sound. 'Well, I don't know it, but I know where it is. Some friends mentioned it once.'

It's funny when we stop outside the old flat. Life's changed so much since I was last here. I'm all dressed up in a gorgeous emerald green dress, fabulous gold earrings and bangles. I need to be dressed up so Henry can take me straight to the airport to meet Rufus afterwards, but I'm worried that the way I'm dressed is almost a barrier, a hurdle between my old life and my new one. I hope the girls don't think I've dressed up on purpose, just to make them look bad by comparison.

Henry pulls up outside and I ask him whether he'll come and collect me around 7.30 pm to take me to the airport.

'So you won't need me before then?' he asks.

'Nope.'

'And Elody can't use me.'

'Nope.'

'And Rufus is abroad.'

'He is,' I say.

'How nice,' says Henry with a grin. 'Then I'll go and spend a few hours on my allotment.'

In the freezing cold? When it's getting dark? Gardeners are mad. I must remember to introduce Henry to Frank from Hampton Court. They'd get on very well . . . both loonies when it comes to gardening!

I walk purposefully towards the door, pleased that I've allowed Rufus's faithful driver the time to tend to his cabbages. It's 4 pm. The girls have definitely had enough time to get home from work, and surely it's too early for them to be in the pub. There's every chance that they'll be in. I'm nervous as hell. If they're not here, I'm going to find them. I'll tour the pubs and shops of south-west London until I stumble upon them. I have to see them before going to the airport and there's no way I'm going back to that house before Rufus gets home. I ring the bell.

Henry drives off as I stand at the door, hoping that Jimmy won't come out and engage me in a conversation about lap-dance technique, G-string removal or chicken wings. I ring the bell again. Still no response. Shit, they're not in. What now? I suppose I could get a coffee in Starbucks round the corner and make a plan. Or I could go back to Richmond and see whether they're still at work, or in The Sun.

It's 6 pm before I get into the flat. Happily, it's Mandy who opens the door. And, more happily still, she grins madly when she sees me. I take one look at her and burst into tears. 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' I wail. 'I've been so horrible but I didn't mean to be, I couldn't get hold of you, and life's been so difficult and please, please, Mandy, please tell me we're still friends.'

'Of course,' she says, hugging me and feeling how icy I am.

'Where've you been for the past two hours?' I howl for no good reason. The sight of her has reduced me to a pathetic, needy wreck. 'I've been waiting for you since 4 pm.'

'Come in, come in. Why didn't you call us? We'd have come back sooner.'

'I tried. Like I always try. I ring you all the time on Sophie's mobile but I never get through.'

'How weird. Are you ringing the new number?'

'What new number?'

'Sophie's got a new number,' says Mandy. 'I phoned a few weeks ago to tell you. Elody answered your phone, as she always does, and she said she'd pass on the message. Soph's with Tandem mobile now and she's saved a fortune.'

'Oh good,' I say vaguely, but I wonder why Elody never passed the message on. She knew how eager I was to talk to the girls. She knew I was calling them, yet all the time she must have known that I was calling them on the wrong number. What a horrible thing to do.

'You don't look very happy,' says Mandy, and I suddenly feel more lost and confused than I ever have in my life before. I look at Mandy's warm and tender face and break down into fits of tears all over again. 'Help me, help me,' I find myself sobbing into her large chest. 'I can't cope. I feel like I'm going mad. I don't know what's right and what's wrong and who's decent and who's not. And the bracelet and Elody and I never knew you'd changed your number and I never got any of the letters and I didn't know you'd been round to see me. I feel so scared and so alone.'

'Calm down, calm down,' Mandy is saying, stroking my hair as I let the tears pour down my heavily made-up face and all over the front of her dress.

'Come in the sitting room,' she instructs, and I follow her up the flight of stairs to our little flat on the first floor. I walk into the familiar room with its cheap and tatty furniture, and all the while I'm sobbing my heart out.

'What on earth is the matter?' asks Sophie, jumping up from her cross-legged position on the floor where she's been examining bills and jotting figures onto Post-it notes. It's an activity I remember all too well. The money coming in is never enough to satisfy the demands, so we'd work out how we could shuffle money around and invariably work out that we had about £5 between us to pay the rent, the bills and all food. We'd sit a while and wonder whether there were any part-time jobs that we could get to ease the burden, contemplate the idea of getting jobs behind the bar at Jimmy's place then decide to worry about it some other time. Those times seem so long ago. The problems then seemed insurmountable, but they seem tiny compared the problems I'm facing now.

'I can't cope,' I manage to mumble to Sophie, once she's coaxed me into a sitting position. 'I can't. I don't want to go on leading a life like this. I don't understand the rules; I don't know how to behave. It turns out I don't know anything at all. Nothing that's any use to me, in any case.'

'Leave him and come back here then,' says Sophie in that incredibly down-to-earth, cut-to-the-chase way of hers. 'Just pack your things and come home. You don't have to wear all these posh clothes or have all these absurdly overdressed friends to be happy; they're certainly not making you happy, are they?'

'No, I guess not.'

'Are these new friends of yours making you happy?'

'No.'

'So leave.'

'But I love Rufus.'

'Well, then, carry on being the girl who Rufus fell in love with but from back here, in your own world. Everything will be OK then. Surely.'

I'm staring at Sophie because what she's saying makes perfect sense, but I'd feel a failure if I moved out, and Rufus would hate it.

'I can't do that,' I say. 'None of this is Rufus's fault; I've just got myself into a total state since he's been away. I feel these astronomical pressures on me because of the lifestyle and the things people say and think. I don't want Rufus to be rich and famous. I want him to be a completely normal bloke from down The Sun so he's not surrounded by weird controlling women, and so we can pop out for a drink like normal people do, without the world's press coming too.'

'Then you need to talk it all through with Rufus.'

'But he can't stop being an actor because I'm insecure about it all.'

'Well, he might be able to reassure you; perhaps in future he'll think about taking you with him when he goes away.'

'I think it's deeper than that. I think I'm just not cut out for this,' I say. 'I need Rufus to stop being a film star and then the two of us can run away together and live in a forest or something where no one will bother us, the papers will leave us alone, and no one will care where I got my clothes from or which parties I want to go to. I love Rufus; I just can't handle all the crap that goes with being with him. It's horrible.'

'What crap is this then?'

Oh God, here we go. I know that if they're going to help me, I have to be honest with them, and tell them how horrible it all feels sometimes . . . so I do. I explain all about the terrible drinks parties where Elody makes me get all dressed up and everyone's bitchy about her. I try to explain the unbelievably obsessive need to be slim and how everyone seems to judge everyone else on the way they look and what they're wearing. I explain again about the paparazzi. 'I know it sounds like I'm being silly, but I promise you until you've been through it, you have no idea how absolutely terrifying it is to have the papers reporting on your every move, especially family and personal stuff from your ex-boyfriends and making digs at you, and writing about things they shouldn't know about, so you've no idea who's spoken to them and you're terrified about what will appear next and who you can talk to and trust and . . . I don't know – it ends up just completely undermining you. I have to be honest there were times when I wondered whether you would end up selling stories. It seemed like everyone else did.'

'Not everyone,' says Sophie miserably. 'We'd never do that to you. You've got lots of friends, Kelly. You know, even Jimmy Lapdance came in here and handed me some photos he'd taken that night we were in there, pictures of us all hugging. He didn't want them to get into the wrong hands. Lots of people think the world of you and would never turn on you. Stop focusing on those that have.'

'Sorry,' I say meekly. She's right, but it's hard to get a perspective on the world when you're bloody cooped up in a massive house looking at the outside world through the eyes of the press. 'It's just that I never go out now unless it's to a pre-arranged night with the people on the Hill,' I try to explain to her. 'I feel I can sort of trust them because they understand what it's like being in this little glass-walled world, but it is hard being at home all the time; it makes me more and more depressed. Especially with the diet pills. It's horrible.'

Sophie and Mandy are staring at me with their eyes so wide open they look like a couple of frogs in the early stages of going through a lawn mower.

'Diet pills?' Sophie eventually asks. 'What bloody diet pills?'

I reach into my bag and pull out the small bottle of Vanitas.

Sophie and Mandy both mutter the name as if it means something to them.

'I've read about those,' says Sophie. 'They're bloody lethal. Bloody hell. There was a big thing in the
Mail
about people getting addicted to them and people have died taking them. You know they're illegal in this country because of the trouble they cause, don't you?'

'Are they?'

'God, Kell, where did you get them from?' asks Mandy, full of concern.

'Elody gave them to me.'

'What a fucking witch,' says Sophie. 'Does she know how dangerous they are?'

'I don't know, but they are helping me to lose weight.'

'You don't need to lose weight,' they both say.

'Kelly, you look worse now than before you started taking them; can't you see that? You look tired and pale and, yes, about a stone lighter and dressed in a load of fancy clothes. That green dress really suits you, but you're not the pretty, vibrant young thing that you were when you left this flat.'

Sophie takes the diet pills and walks out of the room.

'Where are you going?' I call after her. Then I hear the toilet flush and I know what she's done; she's flushed them down the loo.

If I'm honest, I feel a pang of relief. I'm sure I would have just kept taking those pills yet I know this feeling of helplessness brought on by lack of sleep and the depressive qualities of the pills is bringing me down.

'You know you're going to have to talk to Rufus about all this, don't you?'

'Mmm,' I say, without real conviction.

'You are, Kelly. You can't bottle everything up.'

'I don't bottle things up. I told Elody how I feel about things.'

'Great, cos she's really going to help you . . . the crazy lady.'

'She's OK,' I say, not entirely convincingly. 'Well, maybe a little mad, but I'm sure her heart's in the right place.'