Friends & Rivals (15 page)

‘Are you all right?' Catriona asked him. Even by Ned's erratic standards, this was early for an unannounced house call. ‘Would you like some tea?'

‘No, thanks. Well, yes, but … I'll make it. You'd better sit down. Are the children still asleep?'

‘Hector is. Rosie's probably emptying half of my make-up bag onto her face and drowning herself in Miss Dior. All for your benefit, I hope you realize. You can't go before she comes downstairs again, by the way.' She started to laugh, but something in Ned's eyes made her stop. ‘What's all this about?'

Grimly, he handed her the newspaper. ‘It's Ivan.'

Catriona stared at the front page for a long time but said nothing. Slowly she sank down into a chair.

‘I'm so sorry,' said Ned. ‘But I thought it would be better coming from me than … Well, someone else. Has he called?'

Still mute, Catriona shook her head.

‘What about the media?'

At that very instant, the phone rang. Ned leaped on it instantly. ‘Hello? No, she's not here. At her sister's, I think, I'm not sure. I'm a friend. No, I don't know when she's going to be back. Look, just bugger off all right?' He hung up, then disconnected the phone at the wall. Later he'd have to pull out all the others. Bloody Ivan. The bastard ought to be shot.

The front page of the paper was a grainy but nonetheless clearly recognizable picture of Ivan Charles kissing Kendall Bryce in a London restaurant. ‘TV Judge Beds Bryce!' ran the headline, with a subheading promising readers ‘more intimate pics' on pages four, five, six and seven. Like a zombie, Catriona turned the pages. For the first time, pain broke through the shock on her face. A series of shots, all taken with a zoom lens through an open window, showed Ivan and Kendall partially dressed and locked in a series of passionate clinches. They were standing up, but the body language (not to mention the fact that Kendall was topless in two of the pictures) made it clear the embraces were a prelude to sex. What hurt most was that the shots had clearly been taken at Eaton Gate.

That's our flat
, thought Catriona.
That's our bedroom.
Her hands began to shake.

‘Did you have any idea?' asked Ned.

Catriona shook her head. ‘I knew she was staying there. But she's only a baby. I never thought … She's been here, you know. To The Rookery. Twice.'

‘I know,' said Ned, who remembered walking in on Kendall and Ivan in the stable block last summer. ‘I met her, remember?'

‘She seemed like such a sweet girl. The children adored her. Especially Hector. Oh God.' Catriona looked up, stricken. ‘What am I going to tell the children?'

‘Nothing,' said Ned. ‘They don't need to know. Unless you're going to leave him, of course. Are you?'

‘No,' said Catriona automatically. ‘We've been together for twenty years. You don't just throw that away over one mistake.'

Ned felt like pointing out that this affair with Kendall wasn't ‘one mistake', but the latest in a long line of calculating, selfish decisions by a remorseless adulterer with a major Peter Pan complex. But he bit his tongue. He was here to listen, not preach.

‘But the children will still find out,' Catriona went on. ‘If they were toddlers we might have been able to get away with it, but at this age they're bound to hear malicious gossip at school. Especially with Ivan all over the telly every bloody Saturday night. How
could
he?'

‘Hi, Ned.' Rosie reappeared, sashaying into the kitchen in a pair of tight Top Shop jeans and her mother's brand-new, horrendously expensive Brora sweater. Her cheeks glowed with blusher like a painted doll's, and she appeared to have applied her mascara with a trowel. When she hugged Ned, he practically choked on a waft of perfume and hairspray. ‘You're here early. Have you changed your mind about Mustique?' she asked hopefully

‘Er, no,' said Ned. ‘I'm off on Wednesday. I just popped in to see your mum.'

Catriona hastily closed the paper and folded the front page picture out of sight. An awkward silence descended, and for an awful moment Catriona thought that Rosie might sense something was wrong and force the truth out of them. Instead she disengaged herself from Ned, pouted disapprovingly and began making herself some toast.

‘What about poor Badger?' she grumbled, getting the honey jar out of the larder and attacking it with a spoon on her way to the table. ‘Dogs can actually pine to death when their owners abandon them, you know.'

‘Ned's not abandoning Badger, darling,' said Catriona automatically. ‘He's going on holiday.' It felt strange to be having a normal conversation with her daughter about Ned Williams when a hand grenade had just exploded so spectacularly into her life. Why hadn't Ivan called her? Where was he now? In the flat, with
her
, with Kendall? Suddenly she felt sick.

Ned turned to Rosie. ‘Actually,' he said, ‘I was going to ask you if you'd consider taking care of him for me while I'm gone.' Sensing Catriona's shift in mood, he wanted to get rid of Rosie and give them a chance to talk. ‘I'd feel much better if I knew Badger was really happy, and he would be with you.'

‘Me?' Rosie flushed with pleasure. ‘You'd really trust me with him?'

‘Of course. He adores you. He's out in the hall now, having a drink. Why don't you go and break the good news to him, show him where he'll be sleeping, that sort of thing. Dogs like to have a good sniff around before they move in.'

Rosie skipped off delightedly, forgetting her toast and slamming the door behind her.

‘Thanks,' Catriona said weakly. ‘Do you think I should call Ivan?'

‘Absolutely not,' said Ned. ‘This is his mess. Let him call you.'

‘I can't just sit here and do nothing.'

Gently, Ned took the paper from her and threw it in the bin. ‘Go and have a shower. Get dressed. I'll make you some breakfast and hang around until Ivan gets back.'

‘Thanks.' Catriona's eyes welled with tears. Ned's kindness was more than she could bear.

‘Oh, and Catriona?' he said as she got up from the table ‘Don't forget to unplug all the phones.'

Kendall woke up late in her suite at The Dorchester, but she didn't feel rested. She'd had terrible dreams. In the last one she was walking through a beautiful forest when a fire swept through the trees out of nowhere, engulfing her in flames. She ran, tearing her legs on thorns, choking on smoke, but when she finally emerged from the forest to safety, she found she was standing on the edge of a cliff. For a moment her heart soared when she saw Jack standing on the other side, arms wide.
Jump and I'll catch you
, he seemed to say. But then she did jump, and he turned away, and she fell deeper and deeper into the abyss, with Ivan's voice echoing in her ears all the while ‘
Bitch … Bitch … Bitch
.'

She woke up panting, fists clenched, adrenaline pumping unpleasantly through her veins. After the initial relief of realizing it was just a dream, and she was not in fact plummeting towards certain death, depressing reality set in. Last night's fight with Ivan. That's why she was waking up in a hotel room. It was a fine line between keeping Ivan on his toes and pushing him away completely, and Kendall was frightened she might have crossed it this time.

Not that he hadn't deserved it. Ever since
Talent Quest
had become a reality, Ivan had spent more time worrying about his nascent television stardom and less time focusing on Kendall's album, her first with Fascination and a critical turning point in her career. She'd risked a lot, leaving Jack and Los Angeles and Matador and putting all her eggs in Ivan and Jester's basket. The least Ivan could do was to give her the attention she not only deserved but needed. Why should she be expected to sit at home like the little wife, glued to his stupid TV show? Jack wouldn't have needed that kind of validation. Then again, Jack wouldn't have been sleeping with her in the first place. He couldn't even cheat on a dead wife, never mind a living one.

Jack.

It had been several months since Kendall's defection broke up the Jester partnership and put an abrupt end to her and Jack's professional relationship. Any hopes she might have had back then of her absence making Jack's heart grow fonder had long since withered on the vine. She'd heard nothing from him. Not a word of congratulation when she released her first UK single, nor when she made
Rolling Stone
's ‘Ones to Watch' cover back in October. Lex was pissed at her too, but at least he still emailed every few weeks. Kendall always asked after Jack in her replies. She missed him, she missed them both. But Lex pointedly never responded to these enquiries, other than with a curt ‘He's fine.'

Career-wise, it was no secret that Jack Messenger was far from fine. That he'd lost, if not everything, then certainly the bulk of his clients when he'd walked away from Jester. Kendall longed to talk to him about it. Not to apologize exactly – she still felt she was right to take the Polydor deal – but at least to explain that she had never intended to destroy Jester, or to hurt Jack professionally. But that bridge had not so much been burned as incinerated. There could be no way back, no leap across the cliff.

Which left her with Ivan. Ivan could be vain, self-centred and insecure, all traits which irritated Kendall, perhaps because she recognized them in herself. But when he let go of his anxieties, he was still terrific fun: rude, witty and unpredictable in a way that made life exciting. Sexually he was dynamite – they were dynamite together. He told Kendall that he and Catriona no longer slept together, that they hadn't for years and, despite it being the ultimate cliché, Kendall was inclined to believe him. Certainly his hunger for her, his wild, toxic need, was a strong indication that something pretty fundamental must be missing in his marriage. And yet, increasingly, Kendall felt threatened by Catriona Charles. When Ivan went home to Oxfordshire for the weekends, he returned to London refreshed, calmer, visibly happy. Kendall, on the other hand, spent weekends in a frenzy of activity – shopping, clubbing, having lunch with Stella Bayley and her coterie of Primrose Hill celebrity friends, snapped everywhere she went by the ubiquitous paparazzi. But invariably by Sunday evening she felt depressed, anxious and deeply lonely. When Ivan came home she would pick a fight with him, and they would end up having wild, intense, make-up sex. By Monday things had settled back to ‘normal'. But Kendall was left with a deep fear of Ivan abandoning her, going back to his kind, comfortable, country wife and leaving her to fend for herself in London. She couldn't let that happen.

After a long, hot shower and a room service breakfast of poached eggs, granary toast and a positively ambrosial fruit compote, Kendall felt considerably better. She would check out later this morning, return to the flat and make things up with Ivan. Perhaps she'd stop by La Perla on Sloane Street on the way and pick up something tiny and lacy and provocative to help seal the deal.

The phone rang. The room phone.
No one knows I'm here except Ivan. He's calling to apologize, to make the first move.
Feeling hugely relieved, Kendall took a few seconds to compose herself, then picked up.

‘Hello?' Her voice was deliberately languid and sleepy. She wouldn't want him to think she'd been up for hours, worrying.

‘Was it you?'

There was nothing apologetic in Ivan's tone. It was cold and accusatory.

‘Was it me, what?'

‘Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about. Did you leak the story to the
Mail on Sunday
? We're all over the front page, and a six-page fucking spread inside. I've just got off the phone to Catriona. She's in pieces.'

Kendall took a moment to digest what he was telling her.

‘A tabloid's running a story about our relationship. Is that what you mean?'

‘Yes, that's what I mean,' snapped Ivan. ‘Someone must have tipped them off and it sure as hell wasn't me.'

‘Well it wasn't me either!' she said indignantly. ‘For God's sake, calm down. Where are you now?'

‘Where do you think I am?' said Ivan. ‘I'm in the car on the bloody M40 trying to get home. There are reporters camped outside my front fucking gates. Poor Catriona's under siege in there.'

‘I see,' Kendall said coolly. ‘Poor Catriona, eh? And what about poor me? Who's going to help me deal with the reporters? Have you even called Sasha yet?'

Sasha Dale was Kendall's newly appointed publicist. Five foot one, blonde and with an angel's face, Sasha had the mind of a sewer rat and the hide of a rhinoceros. Stories like this were her bread and butter. She would know how to handle the situation.

‘Are you kidding me?' said Ivan. ‘My marriage is about to implode and you're worried about your image?'

‘Well one of us needs to be,' Kendall shot back. ‘About both our images. Even if you don't give a shit as my boyfriend about the entire country branding me a home-wrecker, as my manager it is your
fucking job
to care!' She was properly angry now. ‘How dare you put this all on me? It's not my fault your wife is upset, it's yours. No one forced you to fuck me, Ivan.'

‘Don't talk like that,' said Ivan, wincing at the harshness of her language. ‘It's ugly.'

‘Yeah, well, sometimes the truth is ugly. But clearly that's all I am to you. A fuck. A cheap, disposable fuck.'

‘That's not true.' Ivan sighed heavily. His head throbbed horrendously and sweat soaked through his shirt. This was unquestionably the worst morning of his life. ‘Look, I'm sorry I accused you, OK?'

Kendall said nothing.

‘Calling Sasha's a good idea,' Ivan went on. ‘You should do that, and stay where you are for now, lay low. It may take me a few days to smooth things over at home with Cat, but I'll call you as soon as I can.'