Friends & Rivals (20 page)

It was one of the mother's at Rosie's school who'd suggested the photography business, after seeing some shots of Catriona's in the school magazine. ‘You could start with my children. I'll pay you a hundred quid plus expenses for a decent portrait of them all together, looking half-human. If you can pull that off with my three terrors, believe me, you'll be beating off new business with a stick.'

While that hadn't quite turned out to be true, Catriona was gratified and amazed to discover that there really was a market for what she had always enjoyed as a hobby. So far she was only making pin money, paying for the weekly shop at Morrisons and the children's after-school clubs. But if she really organized herself, took out an ad in the local paper, put fliers up in surrounding villages and local schools, she was sure she could turn the thing into a proper going concern.

The problem, besides her ongoing battle with artistic integrity, was time. Officially Ivan was supposed to have the children every other weekend and for at least a few weeks in the school holidays. In reality, his work schedule meant that he could take Rosie for a night once a month at best – Hector still refused point-blank to see his father – and the last two holidays had been a write-off. Rosie had gone with Ivan and Kendall to Cape Town last New Year and apparently had a great time. But with Hector still at home, and his behaviour wildly erratic and attention-seeking, this was no break for Catriona.

Hector's evident unhappiness, and her own utter inability to get through to him, frequently brought Catriona to the brink of despair. She'd gained weight, largely due to a hefty reliance on gin and tonic in the evenings after another long day of battles with her son. His private school, St Austin's, had finally thrown in the towel a year ago and kicked him out. Since then, he'd burned his way through two more establishments before Ivan decided enough was enough, he wasn't throwing good money after bad and the boy could damn well go to the local comprehensive. For a few wonderful weeks, this worked well. Hector seemed to enjoy the relative freedom of Burford High. But eventually it dawned on Catriona that the spring in his step wasn't because he was revelling in choosing his upcoming GCSE courses, but because he wasn't going to school at all but hopping off the bus at the top of the high street and hitching lifts into Witney, where he spent the majority of his afternoons hanging around McDonald's or watching matinees at the Odeon.

In a rare show of parental solidarity, Ivan had actually torn himself away from his fabulous new life in London and driven down to Burford to confront the boy with Catriona, face to face. It was the first time Catriona had seen Ivan in more than six months, a prospect that frankly terrified her, but she put her own anxieties aside for Hector's sake and made a titanic effort to appear normal and relaxed in Ivan's company. Unfortunately, the meeting was a disaster. Despite both parents' best efforts it descended into a screaming match, with Hector hurling abuse at Ivan and Catriona helpless to placate either of them, or even get a word in edgeways. Poor Rosie had been terribly upset, and that night Catriona leaned more heavily on her green bottled therapist, Dr Gordon's, than ever, waking up the next morning with a hangover that could have raised the dead.

Now, picking up her three brown envelopes she went downstairs, grabbing her handbag from the kitchen table, and ventured out into the village. It was a sunny, early June day, not yet really hot but with all the promise of summer hanging heavy in the honeysuckled air. As usual, the steep hill of Burford High Street was busy with traffic, but the village still looked ravishing with its mellow stone terraces, spectacular Gothic church and ancient stone bridges crossing the rippling Windrush. Catriona stopped at the post office first, stamping the sub-par portraits and slipping them into the scarlet pillar box with a guilty conscience. To cheer herself up she crossed the road to Huffkins tea shop, treating herself to an enormous slice of carrot cake and picking up two sugar mice for Rosie and Hector, a childish treat that both of them still secretly loved to find on their pillows. Leaving the tea shop, having successfully replaced one guilt with another (had she really just wolfed down all that cake?), she was startled to discover her mobile ringing. She only kept it on so that the children or even Ivan could reach her in an emergency. After a long marriage spent mostly at home raising children, followed by a divorce from a much more glamorous and high-profile husband, Catriona had learned quickly and brutally just how few real friends she had left. Days, even weeks, could pass without her phone ringing at all. When it did, more often than not it was some stranger trying to sell her something.

Perhaps it was a client, someone wanting to give her a new commission? She kept forgetting she was a businesswoman now. Brightening, she put on her capable, professional voice. ‘Hello? Catriona Charles speaking?'

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Charles. This is PC Scott of Oxford Police. It's about your son, Hector.'

Catriona froze. Oh God. He'd been killed. He'd been hit by a car or a train or … she clutched at a dry-stone wall for support.

‘He's been arrested and charged with vandalism and breaching the peace.'

Relief flooded through Catriona's body, swiftly followed by anger. Bloody stupid child! What did he hope to gain by this nonsense?

‘I see.'

‘You can come down and pick him up if you like. Otherwise we can keep him overnight in the cells. Either way, he'll have to appear before the magistrates' court tomorrow morning at eleven.'

Suddenly Catriona felt overwhelmingly tired. She knew she ought to ask what he had done exactly, where it had happened and why. But she hadn't the energy to put any of it into words.

Taking her silence for shock, PC Scott continued kindly, ‘As a juvenile and a first offence, they'll let him off with a caution. But if you want to give him a scare, you might want to let him sweat it out with us for the night. Take him home after court in the morning.'

A million thoughts raced through Catriona's mind, the most unpleasant of which was that she was going to have to tell Ivan, who would no doubt blame her for not being firm enough with Hector, even though it was clearly his abandonment that had pushed the boy off the deep end in the first place. Hector was still only thirteen, and a young thirteen at that. The thought of him spending the night in jail, alone and frightened, tugged at all her maternal heart strings. At the same time, she knew that the more she rode to his rescue, the more he'd keep screwing up.

At last she said, ‘Thank you, PC Scott. He can stay there for the night. I'll see him at court in the morning.'

Then she hung up, pressed her hands to her eyes, and burst into tears.

Ivan leaned in close to his dressing-room mirror, intently studying the results of his latest round of Botox injections. The crow's feet around his eyes were gratifyingly absent, and the deep grooves that ran down from the corners of his nose to either side of his lips looked noticeably fainter. It was a good result, but ever since a snide television critic in the
Evening Standard
had described him as ‘the waxen-faced Mr Charles', Ivan had become anxious to the point of paranoia about his looks.

Even Kendall had learned not to tease him about the fillers, or the fortnightly trips to John Frieda to get his hair dye touched up.

‘It's part of the job in television,' he insisted defensively. ‘Showing up with grey hair would be considered grossly unprofessional. I wouldn't bother otherwise.'

Bitchy reviews aside, the reality was that Ivan did look good. Terrified of looking like an old man next to his beautiful young girlfriend, he worked out obsessively and was far more cautious about his diet than he had ever been with Catriona. Sometimes – often, if he were honest – he missed the carefree, calorie-filled family suppers of the old days. Cat's sticky toffee pudding with homemade butterscotch sauce still haunted his dreams on a regular basis. But his new life required energy, and energy, at his age, required discipline.

There were days when his levels of exhaustion actually scared him. Apart from the gruelling business of being a key player in a hit TV show, he still had an immense workload at Jester, which was losing money at an alarming rate. No matter how many new agents he hired, some at extortionate salaries, the big clients still wanted Ivan's personal attention. And none more so than Kendall, who was almost as demanding professionally as she was in bed. Only last night, bucking and writhing on top of him, frantically in pursuit of her third orgasm of the night, she suddenly stopped and began grilling him on the marketing campaign for her second UK album. Her first release,
Girl Reborn
, had performed solidly but had not been the spectacular, ball-out-of-the-park smash that both she and Polydor had been hoping for. Kendall blamed this roundly on poor marketing, which she in turn blamed on Ivan.

‘You'd better not take your eye off the ball this time,' she warned him, arching her back and clenching her muscles around Ivan's already wilting dick. How the hell was he supposed to maintain a hard-on while she nagged him mid-shag? He felt like an old horse being ridden into the glue factory. ‘I'm tired of hearing about bloody
Talent Quest
. You're supposed to be
my
manager, and
my
boyfriend. This album should be your number one priority. Ivan? Are you listening to me? What the hell happened to your erection?'

Secretly, Ivan had started turning to Viagra to help him keep up with Kendall's needs. Not that sleeping with her was any kind of chore. Sex, in fact, just got better and better, a drug he needed every bit as badly as she did. But if the spirit was willing, the forty-two-year-old flesh was weak. Between the stress of his home and work lives, as well as the lingering guilt over Catriona and the children, especially Hector, he felt as if he were being pulled apart. Piled on top of all that was the financial pressure of running two households, paying school fees and maintenance, and trying to keep pace with Kendall's wildly profligate spending. He'd wanted fame and excitement and he'd got them. But once the adrenaline rush faded, Ivan felt more tired than he ever had in his life.

A runner put her head round the door. She was a pretty girl, blonde and slim with pert apple breasts that jiggled deliciously underneath her white T-shirt. She couldn't have been much more than eighteen.
A few years ago
, Ivan thought,
I'd have had a crack at that.
Now just the thought of more sex made him want to crawl under a duvet in a dark room and go to sleep for a year.

‘Ava's about to go on. Do you want to come and watch?'

Ivan brightened. ‘Absolutely.'

Ava Bentley, a sweet, slightly chubby seventeen-year-old from Rosedale Abbey in Yorkshire, had become Ivan's lifeline, his golden ticket. The most talked-about contestant of the show so far, Ava had won the nation's heart with her natural, infectious laugh, her unaffected good humour and, of course, her sensational voice. If Ivan played his cards right – and he intended to – Ava would be Jester's Messiah, the voice of an angel that would lead his ailing business out of the wilderness and back into the light.

Slipping into the back of sound stage one, where the remaining contestants were in the midst of a last-minute run-through of their songs for tonight's show, Ivan smiled paternally at his favorite
Talent Quest
mentee. This week's theme was ‘jazz greats' and Ava was performing Etta James's famous ‘At Last'. Seeing Ivan, she waved at him sweetly mid-song, like a primary-school child spotting its mother in the audience of the nativity play.

‘Ava, love, keep your focus,' John the voice coach shouted encouragingly. ‘Eyes front, remember. Camera one.'

‘Sorry.' Ivan smiled sheepishly. ‘Just forget I'm here.'

Ava finished the track, her high, pure voice lending the song a breathless, innocent quality quite different to the soulful Etta James and Beyoncé versions. Skipping over to Ivan in a knee-length floral dress, she looked even younger than her seventeen years, her face flushed with happiness and excitement.

‘Was I all right?' she asked nervously, in the broad Yorkshire accent that the whole of Britain had come to know and love. ‘I felt like the last verse was a bit wobbly.'

‘You were perfect,' said Ivan. ‘Seriously. Don't change a thing, my darling. Are your mum and dad here yet?'

Ava looked around. ‘Somewhere. They're dead excited about our dinner tonight. My dad said the restaurant you've booked is well posh.'

Ivan laughed. ‘Tell your dad he can get used to posh restaurants from now on. Only the best for Britain's newest singing superstar.'

Both Ava and her parents were simple people who trusted Ivan implicitly. It had been no mean feat to secure Ava's loyalty to him, personally, rather than to
Talent Quest
, and to tie her rising fortunes inexorably to his own. Tonight's after-show dinner was the latest step in his relentless wooing of the Bentleys. But he wasn't out of the woods yet.

‘Stop it,' Ava giggled. ‘I haven't won it yet, you know. Some of the others are dead good, especially Michael.'

‘Michael? Who's Michael?' Ivan teased.

The reality was that he didn't, in fact,
want
Ava to win the ITV competition. If she actually won the show, and right now she was Ladbrokes' odds-on favourite, she would be contractually bound to release her first album with Sony, under the terms of the deal Don Peters had made back when
Talent Quest
launched. Peters' own management company, Phoenix, would take charge of the winner's career.

If Ava came in second or third, however, legally she would be free to sign with whomever she chose, and on whatever terms. If Ivan was going to poach her for Jester, (and get her clueless parents to sign away fifty per cent of her earnings up front), he had to navigate his way through a minefield. First, he had to make sure Ava did well enough on the show to keep her profile high in the press, but not so well that she won. Secondly, he had to convince her and her parents to agree to Jester's terms, which meant shielding them from
any
other influences within the business who could have told them how extortionate and exploitative Ivan's proposal actually was. And thirdly, if he pulled it off, he had to figure out a way to smooth things over with Don Peters sufficiently to be allowed to keep his job on the show. Legally, runners-up were free to cut their own deals. But amongst show insiders, the absolute assumption was that Don Peters, as
Talent Quest
's creator, had first dibs on all contestants, especially the budding media stars like Ava. After the first series, all seven finalists had signed up with Phoenix. Stealing Ava Bentley from under Don Peters' nose was going to ruffle more than a few feathers.