Friends & Rivals (33 page)

‘Sure,' Lex called after her retreating back.
Don't hold your breath.

Catriona switched on the radio and sat down at the kitchen table with a well-earned, and much-needed, cup of tea. Stella Bayley had finally gone home to London yesterday after an emotionally draining three-night stay, and Catriona had spent the morning cleaning the house, sorting out her filing, and generally getting her life back on an even keel. The delight of having the house to herself and sipping a big mug of Earl Grey while Classic FM washed over her was quite extraordinary. From now on, she told herself, she would make sure she enjoyed life's simple pleasures. The garden; spending time with her children; peace, on the rare moments she got it. The romantic side of her life might be over, but she still lived in a beautiful home in a glorious village, she had her photography, her friends (well, Ned), her health. There was so much to be thankful for.

She'd thought briefly about calling Ivan to let him know about The Blitz's defection to JSM. She and Ivan had been getting on much better recently, touching base every few days about the children, and in particular Hector, who was making great progress since his return from LA. But on balance she'd decided against it. They weren't married any more, and it wasn't really her place to get involved with Ivan's business problems. The fact that this particular problem involved Jack would only make it more charged and difficult. Besides, he'd find out for himself soon enough.

A knock on the front door startled her. No one ever used the front door – certainly not the postman, who always came up the twitten to the side entrance like everybody else. Perhaps it was some delivery man from London or Oxford, although she couldn't remember having ordered anything.

‘Hang on!' she shouted, putting down her tea and running into the hallway. ‘I'm coming.' She was still in her dressing gown and slippers (oh, the decadence of the work-from-home lifestyle) and suddenly found herself hoping that it wasn't the vicar or someone from Hector's school dropping in for a social call. The front door was bolted top and bottom and, as it was never opened, the bolts were stiff. By the time she'd wrenched them free, her cheeks were flushed with exertion and her hair was dishevelled, escaping from its elastic band in strands that stuck out at all angles.

‘Sorry,' she panted, opening the door. ‘We don't normally use this entrance. I …'

The words trailed off mid-sentence. Standing on the doorstep in a quite ridiculous outfit that included a beret, a silk cravat tied at the neck and covering half his face, and a pair of Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses, was Jack Messenger.

‘Hello, Cat. Can I come in?'

Numbly, Catriona stepped back into the hallway, letting him inside and closing the door behind them. She had any number of questions to ask him, but the one that came to her lips was, ‘What on earth are you wearing?'

‘This?' said Jack, admiring himself in the hall mirror. ‘It's my disguise. I'm here incognito, you see. I wouldn't want any of the neighbours to see me and alert your dastardly husband.'

He grinned.
Was he joking?
Suddenly Catriona felt herself feeling quite cross.

‘Well, you needn't involve me in your games,' she said hotly, walking back into the kitchen. ‘I had Stella Bayley here for three nights in absolute pieces about Brett leaving her. She said you've poached him back to LA.'

Jack followed her, frowning. ‘It's true I re-signed the Blitz to JSM,' he said defensively. ‘But that had nothing to do with Brett leaving Stella. He's having an affair.'

‘Yes, with a girl in LA,' said Catriona. ‘It would have fizzled out like all the others if you hadn't offered to re-start his career over there.'

She knew she was being unfair, but her anger needed an outlet, and Stella Bayley's misery was as good a peg to hang it on as anything else.

‘Cat,' Jack said gently, touching her arm. ‘It's business.'

‘Hmm.' Catriona sniffed. ‘Bloody backhanded business if you ask me. You only came to London now because you knew Ivan was away in Paris. You're stealing Jester's clients behind his back.'

‘Hang on …' began Jack, but Catriona was on a roll.

‘It's the exact same thing that Ivan did to you with Kendall, but two wrongs don't make a right, you know. Not to mention the fact that if you bankrupt Ivan, you'll be bankrupting me. But I suppose none of that means anything to you, just as long as you end up getting Kendall back.'

‘
Kendall?
' Jack looked baffled. ‘This has nothing to do with Kendall. She's not even here, she's in Paris with Ivan.'

‘I know where she bloody is!' shouted Catriona.

For a moment they both stood there in silence. Jack was too scared to say anything else in case he got his head bitten off, and Cat was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Ten minutes ago she'd been full of calm positivity. Now she felt as flustered and awkward as a schoolgirl, sitting down, then standing up again, her hands flapping uselessly like the wings of some flightless bird. Catching sight of her reflection in the window, all wild hair and egg-stained dressing gown, she let out a little moan of horror and ran out of the room.

‘Make yourself a cup of tea,' she called over her shoulder. ‘I'm going to get dressed.'

Upstairs in the bathroom, Catriona stood naked in front of the mirror, shaking like a jelly.

Get a grip
, she told herself sternly.
You must get a grip.

Letting go of the idea of Jack had been easy. Well, relatively easy. But now that she was faced with actual flesh and blood Jack having a cup of tea in her kitchen, her emotions were whipsawing all over the place. Was she angry because of Stella or because of Jack doing the dirty on Ivan? Or was she angry because he'd been in England for a week and hadn't bothered to call? Maybe it wasn't Jack she was furious with at all, but herself, for allowing a ridiculous, childish crush to get the better of her like this.

A crush! At forty years old, on a man I've known more than half my life.
It was the very definition of pathetic.

Jumping into the shower, she turned the jets up to full blast and the water onto cold in an attempt to jolt some sense back into herself. Once dry, she dressed in a pair of slim-fitting dark jeans from Next and the chocolate-brown cashmere polo neck that Ned Williams had bought her last year for Christmas but which she'd been far too fat to wear until now. She deliberately did not wear make-up. Jack was an old friend, not a suitor she was trying to impress. But she did brush her tangled blonde hair and tie it back in a neater ponytail, spritzing on a little Chanel 19 because that was what she always did. It wouldn't be right to change her habits just
because
Jack was here, and he'd once kissed her out of pity.
Oh God, stop overthinking it. He's going to think you're a madwoman and run screaming from the house.

When she came down, Jack was standing in the kitchen looking out over the walled garden. He turned around when he heard her tread. ‘I'm sorry if I upset you. I didn't come here to fight about business. I came to visit a dear, old friend.'

Dear. Old. Friend.
Catriona repeated the words in her head like a catechism.
That's how he sees me. That's what we are to each other.

‘It's me who should be apologizing,' she said. ‘I overreacted. I just felt terribly bad for poor Stella … and things.'

Jack looked at his watch. ‘It's almost twelve,' he said brightly. ‘Why don't we drive over to The Fox at Oddington for a bite of lunch? My treat.'

Catriona racked her brains for a reason to refuse. It was a bit disloyal to Ivan, especially if what Stella had said about Jack raiding his client list behind his back was true. Then again, Jack
was
an old friend, he
had
worked miracles with Hector. And it was only lunch.

‘OK,' she said. ‘But only if you promise not to wear that ridiculous hat. You look like Hercule bloody Poirot.'

The Fox was a charming fifteenth-century coaching inn with a bar, snug and formal restaurant in a pretty hamlet near Stow-on-the-Wold. Jack and Catriona took a table in the snug, a cosy room with mellow, uneven flagstone floors covered in tatty Persian rugs, hops hanging in bunches from the beamed ceiling and a huge open stone fireplace in which a pile of pine logs burned and crackled merrily. Too nervous to eat a big meal, Catriona ordered the field mushroom soup and a side salad. Jack had a ‘when-in-Rome' moment and opted for steak and kidney pudding and a pint of pale ale.

‘You look terrific,' he told Catriona, watching her sip at a Diet Coke. ‘You've lost a lot of weight.'

Catriona flushed, half from pleasure and half from embarrassment. ‘I've been running,' she admitted. ‘And I haven't had a drink since I left LA.'

‘That's wonderful. Good for you.' Jack reached across the table and patted her hand. If Catriona needed any more proof that his feelings for her were a hundred per cent platonic, this was it. ‘Do you feel better?'

‘Yes,' she said truthfully. ‘I really do actually. It's as if everything came together at once. Me getting healthy, Hector getting himself back on track, Ivan and I becoming friends again.' Jack frowned, but Catriona continued, oblivious. ‘The irony is that it was Hector taking off like that that triggered it all. Not to mention the fact that it brought you back into our lives.'

The food arrived. Jack's pie was delicious, the suet pastry just the right side of stodgy and the meat as succulent and tender as he'd tasted anywhere. ‘How is Hector?' he asked. Catriona spent the next fifteen minutes filling him in on the strides his godson was making at school and at home, her face lighting up as she listed each miraculous step forward. Jack listened eagerly, delighting in her happiness and thrilled to think he might have played a small part in bringing it about.

‘And of course Ivan's over the moon too. It's been hard for him. Hector still won't talk to him, let alone see him. But we're both hopeful this could be the start of a change there. That eventually there'll be some
rapprochement
.'

Jack pushed aside his empty plate angrily. ‘You're too good to him, you know. Too forgiving.'

Catriona looked confused. ‘How can one be “too” forgiving?'

Jack couldn't help but laugh. She meant the question quite sincerely.

‘Anyway, this isn't really about Ivan, it's about Hector. I love my son, and whatever he might say to me or you or his friends, I know deep down that he loves his father and misses him. They should have a relationship, Jack, if they can. Surely you can see that?'

‘Hmmm,' Jack grunted grudgingly. ‘Maybe.'

‘Is it true you came here to steal Ivan's acts while he's in Paris?' Catriona blurted.

‘It's true I timed JSM's deal with The Blitz to coincide with his absence,' said Jack cagily.

‘But it's not just The Blitz, is it?' asked Catriona. ‘It's all of them. You won't stop till you've destroyed Jester.' She wanted to add ‘
and got Kendall back
', but something made her hesitate.

Jack was silent for a moment, considering his next words. ‘Do I want Jester to fold? Yes. I do. But am I destroying it? I don't know. I'd say it was destroying itself.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘You can't
steal
a client, Cat, any more than you can
steal
a wife or a husband
.
People do what they want to do, what's in their own best interests. Brett Bayley wouldn't have come back to me if Ivan hadn't dropped the ball as his manager. And that applies to everyone else on Ivan's list. They could come to me at JSM or they could go elsewhere. But no one's going to stay where they aren't being taken care of. Everybody knows the only artists your ex cares about are Kendall and the girl Ava from his TV show. If Ivan's chosen to put all his eggs in two baskets, it's nothing to do with me.'

‘So this isn't a personal vendetta, then? Is that what you're saying?'

Jack looked awkwardly out of the window through the dangling wisteria, but said nothing.

‘He was your friend too, you know,' Catriona said quietly. ‘Once.'

Jack turned and looked Catriona in the eye. Something about his expression made her fearful, and when he spoke his voice was a monotone, as cold and unyielding as the grave.

‘You can never go back,' he said. ‘Never. Not if you want to survive.'

Later that night, after Jack drove back to London, Catriona thought about his words.
Was it true? Could you really never go back?
If so, then there could be no hope for her and Ivan. It was only when Jack said it that she realized a part of her
had
still been hoping, fantasizing, imagining how life might be if Ivan finally tired of Kendall and came home. Especially if Jester really did go under, and Ivan's career hit the skids, she'd pictured herself as his safe haven, the one who took care of him, who put it all right.

‘Do you still love Ivan?' she asked herself out loud. But she had no answer. Only Jack Messenger's brutal words in her head.

You can never go back.

Kendall sat at a quiet corner table of Harrods' Ladurée tea rooms, poring over the same
Daily Mail
picture she'd been mentally dissecting for the past twenty minutes.

‘May I bring you some more tea, madam?' The poncey waiter with the non-specific Euro accent who'd been hovering around her table like a fly on a turd since she first sat down, was back.

‘No,' snapped Kendall. ‘I'll ask if I want anything. Actually,' she changed her mind, ‘I could go for another pistachio macaroon. One of the big ones.'

It was turning out to be a two-macaroon sort of day. Unfairly, really, because this was the week when Kendall should have been celebrating, dancing on air after a flurry of career triumphs. The French trip with Ivan had been a roaring success, vastly raising and enhancing her profile in Europe's second-largest music market. Meanwhile, two days after her return to London, she'd learned that ‘Liar, Liar' was now the most downloaded song in the UK. As if that weren't wonderful enough, on Monday Clairol had called Ivan and offered her a highly lucrative endorsement deal to front their new shampoo line, Temptress. After so long in the wilderness and living on tenterhooks after her last, bombed, album, Kendall was finally firmly back on the up. This was the time to exhale, to enjoy. But of course it had all been ruined.