Friends & Rivals (44 page)

‘About an hour,' said Ivan smugly. He was picturing Jack Messenger's face when Kendall appeared on
Good Morning
tomorrow in Ava's stead. Talk about a coup. By the time Kendall had finished charming the pants off the audience and painting Ava as the two-faced little snake that she was, he wouldn't be surprised if Jack gave up the whole misguided Christmas number one campaign and flew back to LA with his tail between his legs.

Kendall stared out of the window. The noise of the chopper gave her a perfect excuse to avoid conversation. These days she found the less she talked to Ivan, the easier it was. Not that there was any hostility between them. In fact all their private interactions were scrupulously, painfully polite. (As opposed to their public encounters, which were gushingly romantic and Brangelina-esque.) Ivan had kept to his word and stopped drinking. He'd also done a spectacular job of orchestrating the smear campaign against Ava and bolstering Kendall's own public image in the run-up to Christmas. But all of the fun, the spark and banter, had gone out of the relationship. The sexual chemistry that had been their one constant since the earliest days seemed to have deserted them, like an exhausted guardian angel. Kendall had forgiven Ivan for what happened that night at The 100 Club. So it was a surprise to find that forgiveness alone was not enough. Something had broken that day, a connection between them had snapped, and nothing either of them did or said could bring it back again.

Kendall knew it. Ivan knew it. But nobody had the desire or the courage to say it out loud, still less to think about what it meant for their future. Especially now with their mutual enemy at the gate.

Kendall wondered briefly about Ava, where she was right now and whether she was with Lex. Closing her eyes, she forced the thought out of her mind. She had trained herself to shut down her emotions when it came to Ivan. As for Jack, last time he was in England she'd been in pieces mentally, but this time she felt nothing at all. She could do the same with Lex. She'd have to if she was going to protect herself, no matter how many loved-up shots of him and Ava arriving hand in hand at Heathrow she was forced to endure.

Flipping open her iPad, she studied her notes on Eamonn Holmes: his interviewing style, preferences, the pitfalls other guests had stumbled into on his show. What was Stella always telling her?
Focus on today. Focus on the now.
Right now all that mattered was acing it on
This Morning
and wiping the floor with Ava Bentley.

That much, at least, Kendall knew how to do.

The next ten days were a nightmare for Lex, whose Christmas spirit proved to be as short-lived as the London snow. From a purely professional perspective, the trip had been a disaster. Ava's press was bad enough before her no-show on
This Morning
. But when Kendall took her place on that couch, looking doe-eyed and vulnerable hand in hand with Ivan, you could practically hear the knives being sharpened. Kendall played the thing perfectly, actually defending Ava when Eamonn Holmes accused her of being spoiled and a diva, but in such a weak way, ‘
I
really don't know what happened. I guess she must have had her reasons
', that she ended up making her look worse.

Ivan played the same game. ‘I've always had a soft spot for Ava,' he told the host disingenuously.

‘And a hard spot for your wife, I assume?'

Cue awkward audience laughter and a perfectly timed kiss from Kendall.

‘Well, yes, that's true,' Ivan smiled. ‘But joking aside and despite everything that happened, I still wish Ava all the best. We both do.'

Jack had started screaming at the TV at that point, hurling abuse at Ivan, Eamonn Holmes, the show's producers, the helicopter charter company and anyone else he could think of to blame for this PR catastrophe. But there could be no getting away from it. A catastrophe was what it was.

After the tsunami came the rescue efforts, a draining round of publicity appearances aimed at damage control and showing Ava in a more positive light. Somebody at Columbia decided that part of this rebrand should involve playing up Lex and Ava as a couple. As a result Lex found himself being dragged from TV studios to radio stations to various staged ‘photo opportunities' at restaurants, theatres and even children's homes, thrust wholly unwillingly into the limelight. The fakeness of it all stuck in his craw. Not that he wasn't with Ava. But they were hardly love's young dream, altar-bound. At least that wasn't how Lex perceived them. Some of the comments Ava made live on air had him worrying that perhaps she was starting to believe the hype.

He tried to talk to her privately about it, but it was difficult with her father always there, following them around like a fat shadow. Lex tried hard, but within a few days he had come to loathe Dave Bentley. Not only was the man a bully, bossy, overbearing and opinionated, but he seemed to have conveniently forgotten the fact that he was no longer his daughter's manager, driving both Lex and Jack mad with his constant interference. It was Dave who arranged the visit to the children's hospice in Wolverhampton.

‘Everyone loves dying kiddies,' he announced bluntly and without irony. ‘Ava should go and sing 'em some Christmas carols. People'll love that.'

Jack complained, Jen Gomez complained, but Dave insisted, and in the end Ava didn't have it in her to say no to her dad. Once again, Lex was dragged along for a horrendously schmaltzy sing-along with the sick children and their families. The next day's papers were uniformly scathing.

‘CRASS PUBLICITY STUNT.'

‘DESPERATE BENTLEY DOES “A DIANA”.'

‘CRINGE-MAKING.'

Poor Ava, who'd been genuinely moved by the children's plight and had privately written cheques to a number of the families, was deeply hurt by the coverage. But not as deeply hurt as her record sales. Pre-orders for ‘Home', the song with which she hoped to beat off Kendall's ‘Sweet Dreamer' to the number one spot on Christmas morning, now less than two weeks away, were embarrassingly low. Two nights ago she'd finally broken down when in bed with Lex, sobbing for a full five minutes before he could get any sense out of her at all.

‘Everyone hates me!' she wailed. ‘No one's going to give me a chance. But I don't understand what I'm supposed to have done. Since when is moving to America a crime?'

‘It isn't,' Lex assured her. ‘Everything's being twisted.'

‘Yeah, by Kendall,' said Ava bitterly. ‘She seemed so nice when I met her. Why is she doing this to me?'

‘Because you're threatening her, honey,' said Lex reasonably. ‘You must see that. You're bringing out your single in direct competition to hers, in her primary market. Kendall sees that as an act of war. She's fighting back.'

‘Oh, so you're on her side,' Ava sobbed. ‘My own boyfriend!'

‘I'm not on her side. I—'

‘You are! Admit it. You're still in love with her, aren't you?'

And they were back to square one.

Nightmare.

The sooner they got out of London, the better.

On Tuesday morning around ten o'clock, Lex's cell phone rang.

‘What are you doing for lunch today?'

It was a woman's voice, American, but Lex didn't recognize it.

‘Er, I'm sorry, this is Lex Abrahams. Who is this?'

‘It's me!'

He thought for one awful moment she was going to leave it at that. But then she went on.

‘It's Stella, Stella Bayley. You represent my dirty rotten pig of an ex-husband, remember?'

‘Stella! Of course. Hi,' Lex said awkwardly. He had known Stella socially in the old Jester days, before Jack and Ivan split. The Blitz had all lived in LA then, and Stella and Brett had been regulars on the West Hollywood scene. But they were hardly good friends, and it had been – what – ten years? ‘How are you?'

‘I'm good thanks,' she trilled. ‘No thanks to you and your dirty rotten partner, luring Brett back to California.'

‘Hey, that was Jack's idea,' said Lex honestly. ‘Nothing to do with me.'

‘Oh, that's OK.' Stella laughed. ‘I'm only teasing anyway. Jack did me a favour. But look, I knew you were in town and I'm sure you must be having a shitty time of it, so I thought I'd ask you out for lunch.'

Her candour was refreshing. It was a relief not to have to pretend that everything was OK. ‘That's very kind of you.'

‘No it isn't. It'll be fun,' said Stella. ‘How about Daphne's at one-thirty. Can you do it?'

Lex was supposed to be at Capital Radio studios on Leicester Square with Ava at one-thirty, but the lure of a lunchtime escape was too strong. Jen could take Ava this time. After all, she was supposed to be the damn publicist.

‘Sure. Sounds wonderful. I'll see you there.'

Stella was seated in a corner table at the back of the restaurant, half hidden behind a pillar and completely safe from any prying lenses that might have followed Lex, hoping for some scandal. She was wearing a blue-and-white striped sweater and fitted white jeans tucked into boots. She looked like an unusually chic French fisherwoman.

‘Hi.' Lex kissed her on both cheeks as he sat down. ‘This is such a treat. And a surprise! You look incredibly well.'

‘Do I?' Stella beamed. ‘Thanks. It's been a rough couple of years but I'm actually very happy right now. I think divorce agrees with me.'

‘I think divorcing Brett would agree with anyone,' said Lex. ‘God knows how you stood it so long.'

Stella ordered the soup and tagliatelle, along with a large glass of rosé. ‘I know you're not supposed to drink rosé in winter, but I just love it,' she grinned. Lex thought back to the macrobiotic, clean-living, serious girl he'd known all those years ago and smiled.
Europe's been good for her. Age too. She's finally found her mojo.
He ordered the minute steak and fries and a beer (
What the hell
, Lex thought), and they got down to the serious business of gossiping.

‘I should probably warn you before we start that I am on the enemy payroll,' said Stella. ‘I've been working as Kendall's PA for almost a year now.'

Lex's face fell. ‘Oh.'

‘But I'm
not
here in a work capacity, I'm
not
wearing a wire, and I give you my word that I'm not gonna go running back and spilling your juicy secrets. I'm here as a friend.'

She was so open and kind that Lex instantly believed her. ‘I don't have any juicy secrets to spill, in any case,' he said, sipping his beer. ‘Do you?'

Stella leaned forward. ‘Well as it just so happens …'

She didn't draw breath for the next hour and half. Lex's salad and steak came and went, as did two more beers and an ill-advised helping of sticky toffee pudding, while Stella continued to regale him hilariously with tales of Jester and JSM clients past and present. She'd always seemed so straight-laced when she was with Brett, but freed from the role of supportive rock star's wife slash super-mommy, she actually had a wicked sense of humour. For the first time since he got to England, Lex was enjoying himself. Before long he found himself opening up about Ava, her dreadful father and the PR machine's obsession with painting him as Romeo to Ava's Juliet.

‘Like that's gonna sell more records, you know?'

Stella shrugged. ‘It worked for Kendall and Ivan.'

‘Yeah, but they're not being followed around by a twenty-stone cupid from Hutton-le-Hole with a beer gut, bad breath and a boiled Yorkshire cabbage where his brain should be, are they?'

‘No,' Stella giggled.

‘I swear to God, Dave Bentley makes Donald Rumsfeld look sensitive.' Looking away, Lex asked as casually as he could. ‘So, how is Kendall?'

Stella eyed him curiously. ‘How is she in what way?'

‘I don't know, in every way. Personally.' Lex cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘Jack and I watched her on
This Morning
last week. She seemed happy.'

‘Did she?'

‘Well,' Lex backtracked, ‘she came across well, let's put it that way. Jack was spitting teeth. It was a bravura performance.'

‘You can always rely on Kendall for a good performance,' said Stella cryptically.

Lex raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you trying to tell me something?'

Stella leaned back in her chair, pushing her plate to one side. ‘Look, I don't just work for Kendall. I consider her a friend. Ivan too, in a way, although that's a bit more complicated. Anyway, there are things I can say and things I can't. But don't be fooled by the “perfect marriage, perfect life” stuff she spouts in the media, that's all. That's image. It's not reality.'

‘So she isn't happy?' asked Lex, ashamed by how good that prospect made him feel. Not because he wanted to hurt Kendall, but because he missed her like hell.

‘Neither of them are happy,' said Stella. ‘That's my opinion. But they're scared to leave each other, scared to admit they made a mistake. I think they would have separated in the fall if it weren't for Ava coming over here.'

Lex put his head in his hands. ‘Please don't say that.'

‘It's true,' Stella shrugged. ‘This race for the Christmas number one is what threw Kendall and Ivan back together. She's worked so hard to rebuild her career over here, you know. She's not going to let that go without a fight.'

‘Of course not,' said Lex. ‘That's what I've been trying to explain to Ava. Kendall's always put her career before anything else. She'll fight to the death for it.'

Stella looked at him thoughtfully. ‘She's changed, you know. Softened. I don't think work is all she cares about any more.' On a whim, she added, ‘She misses you.'

It was embarrassing the degree to which Lex's heart leapt when he heard those words. But he stamped down his elation. Stella was probably just trying to be kind, to make peace between her two friends. What did she really know about how Kendall felt?