Friends & Rivals (48 page)

Meanwhile, Ava's
Mail on Sunday
effect seemed to be wearing off. Ratings for her chat-show appearances were consistently lacklustre, and she was booed at a shopping centre in Birmingham during a live performance of ‘Home'
,
with hecklers shouting, ‘Go back to America if you love it so much!'

By the time Christmas Eve morning dawned, Kendall's confidence was soaring. Unfortunately, so was her temperature.

‘There's no way she can make the party tonight,' said Stella firmly, elbowing Ivan aside to plump up Kendall's pillows and hand her a steaming mug of Lemsip. ‘She has a hundred-and-two-degree fever. She'll collapse.'

‘I'll be fine,' croaked Kendall inaudibly.

During the last few days' media blitz she'd moved back into the Cheyne Walk apartment with Ivan, and was sleeping in the master while he bunked in the spare room. So far no one had noticed Kendall's regular sleepovers at Stella's place in Primrose Hill, but now would not be a good time for them to start.

‘She doesn't have to stay long,' said Ivan. ‘But she must put in some sort of an appearance.' Polydor had laid on a lavish ‘Number One' bash at The Box tonight, to celebrate what now looked like certain victory in Kendall's battle with Ava Bentley. Kendall and Ivan were both physically and emotionally exhausted, but it had been worth it.

‘You're both crazy,' said Stella crossly. ‘What if she passes out? It's possible, you know.'

‘She won't,' said Ivan brusquely. ‘She can rest up here with you all day, get her strength back. After tonight we can all switch off.'

‘What do you mean “here with me”?' Stella's eyes narrowed. ‘Where are you going?'

‘I have somewhere I need to be.'

‘You're not coming to the party?' Kendall's voice was barely a whisper. Ivan had to bend low over the bed to hear her.

‘Course I am, sweetheart,' he assured her. ‘I just have a few personal things to tie up first. I'll be back here at six and we can go together.'

The estate agent from Jackson-Stops was a roly-poly ball of a woman in a tweed skirt and the sort of worsted horsehair shirt that Ivan thought had stopped being made in the 1940s. Despite being only five foot tall, she had a commanding bearing, glowering at Ivan like a disappointed headmistress. Clearly neither celebrity nor a handsome face impressed her.

‘I've told you, Mr Charles, as plainly as I can, that The Rookery is not for sale. I presented your offer to the owners last week, and while they agreed it was very generous, they simply don't wish to move.'

‘Then make them wish it,' snarled Ivan. ‘I want that house back, and I'm going to have it. Ask them to name their price.'

‘This is Burford, Mr Charles,' the agent said witheringly. ‘Not Las Vegas.'

‘Just ask them. You've got my number.'

At three o'clock, Jack Messenger sat alone in his suite at The Berkeley, listening to Radio One. The UK singles chart was still run in a curiously old-fashioned manner, revealing the week's positions on Reggie Yates's Sunday afternoon show before the OCC (Official Charts Company) had even posted the results on their own website. Apparently, based on combined record sales and download numbers, there was virtually no transparency to the process. If Radio One said you were number one, then number one you were. If they didn't, you weren't, no matter how much independently verifiable sales data you produced to the contrary.

This year, however, in an unprecedented break with trad-ition, it had been decided to announce the chart on a Friday: Christmas Eve. Kendall and Ava's battle for the top spot had generated so much publicity and much-need revenue for the sector, it was thought to be in everyone's interests to string out the tension as long as possible.

Not that, by this stage, there was much tension left, especially amongst insiders. Everybody knew that Kendall had seen off the would-be pretender to her crown. Ava's download figures might be high, but on the street the wave of affection and loyalty towards the American girl who had ‘chosen' England was palpably overwhelming. Don Lenner from Columbia had already been on the phone to Jack, expressing his disappointment and demanding Ava's immediate return to US soil. The label had forked out for a ‘celebration party' tonight at Annabel's, to rival Kendall's bash, but everyone knew that once Ava came in at number two it would be more of a wake.

Ava herself had been sanguine in defeat, but announced this morning that she couldn't bear sitting around a radio set listening for the inevitable. Lex had whisked her off to a private viewing at Tate Modern and would take her for a low-key dinner afterwards. Then, after a cursory appearance at Annabel's, Ava would head up north for Christmas with her family and Lex and Jack would catch the next plane home to LA. Both of them dreaded the flight. They'd barely exchanged two syllables since Lex walked in on Jack with Kendall the other morning, but given that they would be side by side on a plane for eleven hours, at some point they'd have to talk about it.

‘Merry Christmas, guys, and welcome to the last UK Top Forty of the year!' Reggie Yates's London accent rang out through The Berkeley's Bose speakers. ‘As you all know by now, it's all about two beautiful young ladies this week. So which one is going to be having a Merry Christmas, and which one's gonna end up a Christmas turkey, huh?'

Who writes this stuff?
thought Jack wearily. Ava wasn't the Christmas turkey. He was, for bringing her here in the first place, for underestimating Kendall and Ivan, for having no one to share this most special of all days with. Kendall's words floated back to him:

‘We're both alone, Jack.'

‘Ivan's still in love with Catriona. It wouldn't surprise me if they got back together.'

Pouring himself a Laphroaig from the minibar, he turned up the volume on the sound system to drown out his own thoughts.

Across town, in the kitchen of Kendall and Ivan's Cheyne Walk flat, Stella Bayley was also tuned to the Reggie Yates show, with the volume turned down low. Kendall was sleeping in the master bedroom and next door in the sitting room little Miley was happily making glitter-paper chains and watching
Frosty the Snowman
on DVD.

Please let her get it
, thought Stella.
She needs it so much more than Ava does.

She turned back to her cinnamon cookies.

‘Do you think they've announced it by now?' Ava asked Lex anxiously.

They were at Tate Modern, standing in front of what looked to Lex like a giant wire coat hanger draped in red cloth, entitled
Bloody Murder.
The privately hired curator was filling them in on the sculpture's provenance, but neither Lex nor Ava were listening.
We should have gone to the movies
, thought Lex.
Really distracted ourselves.

‘No,' he replied. ‘Not till four. Try not to think about it.'

He might as well have told her to try not to breathe.

In JSM's LA office, Lisa Marie and a smattering of other staffers who'd made it in on Christmas Eve morning sat sipping Starbucks coffees and picking at sunrise muffins while Radio One played live on the Internet.

‘Do you think she has a shot?' asked Candice, one of the PAs. Candice liked Ava. Everybody liked Ava.

‘Probably not,' said Lisa Marie. ‘But it ain't over till it's over.'

She thought about Jack, where he was right now and whether he was OK. Poor guy. He was a great music manager, one of the best, but he'd really fucked up on this one. No one enjoyed looking like an ass.

‘Are you coming, Mum?'

Hector's voice rang out from the front parlour. Catriona, skulking in the kitchen, called back nervously. ‘In a minute.'

The kitchen clock said ten to four. In eleven minutes she would know. If Kendall's single was number one, she would sign a huge new deal, which would guarantee financial security for Catriona and the kids. How strange to have one's livelihood depend on the girl who had destroyed one's family. But Catriona wasn't focused on the money. She was focused on her future. Would it be clearer in eleven minutes? Or still a murky, frightening blank?

Since their night together, she and Ivan had spoken on the phone most days, but she hadn't physically seen him. Ivan talked constantly about next year. Buying back The Rookery, taking the kids on holiday to the south of France, remarrying in the tiny church at Widford that had always been one of Catriona's favourite spots in the world. Sometimes she loved to hear him talk this way. It made her feel happy and hopeful, a return to reality, to the normal order of things.

Other times she felt sick.

She hadn't said anything to the children yet, not least because she had no idea what to say. But she sensed they knew, or at least suspected something might be afoot. If they were appalled by the idea of their parents reuniting, neither of them had shown it. Equally, they had tactfully refrained from doing victory dances, asking questions, or pushing their mother for a decision.
It must be hard for them, after all this time. They're probably as confused as I am.

‘Muuum!' Rosie yelled even louder than her brother. ‘Come
on.
He's already at number five.'

‘All right,' said Catriona. ‘I'm coming.'

Pulled over in a lay-by off the M25, Ivan felt a glow of contentment almost as warm as the air swirling around his Bentley Continental. At long last, it was all coming together.

After tonight's victory, he could begin negotiations on Kendall's new deal, a deal that would make both of them millionaires several times over. Ending their marriage had been remarkably painless. Until now, he'd always thought that ‘mutual' divorces were a myth. But Kendall plainly wanted out as much as he did, which was an immense relief. Even so, he felt better walking away knowing that he had left her a seriously rich young woman, and that they would part quite genuinely as friends. It was astonishing how suddenly, and totally, his desire for Kendall had evaporated. As soon as he began to think of her as a friend, an ally in this fight against Ava, the erotic charge that had kept him glued to her side for so long like a miserable barnacle in a storm had fizzled out into nothing.

It was Catriona now who filled him with longing. Catriona, who he'd always loved as a mother and a soul mate and a friend, suddenly appeared in a whole, new light. He could tell this new Catriona was passionate, greedy, wild even. She was the girl he fell in love with twenty years ago and he wanted her back so badly it was like a heroin craving.

Soon, very soon, he would have her.

And, last but not least, there was the prospect at long last of beating Jack Messenger. Publicly, the chart battle had been all about Ava and her ‘betrayal' of Ivan as her
Talent
Quest
mentor. But, deep down, Ivan bore Ava no ill-will. She'd been offered a better deal and she'd taken it. Simple as that. There was no malice in it, only self-interest, and Ivan Charles was the patron saint of self-interest.

But Jack was different. With Jack it was personal. And business was the least of it. Jack had inveigled his way into Ivan's family. He had flirted with Catriona's affections and tried to replace Ivan as Hector's father. For that, Ivan would never forgive him.

Everyone dated their bitter rivalry as beginning when Ivan ‘stole' Kendall from Jack and broke up Jester. But the truth was it had started far, far earlier than that. Even at university, at the height of their friendship, there'd been an edge to the relationship. ‘Competitive' was the nicest word for it. But for Ivan at least it had always run deeper. Somewhere along the way he had learned to hate Jack, for his moral superiority, his ‘shyness' that had always seemed to Ivan to have a burning ball of arrogance at its core, for his pride. Everything about Jack seemed to scream at Ivan:
I'm better than you.

Well, today, Ivan was going to prove to the world once and for all that that was not the case.

Reggie Yates's smooth tones flowed through the Bentley's sound system like warm honey. ‘So now's the moment of truth, guys, the result we've all been waiting for. This week's number
two
, the runner-up in one of the hardest-fought battles we've ever seen for a Christmas number one single,
is
…'

He paused for dramatic effect.

Ivan savoured the moment.
Fuck you
, Jack.

‘“Sweet Dreamer”
,
from Kendall Bryce.'

At The Box on Brewer Street, amid the balloons and champagne bottles and streamers, there was total disbelief. Someone turned off the radio. Martin Higgis, who'd stopped by early to check on the party preparations, summed up the mood.

‘Fuck. We are totally fucked.'

‘Should we cancel?' asked Kendall's publicist, Sasha.

‘Definitely not,' said Higgis. ‘The worst thing she could do now is come across as a sore loser. We party, we smile, we congratulate Ava and bleat on about what an honour it is to come in second to such a great song. Got it?'

There were a few desultory nods.

‘I'll get a statement to the press and try and make sure we still get some decent coverage and the paps don't all fuck off to Annabel's. And you lot,' he turned on Ivan's staffers, ‘stop standing around like a bunch of lemmings and start blowing up some more snowflake balloons. And smile, would you? Don't you know it's fucking Christmas?'

Kendall double-checked her appearance in the mirror. It was a long time since she'd got ready for an event this important on her own, but she'd insisted Stella and Miley go home and leave her to it.

‘It's Christmas Eve. Miley should be at home, hanging her stocking and putting out carrots or something, not watching TV in our living room.'

‘But are you sure you're all right?' said Stella. ‘I know it must have been an awful shock, and your fever's only just come down. I don't like leaving you here alone.'