Last Resort (3 page)

"If it's drugs, I'm going to let them hang you."

"I haven't been arrested,"

Sammy giggled.

"I just said that to make whoever the old sourpuss was go and get you."

"Ingenious,"

Penny muttered.

"So, where are you?"

"You'll never guess."

"No, you're right, I won't."

"I'm in Casablanca. You know, that place they made the film about."

"Yes, I've heard of it. Have you figured out how you got there yet?"

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'Somebody brought me here on a private jet. He didn't own it, or anything, he's just the pilot. But anyway, it seems like he had to go off again in a bit of a hurry and ended up forgetting about me."

Refraining from remarking on the pilot's discerning lapse of memory, Penny said,

"So how much is it going to cost me to get you home?"

"Um, I worked it out that if you send me three hundred pounds that should cover my hotel and air fare."

"OK, give me the bank details,"

Penny said, too practised in this now to show any horror at the amount.

That,"

she said to Sylvia, pointing to the phone as she turned back to the sofa,

"is one very good reason why I can't go to the South of France. She's not safe to be left alone. I mean, look what happens when I'm here. I dread to think what she'd do if I weren't."

They have telephones in the South of France too,"

Sylvia remarked drily.

"But why don't you take her with you?"

Take Sammy to the South of France! Are you kidding! She'd have us both arrested before you can say Jacques Medecin."

Sylvia arched an eyebrow. Medecin, the notorious exmayor of Nice, was, if memory served her correctly, still facing charges of corruption, so maybe Penny had a point about villains. Still, it wasn't a topic she was going to pursue. Take Sammy with you and give her a job,"

she said.

"It could be just what she needs. Something to concentrate her mind. A bit of responsibility, a pay packet of her own..."

"And whole harbours full of yachts to smuggle herself away on,"

Penny added woefully.

"Well, think about it,"

Sylvia chuckled as she got to her feet.

"I'm sure you've got a busy day in front of you so take the weekend to think things over and we'll have a spot of lunch together on Monday when you can give me

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your final decision."

"Do I have any choice?"

Penny enquired.

Tes, of course you do,"

Sylvia answered, opening the door.

"But I think we both already know that you're not going to take either of the alternatives. Incidently, Rebecca here will give you some back copies of The Coast to look over."

"Shit!"

Penny muttered under her breath as Sylvia closed the door behind her.

She was too late to pull a mask over her disappointment which meant that as Linda Kidman sailed past for her session with Sylvia Penny had the joyful experience of being gloated at. Resisting the urge to smack her one, Penny took herself to her desk and sat down heavily.

"What's this?"

she snapped, pulling a cardboard box towards her.

"Oh God/ she groaned when she saw the range of anti-cellulite creams Claude, the celebrity beautician, had sent her.

"Pen!"

someone shouted.

"Yolanda and Maurice want to see you as soon as you're free. They want to know how the piece on that Italian judge is coming along. I think they're rather keen to run it before the Sicilians put Whatever-her-name-is in her concrete boots."

Penny rolled her eyes. Great, just what she needed right now: the editor and news editor ganging up on her for an interview she'd done in Rome five days ago with Carla Landolfi, the Italian judge whose courage and rectitude in the face of repeated Mafia threats begged any number of mythological metaphors.

The entire interview was in Italian and she hadn't even translated it yet.

Well, she'd just have to wing it, keep Yolanda and Maurice happy for a couple more days and move like greased lightning all weekend.

"Anyone seen the photographs I left on my desk?"

she cried, riffling through the chaos. The ones of her Honour?"

"Frank came up for them earlier,"

Philip Collins, the

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sub who sat opposite, informed her.

"He left a note

"Where did this come from?"

Penny demanded, picking up a giant hardback book by some obscure writer with an unpronounceable name. The note hooked inside read: "Thought this was just up your street. A rampantly political Russian romance. Need the review by the end of next week. Any chance? Maybelle."

Penny slung it to one side and picked up her phone.

"Anyone know the number for the art department?"

she yelled.

"4962,"

Philip answered.

"So, come on, how did it go in there? Don't keep us all in suspense."

Having received an engaged signal, Penny replaced the receiver and heaved her briefcase on to her desk.

"How are you doing with that transcript, Gemma?"

she called out.

"Another hour and you should have it,"

the secretary shouted back.

Knowing they were all watching her, Penny looked up at last and, finding Philip's curious round eyes and fluffy chin in her direct line of vision, she felt a surprising flood of affection for him. He was an ablutophobe who blithely stank out their corner, irritated her to the point of violence and frequently had her reaching jibberingly for the bottle by lunchtime. But suddenly today she loved him, adored him, wanted to sit opposite him for the rest of her days and inhale the glorious odour of his unwashed body.

"If I told you I'd got the job it would make me one of Congreve's first magnitude,"

she answered dolefully.

"You're obfuscating, Penny,"

he sweetly reprimanded.

"No, I didn't get the bloody job!"

she seethed.

"And, what's more, I'm leaving."

A general murmur of surprise and dismay reverberated around the office. Having Linda Kidman as the boss was bad enough, but without Penny there the place was going to be about as much fun as a German resurgence 17

of patriotism.

Tou didn't really give your notice in?"

Karen Armstrong, one of the assistants, asked incredulously.

Penny shook her head.

"I'm being banished to the fucking French Riviera,"

she said wretchedly.

The others exchanged puzzled glances, unable to fathom why Penny should find that such an odious prospect, especially when they learned that Penny was to be given her own magazine.

"Because,"

she explained,

"all my contacts are here, all my friends are here, I love London, I love my life and I don't have the remotest desire to end it."

What she didn't add, for modesty forbade, was how ridiculously proud and excited she had been to read about herself in The Times just last week when a journalist she didn't even know had advised Lynn Barber and Zoe Heller to sharpen up their acts because

"Penny Moon is fast becoming the most widely read and respected interviewer in the country'. How could Sylvia do this to her? It was like asking a bride on the eve of her wedding to exchange the man of her dreams for a deaf-mute dwarf with the life expectancy of Methuselah and the get-upand-go of a pork chop.

"You'll be coming back, won't you?"

Philip said.

"I mean, eventually."

Penny shrugged.

"Who knows? But even if I do you'll all have moved on to other things by then and all my contacts will be in Linda frigging Kidman's black book. It'll be like starting from scratch all over again."

Slumping forward she rested her chin despondently in her hands.

"Plus,"

she added,

"I don't know a single, solitary soul down there."

"Well, I don't think you'll be short of visitors/ Annie Kaplin, another journalist, grinned, already thinking about her summer holiday.

"When are you going?"

Karen asked.

"God knows. I haven't actually said yes yet. Oh shit, 18

why can't she send Linda? She'd love it down there on the Riviera, strutting her stuff for the seriously brain dead. And what the hell am I going to look like down there in all that sun? I won't be able to cover up any of the nasty bits... Maybe I'd better keep those cellulite creams and try a bit harder.

What the hell's all that?"

she cried, glaring up at the post boy as he dumped a sack full of mail on the floor beside her.

"Applications for the Declan Hailey talk on nude art,"

the post boy informed her.

"I was told to bring them all to you."

Tou left this in Sylvia's office,"

Rebecca said, handing Penny the scribbled bank details Sammy had given her.

"Oh yes, thanks,"

Penny said, taking them.

"I suppose I'd better do that now or she really will manage to get herself arrested. Anyone fancy the wine bar for lunch? I'm in need of one last binge before I start the next deportation of fat cells."

Laughing and groaning, they all turned back to their desks. Penny's diets were as legendary as they were unsuccessful - though at times they were almost as good a source of entertainment as her outrageously chaotic love life.

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Chapter 2

Early the following afternoon, complete with overnight bag, portable computer and bulging sack of Declan Hailey mail, Penny was unceremoniously deposited by a taxi into the driving rain at the entrance of a secluded and picturesque little harbour just outside Portsmouth. Two neat rows of smart town houses, currently being belaboured by the storm and hazed by low-sailing grey cloud, fringed opposite sides of the harbour, where yachts of all sizes and descriptions bobbed and clanked recklessly on the swelling tide.

As Penny struggled along the narrow towpath with her luggage she was wondering what kind of mood she was going to find Declan in after their phone call the night before when she'd tried to persuade him to corrw up to London rather than her having to drag all the way to Portsmouth when she was so busy. He'd won the battle, partly because she'd had too much to do to spend the time arguing, but mainly because not having seen him all week she wasn't about to deprive herself any further of the kind of things they enjoyed most.

After almost a year they were still photographed and written about on a fairly regular basis, though nothing like when they'd first got together. It was Penny's revelation that the nude portrait which had catapulted Declan into the media spotlight was indeed of the royal personage rumour claimed it to be.

Since one of Declan's

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trademarks was never quite to reveal the face of his subject - in this instance, the woman concerned was draped languorously across a bed of silk cushions with her face turned shyly into the crook of her arm - no one had been able to say for sure whether or not it really was the mischievous limelight-seeker whose flagrant hedonism was known to provoke many a wince at Her Majesty's breakfast table. After interviewing Declan Penny had been able to put an end to the speculation with the exclusive that he, in an unguarded moment, had given her. Declan had been furious that she had gone to print with what he called

"a royal confidence', and had publicly challenged Penny to print the entire truth of their interview. Penny hadn't, for two reasons: first because Starke wasn't the kind of magazine that ran that sort of story; second, because she wasn't proud of the way she had allowed herself to be so easily - and repeatedly - seduced during the weekend it had taken her to interview him.

Instead she had written him an apology which had also reminded him that she hadn't revealed the fact that he and the married lady concerned had had an affair. Declan had agreed to accept the apology on the condition that she, Penny, sat for him for three whole days the following week at his studio in Portsmouth. As it turned out, they made love for three days, which both had known they would, and ever since then Penny had happily posed for him whenever he asked, but only because of what it led on to, certainly not because she hoped to see the end results on public display - which they never were.

As she approached the last house in the terrace, which masterfully concealed an expansive top-floor studio with a panoramic view of the sea, she was desperately hoping that she wasn't going to find him in one of his artistic sulks. She needed to talk and, when in spirits, he was the most level-headed adviser she knew, whose logic, though as peculiarly and poetically Irish as his

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long, jet-black hair and devilish turquoise-blue eyes, always seemed to contain more basic common sense than most would ever credit him for. But when in a sulk he was totally insufferable and best given the kind of berth one would normally reserve for a kamikaze recruiting agent.

Inserting her key in the lock, she pushed open the door and dropped her bags in the hall.

"Is that you?"

Declan called out as the door slammed behind her.

"It's me/ she called back, looking up through the three levels of wrought-iron staircases. She waited a moment, then started to smile as he came to lean on the banisters and look down at her. His dark hair was tied in a ponytail, his lean, handsome face was smeared with paint and he was badly in need of a shave.

"Hi,"

she said, thinking that Diane Driscoll, the diarist for one of the seamier tabloids who was more commonly known as the Doyenne of Drivel, was right when she'd written that

"one look at the artist Declan Hailey is enough to electrify the extremities with the desire to be titillated by his masterful brush'.

"Hi,"

he said.

"Hungry?"

"Mmm, a bit,"

she answered.

"You working?"

"Yeah. Richmond's here."

"Hi, Richmond,"

she shouted.

"How you doing, Pen?"

the Olympic gold medallist called back.

"Just fine. I'll leave you to get on with it,"

she said to Declan.

"I've got a whole stack of things that need finishing by Monday. Did you pick up the papers this morning?"