Party Games
Authors: Jo Carnegie
I’m Vanessa Powell. People think they know me because I’m famous. They think I’ve got the whole world at my feet and the husband every woman wants to marry.
But fame can be a lonely place and the perfect marriage even lonelier. Now someone’s come into my life who makes me feel alive.
For the first time ever, I’m thinking about what I really want. No matter what the consequences . . .
Contents
Jo Carnegie
To my family
The pain was starting to kick in. The sun was hot on Catherine’s back, the thin running vest sticking to her skin. Arms pumping, she started down the home straight. Beethoven blared out from a passing Land Rover, the clash of classical music disappearing off into the distance.
The pavement became more uneven and busy, forcing her to slow down. It wasn’t a hardship. Beeversham High Street wasn’t like any she’d known in London, with its wide grass verges and ancient oak trees. Whimsical signs advertised antique shops and galleries, while cafés seduced passers-by with the baking equivalent of an Amsterdam window show: plump cakes with cherries like nipples, silky fingers of sugared shortbread, jammy buns oozing cream. Freshly watered hanging baskets stood out like a mistress’s jewels against the yellow stone. The whole place brimmed with an alluring charm.
As she approached the middle of the High Street, Mr Patel was coming out of his shop.
‘Catherine!’ he cried. ‘Your favourite olives are back in!’
Gasping a thank you Catherine put her head down. She shot past the open windows of Bar 47 and the drinkers enjoying a convivial sundowner. At the market square she turned right and started up Lamb Lane.
The steep climb had defeated many a pedestrian and the blood started to roar in Catherine’s ears. The almshouses appeared on her left, before the welcome sight of the church came into view, looming down from the top of the hill. Arriving at St Cuthbert’s she collapsed over the gate, sucking in deep, restorative breaths.
Her watch showed a personal best. That earnt her a bloody big glass of wine later. As the feel-good endorphins started to surge through her body, she stood up and turned round.
Catherine would never get tired of this view. Valley rolling as far as the eye could see, as if someone had taken a luxurious green rug and shaken it out. The land dived down low and swept up to perilous heights. Nestled in the middle, like a puddle of melting gold, was the market town she now called home.
A periwinkle sky framed the idyllic scene. The month of May had been more like a July, with uninterrupted sunshine and soaring temperatures. Weather forecasters had excitedly predicted an Indian summer. Everyone hoped they were right, for once.
One thing jarred in the genteel landscape. Perched high in the hills, like a predatory eagle about to take flight, stood a gleaming white box of a house. Beau
Rainford’s controversial modernist creation, ‘Ridings’. An appropriate name, considering how many women Beau was meant to have bedded. He’d caused local uproar when he’d ripped down an old farmhouse to build his abode of sharp angles and lines. There had been mutterings about dodgy planning permission and people being paid off but nothing had ever been proved. Now it looked down on the town, the mirrored windows matching the arrogant disdain of the owner. Beeversham’s notorious bad boy was doing nothing to build his bridges.
On the opposite side of the valley, facing Ridings like a reproving older brother, stood Beeversham’s most famous landmark. Blaize Castle, or rather the ruins of the castle, were surrounded by shimmering meadows of wild grasses. The place was a mecca for American tourists visiting the area. The remote location made it popular with local kids and amorous couples bent on misbehaving.
Catherine could have stayed where she was all evening, but John would start wondering where she’d got to. She started a leisurely jog back down Lamb Lane. By the time she got back to the High Street, she was so deep in thought about what to have for dinner that she didn’t see the black Bentley coming too fast in the opposite direction. It sounded its horn, shattering the peaceful evening and making her leap a foot in the air.
‘Jesus!’ she yelled, attracting a disapproving look from an old couple walking by with an obese Jack Russell.
As the car swept past she got a glimpse of a stunningly
beautiful woman on the nearside of the back seat. The woman glared at Catherine with feline eyes before the car zoomed off, leaving her in the road like a piece of discarded litter.
Catherine watched the POW 1 number-plate disappear down the street, carrying its famous cargo. Vanessa Powell, one half of Beeversham’s celebrity couple. It was fair to say Catherine and Vanessa had history. In fact, Vanessa loathed Catherine. When she’d been editor of the renowned
Soirée
magazine Catherine had run an article on Vanessa that had nearly wrecked the celebrity’s reputation.
Seven years on, Catherine still cringed every time she thought about it. It had been the press week from hell when a story had come in about Vanessa Powell, the then model-cum-socialite being paid to appear at an African dictator’s birthday party. What’s more, she’d apparently made her entrance rising topless out of a six-foot strawberry layer cake. Print deadline looming, Catherine had assumed a vacuous vamp like Vanessa Powell would be desperate for any publicity and had decided to run it.
It had turned out to be completely untrue. Vanessa had never even met the African dictator, let alone had any intimate dealings with layer cakes. Her lawyers had come out swinging, and Valour Publishing had ended up paying substantial damages. Catherine had nearly lost her job over it. The worst thing of all was the grovelling apology she’d been forced to write in her Editor’s Letter, describing Vanessa as ‘an icon for their generation’.
The women had run into each other at a high-profile
fashion exhibition a few months later, where Vanessa had ‘accidentally’ emptied her glass of champagne down Catherine’s new Armani suit. Conveniently, a bank of photographers had been on hand to capture the whole thing. The gossip pages had dined out on it for weeks.
It was one of life’s bitter ironies that they’d ended up living in the same town. Thankfully Catherine was yet to have an encounter with her Ladyship at the mini market. The only time the residents of Beeversham saw the Powells was on TV or in
OK!
magazine, usually gushing about their wonderful marriage. Once the lights and cameras stopped it was like the celebrity couple ceased to exist.
Catherine had a sudden pang of yearning for her old life when she’d been a person of influence, lawsuits and all.
Now I’m more of a desperate housewife
. That thought was replaced by the one playing endlessly in her head at the moment that, despite all her and John’s enthusiastic efforts, she still wasn’t pregnant.
Crossing the road, she started for home.
The Bentley continued the journey towards home. The suave man sitting beside Vanessa gave a dismissive sniff. ‘Was that Catherine Connor back there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Has she cut her hair?’
‘Why would I notice?’
‘Makes her look like a bloke. I always thought she was hiding a cock in there somewhere.’
Vanessa’s husband’s comment wasn’t made entirely out of loyalty. Conrad Powell had hated Catherine ever since a film reviewer in
Soirée
had described his acting as ‘more wooden than a Pinocchio convention’. He’d been positively gleeful when the subsequent revelations about Catherine had come out.
He went back to scrolling furiously down his BlackBerry. ‘She looked a mess. Little Miss Hotshot isn’t so hot now she hasn’t got her precious magazine to fall back on, is she?’
Vanessa turned to look at her husband. His matinée-idol looks showed no sign of fading, the smooth
complexion helped out by discreet jabs of Botox. Conrad looked every inch the face of ‘Valiant Hair Colour For Men (Dark Coffee)’, his most successful campaign to date.
‘It went well today, didn’t it?’ she asked.
Conrad glanced up again, giving her a flash of deep chocolate eyes. ‘I suppose, if Vitamin Vite is about to take over the world as you say it is. The way the PRs were having orgasms over it, you’d think they’d discovered the cure for bloody cancer.’
She laid a manicured hand on his knee. ‘You were fabulous, Conrad.’
‘I just fucking hate these things, all those people mooning at you like brainless sheep.’
Vanessa studied her husband’s handsome profile. She knew these things were hard for him. When they’d first met Conrad had been the more famous one. A household name as the dashing Dr Debonair on BBC1’s hit show
The Saviours
, his big break had come when he’d been cast alongside Colin Firth in the Hollywood remake of
Of Mice and Men
. He had been convinced it was the start of Hollywood stardom. She could still remember the black moment when her husband had discovered his scenes had ended up on the cutting-room floor.
She had urged him to get straight back to work, but long hours on a TV drama didn’t cut the mustard with him any more. Conrad rejected 90 per cent of the scripts he was sent, and as the months and then years went past, Vanessa had started to wonder if his Hollywood dream would ever happen. In the meantime she’d devoted herself to transforming them into the biggest
husband-and-wife team since the Beckhams. Vanessa was a huge fan of the former Spice Girl.
What would Victoria do?
was often her mantra.
Her hard work had certainly paid off: Brand Powell now reigned supreme. Advertising campaigns, clothing lines, his and her perfumes, (imaginatively called ‘Vanessa’ and ‘Conrad’). There was even talk of their own chat show, although things in the TV world took a frustratingly long time. In the meantime their profile had soared and the money was rolling in, even in these recession-hit times. Conrad might complain but his wife had turned him into a walking and talking aspiration.
He sighed heavily, as if someone had just sounded the death knell for his soul.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘Bloody wonderful.’ He didn’t look up.
She turned to gaze out her window at the fields flashing by. Conrad made no secret of the fact that he found the things they did for Brand Powell demeaning. Vanessa was often made to feel it was her fault. But what was the alternative? To sit back and watch their empire dry up around them?
Just like your career?
she thought disloyally. She had worked too damn hard. The thought of going back to nothing made her shiver.