Vanity (26 page)

‘Well, I've got loads of reading to do for next term …'

‘Oh
,
that really is silly. You work far too hard as it is. Just jump in a cab and get yourself to the Crack Den, pronto!' The Crack Den was their name for the boys' house in Dalston. ‘We'd all love to see you … wouldn't we
,
boys?' Sam could hear male voices of assent in the background.

‘Really?' She hadn't seen the boys since the time she'd turned Dan down after their day at the Hawley, and was still feeling a bit bad about the whole thing. But then again, they'd had such a nice, giggly time getting stoned together afterwards, that maybe it didn't matter.

‘Of course, really, you idiot. Just get your arse in a cab and I'll pay for it this end.'

‘Thanks, but no need for that.' Sam had her pride. ‘I'm nearly at Piccadilly Circus. I'll get the Tube.'

‘Piccadilly Circus to Dalston? In the rush hour? You must be …' Sam could hear someone shushing Sienna in the background. ‘Well, rather you than me, darling. OK, we'll see you when we see you.'

When Sam eventually poked her head around the door, Sienna, Dan, Mikey and Olly were sitting on bare wooden floorboards, smoking joints, drinking beer out of cans and playing Scrabble. Loud rock music blared from the enormous sound system that dominated one corner of the open-plan living room, and the rain still thrashing down outside was clearly audible through the curtainless windows.

‘Hello?' she said tentatively, not wanting to make a nuisance of herself.

Sienna, who was wearing a Flaming Geysers T-shirt and black leather hot pants that showed off her long, pale legs, leapt to her feet and ran towards her.

‘Sammi-Jo! At last! We thought you were never going to get here. Was the journey absolutely horrendous?'

The journey had involved a Tube so packed that she'd had to let three trains go past before she could squeeze onto one, a bus that lurched with infuriating slowness through the traffic on the Essex Road, and a ten-minute walk in the rain. It had taken nearly an hour and a half in total.

Sam just shrugged and said. ‘Had worse. But please don't call me Sammi-Jo.'

Sienna recoiled slightly, looking hurt. ‘Sorry, babes, it was only meant to be a joke.'

‘Not a very funny one,' said Dan, not looking up from his letters. ‘Her name's Sam.'

Sam looked over at him gratefully and smiled, but he was still engrossed in his letters, his dark brown fringe flopping over his face as he looked down.

‘Sorry sorry sorry,' said Sienna, giving Sam a huge hug. ‘I'm a bit stoned. Didn't mean to be offensive.'

‘That's OK. Sorry for being oversensitive. Just had a really bad day, and I don't want to be Sammi-Jo any more.'

‘Why? What's happened?' asked Mikey disingenuously, brushing his golden-blond fringe out of his eyes.

Sam looked at Sienna.

‘So you didn't tell them?' She knew her friend could never keep her mouth shut.

‘Yeah, she told us,' said Dan, still not looking up from his letters. ‘Sorry to hear about that shit-head photographer. He needs his face kicked in. Plenty of beers in the fridge, Sambo. Help yourself.'

‘Thanks Dan. Just need to go to the toilet.' The stockings and suspenders were starting to feel extremely uncomfortable underneath her damp sweatpants and Sam found her teeth were chattering slightly. Dan looked up.

‘You're soaking.' Sam instinctively put her arms around her braless chest in the wet hoody, and he pretended not to notice. ‘D'you want to borrow something dry? You can have a look in my room, if you want, but everything I've got will be huge on you.'

‘Borrow something of mine, Sam,' said Olly, the drummer, who was shorter and less handsome than the rest of the band, but with a sweet, open face that reflected an
endearingly
sunny nature. ‘First floor, second on the right. Just help yourself to anything you like.'

When Sam returned downstairs, she was wearing a rolled-up pair of baggy Diesel jeans and a fine-knit black V-necked sweater. She'd wrung as much water as she could out of her long red hair and tied it up into a ponytail.

She helped herself to a beer out of the huge fridge and sat down next to Sienna.

‘Thanks for the clothes, Olly.' She smiled at him. ‘This is much more comfy.'

‘Suits you.' Olly smiled back. ‘You should wear my clothes more often.'

Sam saw Dan's back stiffen.

‘So who's winning?' she asked quickly.

‘Dan,' they all said in unison.

‘He always does,' added Mikey. ‘Don't know why we bother playing him really. Clever bastard.'

‘Well, someone's got to write the lyrics,' said Dan, glancing up from his letters. ‘You lot were well crap with your “yeah yeah yeahs” before I came along.'

‘Worked for the Beatles,' said Sam, taking a swig of her Stella, and accepting the joint Sienna was handing her way. ‘Thanks, Sienna.'

‘Exactly. It worked for the Beatles, the best band in the world. But we are not a copycat band, or a fucking cover band. We write our own stuff. Original stuff.'

As he finished his sentence, Dan put his letters down. There was a Y free at the bottom of the board, and he used up all seven of his to make RHAPSODY, on a triple-word score.

‘Oh, come on, mate … !'

‘For fuck's sake, Dan … !'

‘Told you he were a clever bastard!' Mikey grinned. ‘No way any of us can catch up now.'

‘It's not about the winning, it's about playing the game,' said Sienna, looking and sounding ridiculously posh, despite the band T-shirt and leather hot pants. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, her posture was perfect.

‘Oooh, listen to the public schoolgirl,' teased Mikey, leaning over to kiss her. ‘Were you a prefect? Or vice captain? I like to think of you as captain of vice.'

‘Head girl, actually, until I was expelled.'

The boys looked at her in delight, all their St Trinian's naughty schoolgirl fantasies made flesh.

‘What for?' Sam asked, giggling – the dope was strong, and already working its magic.

‘Oh, nothing major. I got pissed and shagged the gardener. I've always liked a bit of rough. QED …' She stretched her long pale arms out and they all started laughing.

‘You're my Marianne Faithfull,' said Mikey fondly.

‘I'm so glad you're taller than Mick. Though I probably wouldn't have said no when he was younger – there was something about him, wasn't there?'

‘I've always liked Keef,' said Sam, drawing deeply on the joint.

Dan, who was taking seven more tiles out of the green bag, looked over at her.

‘Thought you'd be more of a One Direction kind of a girl.'

‘Oh, piss off! Just 'cause I'm from Romford, doesn't mean I like boy bands.'

‘What do you think we are then?' Dan looked at her again, his gaze challenging.

Sam looked straight back at him, her heart starting to beat a bit faster.

‘Well, you're boys, and you're in a band. But you're not a boy band. You're proper rock'n'roll, and when you're older, you'll be legends, like Filthy Meadows.' Her horrible day seemed worlds away now. Despite the grungy surroundings, beer and dope, everything seemed so much more wholesome than the Soho environment she'd just left.

‘You've just passed the test, Sambo.' Dan smiled at her, making her feel like the only person in the room, as only he could.

‘As if there were ever any doubt,' said Sienna, leaning over to put an affectionate arm around Sam's shoulder. ‘Sam's one of us.'

And as incongruous as the ‘us' sounded, when it comprised a billionaire's plummy-accented daughter, three wannabe rock stars from Manchester and a student-cum-glamour model from Romford, it was an ‘us' that Sam was more than happy to be part of.

Several hours later, surrounded by overflowing ashtrays, empty beer cans and takeaway pizza boxes, they found themselves looking up Disney songs on YouTube. Olly had passed out on the floor, underneath an old checked blanket that Sam (under Dan's watchful gaze) had draped over him. Sienna was snuggled on Mikey's lap in an armchair, Sam curled up at one end of the holey old sofa and Dan perched the other end, as he manned the controls of his thirty-six-inch-screen Mac.

They had already had the best of
The Jungle Book
– ‘The Bare Necessities' and ‘I'm the King of the Swingers' (Sam's choice, which everyone had applauded), ‘Everybody Wants to Be a Cat' from
The Aristocats
(Dan's choice) and ‘Once Upon a Dream' from
Sleeping Beauty
(Sienna's choice).

‘You're so gay,' had been Mikey's comment on the last. Sienna had responded by telling him it was a Tchaikovsky waltz, calling him a philistine and leaning over for another snog. They looked like a couple of beautiful fallen angels together, thought Sam – Sienna with her white-blonde waves, high cheekbones and bruised dark blue eyes; Mikey with his golden fringe and pretty, pouty, girly face.

Now it was his turn. ‘I always liked
Snow White
,' he said, through the dope smoke.

‘And you just called
Sienna
gay?' said Dan, and they all erupted in stoned giggles. ‘OK, Mr Hard Man, which one do you want?'

‘“Whistle While You Work”.'

‘Oh, the one with all the birds and the animals,' said Sam, smiling dreamily as she accepted the joint from him. ‘I always loved that one too.'

‘Actually,' said Mikey, ‘you look a bit like Snow White, Sam, with your dark hair and enormous eyes …'

‘Except Snow White had enormous
blue
eyes, shit-for-brains,' said Dan as he scrolled down the YouTube list. Then he started laughing. ‘Well, for some reason the only version of “Whistle While You Work” I can find is in
Dutch
, with subtitles. Will that do?'

‘Oh, yeah!' They all laughed in agreement, and soon they were singing along to
Snow White
, trying to make the English subtitles sound Dutch, giggling like loons. Sam couldn't remember a time she felt happier.

‘Oh, this is so much fun,' she said, when the song came to an end. ‘Thanks for making me feel better. It's really lonely in halls at the moment, and after today I don't know how much more I can stand doing modelling.'

‘I wish you'd give it up,' said Sienna. ‘Surely you can get another student loan? I can easily lend you some dosh to tide you over in the meantime.'

Sienna never tired of offering Sam money, and Sam never tired of refusing.

‘Thanks, but you know I can't. It's going to take me years to pay off the student loan I've already taken out, anyway. And I've got to pay next term's hall fees any minute, too. It's going to be even worse there without you next term, Sienna. I'm dreading Josh coming back.'

Sienna had nearly completed on her purchase of a million-pound flat in Notting Hill. She'd have offered Sam a room in an instant, but her canny self-made father, always aware of people taking advantage, had insisted she bought a flat with only one bedroom. His hard-earned filthy lucre was not to be used to support hangers-on.

‘I hope you're not going to let Josh be too vile, without me to stick up for you,' Sienna was starting, when Dan interrupted.

‘I can't believe how fucking stupid we're all being. Why don't you move in here, Sambo? You can have Ross's old room. It's a tiny shithole, mind, but dirt cheap. Then you can save on next term's rent, stop doing so much of that crap modelling, and concentrate on your studies.'

Sam was staring at him, delight starting to creep over her face.

‘It'll be shit, like, having you around.' Dan grinned. ‘But you can earn your keep doing a bit of cooking and cleaning …'

‘Can I? Can I really?' Her head swivelled from Dan to Mikey, both of whom were smiling and nodding. Sienna, from her feline position on Mikey's lap, was giving her a wink and a double thumbs-up.

Sam glanced over at Olly, snoring slightly on the floor. ‘You don't think Olly would mind?'

‘Sam,' said Mikey. ‘When will you realize that we all bloody well like you?'

Sam looked over at Dan again. He was saying nothing. But he was smiling.

In her luxurious home in Eaton Place, Alison frowned as she looked at the evidence. She should be feeling ecstatic: she was home from the holiday from hell, and her evil stepchildren had at long last gone back to boarding school. But even though she should be feeling happy that the little fuckers were incarcerated once more, she couldn't. The case she was working on was just too disgusting. Could she really defend these bastards, when what they were doing – and seemed to have been doing for years – was quite so despicable? Tales of the imprisonment, rape and torture of underage girls, year after year, going back for decades, leapt off the screen at her.

She couldn't ask Philip: he was too much a professional lawyer, and also a man. He would tell her that everybody was entitled to a legal defence, and she couldn't let her emotions get in the way. She had always thought that her professionalism was second to none, but now she found that her emotions
were
getting in the way. She couldn't understand what was wrong with her.

She sighed, and put her face in her hands, completely at a loss for the first time in her life. Then something occurred to her: she could ask Andy. He would know what to do. They had hardly been in friendly contact since he had discovered she was cheating on him in the run-up to their wedding the previous year, but he was one of the only truly decent men she knew. What was more, he had worked on similar cases for his newspaper; if nothing else, it would be good to unburden herself to somebody who understood the depths of filth to which she now found herself exposed.