What She Wants (54 page)

He liked her hair too.

‘It suits you short,’ he’d said admiringly, in the brief moment when they were alone while Sandra and Reenie were looking out the boardroom window admiring the view of London below.

Somehow, at that moment, Nicole began to trust him. There was something you could trust in that kind, open face. Something that said Darius Good was kind to animals, gave up his seat on the underground to old ladies and would never tell a girl he’d phone her if he didn’t mean it.

She smiled up at him and the tough feline little face

blossomed into the warm, beautiful, gentle one that Darius had known was there all along. ‘Thanks,’ she breathed. ‘I mean it,’ he said anxiously. ‘I know,’ she said softly. As he sprinted along the corridor to Sam Smith’s office, Darius felt ten feet tall. Sam had five minutes before her next meeting. ‘I’d love to say hello,’ she told Darius. ‘They must be nervous. Have you offered them coffee?’ ‘Er no but I will,’ Darius said. There was definitely something different about Sam Smith these days. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it but she was changed. Softer, kinder, somehow. Or maybe he was imagining it. But Izzy, the A & R secretary, had said so too. Although she’d been slightly less charitable. ‘Ms Smith must be getting it,’ she’d said sagely over lunch one day. ‘She’s dumped the career bitch clothes and has gone all floaty and New Age on us. Did you see her with her hair in a pony tail with a flower on it the other day? Definitely a man. Those hard-as-nails types always lose the run of themselves when they’ve got more than a cat to go home to.’ Darius felt that Izzy was being a bit cruel but he had to admit that Sam had changed. She was chatty, warmer definitely, not the tough, no-nonsense woman he’d met initially. Still, he didn’t care. Her new-found sweetness meant his darling Nicole was being wonderfully looked after and that was all that mattered. If a man was responsible for this change in the boss, he was happy for her. After all, he’d found Nicole, although she didn’t exactly know it yet. Sam strode along the corridor with her off-white John Rocha dress flowing elegantly behind her. She loved wearing it, adored the way it hung beautifully without clinging. Like a mini whirlwind, she swept into the boardroom. Nicole got to her feet instantly, a slim, beautiful figure in black with a halo of bronze curls on her exquisitely shaped head. ‘Hi Sam,’ she said.

Sam found herself giving the girl a hug, not the sort of thing she’d have done before. Before The Illness, as she called it herself, in capital letters, had changed her life.

‘Hello Nicole, lovely to see you.’

‘This is my gran, Reenie Turner,’ Nicole said, ‘and my mum, Sandra.’

‘Nice to meet you,’ said Reenie formally, taking Sam’s hand and giving it a strong shake. ‘We’re here to support Nicole in whatever way we can,’ she announced firmly. Nicole had asked for support and she’d get it.

‘It’s so exciting,’ trilled Sandra as she took Sam’s hand in her own dainty one. ‘You’ve got a lovely picture window here. How do you get any work done with the view?’

‘You don’t notice it after a while, I’m afraid,’ Sam said regretfully.

She sized up the Turner women. At least the grandmother seemed like a sensible woman, not like Nicole’s sweetly dizzy mother, who seemed to think that a cream leather jacket, floaty girlie skirt and pink high heeled sandals were becoming on a drizzly spring day. It was a look that could work well in the fashion pages of Sunday supplements when worn by a twenty-year-old model but it managed to look a bit too garden-partyish in the cold light of the normal world on a normal woman.

‘I won’t be sitting in on the meetings with you,’ Sam explained, ‘but I know Darius will if you’d like that and that he’s told Nicole about the various people you’ll be seeing.’

Nicole glanced shyly at Darius.

‘You don’t have to make any decisions today and don’t let any of these people bully you. Their job would be to represent Nicole in her career and she has to feel comfortable with them. That’s very important, Nicole,’ Sam added. ‘Your manager will work very closely with you, so you’ve got to get on with him or her and that’s often an instinctive decision. Everyone coming here today is a professional and is damn good. So it’s really up to you and how you feel about them all as individuals.’

Nicole and Reenie were watching her intently as she spoke. Sandra was admiring Sam’s Gucci mules. ‘Afterwards, if you have the time, I’d like to take you to lunch.’ Sandra lit up. ‘Will there be champagne?’ she asked.

‘What did you think?’ Darius asked at ten to one, when Nicole’s head was spinning. The highlight of the morning had undoubtedly been when her grandmother had sent a photo of one manager’s top clients spinning across the shiny table with the words: ‘if you think you’re going to get my Nicole into an outfit like this … this … prostitute’s costume, then you’ve got another think coming!’ ‘I don’t think Gran liked the middle guy,’ she remarked with a grin. ‘Yeah.’ Darius grimaced at the memory. ‘Although hot pants aren’t that unusual in this business.’ ‘I quite like hotpants,’ Nicole laughed. ‘It’s just that Gran’s never seen me in mine.’ Darius’s eyes lit up. ‘Do you think I might get to see you in them?’ She gave him an impish look. ‘You never know your luck.’ ‘They’re Gucci, those mules,’ whispered Sandra to her daughter as they followed Sam and Reenie to the lift on their way to lunch. ‘I’ve seen them in New Woman magazine on the fashion pages. I wouldn’t like to tell you what they cost.’ Nicole linked arms with her mother. ‘When we get this deal sorted out, Mum,’ she whispered, ‘I’ll buy you a pair.’ ‘Promise!’ breathed Sandra. ‘I promise.’ Nicole was pretty sure it was a promise she could keep. After meeting the various managers that morning, she’d been astonished at how much money they’d all insisted she could get from Titus. It had been more money than Nicole had ever dreamed of, and they’d all promised that this was only the start.

‘If you really make it, you could become a very rich young lady,’ the manager she’d disliked most had said.

Nicole hated being called a young lady. He was definitely out of the running. Those beady little eyes and eyebrows that met in the middle. Horrible. So was that tall bossy woman with the short haircut and the leather jeans. Her voice was so penetrating and she reminded Nicole of Sister Jerome who’d taught her geography for the three months she’d been at St Anne’s before she was expelled. Nicole half-expected the bossy woman to demand to see her homework on the industries of the Ruhr valley. Definitely out too. The other two were OK, nice enough, but Nicole didn’t have an opinion on them either way.

The best was a youngish guy who’d made her laugh and who hadn’t attempted to talk himself up by telling her he could get her the best deal on the planet - unlike the other four. Casual in jeans and a wrecked looking leather coat, he’d told her about his other clients, an impressive list, Nicole noticed, explained what he did and added that he wasn’t the sort of manager who believed in being a sycophant.

‘A boot-licker,’ Nicole whispered to her mother, who’d looked puzzled.

‘I’m here because I think you’re good and I think you’ll go places. It’s my job to help you go places. It’s not my job to suck up to you and make you think you’re Madonna. That’s a mistake all round. If that’s what you want, then I’m not your man.’

Nicole looked at his name on her sheet of paper: Bob Fellowes of DMF Management. A solid, straightforward name for a solid, straightforward guy.

‘He’s good,’ Reenie said afterwards. ‘I liked him best. At least he didn’t have any pornographic photos of other people he looks after. I’m not having you dressed up like a fallen woman for anybody, Nicole.’

At lunch, Darius behaved like the well-brought-up young man he was and talked politely to Nicole’s grandmother

who was warning him off outlandish outfits for Nicole’s future engagements. Sandra Turner, wildly happy to be having lunch in a posh restaurant with running hot and cold waiters, was busy watching the other guests and trying to work out where they’d bought their clothes and how much they’d cost. Sam finally had a chance to talk to Nicole. ‘How have you been?’ she asked kindly. With this new, friendlier Sam Smith smiling at her warmly and seeming really to want to know how she was coping, Nicole was honest. ‘Freaked out,’ she said. ‘I never dreamed anything like this would happen. It’s scary.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘I know that sounds stupid to someone like you, but this is scary to me.’ ‘It’s not a bit stupid,’ Sam insisted earnestly. ‘There’s nothing worse than being scared. Something happened to me recently that scared the hell out of me and made me change how I looked at everything. That’s a hard thing to go through. I know how you’re feeling.’ Nicole wanted to ask what had happened but she didn’t feel she could. ‘The secret is,’ Sam continued, ‘to be yourself and to trust yourself. This is a wonderfully exciting time for you but of course it’s scary, and that’s why you need a good manager to make sense of it all. Hopefully, you’ll have Darius and myself to help too. He’s a good guy, Darius.’ Nicole nodded shyly. Sam ploughed on. ‘Some people change when they make an album and think it’s important to behave in a certain way. They lose sight of who they really are - and they generally drive everyone else mad at the same time,’ she laughed. ‘You mean like asking for Jack Daniels in their dressing rooms and M & Ms with all the red ones picked out?’ Nicole joked. ‘Yeah, that sort of thing,’ Sam admitted. ‘But it’s more than that. They begin to believe the hype and lose it. You’re a lovely girl and you’ve got a fantastic voice. I want you to

be successful but I want you to understand that this is a tough business and that you should hold onto your friends and onto who you are. Trying to turn yourself into something you’re not is a big mistake.’

For a moment, the distant look on Sam’s face made Nicole think Sam was really talking about herself. But she couldn’t be.

They had a great lunch. Sandra was in flying form and Reenie, who firmly approved of Darius, thoroughly enjoyed herself. To keep things light, they talked about holidays and Sandra professed a lifelong desire to go to Cannes.

‘The South of France is so glamorous,’ she said wistfully, picturing herself on the Croisette wearing head-to-toe Dior, possibly with a poodle or some such dog under her arm. Women in magazines often had small dogs with them although Sandra wasn’t sure if dogs were let into restaurants and shops unless they were Labradors.

‘You can’t beat Eastbourne,’ Reenie said. ‘Although my best holiday ever was in Guernsey. We stayed in a little guesthouse outside St Peter Port and the weather was magic’

‘I saw a holiday programme about the Maldives and it looked wonderful,’ Nicole sighed dreamily. ‘Bounty bar beaches and incredible blue sea and nothing to do all day long.’

Darius’s eyes met hers. ‘I’ve always wanted to go there too,’ he said eagerly.

Sam told them she’d had a lovely few days in Ireland with her sister.

‘She lives in the most amazing place,’ Sam recalled. ‘It’s so pretty and looks like a postcard with the most incredible landscape all around, all brooding melodramatic hills and valleys, and in the middle, this lovely village with these cute little houses, brightly coloured shops and the liveliest pub culture in the world. But it’s a very healing place, if you know what I mean. It’s friendly and there’s a great sense of community, which is missing from everywhere else, isn’t it?’

Reenie nodded sagely. ‘Nobody knows their neighbours

any more. You could be dead in your house and the only way anyone would know would be when the milk bottles piled up outside.’

Sam thought of the lovely kind people of Redlion who’d taken Hope into their hearts and who looked after her as if they were one big family. She thought too about the long walks she and Hope had enjoyed, letting the fresh country air fill her spirit, and she remembered the marvellous Macrame Club when she’d laughed so much, her ribs had ached, and where she’d begun to think about changing her life.

‘It’s peaceful too, although when you actually get to know the people there’s more going on in Redlion than there is in central London, I swear! It’s a hotbed of action.’

Reenie stiffened in her seat. ‘Redlion, you say?’

Nicole looked at her grandmother curiously.

‘Do you know someone from there, Gran?’ she asked. ‘Gran’s originally from Ireland, from Kerry,’ she explained to Sam. ‘She left at sixteen and she’s never gone back. I said that if I get a contract, we’ll all go and see where she came from. I’d love to go.’

‘Did you come from Redlion?’ Sam said excitedly.

Reenie’s pale eyes went opaque behind her thick glasses.

‘No, from Killarney,’ she said quickly.

At that moment the desserts arrived, so the subject was dropped. Sam wondered why Reenie Turner had reacted so strangely to the very mention of Redlion. The subject had certainly sparked something in her and she’d seemed interested in the whole notion of Ireland until then. But perhaps she hadn’t good memories of her homeland. If Sam was accurate about Reenie’s age, she would have left Ireland some fifty years ago.

Things were different then. Lots of people left and never returned for a variety of reasons. And Sam knew that some emigrants couldn’t bear to return to their home country because of the bad memories of their life there, while some preferred to remember the auld sod in misty sepia rather than see it for what it actually was.

After lunch, Sam had to rush back to the office. She hugged Nicole goodbye and found herself on the receiving end of a double kiss from Sandra, who’d watched people doing it all lunchtime in the restaurant.

‘Phone me any time if you want to talk it over,’ Darius said to Nicole as he left with Sam.

‘I will,’ she said, gazing after him. ‘I will.’

‘What do you think?’ Sam asked as she and Darius went up in the lift.

‘She’s incredible,’ Darius said with a misty look on his face.

Sam grinned. Wasn’t true love wonderful?

Karen Storin, who dropped in to see her at six on her way to an album launch, didn’t think the whole thing was quite as wonderful. She loved Nicole’s golden voice and was as keen as everybody else to sign her. But she saw problems in the future because Sam had been working so actively with Darius to get a hot manager for Nicole.