‘What are you doing?’ her mother hissed, shooing Ellie back towards the bedroom with frantic flapping motions. ‘Get back in there.’
‘I need to pee and I need some water.’ Ellie refused to budge an inch. ‘Why are you whispering? Who’s at the door?’
Ari rolled her eyes. ‘Photographers, reporters and a couple of film crews.’
‘Oh God.’ Ellie leaned heavily against the wall. ‘I really didn’t think things could get any worse.’
‘What can I tell you?’ Ari shrugged. The banging started again and she was forced to raise her voice. ‘They kept shoving notes through the door till I wadded up the letter box. The Sun is ahead with an offer of a hundred grand if you’ll go topless.’
Ellie didn’t need to think about it. ‘Not even if they were offering a million.’
Ari patted her shoulder. ‘That’s my girl,’ she said, over the cacophony of someone leaning on the doorbell. ‘Sadie phoned. She says she and Morry love you and they don’t believe a single word, but this is what happens when you date outside your faith. And all your aunties have been on the phone, pledging support and wanting to come round with crumb cake and flowers. All except your aunt Carol, who blames me for raising a child without a strong male role model.’
‘Did she really say that?’ Ellie asked, hurt throbbing in her voice, though Aunt Carol, Louis’s mother, had never liked her.
‘Well, yeah, but that’s Carol for you,’ Ari said. ‘So what are we going to do, kid?’
Ellie shook her head. ‘You know that usually, when something bad happens, I try and take some control of the situation so I don’t feel completely helpless, but this … this is beyond anything I can control.’
Ari’s smile was wan as she brushed her fingers down Ellie’s cheek. ‘Have a shower. At least you’ll feel fresher.’
Half an hour later, Ellie was peed, showered and wearing the least outrageous outfit she could find in Ari’s wardrobe: an old denim mini skirt and a faded Pixies T-shirt. The kitchen was out of bounds as the window looked out onto the walkway where most of the world’s press were congregated and Ari had never got round to fixing her broken blind. Her mother had already had a very tense conversation with Alf from next door, both of them leaning out of their bedroom windows on the other side of the block, because he couldn’t get out to go to William Hill and place a bet on the three thirty at Kemptown.
‘Maybe I should just go home?’ Ellie suggested, as she and Ari camped out in the living room and shared the last of the chocolate Hobnobs. ‘I could put my head down and run for it.’
‘You can’t. Tess texted me while you were still asleep. It’s even worse outside your place.’ Ari shook her head. ‘They might get bored in a bit. I hope so, we’ve only got enough milk left to share one mug of tea.’
They were sitting on the floor, curtains closed as, like the kitchen, the windows looked out onto the communal walkway. The assault on the front door had stopped, but occasionally someone would tap on the window and Ellie would jump and her stomach would lurch. Though it was yet another sweltering day and the flat was now hermetically sealed, she felt cold and clammy.
‘I’m sorry about this, Mum.’
Ellie might have had a good eight hours’ sleep thanks to a Percocet, but her mother had purple shadows under her eyes and, for once, looked every single one of her forty-eight years. She still had the energy to give Ellie her sternest look.
‘You have nothing to be sorry about!’ she reiterated. ‘This is all my fault. I should never have introduced you to Richey.’
‘You didn’t force me to go out with him,’ Ellie pointed out. ‘That was my choice.’
Ari crawled across the living-room floor so she could put her arm round Ellie’s shoulders. ‘Look, I wish I could say that I was sorry that I ever met Billy Kay but I’m not, because without Billy, there wouldn’t be you and I’ve kind of got used to having you around now …’
‘Thanks. You’re not so bad yourself.’ It didn’t even have a quarter of the snark of their usual tender exchanges but it was familiar ground on a day when nothing felt familiar. It was the two of them styling it out as they’d both done countless times before. ‘And anyway, you can’t help who you fall in love with, can you?’
‘You really can’t, even when you try extra hard to stop. I did love him back then, Ellie. As much as I was capable of loving anyone.’ Ari hadn’t spoken about back then in ages, and never with so much conviction. At any other time, Ellie would have pressed on Ari’s weak spot and started asking questions but, right then, she didn’t want to know; wasn’t sure she could handle the truth. And as if she was embarrassed about revealing that much, Ari turned her head to stare at her hula girls above the mantelpiece. ‘You will get through this, honey. I know it might seem like everything’s gone to shit but you’ll come back from this.’
Ellie knew that she should chime in on the chorus but she didn’t have Ari’s faith. They sat there in a silence punctuated only by the baying of the mob outside.
Ari nudged Ellie. ‘They’ll probably go once it starts getting dark.’
‘That’s hours from now!’
‘Well, maybe I could—’
Ari was interrupted by Ellie’s phone ringing. It had been silent up until now, as if her loved ones didn’t quite know what to say to her and her not-so-loved ones had decided that twenty-four hours was industry standard before they called to offer insincere commiserations.
‘Hello?’ Ellie said without much enthusiasm.
‘Hi. Sam Curtis here from the Sunday Chronicle,’ oozed the voice at the other end. ‘How the devil are you?’
‘Christ! You’ve got a real nerve calling me. How have you managed to not die of shame?’ She pointed at the phone and pulled an agonised face at Ari, who widened her eyes, stiffened her spine and looked a lot like Porky, their late cat, whenever she’d spotted an insect. ‘Have you any idea what you’ve done?’
‘Look, Ellie, you’re a big girl. You know how these things work,’ Sam Curtis said, as if the complete destruction of her life was not that much of a deal. ‘The public have a right to know the truth.’
‘Excuse me? The truth? The truth in your story would only be visible under a microscope,’ she growled at him. ‘Seriously, how do you sleep at night?’
‘Pretty well, thanks.’ He chuckled. ‘Now that we’ve got the social niceties out of the way, how would you feel about sitting down with me for a proper chat?’
Her anger rolled over Sam Curtis like he was coated in something non-stick. Maybe it would be a better idea to establish some kind of rapport.
‘Let me think. Hmm, I’d rather open my veins with a razor in a warm bath,’ Ellie said, and it was obvious she was joking so there was no need for Ari to try to snatch the phone away.
‘Can I quote you on that?’ Sam Curtis asked.
Oh, shit! ‘No! Please don’t quote me,’ Ellie begged. ‘Come on, have a heart.’
‘It’s time to get a clue, darling. The story’s published; it’s been picked up by all the other rags and here’s what’s going to happen. I take it that the charming Richey wasn’t the first bloke you’ve had sex with, right?’
‘What?’ Ellie spluttered. ‘How—’
‘Yeah, yeah. How very dare me.’ Ellie could tell he was getting a kick out of her anger and confusion, but still she couldn’t hang up. Not until she knew how bad it was, even though it was currently very, very, very bad. It might even have upgraded to full-on catastrophic. ‘Even as we’re exchanging pleasantries, every guy you’ve ever shagged, even a few you haven’t, are phoning up my colleagues on other papers to trade their stories of your fun sexy times for cold, hard cash. The going rate must be about ten grand right now. Probably more once your half-sisters, lovely Lara and Rose, put the boot in and do a photoshoot with their tits falling out of their dresses.’
‘How do you even know this?’
‘Because this is how it always plays out,’ he told Ellie pityingly, as if he couldn’t
quite believe how naïve she was. ‘Everyone has a part to play. How much is it going to take for you to start playing yours? I can tell you’re not going to get your kit off so I won’t waste time asking, but I could still go to twenty-five grand for an interview and photoshoot. Thirty if you show some skin. Nothing skeevy.’
‘What’s he said now?’ Ari demanded. ‘Why are you looking like that?’
She was looking like that – as if she’d suffered a swift and painful blow to her head – because thirty grand was a lot of money. It was a hell of a lot of money for one day’s work and she wouldn’t even have to suck up to some insufferable oligarch’s wife or fill in Customs forms or deal with some uppity artist banging on about how she was stifling his creativity. It would be enough for a deposit on her very own place and put a sizeable dent into what remained of Ari’s mortgage, and what the hell? She could even buy a Mulberry bag without asking friends and relatives for Selfridges vouchers for her birthday, Chanukah and Christmas presents.
And it was more – thirty grand more, to be precise – than she’d ever been given by Billy Kay, who’d never even stuck a fiver in a birthday card. Never given her a passing thought but had thrown her and Ari away like they meant nothing, like they weren’t important. Ellie wondered just how important she’d become to Billy Kay if she shared that charming side of him with Sam Curtis’s readers?
‘So, Ellie, what do you reckon? I could have you in a car in half an hour, and what about we put you up in a fancy hotel until all the fuss has died down?’
Ellie was snapped back from her revenge fantasies into the present, where someone had started leaning on the doorbell again and Ari was talking on her mobile to Mrs Okeke from the flat above.
‘Really sorry about this, Mary,’ she was saying. ‘No idea how long they’re going to be there, but I hope it won’t be all day because we’re down to half a packet of rice cakes … No, not even the salt and vinegar ones, the regular ones …’
Thirty grand wasn’t going to make Ellie feel better and it certainly wasn’t going to make this go away. Besides, it was her story and she decided who she was going to share it with. God, she hadn’t even told Tess until they’d known each other for seven years and had got drunk together at least six times. There was absolutely no way she would share her story with the Chronicle – not out of loyalty to Billy Kay but because she was better than that.
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m not that kind of person.’
‘Thirty-five grand. That’s my final offer.’
‘You don’t get it,’ Ellie said, and she was pleased that she sounded sure of herself now. Her whole life, everything she’d worked so hard to achieve, was slipping through her fingers but at least she still had her integrity. You couldn’t put a price on integrity. ‘My story’s not for sale. I’m not for sale.’
‘Everyone’s for sale. Two more days of this and you’ll be begging me for a little face time.’ Sam Curtis managed to choke out a chuckle. ‘You think this is bad? Honey, you don’t know what bad really is.’
There were no photographers outside at five the next morning, just a mound of cigarette butts, crushed Styrofoam coffee cups and sandwich wrappers that Ellie had to step over when she opened Ari’s front door.
Still, she held her breath as she reached the end of the walkway in case anyone was lurking in the stairwell, but it was empty and Ellie was able to step out onto the street and walk the five minutes to Delancey Street undetected.
The first thing Ellie did when she got back to her flat, which thankfully was not being blockaded by members of the fourth estate, was to start packing everything she might possibly need for the coming week. If Sam Curtis was right and Ellie’s lame ducks went quacking to the papers, and Billy’s celebutante daughters, Lara and Rose, fame-whored their way on to the front pages when usually they could only get a page-five lead, then Ellie could never go home again. Ari’s place was out of bounds too. She might be able to stay with Sadie and Morry if they weren’t besieged, or Chester, or even Chester’s parents in Romford, but the commute would be a bitch and the practical solution was to book into a hotel.
Everything would be neat, organised and controlled in a hotel. Nothing would happen without Ellie’s say-so, whether it was room service or turn-down.
Today she had to put her gameface on and pretend it was business as usual. She’d spent months working on the Emerging Scandinavian Artists exhibition and she wasn’t going to let that suffer – not that Vaughn would regard her new notoriety as a good enough excuse for fucking up. Everyone else (but mostly Muffin) would be scrutinising everything Ellie said and did for an indication that she was falling apart. Whereas, her grandparents, Ari and Chester would expect Ellie to soldier on, and that was what she was going to do – until approximately ten thirty tonight. Then she could check into a hotel and simply be herself. She could cry. She could comfort-eat her way through all the chocolate and pretzels in the mini bar. She could even chew the carpet if that was what she needed to do to get through this, but she needed to keep it together for today. Just one day. She could manage that.
Ellie wrote a note to Tess and Lola to say that she’d see them at the exhibition that evening. Then, at six, she left the flat while the going was still good.
Anyone else with a wheeled suitcase, large holdall, small holdall, laptop bag, tote bag and handbag would have taken a taxi, but the heat wouldn’t reach stifling for at least another two hours, she’d eaten most of a packet of chocolate Hobnobs the day before, and Ellie did all her best thinking during her morning walk through Regent’s Park.
It was actually a relief to start panicking about all of the items on her gigantic to-do list and whether it had been such a good idea to ask the caterers to provide a pickled herring canapé. These were problems that had solutions as opposed to her other problems, and as Ellie fought hard to get into work mode, she did begin to feel a tiny bit better.
She forced herself to smile brightly at the baristas, who all nudged each other and whispered when she popped in to get her morning coffee. Then she went to the newsagent and had a perfectly pleasant conversation about the weather, just as she did every morning when she collected the newspapers on her way in.
See? You’ll get through this, Ellie told herself, as she entered Thirlestone Mews. It’s not going to kill you. It’s going to make you stronger.
She had to hold that thought and throw herself and her luggage against the railings as she was almost mown down by a white van that came screeching round the corner; the driver slamming on the brakes just a fraction of a second in time.
Ellie gingerly rotated her shoulder then dusted down her pale blue poplin dress.
‘You all right, love?’ asked a voice from the driver’s side window.
‘I would be if you kept to the speed limit!’ Ellie tried to attach her large holdall to her suitcase again – they’d become separated in the mêlée. ‘You nearly ran me over!’
‘Fuck me! It’s her,’ the driver said, and he didn’t sound the least bit repentant, probably because he was jumping out of the van, a camera in his hand. The door slammed on the other side and another man hit the ground running. ‘Velvet! Love! Just one picture.’
‘Oh, no!’ It was very hard to run over cobblestones with her heavy load in shoes with wobble-board technology built into their soles, especially when she was being pursued by a man who kept yelling, ‘Can we go somewhere quiet to talk?’
When she reached the gallery, Ellie was so spooked that she couldn’t remember the door code. It took three attempts, with a camera shoved into her face and two men trying to physically bar her way as they offered her twenty thousand pounds for exclusive rights to her story.
Ellie didn’t say a word, but her face got redder and redder as her sweaty fingers slid over the keypad. She didn’t even dare swear under her breath and in the two minutes that it took to finally get the door open, more reporters and photographers appeared.
‘Come on, Velvet. Crack a smile!’
br /> ‘One picture! And if you show a bit of leg, we’re golden here.’
‘Have you spoken to Sir Billy? What did he say?’
‘Any comment on what Lara and Rose said in the Sun?’
Ellie was pushed further and further back from the door because they were tugging at her dress, even pulling on her bag and suitcase as they shouted. Ellie could feel spittle on her face from a man who was pressed right up against her as he bellowed sweet nothings into her ear about how much his paper was prepared to pay for the rights to her innermost secrets.
It was a lot like being in a whirlwind: nowhere to hide or run, completely exposed to the elements, the click and whirr of cameras snapping at her and a sea of red faces all shouting at her as Ellie was pushed and jostled and shoved further and further away from the door.
In the end she had to fight her way through them to regain her ground. She used elbows and even kicked someone in the shin when he stuck a leg out to stop her.
At last she succeeded in covering the half-metre that placed her back in front of the door and got it open, even managed to get her many bags over the threshold, but shutting the door proved impossible as there were too many people intent on getting into the gallery with her. ‘No comment! No comment,’ she kept bleating, and with each ‘no comment’ she succeeded in closing the door another centi metre, until finally the last photographer had to remove the foot he had wedged in the doorway or lose it for ever.
‘Oh God, oh God, oh God,’ Ellie muttered under her breath. She did a complete circuit of the reception area, trailing her suitcase behind her. She was still holding her coffee cup and dimly recalled one of the press pack kindly offering to hold it for her while she tried to open the door. ‘Oh fuck.’
Now they were ringing the buzzer and banging on the door as if Ellie might have changed her mind in the last two minutes and had decided that yes, she did want to sell her soul and the rights to some tasteful bikini shots to the highest bidder.
Suddenly all the items on Ellie’s to-do list didn’t seem that doable when she couldn’t even let go of her suitcase handle. So much for only worrying about the things she could control.