It was hard to concentrate when it felt as if her brain had been replaced with a wad of cotton wool. She kept replaying last night’s scene over and over again. She felt sick with shame as she remembered the way she’d tried to snatch David’s phone away from him; how he’d had to fight her off. Then she’d remember how he held her against his chest, arm tight around her, forearm pressed to her breasts, though that had barely registered at the time. This morning it was all Ellie could think about.
It was as if she no longer knew who she was, but vacillated between Ellie Cohen and Velvet Underground, and the person who was there to witness her identity crisis, to see her behave in a way that she never had before, was David. If only he’d known her before, even before Glastonbury, then he’d know she was acting out of character.
Or maybe this was who Ellie was supposed to be. When she was stripped of all that made her look good – nice Jewish extended family, fancy job, expensive hair products – what was left didn’t measure up. Maybe what was left had always been substandard, shopsoiled and tarnished before the tabloids ever got hold of her. Certainly that was what David must think of her after seeing her in action last night. Ellie wished she could be defiant and uncompromising, that she didn’t care what he thought, but she did.
Then she had to wonder why she did and why she was so attracted to him. Last night on the sofa, before Billy Kay had called, her whole body had been attuned to his presence, had strained towards him.
Finally, she thought about Billy Kay and how he was still absenting himself from her life. Ellie waited for the familiar hurt to flare up, but when it did it was a new hurt as she replayed that heart-ripping moment when his name flashed up on David’s phone, and then she remembered the shocked look on David’s face when she’d launched herself at him to retrieve said phone and she was back at the beginning of her shame spiral.
No wonder it took half an hour to write a five-line email to Vaughn updating him on her progress with what she insisted on calling the Desperate Housewives exhibition, even though he’d told her not to.
In the end, because she wasn’t really working, Ellie broke with routine and swam before lunch. Instead of counting lengths, she found herself counting all the ways that Billy Kay had let her down during her lifetime. She redoubled her efforts to count lengths, but realised she was totting up all the times that David had looked at her with what she liked to think was a dark intent. It was possible, she thought then, that being confined to quarters was driving her to the brink of her sanity.
When she came back from her swim and it was impossible to feel any worse than she currently did, Ellie decided it was time to assess the damage. So far, she’d avoided the newspaper websites and gossip blogs because every time she thought about checking them out, her stomach dipped and swayed as though she was top deck on turbulent seas, but it was Friday and she was going to be out of David’s flat by end of business today, no matter what. Though it would make it harder to leave if one of her exes had over-shared, or Lara and Rose had given another exclusive interview about how Ellie had ruined their lives. Then the paps would be back like a bad case of nits.
There was a big story in the Daily Mail about how single mothers like Ari and children brought up on state handouts and reality TV like Ellie were the root cause of all the evils in modern society. The Daily Mirror had a photo of Richey out on the town with two girls – one had made it to judges’ houses on The X Factor and the other was apparently a model. Richey was wearing a tight white vest, which showed off his muscles and tribal tattoos, a baker boy cap and a grin that now looked more cheesy than cheeky. Ellie wondered what she’d ever seen in him apart from the muscles, until she was distracted by the Chronicle’s headline: ‘BILLY’S BELLES – HOW DO THEY MEASURE UP?’
There were full-length photographs of Ellie, Lara and Rose and the journalist had thoughtfully marked their corresponding body parts out of ten. Lara had the best smile, breasts and feet, Rose was ahead on nose, lips and waist, but Ellie had the best eyes, hair, bum and legs, which was demeaning to all three of them, but also oddly validating, not that Ellie would admit that to a living soul. There was even a little sidebar on her beloved toning shoes: ‘The £70 sneakers that give Velvet her va-va-voom!’
None of that was as bad as Ellie had feared. But the stuff on the gossip sites was much, much worse. The upskirt photo taken at the gallery had made it on to TMZ. The Billy Kay fan forum discussion boards weren’t mincing their words either, which was a shame because the words they were using were ‘slag’ and ‘whore’ and ‘tart’. Someone who had to have known her in real life was regaling the readers of Holy Moly! with the story of the time that Ellie had nearly broken her ex Oscar’s penis.
The only way to deal with the contents of the Pandora’s box that she’d just opened was to not deal with it; to try to pretend that the horrible people who had nothing better to do than spout poisonous remarks behind the anonymity of a fake name were talking about someone else. To hold herself very still and practise taking deep breaths until she stopped shaking and the goose bumps had flattened out. It kind of worked. She was even able to force down a couple of pieces of fruit for her lunch and reopen her work folder, though all she did was stare at her to-do list for twenty minutes without actually to-doing anything.
It was after Ellie had come back from an unprecedented second swim that she accepted what she couldn’t change: her work ethic was gone for the week. It was Friday afternoon and she’d earned the right to sit on the balcony, sip a glass of the Sancerre rosé from the night before and paint her toenails.
After applying a top coat of creamy pale pink polish, Ellie found herself back on her laptop. This time, her hands, acting independently of her brain, were typing David’s name into Google so she could do some digging. Ellie was surprised she’d held out so long.
There was a lot to dig. She discovered that he’d been back in the UK for only a few months. He’d spent five years in the States, setting up an entertainment division for Wyndham, Pryce and Lewis in their New York and Los Angeles offices. ‘For a law firm that used to pride itself on traditional values and a very nineteenth-century notion that a gentleman’s word was his bond, the dynamic David Gold, made junior partner when he was twenty-eight, is determined to drag his colleagues into the twenty-first century,’ claimed one profile from the American Law Review. There was a picture of David sitting at a desk, the New York skyline visible from the window behind. He was smiling faintly, showing just a flash of even, white teeth to dispel the myth that all British people had blackened pegs in their mouths, and looked like he could handle anything the legal profession threw at him.
The more she read about him, from the double first from Cambridge to the rumours about him and the startingly beautiful, Oscar-nominated indie actress he represented, to his sub-four-hours marathon average, the more Ellie knew David was out of her reach. Well, that and the fact that he had his fingers in all of Billy Kay’s pies.
After twenty-six years of pep talks from strong women like Ari and Sadie and Tabitha, nothing had ever felt beyond Ellie’s reach. If she’d wanted something, then she planned and worked and went miles out of her way to get it. But now Ellie was full of doubt and uncertainty, and David was number three on a list of New York’s Legal Hotties. Besides, whether or not she was able to get him wasn’t the issue when she was meant to be getting as far away from him and all the painful emotions he roused in her as soon as possible.
Her time would be much better spent looking for a bolthole – maybe a little self-catering cottage in Cornwall, if there were any left unoccupied in late July – and she might be able to book a bed on the sleeper train from Paddington to Truro tonight, Ellie thought.
Then she heard the front door open. Her stomach did the turbulent seas shimmy again because it wasn’t even four and David wasn’t due home for at least another three and a half hours. She hadn’t had time to practise being personable yet aloof like she’d planned. Ellie wriggled her shoulders, looked up an
d screamed when she saw a woman staring at her from the doorway of the guest bedroom. ‘Bloody hell! Who are you?’
The woman had flailed when Ellie had screamed so she couldn’t work for a tabloid because their employees were made of tougher stuff. Then she took a couple of steps forward so Ellie could see her face and Ellie’s heart started thudding all over again. She was pretty sure it was the woman who’d been with David at Glastonbury. Pretty sure, but not one hundred per cent certain.
She also looked a bit like Melanie from Goldman Sachs. David obviously had a type.
‘I’m Jessica,’ the woman said. She was tall, tanned, slender and dressed in a sleeveless white blouse, beautifully cut skinny black trousers and heels, her glossy brown hair twisted into a topknot. The overall effect was cool and elegant and not altogether friendly.
Painfully aware that she was sporting a fetching pair of neon-orange toe separators and damp hair, Ellie got to her feet and shook the hand Jessica was proffering. ‘Um, hi. Er, how did you get in?’
‘I live across the hall. I’ve got a spare set of keys,’ Jessica informed her in precise Home Counties tones that made Ellie stiffen. The other woman held up a keychain. ‘I kept an eye on the place when David was in the States.’
It still didn’t explain what she was doing in David’s apartment.
‘I’m Ellie. David’s letting me stay here for a few days,’ Ellie said, twisting anxious hands behind her back. Her own accent had climbed a few notches, the way it did when she felt intimidated. ‘So, was there something I could help you with?’
Jessica shook her head. Her hair was more blonde than brunette when it caught the light. She wasn’t the woman Ellie had briefly met at Glastonbury. It was also clear that Jessica knew who she was, because she folded her arms and pursed her lips as Ellie slunk past her. She didn’t want Jessica standing in the guest room, because she was the guest so that made it her room, and Jessica might be David Gold’s current girlfriend, or his overly friendly neighbour with benefits, or even his stalker, but she was invading Ellie’s private space. She also didn’t want Jessica to keep staring at her underwear hanging on the clothes dryer on the balcony because she’d done a wash that morning.
‘Don’t worry, I know where everything is,’ Jessica said as she caught up with Ellie, overtook her and strode confidently towards the kitchen. ‘I just got back from Brussels and the Waitrose delivery isn’t due until six. I’m all out of herbal tea.’
She reached up to the cupboard to get down the tin of camomile teabags into which Ellie had made major inroads. Then she turned round and fixed Ellie with a gimlet look that no doubt struck fear into the nameless bureaucrats of Brussels.
‘Some of the residents wondered who was going in and out of David’s apartment when he wasn’t there,’ she said, though Ellie suspected that one person might have mentioned it and Jessica had hotfooted it over. She was certainly running a proprietorial hand over the granite worktops, which was fine with Ellie. Jessica could run a proprietorial hand over anything of David’s that she wanted to, and Ellie was only gritting her teeth, nails digging into her palm, because hostility was coming off Jessica in waves, like she’d doused herself in it in Duty Free. ‘No need to ask what you’re doing here. It’s obvious now. David is clearing up another one of Billy’s messes.’
Billy? Messes? As in messes in the plural, like they were a regular occurrence. Ellie wasn’t confident that she could speak and what came out of her mouth was more a grunt than anything else. ‘Billy?’
‘You know perfectly well who I mean by Billy,’ Jessica told her kindly. She looked round the kitchen, and if she put the kettle on so she could drink her camomile tea here, instead of in her own flat, then Ellie was going right now. She’d even leave her luggage behind if she had to. ‘David and I had dinner with him a couple of times in New York. Charming man.’
Jessica’s romantic status with regards to David Gold was still indeterminate but one thing was certain, she was a bitch. A month ago, it would have been a point of principle with Ellie to believe that there was no such thing as a bitch, just someone who she hadn’t got on side yet, but that was then. Now Ellie didn’t want to get Jessica on side. She wanted to smack her. Hard. Repeatedly.
‘Right, you’ve got your teabags or whatever it was you came for, so you can go now,’ Ellie said brusquely.
Ellie’s unparalleled brusqueness was wasted on Jessica. ‘Do you parade around half naked like that in front of David?’
Ellie wasn’t half naked. She was wearing a Breton top and shorts, cuffed Whistles shorts, not bootie shorts or short shorts or jeans that she’d cut off so you could see her arse cheeks. It was on the tip of her tongue to say something placating about the heat, maybe offer Jessica a cold drink, because it was awful to be on the receiving end of such passive aggression and not do anything about it. But Jessica didn’t get to come into Ellie’s so-called safe house and speak about Billy Kay like that. Like, going for dinner with him was a delightful thing that happened to people who weren’t Ellie.
Worse, the extent to which David’s life, and not just his career, was entwined with Billy Kay’s hadn’t been apparent until Jessica had rubbed it in her face, so Ellie wasn’t going to play nice. ‘You need to go,’ she said, her face settling into an unfamiliar arrangement that she was sure resembled Ari’s best ‘bitch, please’ expression. ‘As you’re so at home here, I’m sure you know the quickest way out.’
Jessica didn’t even wrinkle her perfect, retroussé nose, but held the tin of teabags in front of her like it was a protective nosegay and Ellie had a bad case of plague.
She was almost at the front door and Ellie was holding her breath, when Jessica turned. ‘You know, dear, I wouldn’t read anything into this,’ she said sweetly, sweeping out her arm to encompass both Ellie, and David’s open-plan living space. ‘When it comes to his career, David is very single-minded. Well, not just his career …’ She trailed off with a suggestive smile about as subtle as breeze block, so Ellie could be in no doubt of exactly when David had shown Jessica how single-minded he could be in pursuit of his goals.
Ellie forced her features into blankness. Grim blankness. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I’ll spell it out for you, shall I?’ Jessica asked sweetly. ‘Billy Kay is David’s biggest client. When David poached Billy Kay from his old law firm, he made junior partner. Now he’s determined to make senior partner by the time he’s thirty-five. That’s in three months’ time and this … you … it’s simply to keep Billy happy. Keeping him happy really mounts up the billable hours for David.’
‘Yeah, well, I know that David didn’t ask me to stay here out of the goodness of his heart,’ Ellie blustered. ‘I needed somewhere off the radar in a hurry. He provided one. End of.’
Jessica nodded her head. She was vile. If all her in sinuations were true then Ellie had to wonder what the hell David saw in her – well, when he wasn’t being single-minded in pursuit of his goals with Melanie and the woman from Glastonbury and a whole host of other women who looked like they’d rolled off some Duchess of Cambridge-approved assembly line. ‘… as long as we understand each other,’ Jessica was saying. ‘Even if he can ignore all those stories in the paper about you, little gallery girls aren’t his style. Not really going to further his cause on the partnership fast track.’
It was the worst insult yet. Ellie was not a gallery girl. She was a display and exhibitions manager. She was Vaughn’s protégée. She was almost an art dealer in her own right. Gallery girls were privately funded, pretty girls who worked in galleries until they got married. They had no ambition, other than plighting their troth to a man with a bigger trust fund than theirs, preferably a friend of Prince Harry.
Muffin was a gallery girl. Two-thirds of the posh girls had been gallery girls, but Ellie had worked bloody hard to get where she was, even if where she was was currently working out a month’s notice. She might not have gone to Oxford or Harvard Business School like Jessica probably had
but she was not some career dilettante.
‘Do you know something?’ Ellie heard herself say, and she couldn’t understand why the words she was thinking were coming out of her mouth unchecked. ‘If David hasn’t made a commitment to you after years of being neighbours and New York dinner buddies, then he’s never going to. Not when he’s fucking a whole bunch of other women who all look like you and dress like you, probably so none of you will clash with his suits.’
Jessica’s lips drew back in a snarl. ‘You utter—’
‘I mean, even someone like me with my disastrous track record when it comes to relationships can tell that he is never going to put a ring on it, Jessica, so if I were you I’d just jog on. It’s the dignified thing to do.’
It was the meanest, bitchiest, most spiteful thing that Ellie had ever said to anyone. She wasn’t even sure that Jessica had deserved it, or if she was simply the most convenient target for all the hurt and ugliness that had been brewing inside Ellie all week.
The door slammed shut behind Jessica and she stood there, hands clenched into fists, panting like she’d just run one of David’s marathons. Then she marched back to her bedroom, poured herself a glass of wine and downed it in one, like the party girl that everyone thought she was.
She had to get out of here. She wasn’t going to be used solely to advance David’s career and be tucked out of sight because it kept Billy Kay sweet. What made Billy Kay happy was nothing to do with her.
Camden, London, 1986
In the end, she let Billy talk her round, and Ari’s sister Carol was desperate to take the baby, so really Ari was doing what her father would call a mitzvah, a good thing. She was a bloody saint, especially when she managed not to lose her temper on the day that Carol and Sadie came to visit her in the summerhouse. Sadie sat on the one good chair and told Ari she was a disgrace and that if anybody they knew found out she was pregnant, she’d die of shame.