‘You haven’t heard, then?’
‘Heard what?’
‘Pages two to six. That’ll be eight pounds sixty, please. Are you wanting the Match Attax cards?’
But Laura wasn’t listening. Mindlessly leaving a ten-pound note on the counter, and handing the cards to Hugh to shut him up, she walked home to tell Gabe, still holding the paper open with one hand and reading as she went.
‘I’m just reading the Echo,’ she told him. ‘They’re serializing David Carlyle’s new book. It’s an exposé.’
‘I know. Of Annabel Wellesley’s misspent youth. Eddie just called me,’ said Gabe.
‘Have you seen what Carlyle’s written?’
‘Not verbatim.’
Laura started reading under the lurid headline, ‘LADY WELL-SLEAZY!’: ‘Lady Wellesley, known for her cold and haughty demeanour during her husband’s court case, when Fast Eddie’s secrets were being laid bare, has skeletons of her own. As a working-class teenager, Anna Green (‘Annabel’ was a later affectation) actually SLEPT her way into high society, taking elocution lessons and ‘reinventing’ herself as ‘posh’, before seducing TWO married aristocrats, destroying their families in the process. Lady Liar reveals the secrets that Lady Wellesley and her tax-dodging husband hoped to hide from voters. Her obsession with money and class. Her desperation to hid her own, humble background, including disowning her own PARENTS. This is the Wellesley Family History they never wanted you to see.’
Laura’s eyes were drawn to a picture of a young Annabel, in hotpants and a clinging T-shirt, her arms wrapped tightly around an unknown man. With her waist-length blond hair blowing everywhere and her carefree, mischievous smile, she looked utterly unrecognizable as the tightly wound harridan of a wife that the Swell Valley, and the country, had come to know. She looked happy. She looked fun. Was this the woman Eddie had fallen for, Laura wondered. And if so, what had happened to her?
‘Fucking hell,’ said Gabe. ‘Poor Eddie.’
‘Poor Eddie! Poor both of them,’ said Laura. ‘I must say I’m astonished. I can’t imagine Annabel seducing anybody, can you? She was bloody sexy, though, back in the day.’
She showed Gabe the picture.
‘Eddie says it’s all nonsense,’ said Gabe. ‘Completely made up.’
‘It can’t be,’ said Laura. ‘Carlyle’s not that stupid. He wouldn’t dare publish if he weren’t sure of his facts. The publisher would have checked them too.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Gabe admitted. ‘But Eddie was adamant. Says he’s suing for libel.’
As he spoke, two television vans pulled up on the High Street. Within minutes they were followed by more. A reporter for the Daily Mail came over and asked Laura for directions to Riverside Hall. Laura smiled and sent them the wrong way.
‘Has anyone told Macy?’ she asked Gabe once they’d gone.
‘Shit,’ said Gabe. ‘I didn’t think about that. I wonder if her plane’s already left?’
Macy sat in her business-class seat, glued to her tablet. David Carlyle was being interviewed on the BBC. In a pale blue suit and silk tie he looked tanned, confident and relaxed, leaning back on the studio sofa and smiling at James Neil.
‘Clearly these allegations, the things you’ve written about Lady Wellesley in your book Lady Liar, some of them are fairly serious,’ James Neil was saying. ‘You call her a home-wrecker. At one point you imply that she blackmailed a former lover; that he gave her money to keep quiet about the affair.’
‘That’s right. I was as shocked as you are, James, and as I know our viewers will be. To put it bluntly, these aren’t the kinds of people we want running the country.’
‘Are you concerned about legal action?’
‘Not at all.’ David Carlyle spread his arms wide in a gesture of innocence. ‘There’s no law against writing the truth. Or, in this case, exposing the lies behind a carefully constructed public image. I’m a hundred per cent sure of my sources, as are my publishers. There’s nothing in my book that wouldn’t stand up in court, and the Wellesleys know it.’
‘Even if that’s the case, some people would argue that it’s unethical to go after the wives and families of politicians. Lady Wellesley isn’t a public figure. She’s never stood for office. Isn’t this “truth” just the latest chapter in a personal vendetta being waged between you and Sir Edward?’
‘Not at all. I’m a newspaper editor. It’s my job to bring people the truth.’
‘But isn’t this ancient history, David? About somebody’s private life?’
‘No,’ David responded, a slight edge creeping into his voice. ‘It’s a story about two people pretending to be something they aren’t, for personal gain. The problem with people like the Wellesleys, James, is that they don’t believe the usual rules apply to them. We saw that with Sir Edward, over his tax affairs. Now we’re seeing it from his wife. Breaking up marriages. Ditching her own parents in her desperation to rebrand herself as upper class. It’s scandalous. Voters need to understand. These people are not who they say they are.’
Unable to stand David Carlyle’s sanctimonious smirk a moment longer, Macy switched to ITV and was amazed to see an ashen-looking Eddie being interviewed. A reporter had cornered him in the street as he was getting into his car.
‘I’ve already made a statement.’ Eddie sounded tired. ‘There is no truth to these revolting allegations. None whatsoever. My wife and I will be taking legal action. Beyond that, I have nothing to say.’
‘So you don’t know about these married lovers?’
‘There were no married lovers!’ Eddie snapped.
‘David Carlyle says he stands by his sources,’ the reporter shouted after Eddie as he climbed into his Bentley.
‘Then I suggest his “sources” buy a clothes peg,’ Eddie shot back, giving a flash of his old, mischievous self. ‘Anyone standing next to that oik should beware of the smell.’
Macy laughed, but it wasn’t funny. She felt terrible for Eddie, but also nervous about what it might mean for the show. Here she was, flying to LA alone to pitch Valley Farm to US networks, with a potentially damaging scandal playing out back in Britain. In Macy’s experience, American TV execs were deeply wary of bad publicity. What, exactly, was she supposed to say to them about Sir Eddie Wellesley’s absence?
It would help if she could reach Eddie in person. Or Gabe, or Laura, or anyone. But it seemed as if every phone in England was switched to voicemail this morning. Not even James was picking up.
Switching off her iPad as the plane’s engines roared into life and they juddered along the runway for take-off, Macy wondered whether what the Echo had published was true. On the one hand she couldn’t imagine the brittle and superior Annabel Wellesley as plain old Anna Green, a mechanic’s daughter from Barnsley on the make. And Eddie was too experienced and savvy a politician to deny a story he knew to be true.
On the other hand, David Carlyle was hardly likely to risk his editorship and a major lawsuit by printing something overtly libellous. Especially something as salacious and incendiary as this extract from Lady Liar. And, according to the publisher, there was more to come. The teasers suggested that Annabel might even have been involved in some sort of ‘escort’ business. Not prostitution, but making herself available to wealthy, upper-class men as arm candy. It implied that she’d married Eddie not out of love, but as part of some sort of social climbing master plan.
Macy hoped that wasn’t true. Eddie certainly wasn’t a blameless husband. But he loved his wife, of that Macy had no doubt.
She closed her eyes as the plane swept up into the clouds, uncomfortably conscious of the empty seat next to her.
Eddie was driving far too fast on the A3 when the car phone rang.
‘Annabel?’
Milo could hear the near panic in his dad’s voice when he answered, ‘No, Dad, it’s me. Are you OK?’
‘I’ve had better mornings. I take it you saw the news?’
‘Yeah.’ There was a momenta
ry pause. Then Milo said: ‘Is it true?’
Eddie couldn’t have been more shocked if someone had thrown a glass of iced water in his face. ‘Is it true? Of course it’s not bloody true! How can you even ask that? This is your mother we’re talking about.’
‘I didn’t say I thought it was true,’ Milo defended himself.
‘But you wondered?’ Eddie shot back.
The truth was, he had wondered. Milo had never really understood his mother. He’d always had the sense that there was a huge part of her that was a closed book to him and to everyone. And, in some ways, Carlyle’s version of events made sense. If she’d spent her whole life playing a role, and worrying about being found out, no wonder she was always so highly strung and irritable.
‘Is Mum OK?’ Milo asked nervously.
‘I don’t know.’ Eddie’s anger was gone now, replaced once again with worry. ‘I can’t bloody reach her. There’s no answer at the house, and you know she never has her mobile switched on.’
‘She’s probably out for a walk or something,’ said Milo.
‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ said Eddie. ‘She obviously doesn’t know yet, or she’d have called me. Which means she could get ambushed by the press at any minute, completely unprepared, completely unprotected. I’m on my way home now.’
‘Do you want me to come down?’
‘No,’ said Eddie. ‘Stay where you are. Lie low and don’t so much as blink at the press.’
‘Of course I won’t.’
‘And if your mother calls, ring me immediately.’
‘It’ll be OK, Dad,’ Milo heard himself saying. Hanging up, he wondered whether it would.
The moment Milo rang off, Eddie heard the sirens.
This can’t be happening. But a glance in his rear-view mirror confirmed it. Two squad cars, lights flashing, were pulling him over. Eddie groaned. For one, mad moment he considered hitting the accelerator and trying to outrun them, but he quickly came to his senses. Pulling over, he wound his window down.
‘Morning, sir. Did you realize you were doing over … oh! Sir Edward.’ The policeman did a double take.
‘I’m sorry, officer,’ said Eddie, running a hand through his hair. ‘I know I was speeding, I accept the points, but I’m desperately worried about my wife and I’m trying to get home. I don’t know if you’ve read this morning’s Echo …’
‘Yes, sir.’
The policeman liked Eddie Wellesley. Everybody liked Eddie Wellesley. His wife was another matter, but the poor bloke was obviously beside himself with worry.
‘If you like, sir, my colleague and I can escort you home. We’ll make better time that way.’
Eddie was touched. ‘That’s incredibly kind. Thank you.’
Following the police through dreary suburbs and then open countryside, Eddie cast his mind back to the early days with Annabel. Who had she been going out with when they met? It was all so long ago, but Eddie was sure he’d have remembered if it were anyone aristocratic, or married. Not that it would have put him off. He’d fancied Annabel so madly, he’d have wooed her no matter who she’d been bonking. But no. If there’d been married men, or high-profile affairs, he’d have known. Of course he would.
There were faint shadows of truth in elements of Carlyle’s hateful story. It was true, for example, that Annabel was estranged from her parents. They hadn’t come to the wedding, and Eddie had never met them – although he knew they lived in a small estate in Scotland and that the father had been in the Scots Guards. Perhaps, he thought now, I should have been more curious? Asked more questions. But then again, why should he? How was he to know that some deranged little pleb with a chip on his shoulder the size of Cornwall was going to crawl out of the slime thirty years later and publish a load of garbage about Annabel having working-class roots, and changing her name, and blackmail, for heaven’s sake! The Echo piece made her sound like Mandy bloody Rice-Davies. The whole thing was absurd.
Grimly, Eddie drove on, his anger burning more fiercely with each passing mile.
The first thing Eddie saw when he pulled up at Riverside Hall was the predictable fleet of reporters and cameramen huddled outside the gates. The second thing was Wilf, racing across the lawn to greet him, wagging his tail as if all were right with the world; the third was a panicked-looking Magda.
‘Where’s Lady Wellesley?’ Eddie asked her.
‘I don’t know. I … I don’t think she’s home.’
Magda explained that she’d left early this morning for a long walk over the Downs with Wilf. When she’d returned twenty minutes ago, she’d found the house surrounded by press. Darting inside, she’d looked for Annabel but found no sign. She’d managed to keep the gates closed and the press pack at bay, but they kept yelling their questions over the walls. It was like being under siege.
Leaving the police to deal with the media, Eddie ran into the house.
‘Annabel!’
No answer.
Her car was in the drive and she never went for a walk without Wilf. She must be here somewhere. He did a quick scout around the ground floor then bounded up the stairs, two at a time.
‘Annabel! Darling? Are you here?’
Nothing.
Perhaps she had gone out? But where would she go, on foot and without the dog? The only possibility was into the village, but if that were the case then the TV crews would have pounced on her instantly.
Eddie walked into their bedroom. The bed had been slept in, the covers pulled loosely together afterwards. Everything looked as it always did. There was nothing on the nightstand or Annabel’s dressing table to suggest where she might have gone, no sign of a struggle or anything untoward. Her mobile phone was there, plugged into its charger, but that wasn’t unusual. She never took it anywhere. After the court case the poor thing had developed an allergy to telephones. Somehow they never seemed to bring good news.
Then suddenly Eddie saw it, taped to the door of the master bathroom: an envelope. For Eddie and Milo.
Ripping it off, he tore it open frantically. Inside, on a neatly folded, single page of writing paper, Annabel had written only six words.
‘I love you both. I’m sorry.’
Eddie felt his knees buckle beneath him and the bile rise up in his throat. He tried the bathroom door. It was locked.
‘Annabel!’ It was more of a scream than a word.
Outside, the two policemen looked at each other. Without a word they started to run towards the house.
Eddie ran at the door, throwing his whole weight against it. It took three attempts before it finally gave way. By the time he found her, limp and lifeless on the floor, the pill bottle still in her hand, the police were right behind him.
‘Call an ambulance!’ Eddie yelled at them, desperately starting mouth-to-mouth.
But deep down he knew it was too late.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
David Carlyle could hear the tap, tap of his handmade leather shoes on the polished marble as he crossed the lobby of the Echo’s London office. Everyone from the reception staff to the security guards to the groups of employees waiting for the lifts watched him pass in stunned silence.
‘Cheer up!’ David grinned, addressing himself to all of them and apparently revelling in their discomfort. ‘Nobody died.’
Miraculously, this was true. Annabel Wellesley had defied the odds by surviving her huge overdose. Overnight her condition had gone from ‘critical but stable’ to ‘comfortable’, which was doctor-speak for out of the woods. But the backlash against the Echo for running the story in the first place was growing by the hour. No one cared any more who Lady Wellesley had or hadn’t slept with when she was eighteen, or what her father did for a living. There was a new villain of the piece, and his name was David Carlyle.
David didn’t give a rat’s arse. Eddie Wellesley was suffering and Eddie Wellesley deserved to suffer. If the British public didn’t think so, it was because they didn’t know him like David did. The paper’s circulation w
as up by well over a hundred per cent, and David’s book, Lady Liar, was flying off the shelves all over the country. If there was one thing British readers really excelled at, it was rank hypocrisy.
‘You’ve all got work to do.’ He clapped his hands together loudly, like a cotton grower summoning his slaves. ‘So stop gawping and get back to your desks.’
At his own desk five minutes later, David began taking the first of what would be a long morning of calls. The first was from his publisher, Damian Blythe.
‘Sir Edward Wellesley’s dropped the lawsuit.’
The relief in Blythe’s voice was palpable.
David laughed. ‘What did I tell you? It’s only libel if it’s not true, Damian. By the way, did I mention I’m thinking of counter-suing for defamation?’
The publisher’s relief evaporated. ‘You can’t do that.’
‘Why not? Eddie’s been all over the TV, calling me a liar and a scumbag and God knows what. I want an apology.’
‘His wife almost died,’ Damian Blythe pointed out. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, David, people don’t like you very much at the moment.’
‘So?’ Carlyle scoffed. ‘I’m not running for office. What do I care? As long as they’re buying my book and my paper, I’m laughing. So should you be.’
However, to his immense irritation, David’s lawyer gave him the same advice as his publisher.
‘A defamation suit would be a disaster.’
‘You mean I’d lose?’
‘You might win the battle. But you’d lose the war. Wasn’t your entire aim in this to derail Eddie Wellesley politically?’
‘My aim was to tell the truth,’ David said archly. ‘I’m a journalist. That’s what I do.’
‘Touché,’ said his lawyer. ‘Very good. But be aware that if you take Wellesley to court over this, you run the risk of cementing his popularity with voters. Public sympathy right now is overwhelmingly on Eddie’s side, David. Overwhelmingly.’
David clenched his fists. He knew that this was true. His desk was littered with polls confirming it. But he still found it hard to credit.