Power Games (14 page)

‘You’re a Silvers,’ Donald reminded her. ‘You’ll get through this. You’re strong. And, when you do, there’ll be a queue of eligible boys. Just you wait.’

17

London

O
ne glance at the teen heartthrob told Eve Harley that Kevin Chase felt like running the interview about as much as she did. Kevin was in town promoting his new single and looked as if he had been asked to lick bathroom floors for a week.

The mini emperor was ensconced in an upstairs suite with his PR team. Lavish bowls of fruit adorned a wide table along with piled-high cans of energy drink, a vat of candy and a selection of herbal teas. Kevin’s mother Joan was having her nails painted in a corner, a half-eaten croissant at her side. Trey, the dachshund, was being petted on a press girl’s lap, his T-shirt bearing the slogan: LITTLE STICK CHASER.

‘Hi again, Kevin.’

It wasn’t clear if Kevin placed her from their previous collision (in which she had ticketed him as ‘curiously asexual’ and ‘eunuch-like’), a fact unaided by his refusal to remove his Wayfarers for the duration of the interview.

‘Girlfriend or boyfriend at the moment, Kevin?’

‘Ignore that,’ droned his PR, at the same time as Kevin lashed, ‘Of course I don’t have a fucking boyfriend, you moron. I’m fucking straight. What the hell kind of a question is that?’ He scowled behind his sunglasses.

She tried a new tack. ‘It’s been a while since Sandi. Why did you break up?’

Kevin didn’t respond, just sat there, seething.

‘Is it true she said you were “physically incompatible”?’

Kevin’s lip curled.

‘What do you think Sandi meant? For a guy in your position—’

‘Can someone please do something?’ Kevin screeched hysterically.

‘We’re not talking romance,’ PR intervened. ‘Stick to the single.’

‘What do you make of claims that you recently assaulted a fan backstage?’

PR held a hand up. Kevin said: ‘I have no idea what you mean.’

‘No comment,’ said PR. ‘Move on.’

‘A fifteen-year-old girl, after
The Craig Winston Show
?’

‘Those claims are completely unsubstantiated,’ said the woman.

‘Don’t you want to have your say?’

‘We have no comment.’

‘Kevin?’

‘No comment,’ he echoed, adding for good measure: ‘Fucking bullshit.’

PR shot him a barbed glance. Eve had no sympathy. Kevin was happy to reap the benefits of his position—just like all famous people. Just like Orlando Silvers.

‘The single,’ warned the woman, ‘or we’ll draw this to a close.’

And so came the predicted response. As Kevin wittered on, Eve took a bland set of notes.
Focus, goddamnit! Concentrate!
But her head was in pieces, negotiating the unanswerable night and day, a labyrinth of dead ends and wrong turns
and twisted logic. Indecision plagued her from the moment she woke to the moment she slept.

‘Yeah?’ Kevin’s enquiring mumble brought her back to the present. He had finished answering and Eve hadn’t listened to a single word. She consulted her iPad.

‘New single / departure / maturity / fan loyalty?’ Her notes ran out.

‘You got all you need?’ asked Kevin’s PR coldly. The dog barked, a shrill, piercing yap. Kevin continued to stare emptily at her through his shades.

‘I think so,’ she said. ‘Thanks for your time.’

‘Go suck on it,’ she thought she heard him mumble.

Eve took the tube to Green Park, where she drank coffee at The Wolseley, so strong and black it made her teeth hurt. The café’s lofty ceilings, gleaming floors and buzz of conversation brought to mind Orlando in his polished American world, dealing in money, fast cars and women, not giving her a thought as she wrestled alone with the biggest verdict of her life. Had he thought about her? Was he thinking of her now?

Angela’s engagement had been announced the previous week. Money stuck with money: that was the way it went. Orlando was the same. The only place his and Eve’s worlds had deigned to cross was in the bedroom. He had messaged once since their meeting with the stark words:
I’ll pay.
The instant the cash had landed in her account—too much, a gross sum to assuage his conscience as much as anything else—she had returned it. She didn’t need his guilt money. This wasn’t about that.

Eve spread her reports across the table. Her vision swam. The words blurred. Her scoop on Mitch Corrigan and Rome was the piece to define her career.

But for once that meant nothing. How could it, when tomorrow she was booked into the clinic and the life inside her died?

She paid her bill and left.

In the park she sat on a bench, cold, her hands clasped between her knees, looking out at nothing in particular. A jogger came past, his feet pounding the stiff April ground. She remembered being here as a girl, with her father, before things turned sour. Sitting on his shoulders. Making a daisy chain. Happy memories. She must have been five, maybe six—before Terry Harley got famous and their lives went to ruin. Greed. Vanity. Pride. Ego. How different things might have been.

It was too late now. Perversely, her mother had loved him until the day she died. Eve could not extend that charity. She could not care any more.

In 1987, Terry Harley had enjoyed one-time chart success with the band he had been toiling with for years. Overnight, their lives were transformed. Terry became public property. He became an idol, thrust into the spotlight, the country’s hero, not just hers. At first it had been fun, and he’d been happy, but when he stopped coming home she wished it would all go away and she could have her father back.

It’s just a performance
, her mum used to comfort her,
don’t be frightened.
But soon the performance took over. The performance became his life.

He made millions—and lost them just as quick. Pissed away on alcohol, drugs and strippers. On his family’s misery. Terry turned from the man they knew. He turned into a monster: fame-grabbing and desperate and hell-bent on ruling the world.

In the months and years that followed, his campaign of terror began.

Terry rolled home drunk every night of the week. He beat her mother black and blue. He locked them in cupboards, his own flesh and blood, starving and crying and battering the door as they begged through their tears to be let out. One night, Eve had listened at the top of the stairs. Terry was on the rampage; she heard her mother’s pleas as he threw her across the kitchen, calling her a whore, a bitch—his wife, Eve’s mother, how
could
he? Eve darted to bed, the sheets taut, trembling with fright, and heard his footsteps mount the stairs—
thump thump thump.
The handle turned. She had seen him against the light, a savage silhouette swaying queasily in the shadows. When he approached, horror set in, paralysing her, impossible to make a sound. She thought her heart might stop. She thought she would die. What was he going to do?

He had put his hand around his daughter’s throat. Seconds passed. Eternity. Booze fumes filled the air. Eve blinked against the black veil of consciousness.

Next time, she knew he would kill her.

Terry Harley was the reason Eve did the job she did. Stripping it bare wasn’t going to win her any fans, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that when she was little she had wished for a miracle. She had wished for an angel who could see through walls, inside keyholes and under doors, an angel who could witness her situation as it really was, not as it appeared to be. Not how everyone else saw it.

She had wished for someone to explode the myth.

Today, she was that person.

Terry was a prime example of what happened when fame went wrong. People deserved to know. They deserved to see. Eve knew what it was like to live in the shadow of fame. She knew what it was to live in terror of someone powerful.

It was her war, and she meant every word.

‘You’ll never amount to anything!
’ he had thrown at her once.
‘You’ll never do anything important—not like me!’

Eve put a hand on her stomach. Tomorrow was the right thing. It was.

Angela pulled up outside The Ritz. Her car almost collided with an auburn-haired woman crossing the road. She recognised her but couldn’t think from where.

Scooping up her cell, she braced herself and dialled Orlando. ‘Can you talk?’

Her brother was terser than usual. Orlando was in Boston this week, on the tail of a new resort franchise. ‘No,’ he snapped, ‘I haven’t got time.’ Then: ‘What is it?’

‘I’d rather not discuss it over the phone.’

Her chauffeur opened the car door and Angela stepped out. Heads turned as she entered the hotel.

The time had come to tell her brothers everything: about Silvers, about the future, about their father’s illness and the true nature of her engagement. She could carry the secret no longer.

‘Where are you?’ he asked.

‘London. Investors.’

‘Makes a change—I’m surprised that fiancé of yours let you out of his sight.’

‘He doesn’t tell me what to do.’

‘That sounds like a real American love story.’

‘Fuck off. Expect me Friday. Luca should be there too.’

‘What is this? You ditching the mob and eloping with Noah?’

His name stabbed her. ‘What?’

‘Come on, Angela, I’m not blind. He can’t be happy about Dino.’

‘It’s nothing to him. We broke up ages ago.’

There was a short silence. ‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m fine. Stay out of it, Orlando, I mean it. Have you heard from him?’

‘Noah?’

‘Luca.’

‘The Hamptons.’

‘Get him on a plane. And I don’t want Dad knowing anything about it.’

‘Why?’

‘Just do it.’

‘Damn,’ he muttered. ‘As if I haven’t got enough on my mind.’

It wasn’t like Orlando to admit liability. ‘Need to talk?’

‘It’s personal shit—it’s getting sorted. I’ll deal. I always do.’

‘Good. Then prepare to have some more shit thrown in. I’ll see you at the weekend.’

18

Palo Alto, California

M
oveFriends HQ was the greatest sight this side of LA. Jacob thought so every time he visited. The glass building buzzed with entrepreneurial spirit, mixing the finest minds on the globe: what it was to be at the inception of something.

Leith Friedman was a geeky curly-haired guy who spent hours plugged into his music system and tapping code into a machine. His lanky frame was splayed across a Perspex chair in the open-plan arrangement, and in true Leith style his pants were too short for his legs, offering a glimpse of mismatched red and blue socks.

Jacob put a hand on his shoulder. Leith removed the plugs.

‘Yo,’ said Leith. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’

Jacob thrust his hands in his pockets. He sensed the eyes of every female on his back. It was the same as on his college jaunts, crashing a sorority party and being spoiled for choice. Sorority girls were horny. He’d done things with them he didn’t dare repeat—unless he was watching it back, of course. Kathleen and Kitty, the two special Ks. That had to be one of the most viewed in his collection.

A chick in a pencil skirt walked past. Jacob undressed her with his eyes.

Leith was looking at him. ‘What’s up?’

‘Do I need a reason to check in on my investment?’

‘Knowing you, there’s an ulterior motive.’

Jacob grinned. ‘Always is. You got an hour?’

Jacob’s business summits frequently took place in nightclubs. He liked to get drunk, shout ideas loudly over the music and get whoever he was with so soaked on tequila that he could extract from them precisely what he needed.

‘You’re here to persuade me,’ Leith ventured. ‘Aren’t you?’

Jacob downed a shot. ‘It makes sense.’

‘Aren’t we rich enough already?’

Jacob’s reply was swallowed by the music. He repeated it:

‘How rich is rich enough?’

‘The money’s a bonus. I never did this for the money.’

‘Bull.’

‘I did it to change how we access the world. To bring people together.’

‘What are you now, Jesus fucking Christ?’

Leith wrung his hands. Jacob fed him another shot. ‘Listen,’ he straightened his jacket, ‘this is win-win. You still
get
to change the world, Friedman—you get to change the world in a bigger way than you or I ever dreamed.’ He dropped his voice so only Leith could hear. ‘This is the Russian government we’re talking about, man … do you get it?’

Leith pushed his glasses up on his nose. ‘What if someone finds out?’

‘They won’t.’

‘How can you know?’

‘This kind of trade goes down all the time. Collusions, collaborations, the whole world gets built on it. D’you think we
know the first thing about what goes on in our own government? Deals get made every hour of the day. Don’t you want in?’

‘It’s sinister.’

‘What isn’t? This is business, my friend. Remember when we started out? Remember what I told you? You need
balls
to get ahead.
Big
fucking balls. Because everyone’s out for a piece and most of these guys have got bigger balls than you. Only you know how big your balls actually are—the rest is pretend.’

‘Can we stop talking about my balls, please?’

Jacob kicked back in his chair. The way he saw it, the proposal was a gift. Any growing industry would receive an approach for takeover sooner or later, and the only thing that made their situation extraordinary was the unusual nature of the bid. Russia wanted MoveFriends for reasons unspecified. If reports were to be trusted, they had been assembling an advanced global surveillance system for the last decade. Jacob believed MoveFriends would form part of a grid able to footprint where any individual was at any given time, combining all the personal data of Facebook with a geographical tracking of where in the world that person was. When you took it that way, their site was already doing the job: just because they wrapped it up as a non-obligatory social network didn’t detract from the essential notes of scrutiny. Jacob had put this to his partner before. Leith had capitulated. The sale would make them richer than kings.