The Queen of New Beginnings (37 page)

With the kitchen table littered with newspapers, Alice, Bazza, Isabel and Clayton were studying the results of their handiwork.

All had covered Stacey’s drunken confession on live television. Even the broadsheets had dipped their dainty toes into the murky waters of the unedifying story. Condemnation was sweeping and total. Not a single journalist had a good word for Stacey. No one had rushed to defend her. Bazza had also come in for criticism but he’d been portrayed as merely weak rather than a hard-nosed malevolent schemer. In some quarters there was a hint of sympathy for him, for having been under the thumb of such a vicious piece of work.

“I think we can safely say,” Clayton said, looking up from the copy of the
Express
he was reading, “your fall from grace will be short-lived, Bazza. The press are effectively siding with you.”

Bazza looked doubtful. “I still don’t think I deserve to come out of this so well.”

“I agree,” said Alice.

Bazza’s face turned red and he looked at her with discomfort. “I should have stopped Stacey,” he said. “I know that.”

“I agree again,” Alice said flatly.

Whilst Clayton had forgiven his old friend for what he’d done, he knew that Alice wasn’t so easily inclined. It was understandable; she didn’t know Bazza, and she didn’t share the history that he and Bazza did. He was touched, however. Her censure meant that she cared about him. But then he’d known that already, as why else would she have gone to such lengths to help him? That night in her cottage, the day of George’s funeral, when she’d been deep in thought, trying to think of a way to expose Stacey’s deception, he had very nearly done away with his good intentions and given in to his ever-increasing desire for her. Had Isabel not been sitting in the room with them, he would have leapt from his chair and, well, suffice to say, the evening would have taken on a very different slant. He still hadn’t figured out how something as insignificant as Alice touching her lip could cause such a strong reaction in him. He had only to imagine her doing it and he felt the unmistakable stirring of arousal for her. It was like a switch inside him. Weird. Bloody weird. But nice weird. Definitely nice.

Her voice light, Isabel broke into his thoughts. “Alice,” she said, “don’t be so hard on Bazza. I spent only a few hours with the woman, but I swear I’ve never known a more vain, pretentious or demanding client; she spent the whole time telling me how to do my job. I think Bazza and Clayton deserve medals for putting up with her for as long as they both did.”

Finished with the
Express
, Clayton closed it and pushed it aside. “Speaking for myself, I hardly think I deserve a medal for having a woefully ineffectual nature when it comes to that woman.”

“Never mind a medal, an Oscar more like it, after your performance with Stevie McKean. Don’t you agree, Alice?”

Alice smiled. “Isabel’s right: you were utterly convincing, Clayton. Only once did you worry me when you veered off the script.”

He returned her smile. “It’s you who deserves all the credit. Not only did you come up with the entire plan but your impersonation of Stacey was scarily spot on. I was shaking inside at that voice. You were fantastic.”

“I was shaking as well,” said Bazza. He turned to Clayton. “How about we form a new partnership and call it Wimps R Us?”

“Sounds like a winner to me.”

“Oh, stop it you two,” said Isabel. “Neither one of you is a wimp. Barry?”

“Yes?”

“Tell us again how Stacey reacted when you arrived home. You told it so well earlier I don’t think I shall ever tire of hearing it.”

Was it Clayton’s imagination or was there a mutual admiration society taking shape between Bazza and Isabel?” Clayton glanced at Alice and saw straight away by the way her lips had curved into the tilt of a small, ironic smile that she was thinking the exact same thing as he was. Well, well, well.

Bazza’s response to Isabel’s request was to grin like an idiot and say, “Really? You really want me to go through it all again?” All that was missing from his words was a boyish oh-gee-shucks.

Amused, Clayton said, “Tell you what, Bazza, why don’t you oblige the lady while I make us some more coffee.”

“I’ll help you,” Alice said.

“Oh, well, if you’re sure,” Bazza said, looking like a man who couldn’t be happier to be left alone with such an appreciative audience.

When they were at the other end of the kitchen, Alice whispered to Clayton, “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“And some,” he whispered back. “I didn’t see that coming.”

“Me neither.”

“Do you think it could work?”

“You’re asking the wrong person. I’m a total dud when it comes to understanding how relationships work.”

Alice frowned and looked away. Clayton immediately regretted his words; would he never connect his brain to his mouth? He plugged in the kettle and watched Alice run a finger through a trail of toast crumbs on the worktop. Toast crumbs he hadn’t tidied up from breakfast.

While Bazza had been putting into effect the final part of the plan last night, Alice and Isabel had come back here to stay with Clayton, Isabel having arranged for her daughter to stop the night with a school friend. It had been an incredibly well-executed operation and Clayton had to admit he’d enjoyed the buzz it had given him. Getting one over Stacey had meant a lot to him. Possibly too much. But hey, he could live with that.

He tuned into what Bazza was saying to Isabel. Bazza had always been a master storyteller; he had a real talent for capturing all the details and nuances of a story and bringing it to life. Right now he was describing how when he’d returned to Notting Hill, timing his arrival so that he missed Isabel’s departure, he had suggested to Stacey that there was something on YouTube she might be interested to see. Downloading the recording he’d made onto the Internet had been one of the tasks Alice had assigned to him, along with hiding Stacey’s mobile and disconnecting the landline so that no one could ring her before he got back. According to Bazza, Stacey had watched the recording with her eyes and mouth wide open. It was the first time he had known her to be quiet for more than two minutes.

“But it’s not me!” she had cried. “That isn’t me speaking on the phone. Why would I admit to those things? I’ve been here all afternoon. I swear it!”

“So you didn’t pick up the phone and call in?” he’d asked her. “You’re sure your conscience didn’t finally get the better of you?”

“Of course I’m sure!” she’d screamed back at him. “Why would I ever want to confess to what we did?”

“Well, it sure as hell sounds like you.”

“But I can prove it isn’t me!” she had screeched. “The photographer will verify I never went near the phone.”

“What photographer?” Bazza had asked.

“What do you mean, what photographer? The one you arranged to come here, of course.”

“I did no such thing.”

“You did! The photographer who you said was going to take those special publicity shots of me. She called the other day to make the appointment. She said you’d been in touch with her.”

A few more denials from Bazza and apparently the penny had dropped and had clanked around at the bottom of an empty, echoing drum for Stacey. “What’s going on?” she had demanded.

“Since you ask, rather a lot. I’ve had it with you, Stacey. You may thrive on all the arguments we have, and you may also be able to live with the guilt of what we did to Clayton, but I can’t. I want out. Or more accurately, I want
you
out. I want you out of my house and my life. I want the old me back. The me I can respect.”

“You can’t mean that. What about our wedding?”

“It’s not going to happen. I must have been crazy ever to think we could be happy together.”

She had then turned on him, just as Bazza had known she would, which was why he had needed a back-up plan. She had threatened to go to the press and tell the world what a vile man he was, that not only had it all been his idea to blame Clayton for the loss of their baby and that he’d then set her up to take the fall, but he did unspeakable things to her in bed. Humiliating things that no woman should ever have to endure.

That was when Bazza had slipped a CD into his laptop and said, “I knew that’s how you would react, so listen to this and see if you hear anything that might help you to reconsider.”

The CD had been made earlier in the week with Alice’s help. It contained yet more confessions made by Stacey in an emotional, drunken state. She spoke of her relationship with Barry, how it was founded on nothing more substantial than her ambitious desire to be with someone who could offer her the lifestyle she craved. She spoke of her drink problem. How it had been fuelled by the shallowness of her existence and how increasingly difficult it was to keep it a secret. She spoke of the strain of living a life of lies, especially the one she had devised about Clayton.

“Blackmail,” Stacey had said when the CD came to an end. “You’re prepared to stoop to that?”

“Just as you are,” Barry had replied. “And please, there’s a lot more where that came from. I have access to an endless supply of your confessions. One wrong word to anyone from you and I’ll leak this to the press. And a lot more besides.”

“I have no idea how you’ve managed this, but tell me, how could you do this? We were so happy together. We had it all.”

“No, Stacey,
you
had it all. Yes, I was happy with you for a time, but then I discovered the real you. It’s what happens in every relationship. The layers are peeled back and the true self is exposed. And the fact that you’ve just threatened to lie to the press yet again in order to exact revenge on me proves what kind of a person you really are.”

“You hate me so much?”

“I hate what you’ve turned me into.”

Hearing Bazza repeat those words to Isabel now as he came to the end of his story, Clayton thought they made a pretty good punch line. Borderline cliché, admittedly, but no less effective.

The kettle clicked off and while Clayton spooned coffee into the row of mugs, he said, “Alice, I meant what I said earlier about how fantastic you were. You were the brains behind it all. Without you, it wouldn’t have been possible. God only knows how you had the patience to listen to those hideous chat show recordings Bazza got hold of.”

She shrugged. “It’s what I do; it’s how I learn a new voice. To be honest, it didn’t take that long to master Stacey’s. I nailed it after only a few hours of studying it.”

“Well, you did it brilliantly. I want you to know how much I really appreciate everything you’ve done. Not just for me, but for helping Bazza to extricate himself from a nightmare of a situation.”

She gave him one of her flickering, tentative smiles. “Be quiet and make the coffee,” she said, “you’re embarrassing me.”

He had just finished pouring water into the mugs when his phone rang. He stopped what he was doing and took the call.

It was Glen. Again. There had been dozens of calls that morning, all from Glen, all following up on the Stevie McKean Show. Journalists were in a frenzy of eagerness to interview Clayton. Similarly, Bazza’s agent and publicist had been fielding a barrage of calls. Stacey’s publicist had also been in touch with him to say she couldn’t get hold of Stacey and to ask if he knew what the hell was going on. Bazza had wisely switched off his mobile. The minute he had heard about Stacey’s confession, Glen had phoned Clayton last night. He had congratulated Clayton on finally being publicly declared an innocent man. Clayton didn’t tell him how the confession had come about. Nor did he intend to. Well, not yet anyway. One day, maybe.

“Your life is turning into a soap opera, my friend,” Glen said to him on the phone now.

“How so?”

“I think you’d better get yourself over here. Right now. As in pronto. As in
NOW!
”

“Any reason why?”

“I currently have two people in my office claiming they’re going to whip your ass with a libel suit.”

Clayton’s hand tensed around the phone, and wishing he’d taken the call in his office, he turned his back on Alice and lowered his voice. “Are they brother and sister by any chance?”

“As a matter of fact they are. And if you don’t mind me saying, your reaction sounds worryingly like you were expecting this.”

“You know me; I always expect bad news.”

“Be that as it may, I’m working my butt off to keep them sweet and it’s not working.”

“Just plead ignorance. You’re good at that.”

“I don’t earn enough from you to have to put up with this level of abuse, you know.”

“And there was me thinking you did it for love. By the way, for the sake of clarification, tell me the names of the two people in your office.”

“Natasha and Rufus Raphael.”

Now that was what Clayton called a punch line.

Clayton’s first thought was to pretend that nothing was amiss. However, the instant he came off the phone and registered the kitchen had fallen ominously quiet, he knew it wasn’t going to be so simple. “What?” he said as three expectant faces stared back at him.

“Who was that?” asked Alice. Her voice was casual and light, but it wasn’t fooling him. “Whoever it was,” she continued in the same relaxed tone, “they’ve turned your face a whiter shade of pale. To coin a phrase. Anything you want to tell me?”

“How’s your coffee?” he asked merrily.

“Forget the coffee,” Alice snapped. There was nothing nonchalant in her voice now. “Just tell me what’s going on. What’s happened?”

Isabel and Bazza looked anxiously at Alice and then at him.

Clayton’s pulse quickened. He raked his hands through his hair. Right, it was time to come clean. No more hiding anything. He swallowed and did his best to look Alice square in the eye. It wasn’t easy. He cleared his throat. “It’s Rufus and Natasha,” he said. “They’re with Glen. In his office. And they’re none too happy.”

• • •

It had to happen. Ever since
The Queen of New Beginnings
had been aired, Alice had known that eventually, one way or another, Rufus and Natasha would reappear in her life.

The moment Clayton had turned his back on her to continue his conversation on the phone she had known he was trying to hide something. She had been right. Catching the words “brother and sister” she had known that things were about to take a turn for the worse.

Once she had recovered from the initial shock, she had felt surprisingly calm. She still did. She didn’t even feel angry with Clayton. Yes, he was responsible for creating the situation, but maybe it was time to face up to Rufus and Natasha. It was either that or go on hiding from them for the rest of her life, and that would make her a coward, which she wasn’t. And what did she have to feel bad about? It wasn’t as if the way they had been portrayed had been an exaggeration of their behaviour; they really had been as awful as that. If anyone needed to feel bad, it should be Rufus and Natasha.

She was now in the back of a cab with Clayton, on their way to his agent’s office. They were both silent. Both staring intently out of the side windows as if they were seeing London for the first time. The triumphant mood of earlier—the bonhomie of a crack team getting one over the enemy—had evaporated. Clayton was drumming his fingers on his leg. He hadn’t wanted her to come. He had said he wanted to handle this on his own, to keep Alice out of it. But she had refused to listen. “You’ve caused enough trouble on your own already,” she had told him. Her words had come out with more hostility than she had intended and while Clayton was in the hall saying good-bye to Bazza as he prepared to go home, Isabel had taken Alice to one side. “Let Clayton do this his way,” she had whispered. “He wants to protect you from any trouble Rufus and Natasha may try to cause you. Why not let him do it? It’s obviously important to him.”

“I don’t need anyone to protect me,” she had answered. “I never have and I’m not about to start now.”

“We all need someone to protect and help us at some stage in our lives, Alice. It’s not a sign of weakness.”

The traffic was horrendous and they seemed to have been at a standstill for ever. How did people stick it? she thought. Come to that, how had she stuck it for as long as she had? Whenever she had a job to do in London, the intensity of the city always appalled her. The person she had been when she’d lived here—the person who had enjoyed London—now seemed a stranger to her.

“We might as well walk,” Clayton said. “It’ll be quicker. Do you mind?”

“No, whatever gets us there fastest. I’m keen to get this over and done with.”

Clayton passed some money through to the driver and they got out. They completed the rest of the journey in continued silence, Clayton leading the way. It was a sultry, blurry-skied early summer’s day and the streets were crowded with people spilling out from shops, restaurants and bars. The air was viscous with car fumes and it was a relief to come across a deserted street. It was closed to all traffic due to a gushing burst water pipe. A gathering of men in high-visibility vests and hard hats looked on helplessly. Had it not been for the hard hats, Alice suspected they might have scratched their heads to show everyone just how tricky a problem it was to solve.

They had reached Soho now and it wasn’t until Clayton drew to a stop in front of a small, unprepossessing door that he spoke. “Is there anything I can say to you that would make you change your mind?” he asked.

“What about?”

“About me doing this alone.”

“Clayton, this is my battle. Let me sort it out my way.”

He shook his head slowly. “The thing is, Alice, I can’t do that. I’ve made many mistakes in my life, but this is one I have to rectify personally.”

“Why? Why does it matter to you so much?”

“Because…because I care about you. I care about you a lot.”

“You do?”

“Please don’t look so surprised. I’ve never stopped caring about you.”

She frowned and looked down at the ground, poked at a discarded matchstick on the pavement with the toe of her shoe. “Caring is such a vague word. People care about many things, like the cost of petrol or global warming.” She raised her head. “What do you actually mean by it?”

He stared at her, his gaze unblinking. “I’m trying to tell you I made a mistake,” he said at length.

“I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to be more specific. Which particular mistake? After all, there have been a few.”

“I’m talking about us. I should never have kidded myself I didn’t want to be with you.”

“But you did. That day at the hospital, you couldn’t have made your feelings for me clearer.”

“Another mistake in the long and depressing history of Clayton Miller mistakes. I thought I was doing the right thing, only to discover it was entirely the wrong thing. You’re the most amazing person I know, Alice. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone like you. You’re the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning and the last thing when I go to bed at night. Tell me, is there anything I can do to make you think well of me again?”

“I…I don’t know what to say. We’re standing here in the middle of Soho and you choose now to tell me all this. Why? What’s changed?”

He drew in his breath, then let it out. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s got something to do with the thought of Rufus hurting you all over again. The very idea of it makes me want to tear him apart. You know, the whole limb from limb thing with my own bare hands. Very primeval, I admit.” He ran a hand over his face. Then rubbed at the back of his neck. “Perhaps only love can make a person feel that way. What do you think?”

Stunned, she put a finger to her lip. She tapped it thoughtfully.
Love
. He’d used the word
love
. But did he mean it? Did he even know what it meant? She tapped her lip again.

Clayton suddenly groaned. “Please don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?” she asked.

His answer was to take her in his arms and kiss her. It was a kiss of immense passion.

“We’re making a terrible spectacle of ourselves,” she said, when a crowd of drinkers outside a nearby bar started whistling and cheering.

“I’ve made a terrible spectacle of myself all my life,” he said, still holding her close. “I’m beyond caring.” He tipped his head to kiss her again.

She gently pushed him away. “Not so fast, mister. We have serious business to attend to.”

• • •

Glen shared the three-storey building with a firm of accountants whose services were readily and conveniently offered to his clients the moment they signed up with his agency; good rates were guaranteed. His office was on the ground floor.

Clayton led the way to an open-plan reception area where there was no sign of anyone behind the sleek, curving desk. He took Alice’s hand. “Please,” he said, “will you let me try and smooth the waters on my own? There’s really no need for you to get involved. A few simple but adamant denials on my part and we’ll soon have this wrapped up. They really don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to hurling accusations of libel around.”

“Sorry, Clayton, I’m afraid that’s not good enough for me. But I will meet you halfway. I won’t come in with you, so long as you don’t deny anything. Or smooth the waters. You’re to tell them the truth about how you came by the story. And if they want to meet me at a later date, tell them they can.”

“You’re sure?”

She kissed him on the cheek. “Whether they have a leg to stand on or not, I’m convinced Rufus and Natasha won’t pursue a libel suit. The shame would kill them, they won’t risk going public with it. For now, let’s see what they’ve got to say for themselves, shall we? The more I think about it, the more I believe that it’s me they want. And to get at me they have to go through you. They probably want my silence on any further revelations they’re worried I might come out with.”

Clayton gave in. “OK, but I want you out of sight for now. I don’t want to give Rufus the opportunity to confront you today. There’s another office just down the corridor. Why don’t you go and sit in there?”

“Don’t you worry about me. I’ll make myself invisible.”

• • •

Clayton didn’t bother knocking on Glen’s door. He strolled in as casually as he had ambled down the steps of the set for the Stevie McKean show. Plenty of smoke and mirrors, that’s what was needed. “Glen,” he said volubly, “I hope you appreciate that you’ve probably ruined the best day’s writing of my life. But I’m sure you had your reasons.” He ignored the warning look on Glen’s face—a harrowed face that looked like it had seen the future and it wasn’t good—and turned his head to get his first sighting of Rufus Raphael.
Come on, you bastard, let’s be having you! If it’s a fight you’re after, I’m your man!

He almost jumped back in surprise. Holy shit! This was not what he had been expecting.

• • •

With her ear pressed against the door, Alice was straining to hear what was going on. So far only the introductions had been made. And by a voice she didn’t recognize; presumably Glen’s.

Next came some indistinct mutterings Alice couldn’t make sense of and then came Clayton’s voice. “So what exactly is it you’re accusing me of?” he asked.

Alice held her breath, waiting to hear who would answer his question: Rufus or Natasha?

“Please don’t insult our intelligence with an attempt at obtuseness. Let’s get straight to the point, shall we?”

It was Rufus. No question. Still the same patronizing and superior arrogance in his voice. Still the same dismissive drawling lilt to his words. She could picture him looking down his nose at Clayton. He probably hadn’t changed at all. It made Alice think that an older version of the person she had once known would be an adversary of some magnitude. Had he become a doctor? She shuddered at the thought of what his bedside manner might be like. She certainly wouldn’t want to be informed by him that she was dying. He’d be the first to pull the plug on her!

“And what point is it that you want to get straight to?” asked Clayton.

“That your grubby little script was not a work of fiction, as your abysmal and inefficient agent here has been claiming, but was based on a pack of lies told to you by a conniving bitch my sister and I once had the misfortune to know.”

Conniving bitch!
Alice was ready to crash open the door and have her say. But hearing Clayton speak, she held back. “Now listen, you ingrate,” he said in a commanding voice she had never heard him use before. “Firstly my agent is many things but he is neither abysmal nor inefficient, and secondly, the misfortune was entirely that young woman’s.”

“You admit it then! Your script was based on what that wretched girl told you.”

Natasha had now joined in. There was no mistaking her voice. It was lower than Alice remembered it, but the contrived refinement and conceited self-importance was as it had always been. If not more so. For a bizarre moment, Alice found herself mimicking the voice in her head.

“And what if it was? What are you going to do about it? Sue me? Yeah, why don’t you? Tell the world that it’s you in the script in all your full glory. But the truth is, the consequences will be far more damaging to you than they ever would be to me. I have first-hand experience of how the press will treat you when they get hold of this juicy little story. Your friends will all look at you anew and one by one they’ll disown you. You’ll be social pariahs. Meanwhile, I’ll be riding high on a wave of free publicity that you’ll have provided for the sequel I’m currently writing. Hey, you know what, give me your address and I’ll slip an invitation in the post to you to attend a private showing of it. Glen? Any thoughts of your own to offer?”

Alice froze.
Sequel
. She didn’t like the sound of that.

“I think you’re dead right, Clayton. I’m all for getting as much free publicity as I can for my clients. Strikes me this is the perfect gift horse and I look forward to looking it right in the mouth. I apologize for mixing my metaphors, but this could be the cash cow of cash cows.”

There was silence then. It seemed that Clayton had outmanoeuvred them.

Rufus eventually spoke. “We want to speak to her. We want to know why she did this to us. After all this time, why?”

“I’m sorry, to whom are you referring?”

“Don’t push my patience; I warned you not to be obtuse earlier. I’m talking about Alice. Alice Barrett.”

Rufus uttered her name as if it was poison on his tongue.

“We want to know what she hoped to gain from this.”

“Not everyone does something in the hope of gain. Although very likely that’s a concept you don’t understand. Given your behaviour towards Alice all those years ago, I think unrepentant self-interest is a way of life for you both.”

“And you’re basing this view on what? On lies and exaggerations by a fool of a girl who threw herself at me? Because that’s what really happened. From the word go, Alice was obsessed with me. She trailed round after me, day in, day out. She never gave me a moment’s peace. She was a fantasist, imagining that I was in love with her. What’s more, she was as unbalanced as her father. A man, I might add, who pushed two women to their death. The man was a dangerous lunatic. Clearly Alice inherited the crazy gene from him. And to think you believed a word of what she told you.”