The Vanity Game (23 page)

But they don't. Then I'm back in the car, praying there'll be no scum camped outside my gates.

"Come on, come on," I whisper at the gates as they part way too slowly, revealing two of the fuckers scrambling up from the deckchairs they'd been lounging on. They pull their cameras into position as I swing the car on to the road but I push down on the gas, the engine roars into life and I leave them standing there with their glass eyes flashing in my wake. Much to my relief, they make no attempt to follow me as I bomb it down the country lane. They probably think I'm just on my way to training. Training…shit. I need to come up with some excuse and pronto, it's due to start in fifteen minutes. I call up Di Cotto's office on the hands free as I turn onto the motorway. Natalia answers – I hope she can't tell I'm driving.

"Hey Natalia, baby, it's Beaumont."

"Ah, hello," she says in that sexy Italian accent, but fuck it, I'm in no mood for fantasising right now.

"Listen, I'm not feeling too well – I think I've picked up some stomach bug and it's probably best I don't come in as I don't want to spread it to the other lads. Can you tell Di Cotto?"

"Of course, darling. I hear congratulations are in order, by the way."

Great. She probably thinks I'm skiving because I want to have a schmoozy love-in with Krystal.

"Yeah, cheers, I'm not really in the mood for celebrating right now though, I gotta say."

If only she knew just how much.

She tells me she'll definitely tell Di Cotto and hopes I get well soon. So that's one problem out of the way, for now at least.

As I head towards London I start to think more clearly about what I'm doing. It suddenly strikes me that taking the car to the hotel would be pretty fucking stupid as any bastard could track me down. The only option is to dump it somewhere and then find some other way of getting into London. I can feel myself breaking out into a sweat as I realise that that other way is probably going to have to involve public transport. Jesus fucking Christ, what have I let myself in for? But it's too late to go back now. The traffic's pretty heavy on the motorway and I have to keep moving between lanes. Up ahead I see the traffic is slowing down as the M11 ends and the cars peel off onto smaller roads which take them into the city. I'm going to have to decide which way to go, and quickly, but before I have time, I'm at the junction. Instinctively I turn south, don't know why, but now I'm on the North Circular Road.

I see the sign 'Redbridge' and memories from my childhood come flooding back. Grandma Jean used to live here, just off this road, almost opposite the Tube station. Grandma Jean, she's been dead for a few years now – I must have been about seventeen and had just got my big break. Hardly remember her dying at all, I was so busy getting used to being super-rich and having girls chuck themselves at me everywhere I went.

I turned up at the funeral hung-over as hell, almost fell asleep in the church then stayed for just one drink afterwards because I got a booty call from some girl I don't even remember the name of. Fucking hell. She was ill for ages in hospital and I didn't go to visit once, not even when I was at the same hospital on one of those fucking penance visits to the sick kids. Now here I am again.

I turn down the slip road to where she used to live. It looks just the same as it always did. There's the Tube station up ahead of me. Fuck me though, I suddenly think, can I really get on the Tube without being recognised? It's been years, like getting on for a decade, since I got on the
underground
. But maybe the safest thing to do is wear a disguise, keep amongst people, it's the last thing they'll expect me to do. I could park the car near Grandma's old house, and then put on the hat and glasses I've got in the glove box.

What line is this station? I try to force the memories back…me and mum, travelling to Grandma's, the brown line from Wembley Central, changing at Oxford Circus (always busy as hell), onto the red line right through the City where the hassled-looking guys in suits got off at places like Bank and Liverpool Street. The red line … the Central Line.

Now I can't stop the memories coming. I remember Grandma giving me money to buy sweets from the local shop whilst mum sat at the table in the dark kitchen with her head in her hands,
'Men always let you down, Sheila, you're better off on your own,'
I can hear Grandma saying. I've secretly stayed and am listening behind the door, scared because I'm worried something's wrong with mum. Now here I am again, as alone as that boy exploring these strange, quiet streets. It makes me feel sad, like I let that boy down as well, no lie. Like I let everyone down.

But fuck, now ain't the time for reminiscing. There's a church, I remember, just a little way along the road from the Tube station. I drive up to it and I'm surprised to find it exactly as it was all those years ago. The creepy statue of Jesus is still there, arms outstretched at the passing motorists, as is the crappy little outhouse where we once went to a summer fair, and the small car park at the back. I swing the car into the empty car park, put on the hat and glasses and grab the Louis Vuitton holdall from the back seat. I feel that I'm standing out like a clown at a fucking funeral as I walk away from the Land Rover without even locking it. Anyone who wants to steal it is more than welcome, or maybe the church can sell it and build a better outhouse for their summer fairs. Grandma would have liked that.

That smell: dust and fast moving metal, and the warm air. The Tube is just the same as it ever was.

I press myself against the left side of the escalator as some teenage boys run noisily past. The anxiety builds up inside me more and more with every member of the public I see, yet I've got to admit I'm kind of excited. There's only a couple of people on the platform: a short, sassy-looking black girl who stares at me as I walk past, a middle-aged white guy who looks up from his paper and seems to sneer at me. I check myself, they can't possibly recognise me. But I move as far down the platform as I can anyway and as the train roars in I scan the carriage I'm about to enter for any obvious Lovers or Haters. I see no immediate threat and step on. There are only a few people in the carriage and none fit the profile, I'm relieved to say, of your average Lover or Hater, nor do any look like crazy gangster types who are out to marry me to some random look-alike of my dead girlfriend.

I start to feel a bit calmer as the train hurtles through the tunnel. I look at the Tube map above the seats opposite me, it's a long way into town. There's a heap of big hotels around Lancaster Gate and Marble Arch. That's smack in the middle of London but those hotels mainly cater for tourists who will, I guess, be less likely to recognise me. So I'll go to Marble Arch. I try to count how many stations there are between where I am now and there but I keep losing where I'm up to and it's hard to read with the sunglasses on. The train has stopped anyway and as the doors slide open I see a truly scary sight about to get on: a group of teenage girls. Even worse, one of them is carrying a copy of
Heat
magazine, and they all sit down, giggling, and crowding round her to read it. They're probably reading about me right now. Jesus, this is weird. I look around and see there's a newspaper behind my seat so I pick it up and pretend to read it, just to hide my face. It's one of those crappy free ones they hand out in the rush hour and so, again, I'm bound to be in it. Sure enough, there on page three, a picture of me and Krystal. Is it Stella, or an old picture of Krystal herself? I stare at it for a while but I can't tell. The more I look, in fact, the less I even recognise myself. There's also a picture of Felicity walking down the street wearing a fur coat and woolly hat and looking stressed, like she's not enjoying her taste of fame so much. One thing that makes me smile, at least. They've tried to make a new story out of the weekend's allegations, and there's nothing about the marriage. Could I have imagined those marriage stories? But then I see the date, it's yesterday's paper. Of course, it would have been handed out yesterday afternoon before the rumours had been spread. Stella was probably heading for the airport when the original reader of this paper was on this train, on his or her way home from work absorbing this pointless gossip. How quickly everything has changed. If enough people believe what they read, does that make it real?

The teenage girls get off at the next station, but the carriage is pretty full now. It's strange, but the busier it gets, the safer I feel because everyone seems too caught up in themselves to take any notice of me, just one more freak wearing shades on the underground. And yeah, it is giving me an adrenaline rush, being this close to the public but undercover, able to study them without them studying me, close enough to smell the fuckers. A guy gets on and sits next to me. He reeks of Hugo Boss and is wearing a well cut pinstripe suit, expensive, Italian-looking leather shoes and a Rolex that I reckon costs about five grand. The guy breathes arrogance, it's seeping from every pore of his body as he flicks his hair back and pulls a copy of the
Financial Times
from his Gucci briefcase. Maybe he senses me staring at him because he looks round and takes me in for a few seconds then flashes me a quick, almost seductive, smile. A fucking poof? But no, it's not seductive, it's brotherly. He must have clocked the Gucci shades, Louis Vuitton holdall and Franco Visconti jeans and thought I'm just like him, this City boy who probably works fourteen hours a day, can understand stocks and shares, all that crap, and thinks he's doing well on what? Two hundred K a year? If only he knew all I do is kick a ball around, look good at fashion shoots and earn almost that in a week.

Now a family of tourists are sitting in front of me – a woman, a guy and two smallish boys. The Mom and Dad are wearing matching sun visors, blatantly Yanks; and both are dressed in stupid, child-like sportswear. I try to imagine what it must be like to be that guy, stuck with his frumpy wife and snotty kids. But then the smallest of the boys, who's sat on the seat behind him, leans under his arm and the guy gives the kid a daddy-style hug. "Oh, Pop," the kid's squealing, trying to wriggle away and it pulls my heart strings, no lie. Stupid as it sounds I guess I'm jealous of that little fucking kid, maybe if I'd had a dad like that things would have been different. Fuck me, I can feel a lump starting to form in my throat. It's mad how easily it comes on these days.

The family stay with me until Oxford Circus, and then they're replaced by a really hot dark-haired chick who smiles at me as she sits down. I smile back, and wonder if I should say something to her. Something like 'Please take me home with you, let me live whatever life you live and take me out of this hell'. But the train is pulling into Marble Arch and I know that crazy things like that never work outside of films anyway.

Up on the street I feel exposed again. What if they're watching me from the window of one of the buildings above? But they can't know where I am, can they?

I stand against a shop window so at least no one can come up behind me, and I look around. I see Marble Arch to my left and beyond that the start of Hyde Park. The park would be nice, but streams of cars and taxis are blaring and screeching down Bayswater Road and it looks like a total hassle to cross. Besides, the openness of the park is probably too dangerous anyway.

Now I remember that there's a big hotel along Bayswater Road, towards Lancaster Gate.

I stayed there for a night once with a member of a girl band I was having a brief fling with. Krystal was out of town and we holed up in the penthouse suite. When I think about that now, I wonder why I did it. I don't even think it made me happy at the time. I remember lying on the bed while she danced in red underwear in front of me and I tried to suppress the feeling that it was all pretend. It was just another notch on the celebrity bed post for both of us – everyone wanted to fuck her, everyone wanted to fuck me, so it seemed logical that we should fuck each other.

Well anyway, that hotel would be ideal right now. But then I realise that I'll have to get cash – I can't pay for the hotel on my card.

I start to head up Oxford Street as I figure that's the best place to find a cashpoint, but there are so many people. They're pouring out of shops, pushing past each other on pavements, swarming around bus stops. Swarming like insects. Seems like these people are all on autopilot, totally unaware of each other, just obsessed with getting the bargains in Selfridges or Topshop or John Lewis.

But whatever. Up ahead, much to my relief, I see a cashpoint. I break into a slight run and join the back of the queue, standing close to the people in front of me, two geeky looking young guys speaking in a foreign language. They won't recognise me, but it makes me nervous to hang around like this. The queue doesn't seem to move. I'm aware of someone passing close by me, staring at me.

"Oh my God, it's Beaumont! Beaumont Alexander!" I hear her hiss loudly. The foreign fuckers in front of me turn to look round and start grinning. Oh my God, this cannot happen.

"Aw we're such big fans. Can we have your autograph?" says her mate.

They're both thirty-something, with long, straightened hair and both are wearing sunglasses.

"No, no you got the wrong person," I say, my voice coming out American, like that kid on the Tube.

"Oh but you look so much like him," the first hag says.

I feel like I might pass out. I feel dizzy and breathless and this makes me panic more. I cannot pass out, not right here, that would be so bad.

"No, I'm not him. I always get this, please..."