by Jane Fallon
I decide to take a stroll round the area. I’m curious to see her home. To see if I get a glimpse of the famous Hugh. And it’s a beautiful day so I might as well enjoy it while it lasts. I’m up and out before I can change my mind. It’s only a five-minute walk to the Tube. I haven’t even had breakfast but I decide to wait till I’m down there. I’m sure Holland Park has many chi-chi cafés. Or, at least, a Starbucks.
I spend an age waiting at Bond Street for the connecting Central Line train, wondering what I’m doing here. I think about turning back, but I have no other plans for my Saturday so I figure I might as well spend it looking at nice houses as doing anything. It’s only when I emerge at the other end and think to look at Maps on my phone that I realize it might have been better to stay on till Shepherd’s Bush. That’s the thing about London – which surely I should know by now having spent my whole adult life here – the Tube station that has the name of the area you’re going to isn’t necessarily the closest to your destination. Still, Roz’s road doesn’t seem to be too far. I cross over and turn off the main road and weave my way through the smart streets, past houses that people probably pay tens of millions of pounds for, even though they’re hardly ever there because they also have homes in Cap d’Antibes and Aspen. Their live-in staff almost certainly spend more time here than they do. I’d quite like a job with a perk like that. I pass a nanny in a uniform, walking with a red-faced, grizzling toddler tottering on reins beside her. He’s probably the heir to a multi-national corporation. I look up, half expecting Mary Poppins to fly past.
My stomach is growling but I haven’t spotted any cafés since I left the main road. I pass a pretty mews. I can picture the one where Roz and Hugh live from all the times she’s talked about it – the cobbles, the pastel houses, the row of hanging baskets, overflowing in summer, that the owners all agreed on together. I check the address. This isn’t it. It strikes me that most mews are called Something Mews. Devonshire Mews, Kynance Mews, Colville Mews with the crazy Union Jack-covered Temperley building. Roz’s isn’t. Is that odd? I assume there are exceptions to the rule.
As I keep walking, veering to the right all the time, as the map demands, I notice that the area is definitely starting to get a bit shabbier. The buildings are still magnificent but a bit more run-down. No more shiny Mercedes parked outside. Fewer perfectly trimmed box balls flanking the front doors or gleaming brass numbers. One is a B and B. More and more seem to have several doorbells where they have been divided into flats. Then, as I get closer to Holland Road, the style of the houses changes. The stuccoed mansions make way for Victorian terraces. Still lovely architecturally but would they have been grand enough to have mews built behind?
More B and Bs and budget hotels. I cross the main road. I would definitely now say I was in Shepherd’s Bush if asked. Not even the ‘Holland Park borders’ – if there is such a thing. I don’t really know this area well so I wonder if I might stumble on a hidden gem somewhere behind these run-down buildings. London is like that. Mansions sit shoulder to shoulder with council estates. I strap my bag across both shoulders, fold my arm over it protectively and hate myself for doing so but, like everyone else, I’m conditioned to go into self-preservation mode when my surroundings start looking less salubrious. I’m guilty of judging a book by its cover. Or, in this case, an area by its chipped paintwork.
Roz’s street is the next on the left. I can tell before I even get there that it’s not a mews. There are no cobbles. No hanging baskets. It’s just a road of very ordinary Victorian or Edwardian houses. Three storeys and a basement. Perfectly nice if a bit shabby. Let me put this in context. This may not be the breathtaking environs of Holland Park but I still couldn’t afford one of these houses if I worked every day till I was a hundred. Roz and Hugh live at number five, which, annoyingly, seems to be at the opposite end. I know that if she spots me there’s no way she’ll believe any excuse I make about it being a coincidence. Could I make up a friend who lives in the area? Brazen it out? Claim I got lost on the way to Westfield? Feign surprise that she lives here? (Things not to say: ‘Oh my God, I thought you lived in a cobbled mews that’s so pretty tourists go out of their way to photograph it!!’ She once told me this, I kid you not.) But I haven’t come all this way just to turn round and go home without seeing where she lives for myself.
It’s still early for a Saturday, and I know Roz is a late riser at the weekends – or so she tells me; it’s anyone’s guess. I decide to put my head down and risk it. I walk briskly from one end of the street to the other, watching the numbers count down. Out of the corner of my eye I see number nine, number seven. Number five looks as shabby as the rest. The railings along the front of the steps leading down to the basement are rusty. The paint is flaking in huge chunks from the bay window of the raised ground floor. Blue curtains are pulled across but sagging where they’ve come away from the rail. As I approach the front door I risk a look. There are four bells. Four flats. Wherever Roz and Hugh live they don’t live in a house.
There’s nothing else to see short of hiding behind one of the neighbours’ bins hoping to catch Roz and Hugh entering or leaving later. It’s not worth the risk. I’m so confused I know that it must read on my face. I’m a walking emoji. For all Roz’s talk of Hugh’s success, clearly he’s not earning the money she likes to hint that he is … What do I mean, hint? She all out says it. It’s something that always made me feel a bit uncomfortable, the way she would be so boastful about how wealthy they were. Or maybe he is, he just hasn’t got round to buying a decent place to live yet. Maybe he’s one of those people with a chip on his shoulder who tries to stay ‘real’ and close to his roots despite the fact he could buy his neighbours out ten times over. Maybe they’re living here temporarily while their mews house gets refurbished by one of London’s top interior designers and she’s just never mentioned it.
Or maybe their whole fabulous life is a big fat lie.
18
‘Did you take a photo?’ Dee sits there open-mouthed. We’re having Sunday lunch at the Spaniards, out in the garden under a heater because the inside is all booked up. Dee vetoed any closer pubs because otherwise she’d never get her steps in. Gavin declined to join us, as he has to travel up to Leeds later for a meeting first thing tomorrow. I get the impression that suits Dee fine.
‘What? No. I was terrified she was going to look out of the window and see me.’
She flicks at her fringe with her fingers. ‘So, no flash house. No Caribbean wedding. No rough school. What about her is real?’
‘I’ve got no idea any more.’ I pick at my oversized Yorkshire pudding.
‘Interesting. You should pay Fitzrovia PR a visit.’
‘And say what? Is your wife a compulsive liar? Where’s all your money because you clearly haven’t put it into your home?’
‘I don’t know. Just to get a sense of him. Don’t you think it’s odd you’ve never met him all these years?’
‘I’ve never met Juliet’s boyfriend. I don’t even know if she has one.’
‘Because you hate her,’ Dee says, taking a long swig from her lime and soda. ‘But Roz was your friend.’
I steel myself to ask Roz if she wants to have lunch. I want to start paying attention to her stories. See if I can identify any cracks. It’s too much to hope that she won’t invite Lorraine along as well but then I figure maybe that’s good, maybe Roz will be even more expansive with two people to impress, especially when one of them hangs on her every word like a starving dog begging for scraps. She also shouts over to Joe, asking if he wants to join us, pointedly leaving Juliet and Emma the only ones not included, but he declines, claiming too much work. I’ve noticed that Joe seems to have been putting a bit of distance between himself and Roz lately. He’s gone up in my estimation.
We walk to the café in the spring sunshine, Roz holding court about David Summers yet again. How Hugh has an idea to have him do some kind of humanitarian work to help rebuild his reputation.
I
t was reported in the paper this morning that David has been made ambassador for an international children’s charity. Someone is obviously trying to do an Angelina Jolie on his image. Hugh, apparently.
Because the weather has suddenly turned warm both outdoor tables are taken. I recognize four people I half know from the design department at one of them, and I nod a hello. We join the short queue of people waiting to order their sandwiches.
Lorraine pipes up: ‘Was that Hugh’s idea?’
Roz looks around as if she thinks everyone in the vicinity might be hanging on her every word and she needs to make sure she doesn’t give away any secrets. ‘Of course,’ she says in a loud whisper. ‘Brilliant, isn’t it?’
‘So, what …? It’s to make people think he’s a nice person?’ Lorraine, I fear, is not the sharpest needle in the haystack sometimes.
‘Exactly. Which he is. But the idea is that people see that and forget the rumours about all the other stuff.’ She picks out a tuna mayo sandwich and I do the same. I lean over and take a fruit-flavoured fizzy water out of the fridge.
Lorraine helps herself to a cheese salad baguette. ‘Can’t Hugh just prove that the rumours aren’t true?’
Roz looks at her as if she’s just asked the most stupid question ever. ‘He’s working on discrediting those stories. Obviously. But it’s hard when you don’t want the general public to even know it’s David the stories are supposed to be about. You know what people are like. No smoke without fire and all that.’
Lorraine takes a big bite before she’s even handed over her money. ‘Everyone knows though, right?’ she says through a mouthful. I’m glad she came along now because I can see her questions are rattling Roz without me having to say a thing.
‘No!’ Roz says too loudly. The people at the indoor tables all look over. She adjusts her voice down. ‘Not everyone’s obsessed with googling the shit out of every piece of gossip they hear. Most people have no clue, and Hugh is doing a brilliant job of trying to keep it that way.’
Lorraine looks stricken. ‘No. I mean, of course. You’re right.’
Roz flaps her card at the machine. ‘He just needs to make sure David is seen in as positive a light as possible until someone else huge takes out another super-injunction and everyone starts trying to work out who that one is. It’s criminal really that the papers can talk about it at all, and even drop hints.’
Out of the corner of my eye I see the design department guys getting ready to leave so I slam some money down and dart outside, leaving Roz and Lorraine at the counter, just beating a couple of old boys to the table. I feel a bit guilty, but not so bad that I give it up.
‘Nice work,’ Roz says when they come out, having thankfully picked up my change.
‘Hugh must really be at the top of his game,’ I say with a smile. I don’t want her getting all defensive and clamming up about her personal business. I’m convinced that now I’m looking for it I’ll spot a useful piece of ammunition at some point.
‘Exactly,’ she says, fiddling with one of her dangly feather earrings. ‘Most of what he does is making sure people stay in the spotlight, that what they’re doing gets as much attention as it can. But something like this, where he’s trying to save someone’s whole reputation, well, let’s just say if he succeeds all of David’s friends will be beating his door down next time they need help.’
‘Awesome,’ Lorraine says.
‘How did you and Hugh meet?’ I take a bite of my sandwich so I don’t have to look at her. I’m scared I’ll give away my ulterior motive. The bread is soggy, turned to mush by the tuna and mayonnaise. A large chunk slaps on to the table and I busy myself mopping it up.
‘At a party.’ Roz pushes her cat’s eye sunglasses up her nose. ‘He was a friend of a friend of a friend. He came up to me in the kitchen and said he’d noticed me as soon as he walked in because I stood out from the crowd.’
‘Aww,’ Lorraine coos. ‘Did you fancy him right away?’
‘Definitely. Not that I let him know that obviously. I was very standoffish. He told me later it drove him crazy.’
Lorraine laughs. ‘Have you got a photo of him? I’ve never even seen him.’
Do I imagine it or does Roz hesitate for just a second? She starts scrolling through her pictures. ‘I’ve hardly got any on this phone. I had to delete everything because my storage was so low and I’m terrified of putting everything on iCloud in case I forget the password. Oh, wait, here’s one.’
She holds the phone out to Lorraine, who makes appreciative noises. ‘Oh my God, he’s a total hottie. Show Holly.’
Roz swings the phone round to me and I see it’s the same picture of the two of them that she has as her Facebook cover photo. Is that strange? I can’t decide. I try to think if Dee has reams of pictures of Gavin clogging up her mobile – it’s so long since I had a long-term relationship of my own that trying to recall my own history is pointless – and I conclude that, while she doesn’t spend her time taking portraits of him he inevitably shows up in quite a few shots just because he’s there. And Ashley’s phone is like a catalogue of everything she and Ryan have ever done.
‘He’s definitely a looker,’ I say, because I can tell she’s waiting for a response.
‘Oh God,’ Lorraine suddenly says in a whisper that’s as loud as her normal voice. ‘It’s Emma.’
I look up and Emma is approaching the café. I smile at her and she smiles nervously back. I wonder if she heard. She walks past us and inside.
‘She looks as if she got dressed in the dark today.’ Lorraine cackles. ‘Did you see those shoes? They’re like something my granny would put on. And she’s nearly eighty. And she has corns.’
Roz laughs loudly. Lorraine beams. Gold star from the teacher. I concentrate on my sandwich, head down. Say nothing.
Back in the office I text Dee: Roz only has one pic of Hugh on her phone. Is that odd??
A few minutes later I get a response: I just counted up and I have 37 of Gav on mine. And I don’t remember taking any of them. It just happens. I would say VERY SUSPECT!!
I look through the glass and across to where Roz sits, pink-tipped blonde head down, making notes.
I have no idea what to do next.
19
Luckily for me Dee has a plan. Also luckily for me when it all goes wrong – as it inevitably will – there’s no way either Roz or Hugh will realize it’s got anything to do with me.
It’s Hugh’s fortieth birthday this week. I know this from hearing ad nauseam about the big plans for his party. Roz has hired a room in a smart pub in Holland Park – ‘They’re going to decorate it for free for us, because they love Hugh’ – and Dee has decided she and Gavin are going to gatecrash and she is going to, as she puts it, ‘observe them in their natural habitat’. The very idea of it gives me cold sweats.
‘It’ll do us good to have a night out,’ she said when she announced her intention. Roz had made a show of saying how sad she was not to be able to invite me and Lorraine (‘I’m already way over the number the room’s supposed to hold’), but she promised us a full blow-by-blow account on the Monday morning, no doubt listing all the famous faces who show up for the birthday boy.
‘Aren’t they going to realize they have no idea who you are?’ I asked Dee. We were in our usual bar at the end of my road, having a quick after-work catch-up.
She shrugged. ‘I’ll make something up.’
‘What if they have a bouncer on the door? With a guest list?’
‘Then we’ll have a drink at the bar and go home.’
‘And Gavin’s up for it?’
She flicked her fringe. Raised an eyebrow. ‘He has no idea. He thinks we’re going out for dinner.’
I laughed nervously. ‘Just talk me through again how stalking them is going to help me?’
‘I don’t know. But don’t you want to find how much of what she says is true? What else she’s lying about? It’s not as if we’ve got anything else to go on. Or do you want to just si
t around while she tries to lose you your job?’
I couldn’t deny I was curious.
‘OK. Oh my God. I don’t know about this.’
Dee rolled her eyes. ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’
First, though, I have to get through the rest of the week at work. Things seem to have quietened down, at least for now. The calm before the storm, I’m sure. I can’t believe Roz has given up her quest to have me discredited. Meanwhile I’m racking my brains for ways in which I can fight fire with fire. Out of inspiration, I decide to start with the basics. Roz, like most of us, prefers to make notes on each draft of a script as she reads them and, because of the sheer volume, the speed with which we have to turn them round and the fact that all the writers come into the office to talk through them (as opposed to being sent them), at least on the first draft, she rarely types them into her computer. There’s no point.
I know that she had first drafts arriving this week, so I watch to see her, head down, scrawling in the margins. I want to ask Emma if she knows when the writer is booked to come in, but that would be giving myself away. I have to time this right. Too soon and – even though it would be an inconvenience – Roz would have time to go through the whole process again. I try to access her diary when I find myself the last person in the office, but she’s changed her password and by the time I’ve put in three rejected guesses I’m sweating like a first-time shoplifter and too scared to try again. I could never be a career criminal.
