Turned out Lucy’s mum lived in a terraced house on the waterfront in Broughty Ferry with a man who wasn’t her dad. The investigator hadn’t yet been able to find out who her real father was. But the facts spoke for themselves: her mum hadn’t even married her father. Instead, she had hooked up with a local carpenter and had his child.
Perhaps she should forward Lucy’s number to Jerry Springer or whatever chat-show host dealt with the infested, low-life stories of the working classes. Bridget had yelped in delight when the investigator had told her. Lucy might have taught herself to speak well but she was as common as the shell-suited families on morning television. Scum.
Best of all, her half-sister worked for the Daily News – a downmarket tabloid. The kind that delved into the private lives of famous people – the very thing Hartley despised. She was sure Lucy would not have told him about her sister’s murky secret.
Lucy had got her claws into Hartley far too easily, but, now Bridget was armed with the facts, Lucy’s run of luck was about to end.
She would be doing Hartley a huge favour. He had been taken in by this tart’s string of lies. She was a gold-digger. Bridget just needed time to hatch a plan.
She didn’t expect it to come in the form of a phone call from her friend Claudia.
Bridget had noted the anxiety in her so-called best-friend’s voice during their conversation.
After making small talk about upcoming balls and which friends were trying to get pregnant/were pregnant/ engaged/had set a wedding date, etc., Claudia finally got round to the real reason for her call.
‘Bridget, there’s something I want to run by you.’
‘Yes?’
‘First of all I want to say how much I miss hanging out with you and Hartley. I loved the whole double-couple thing we had – you two, Charles and I.’
‘Thanks, sweetie. You never know, we might have those times again.’
‘Oh yes, perhaps. Absolutely. The thing is… I don’t want you to think I’m being disloyal in any way, but Charles has organized a weekend away.’
Bridget guessed what was coming. ‘That’s nice.’
‘Yes. Charles’s friend Robbie, well, his family have an estate in Fife, near St Andrews, I think. Remember we always meant to go but never got round to it? The boys are always talking about playing golf at the famous Old Course. The thing is, Robbie has invited Charles and Hartley – you know what they’re like: peas in a pod.’
‘Yes, sweetie.’ In the mirror, Bridget admired her black Chanel shift dress which came to just above her knees.
She was a good few inches taller than most of her friends and now, thanks to her Harley Street nutritionist’s diet plan, she was at least a stone lighter. The diet had worked superbly, and it was worth suffering the cravings for carbs to look so good.
Her jet-black bob and pale complexion completed her look: exquisite. How dare Lucy say she had let herself go! Anyone could see the opposite was true. Lucy was plainly jealous of her grace, her standing.
‘And, erm, Hartley has invited his new… his new, erm, girlfriend.’
‘That’s the “thing”, sweetie?’ chirped Bridget mockingly while stroking her large £10,000 diamond earring – one of a set Daddy had bought her from Tiffany’s last Christmas.
‘Um, yes. I do hope you don’t mind, Bridget.’
Bridget did mind. She minded very much.
She had brought Claudia into her very inner circle – introduced her to the Princes, for God’s sake.
She had given her the number of her hairdresser, Pierre, who had made her strawberry-blonde frizz sleek with a chemical straightening perm, which was beginning to grow out. She had told her what labels to wear and how to wear them so she didn’t look like the school geek.
And now Claudia was betraying her by running off for a weekend with that bitch. Claudia’s problem was that she was too bloody wet for her own good. No backbone.
If any of her other girlfriends had been in this position they’d have called Bridget to offer to get all the dirt on Lucy over the weekend away. Not Claudia. She was one of those tedious people who believed in giving everybody a chance.
Bridget wanted to tell Claudia to have a great time because when she came back she’d find herself on far fewer invitation lists. Bridget would see to that. But for now she needed Claudia. She wanted the news that she had been gracious about the whole thing to get back to Hartley and his blonde tart.
‘Of course I don’t mind, Claudia. How long have I known you? Ten years. That’s worth more than some weekend away, sweetie. And anyway, Hartley’s new girlfriend has done nothing wrong. You’re right to give her a chance.’
There was silence on the other end. Claudia had been terrified of calling Bridget. In fact, Claudia was terrified of her full stop. Bridget’s life consisted of bitching about people she didn’t like, making sure she was on the best tables at the best balls and getting Daddy to make her life – and wardrobe – as wonderful as possible.
But Claudia had been a loyal friend to Bridget, partly out of fear but also because she tried to see the good in everyone.
‘Perhaps she’s insecure,’ she had often said to her boyfriend, Charles. ‘Maybe her rudeness is a cover-up for being unhappy.’
‘Maybe she’s just a cow,’ was Charles’s invariable reply.
Claudia had listened in horror as Bridget laid into Hartley’s new girlfriend at Ascot a few days earlier.
Lucy was devastatingly attractive and, as far as she could tell, a natural beauty. Bridget had been awful and Claudia had looked at the ground throughout her tirade, beating herself up inwardly for being too cowardly to tell her to stop.
Lucy’s put-down had been unexpected and mortifying for Bridget. Claudia admired this pretty girl who had remained so calm.
‘Right. Well, that’s jolly good of you, Bridget.’
‘Of course, sweetie. Was there anything else? I have a Deborah Lippmann French manicure at twelve.’
‘No, Bridget. I’ll see you soon, hopefully.’
‘Yes, yes. Goodbye… Oh sweetie, one more thing.’
‘Yes, Bridget?’
‘When are you going to Scotland? Just so I know when you can’t do lunch.’
‘The last weekend of the month, Bridget.’
‘OK. Bye, darling.’
As she put the phone down Bridget knew exactly what she would do next. She would destroy Lucy and enjoy every minute of it.
SHERI COMES GOOD AGAIN
What a week.
Max had the potential scoop of the year on her hands: Shagger Sheri pregnant with Kirk Kelner’s baby.
She’d wasted no time in racing back to the office to tell her boss.
‘That’s a belter, Max,’ Claire announced, leaping to her feet in anticipation of telling the big boss, the paper’s editor.
Max felt the stares of her fellow reporters, who were envious it wasn’t their story yet relieved the pressure to come up with a big exclusive was off them for a day or two.
It was said that Claire, four years older than Max and with thirsty brown eyes, would sell her grandmother if it meant getting a front-page. Having gleaned an insight into how she worked, Max was sure she’d throw in her grandfather too. But the result was she was known as one of the best showbiz journalists in the country, with a string of exclusives under her Gucci belt.
She cut an impressive figure, favouring classic suits – always in black and accentuating her waist. Her hair never changed: bleached almost white, a poker-straight bob in a severe centre parting with not even a millimetre of roots showing. This was some feat, given that a decade ago her hair had matched her dark eyes. Claire was attractive in a stern, perfected way, her look finished with bright red lipstick at all times.
As well as her own stories, Claire relied on her staff – Max and three other showbiz reporters – to come up with exclusives every day so she had a full list of four or five tales for the morning conference in which the executives planned what would appear in the
following day’s paper.
That morning’s list had been on the light side.
‘It’s just what we need – someone pregnant with Kelner’s baby. Fucking amazing.’
That was the thing about working in a newsroom where scandal sold – even the women spoke like men who were trying to get their mates’ attention after a few pints.
Claire, dressed in a trouser suit and Gucci heels, sat down and pointed a finger in the air.
‘Hold on a minute. This is Shagger Sheri. Yes, she’s brilliant for stories. But she’d also do anything to feed her coke habit. My mate at Elysium says it’s worse than ever.’
‘Agreed.’ Max nodded. ‘It needs to be stood up before we can print it.’
Standing a story up was journalist speak for proving it. Often, you could have the best story in the world but could never run it without verifying it through a reliable source: standing it up.
Otherwise the star involved would sue. Sheri had no reputation to protect or anything to lose with a story like this. Kirk Kelner might have been delighted with Sheri’s sex-stud kiss-and-tell, but her allegation that he was the father of her unborn child would have to be verified. He would waste no time in suing or at least asking for a paternity test.
‘Exactly. Max, there’s only one thing for it.’
Max had a horrible feeling she knew what was coming.
UNCOVERED: SHERI IN ALL HER GLORY
It had taken a long time to convince Sheri to take the pregnancy test. Claire had insisted she used one of the home pregnancy tests – the ones you peed on to get a result, positive or negative – and that she did it in front of Max. That way Sheri couldn’t doctor the results. This story was worth a lot of money and there was no telling what Sheri would do to get it.
‘I’ve got to fucking piss in front of you?’
‘Yes, Sheri. Sorry. It’s at my boss’s request. She doesn’t know you as well as I do and she’s nervous about paying anyone that amount of money – you asked for twenty grand.’
Max thought it kinder not to mention the fact that no one with half a brain would trust Sheri in the same sentence as twenty grand.
Initially, Sheri had asked for twenty. Max had bartered her down to a more realistic price.
At first Sheri had refused point-blank to take the test.
In that case, Max had told her, no dinero.
‘I’ll go to the Sunday Mirror,’ she spat.
‘Sheri, they’ll just tell you the same and pay you a lot less.’ So Sheri had eventually succumbed and shut herself in the small toilet of her Bermondsey flat with Max.
Handing her the test kit, Max, dressed in a black, sixties-style Warehouse mini shift dress and black-leather, knee-high Gucci boots, felt her cheeks flush as she perched on the edge of the bath and watched Sheri.
She could hear Sir Trevor McDonald now. ‘And the award for losing all self-respect goes to a journalist who watches coke-head kiss-and-tell girls urinating in front of them. Ladies and gentlemen, Maxine –’
Max’s thoughts were interrupted by the noise of Sheri’s trickling pee. She looked up and took in the pathetic figure Sheri cut: her tracksuit bottoms crumpled on the floor under her orange legs, her skinny, muscle-less stomach on show under a T-shirt emblazoned with the words ‘You Want Some?’, which was cut off under her huge breasts.
Is this what Max’s career had come to? Years of effort, tears, hard work – for this?
She had gone straight from school to the local paper, the Dundee Courier, with the DC Thomson publishing family, fitting in journalism night classes at college where she learned 100-words-a-minute shorthand and media law.
Then, aged twenty, she moved down south to Manchester for a news reporter position on a respected local paper.
She was named young local journalist of the year at the National Press Awards when she was twenty-three and promptly offered a job with one of the Sunday tabloids in London. And now, as a showbiz reporter, life was whizzing by in a flurry of free bars and canapés. Well, when she wasn’t watching Sheri piss on a stick.
‘Done,’ announced Sheri, waving the kit above her head.
Max’s mobile rang before she could take it from her.
It rang three times before Sheri asked, with barely concealed irritation, ‘You gonna answer that or what?’
‘No. If it’s important they’ll leave a message.’
Sheri looked utterly devastated, dropping her gaze to the bathroom floor.
This pretty much confirmed Max’s suspicion that Sheri had planned to trick her.
Sheri had shouted ‘Done’ a little too loudly. Max guessed it was her flatmate Envy’s cue to call Max, withholding her number. Sheri knew Max always answered her phone for work and a few seconds would be enough time to swap the kit for another (either tampered with earlier or peed on by a woman who was really pregnant) hidden somewhere in her loo. You can’t trick a trickster, thought Max as she watched Sheri hoist up her pink Playboy thong and Juicy Couture tracksuit bottoms. How come she was tanned mahogany even on her hairless bits down there too?
A deflated Sheri handed the spatula to Max.
‘It hasn’t turned pink, Sheri – it’s negative.’
‘I swear the test I did yesterday was positive.’
Max didn’t have the heart to tell Sheri she knew what had happened. As ludicrous as the plan to deceive Max was, in Sheri’s desperate mind it was her only option. She needed money fast.
She had to look good and that came at a price – manicures, fake tan, hair extensions and designer bags. Maintaining her appearance was a full-time job. And she wouldn’t let the other glamour girls who were regulars on her club circuit have the satisfaction of seeing her dressed in H&M rather than Dolce & Gabbana.
But most of all she needed the money to pay off her coke dealer so she could start getting credit again. Sheri knew she was taking too much but a line or two took the edge off and she needed that for the confidence to blag herself into VIP areas and chat up stars.
She’d finished her last lot of coke before Max came. She liked Max and was normally honest with her. But she really needed the cash. Anyway, if Max had printed her pregnancy story she’d have said she’d had a miscarriage a couple of months later and nobody would have been any wiser.
‘Sorry, Sheri. I’m happy to stay and watch you do another test – this one might have been faulty – but I really can’t pay you if it’s negative.’
Max wanted to give the money to Sheri – and insist she used it on a spell in rehab.
Sure, she looked her tarty best for the snappers waiting outside Embassy or Elysium but it took a hell of a lot of time and money for Sheri to transform herself these days. She was taking so much coke she shivered uncontrollably – even when immersed in a piping-hot bath – until she’d had a livener. Her eyes were sunken, her streaky-blonde hair lank.
Max did not consider Sheri to be her friend exactly – how could they be when their relationship was based on stories for cash? Sheri helped Max get good scoops and therefore give her boss goodies for morning conference, while Max helped Sheri make a living. For what, though? To snort more marching powder, Max thought sadly. She couldn’t help but feel a little protective.
‘Sheri, I was thinking that maybe with the next lot of cash you get you could go away for a bit. Even party girls need their rest. There are some lovely spas just outside London. Or rehab? It’s all the rage with the A-listers. You might even get a famous boyfriend.’ Max hoped her tone was light enough so as not to sound like she was lecturing Sheri.
‘Nah, babes. I’m fine for now. Maybe in a few weeks I’ll ’ave a beach holiday or somefing.’
Max knew she couldn’t push it any further – it wasn’t her place.
But Sheri didn’t seem to have any real friends and Max couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.
‘Listen, Max, maybe I made a mistake with the test. Don’t worry about it.’
‘OK, Sheri. Listen, I have to head off. Will you be OK?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘You couldn’t lend me fifty quid, could ya? I’ll pay you back next week.’
‘Sure,’ said Max, despising herself as she reached for her wallet.
SOME THINGS ARE NOT FOR SALE
Max knew it was coming the moment Claire suggested they have a catch-up over dinner.
Word was out that her sister was dating none other than the UK’s most eligible bachelor and that meant one thing: Max was in a position to bring huge stories to the paper.
‘I know how important family and friends are,’ Claire told her over their second bottle of Pinot Grigio at Chez Gerard near Tower Bridge.
No, Max thought, you don’t know how important family and friends are to me. She smiled at her boss through a mouthful of steak-frites.
Claire gently swirled the wine in her glass, brushing a stray strand of hair behind her ear with her other hand.
She looked at Max, her brown eyes so cold and serious. ‘But the thing you have to understand, Max, is that you, as a showbiz reporter, have a golden opportunity here. You are in the perfect position to bring in great stories – we’re talking front page after front page.’
Max fought an urge to stand up and shout at her boss that she was a blinkered bitch, asking her to tell tales on her sister. How dare she! But then that was exactly what Max had expected. It’s what Claire had become, what the job had made her. Max looked and felt calm. Claire couldn’t assess her reaction.
Putting her glass down, Claire clasped both her hands together as she pursed her MAC-glossed red lips together. A gesture, Max considered, that was meant to show just how honest and helpful she was trying to be.
‘And it wouldn’t be betraying your sister, Max. There are plenty of stories you could bring in that are positive. I mean, let’s say he got engaged to Lucy. That would be a great exclusive.’
Max raised her eyebrows and took a sip of wine.
‘Or… or, if he was holding some exclusive party, you could get inside, get the goss. That would be great publicity for his charity.’
Scandalous Page 8
