by Sue Watson
‘Even after what you just told me, it sounds like you had more of a marriage than I ever have.’
We both sipped our wine in silence.
‘I can see you and Peter are going through a rough patch,’ I said, wondering if the baby mentioned in the birth card was anything to do with their current disharmony. Did Peter refuse to accept the child into their lives? Had Bella had the child adopted? Had I got it completely wrong and the ‘congratulations on your baby’ card was something quite different, Bella had gone ahead with the termination and there was no baby. I was desperately trying to think of a way of bringing this up, but how could I without alerting Bella to the fact that I’d been snooping in her stuff?
‘I used to think, just give me a long weekend with Peter, and everything will be fine,’ she was saying. ‘But I know now I was fooling myself. I’ll never change him.’ She suddenly seemed very serious and near to tears.
Looking at the sadness in her eyes, I decided it was time to stop eating my way through the winter landscape of cheese – Bella was trying to tell me something.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, Fliss says I shouldn’t tell anyone, no one can be trusted, she says…’ she broke off and looked at me as if she’d been caught, as if Fliss were there keeping her in check.
I didn’t want to push her, but at the same time I could tell she wanted to talk, she just needed reassurance. ‘Bella, you can trust me, I know at first I virtually threatened to go to the papers about Mum’s recipes, but I wouldn’t have. Let’s face it, I’ve carried your biggest secret around for years, I’m your oldest friend…’
‘Yes, I know and I do trust you. I’d almost forgotten what friendship was like until you came here, the past twenty-four hours have reminded me what it’s like to have someone of your own. I know we argue, we always did – but I always knew you were there, objective, sometimes annoying – but always on my side. I need that girl now Ames… that confidante, someone I can trust and who can give me advice, I’ve got people like Fliss and Tim, but I need someone who isn’t on the bloody payroll.’
‘I’m here – talk to me. I feel like I let you down all those years ago, let me make it up to you.’
‘We’ve kept it all quiet for so long and Fliss has worked so hard to keep everything out of the papers, I shouldn’t talk about it…’
‘But it’s not healthy to live like this. I know as a celebrity you have to be discreet and you might not want to share all your personal business with the world, but it seems to me you’ve created your own world and it’s not real. Dovecote is like the Bella theme park, it seems so magical but in reality it’s fake and full of secrets… perhaps talking about stuff to someone you can trust will help? I don’t want you to tell me anything you’re not comfortable with, but like I said, I’m here and I want to help.’
She nodded but didn’t say anything and I presumed she’d clammed up again, she was so used to keeping everything locked up inside it must have been hard to let it all go. I couldn’t imagine having to cope with all of my problems alone, no one to talk to or confide in, and all the while pretending that everything was perfect. I finished my wine and was about to change the subject when she suddenly started talking.
‘When I first met Peter I fell completely in love. I thought if I loved him enough he’d love me back.’
‘But he’s so attentive, so adoring, surely he still does?’
She shook her head. ‘He left me years ago – he lives with his lover, Sacha.’
‘Oh Bella, I’m sorry, I had no idea, I thought you were happy… had the perfect marriage. I thought he lived with you here.’
‘That’s what everyone’s supposed to think, we’ve kept it a secret all these years because it could ruin both of us if it got out.’
‘That must be hard, sharing your husband with another woman,’ I started.
‘Sacha isn’t a woman,’ Bella said, gulping a large glug of wine without taking her eyes off me.
‘What? I don’t understand…’
‘Sacha’s a man. And the reason we’re arguing so much is that he’s fed up of waiting in the wings… he wants Peter to marry him.’
‘Oh…oh…’ I didn’t know what to say. I was shocked to the core. ‘You’re telling me Peter – the Silver Fox – is gay?’ I had to have it spelt out to me I was so amazed I wanted to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood what she was saying.
‘Yes.’
‘But he was here, he looked into your eyes in the kitchen and I watched him nuzzle your neck. Only last week he said on TV you were the sexiest woman in the world…’
‘Yes, he’s a good actor. He tries, God bless him he even tried in the bedroom when we were younger. He closed his eyes, lay back and thought of war zones and there was the odd uprising when I felt we might be able to find some common ground. But then he went to Iraq to cover the insurgency and found Sacha. They spend their time between their place in London and Sacha’s home in Paris – which is difficult, but what can I do?’
‘Divorce him?’
‘It isn’t as simple as that. I always knew the score, it was a “showbiz marriage”. Peter was young, handsome, up-and-coming, but in 1990 being gay wouldn’t help his image, especially as there was frenzied talk of him having his own current affairs programme. Coming out would just shift the emphasis from intellectual hunk to intellectual gay man and twenty years ago that wasn’t to everyone’s taste.’
Peter and I were both clients of hers so in Fliss’s inimitable words she “killed two birds with one stone” – and booked a wedding. Gay men weren’t the stuff of TV as they are now. Hell, these days it’s all about the dysfunctional family reality shows where Dad is expected to have a sex change while Mum takes a toy-boy. It was all so different back then, wasn’t it? So we set off for the registry office to hide the gay macho correspondent and his new kitchen goddess under a veil of white tulle and a five-foot croquembouche.’
‘Wow… I remember the beautiful wedding photos. Peter was such a big name back then, no-one had a clue. When you married him I remember thinking how well you’d done… not that you didn’t deserve…’
‘It’s okay Ames,’ she smiled; ‘You’re right, Peter was quite the high-profile celeb and in marrying him my own star rose dramatically, our marriage opened doors for me. And in the years since we’ve become the quintessential English couple with our Sunday supplement lifestyle and spreads in celebrity magazines. You have to hand it to Fliss, she engineered the whole thing brilliantly.’
‘So Peter has his… lover. What about you?’
‘Nada. I have been set up as the perfect woman married to a very physical man and even if another guy was interested in me he’d either be too scared of me or even more scared of my big butch husband. Besides, I can’t get close to anyone because if the press got hold of anything…’
‘But you share a bedroom… don’t you?’
She shook her head. ‘No, sometimes I’d beg him to come to my bed and keep me warm, and once or twice he obliged, but nothing really happened. The tragedy is that despite it being a relationship for show I couldn’t help falling for him, just a little bit - Peter is my perfect man – so handsome, fun, charming and caring. I used to hear him on the telephone to Sacha in the other room, the soft tone of his voice, the way his eyes would soften when he spoke about him and I would cry myself to sleep.’
‘I can’t believe it… you two are just so good together. Peter seems like the perfect husband.’
‘Yes he is – for Sacha, and for the cameras, but there’s only so much you can fake when you’re married to the wrong gender.’
It hit me again just how much she’d suffered just to keep her secrets safe. To live a lie like that for so many years must have been horrific and not worth the fame, adoration, or any of the wonderful things she owned, even Dovecote.
‘I know I live in a different world, but I can’t believe you went through with a fake marriage.’
‘It seems stupid and superficial
now, but if I’m honest I believed we could live that life and everything would fall into place. I stupidly thought I might be able to change him, of course I didn’t… I couldn’t love enough for both of us.’
‘Have you ever been in love with anyone else?’
She shrugged. ‘No, there’s only ever been Peter… and as it was never reciprocated it doesn’t really count.’
I felt so sorry for her but realised in that moment that perhaps I’d never been in love either. My own marriage was almost a parallel with Bella’s. I’d found out I was pregnant just a year after Bella, I was nineteen, I wanted to live my own life – Mum wasn’t around anymore and I wasn’t part of my father’s new home with his new partner.
So in the same way Bella had used her marriage to embrace a bigger, better life, I’d used my marriage to escape my life. I’d been pregnant when I married Neil and spent the next twenty years trying to escape my marriage. I would take on causes, work long hours, help others with their problems – and all because my own life was so unhappy. I’d thought by marrying and having a baby I could create a family, get my mum back – but all I did was become disillusioned. I hadn’t married Neil for the right reason – love. This was the first time I’d realised this fully and faced up to it. Looking at Bella’s marriage was helping me see my own – and it hadn’t been that different to her ‘arranged’ one.
‘The sad truth is,’ Bella was saying, ‘my career has always come first and I’ve never had time for friends and love, I can never get close to anyone because I can’t tell them the truth.’
‘But Bella, think about it – everything is secret because none of you want to lose money or status… but what’s the worst that could happen? You say goodbye to Peter and get yourself back.’
‘Yes, and I’ve thought about it so many times, but it’s just so risky, I’ve sacrificed so much to get where I am – I could lose everything.’
‘Or gain everything?’ I said.
She nodded. ‘Oh Ames, I’ve missed you. You always made sense. I’ve had no-one to turn to since.’
I smiled. ‘I was lucky, I’d always had my mum to turn to – she was incredibly wise, as you know. After she died, if ever I was worried or upset about something I would say to myself “what would Mum tell me to do?” I just wish I’d listened to that voice on my wedding day – I think mum would have sat me down and told me I was making a big mistake,’ I said, finally facing up to the truth after all this time.
‘I know it was him who left, but it sounds like you took your own advice there, Ames. From what you say, you didn’t put up much of a fight when he left – you let him go to get yourself back.’
‘Yes, you’re absolutely right,’ I nodded. It was like Mum had just spoken to me through the years and given me the answer and the strength I needed to finally make the break.
Bella poured us another drink and we sat in silence, both pondering our own lives and marriages by the glow of the kitchen fairy lights.
‘Where’s Peter gone?’ I asked in the dimness.
‘Now, you mean? Oh he’s probably gone to a friend’s nearby. He’ll tell them I’ve locked all the doors and gone to bed and he’s forgotten his key, people are used to him turning up out of the blue from somewhere terribly war-like. You see, we even have to lie to our friends. Peter only stays over for filming – just a few months a year – and if there are others staying over he pretends to go to bed in my room. But he’s more comfortable in Nigella.’
I looked at her.
‘The Nigella room – he likes the decor… it’s more him,’ she said with a twinkle in her eye.
‘So you’ve got a system, you’ve managed to keep a lid on things for all these years, and now Sacha wants to get married?’
‘Yes, Peter’s fifty this year and Sacha wants him to marry him, and come out. His timing couldn’t be worse…Christmas, I ask you?’
‘Yeah but if it’s right for Peter perhaps he should come out now, shouldn’t he?’
‘Mmmm it might be the right time for him, but what about me? How will it make me look? The sizzling sex siren of TV has been married to a gay man for twenty years and didn’t even notice?’ she laughed and took another gulp of wine. ‘Or even worse, that being married to me was enough to turn him gay! Can you imagine, the tabloids will have a field day, it’ll all be how I failed to satisfy him and he found real passion and fulfilment in the arms of another man.’
‘You could say you knew?’
‘And I’ve been lying to my fans?’
‘Mmm, I can see it’s a conundrum.’
Bella’s world had made her super sensitive about how things looked and what people thought, but I could see just from spending this short time with her how exposed her life was.
‘Sounds like you’re both ready for him to come out,’ I tried, offering a sane voice in the celebrity wilderness.
She sighed. ‘Perhaps. He says he wants to live his own life, not half of mine, but I need him in my life. He’s lived a double life, a public, family life of cosy Christmases and family holidays with me for his career and a private, loving relationship with Sacha. Meanwhile I’ve put my life on hold.’
I nodded. ‘It might surprise you to know I can relate to everything you’ve told me,’ I sighed. I too had put my life on hold since I married Neil, just drifting along, knowing it wasn’t right or good for me, but hoping for a miracle.
‘Funny, isn’t it?’ she said, ‘you and me have both given up our lives to the wrong men, to relationships that weren’t going anywhere and would never make us happy.’
‘Yes and now we’re both standing on the precipice, scared to step out on our own,’ I added.
‘But Ames, however bad you think it’s been for you, it’s been so much worse for me…’
‘God Bella, you’re even competitive about whose marriage failed the most,’ I laughed, and she laughed along with me while pouring us both another large glass of chilled white.
‘I live in a cut-throat world,’ she sighed, taking a sip and settling onto her stool. ‘Even my agent wants to sell me off as a sex slave to some African royalty… so I do have it so much harder.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, recently with the ratings dropping, she had this “brilliant idea” of selling me to the king of Cameroon who was apparently looking for ‘another’ wife. As she pointed out, “Dahling you’d want for nothing”.’
‘She’s outrageous,’ I laughed.
‘Oh, you can laugh but you’d be surprised what depths that woman will go to. A Saudi oil baron once offered her £1m for me to jump out of a cake naked and she was all for it – “Dahling, you’re washed up in blighty,” she said. “Let’s go for the big bucks in the Middle East – you’re a tasty European tit-bit and they are simply gagging for a nibble of you”.’
She said this in Fliss’s posh husky voice which made me laugh a lot.
‘There’s me envying your lavish Christmases and imagining your wonderful life being offered TV specials all over the world - when in reality your agent’s telling you you’re a has-been and flogging you to the highest bidder!’
‘Ha ha, yes and I’ve resisted her offers so far. As for my TV specials and “lavish” Christmases you’ve probably gathered by now they are totally faked up. At Christmas we usually film the ‘live’ Christmas lunch the day before, then everyone buggers off to their real families – including my husband.’
Bella made some coffee and we drank and chatted and the more time we spent together the more I realised, especially when it was just the two of us, I’d found my old friend again.
‘I appreciate you sharing… everything,’ I said. ‘And I can see why you might find it hard to trust anyone.’
‘Mmmm, I’ve had some pretty bad experiences with so-called friends since becoming famous. I get taken in easily – I’m lonely and vulnerable I suppose? A few years ago I met this woman at a fashion show, and she seemed lovely all “let’s go for girlie drinks, let’s do lunch…” and I was fl
attered.’
I nodded.
‘Anyway Julie – as she called herself – takes me out for a few Christmas cocktails and I had one too many.’ She sipped at her black coffee, ‘And next thing you know I’m pissed, Julie’s got her camera out and a male stripper’s sitting on my face. Before you could say “Jingle Bells” the whole sordid thing was emblazoned across the front pages of the newspapers – with a link to the four minute video online. I can laugh about it now, but at the time I was so hurt.’
‘I can imagine,’ I said. ‘Someone who you thought was a friend betrayed you.’ I sighed, thinking about my own actions all those years ago.
‘Bloody journalist… I really liked her. I don’t have many – okay any – female friends, this whole persona that has been built around me has kept the outside world out,’ she sighed. ‘So when Julie came along, I just bought it all. I was drunk and Julie was egging me on – Ames, I was wearing a Santa hat!’
‘From what you just told me I think the Santa hat was the least of your problems,’ I laughed.
‘You’re right… his groin was here,’ she gestured to her chin. ‘He was gorgeous though - and only wearing a red velvet thong and a sprig of holly.’
‘He had a Christmas theme going on then?’ I laughed. She joined in, and we both sat there drinking coffee in our dressing gowns and I was back somewhere in the 80s, sitting in our kitchen at home, the two of us in pyjamas chatting about boys.
14
Bowels of Hell with a Festive Frisson
The following morning I woke up wondering where I was and in my exhausted and slightly hung-over state thought I was at home in my own bed until I saw the regal features of Mary Berry peering down at me from her portrait. I’d been dreaming about Neil kissing me under a Christmas tree – and as I opened my eyes was surprised how disgusted I felt. I climbed out of the huge bed and padded over to the window, to reassure myself I’d not dreamt that I was back at Dovecote with my old friend. I opened the thick gold curtains and looked up into a greying white sky, snow was hurtling to the ground in huge white spirals, adding yet another layer of white to the enormous garden which was already completely covered with snow. Keith the cat meandered around my legs and I gazed for a long time at the falling snow, thinking about Christmas and the previous night’s revelations about Bella and the Silver Fox.
