by Karen Swan
‘So – give me the scoop, Cress,’ Kate asked, oblivious to her friend’s ongoing drama. ‘Tell me all about your new super-author. I’ve been dying to ask. The Wrong Prince has been strictly verboten in our household. I had to smuggle in a copy and keep it in my knicker drawer! Even just the mention of it drove Harry into a howling rage. He’s been driven demented seeing you on telly everywhere, talking it up. He’s convinced the whole anonymity issue is just a media ploy to fan up the hype.’
Cress snorted.
‘Huh, I wish! I’m afraid I’ve got absolutely no idea who the guy is. He’s refused all personal contact and I’m taking it personally.’ She shrugged. ‘He’ll only liaise via email which – before you ask – is a floating hotmail account used at various internet cafés. I had my techies checking out the URLs.’
Tor hiccupped and sniffed, the tears still plopping quietly from her eyes.
Kate covered a hand with hers, but carried on. She loved a mystery.
‘Really?’ she drawled. ‘But what about signing the contract? Surely he had to give you a name then?’
Cress shook her head. ‘He’s signed over power of attorney to his solicitor and that’s the name on the contract. There’s a separate affidavit that declares his identity but my senior brief has to keep the information confidential. His name is only to be released in the event of his death. How frigid is that! Brendan bloody Hillier. He’s the bane of my life.’
‘Hillier again? What’s he got to do with this?’
Cress raised her eyebrows. ‘Didn’t you notice, on the dedication page?’
Kate shrugged and shook her head. ‘Was I supposed to?’
‘Whoever wrote The Wrong Prince has dedicated it to Brendan Hillier.’
‘No!’ Kate gasped. ‘That can’t be a coincidence.’
‘Of course it can’t.’
Kate fell silent, her brain trying to play catch-up – Brendan Hillier the true author of Scion; The Wrong Prince dedicated to him . . .
‘Well, have you discovered anything about the author?’
Cress shook her head. ‘We had a PO box address which was registered to an address in Fulham which – wait for it – belonged to a Bridget Hillier. I think that’s his sister. She’s about the same age as him, but she’s living in Switzerland. Supposedly her daughter Amelie uses the flat occasionally but it seems she’s rarely there, and we can’t find any trace of her at all – either here or abroad.’
Tor butted in, nodding towards the screen. It had come to rest upon yet another gorgeous young blonde.
‘Who’s that? She’s familiar,’ she said, miserably.
‘Yuh, most people here are, Tor. They’re actors – that’s the nature of their jobs!’ Kate said, talking down to her tummy. ‘Ooh, the baby kicked – d’you want to feel?’
Two sets of hands reached out and felt the rhythmic drumming of baby heels.
‘Wow, she’s a feisty little thing,’ Cress smiled.
‘Yes, I think I’ve put her through the wringer today,’ Kate said, rubbing her tummy soothingly and apologetically.
‘No, I really recognize her. What’s her name?’ Tor was looking at the screen with renewed focus. ‘I’ve seen her somewhere. Where was it?’
Kate and Cress looked up at the screen.
‘That’s Emily!’ Kate exclaimed. ‘What the hell’s she doing here? She’s a PR, not an actress.’
‘And to think I thought this was an exclusive shindig,’ Cress muttered. ‘Half of bloody London’s here. It’s like going to Chamonix.’
‘You recognize her from the Oxford fiasco, Tor – thanks for that, by the way, Cress,’ Kate said sarcastically.
‘Apology accepted,’ Cress retorted deadpan, and the two women burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of the fixes they’d put each other in.
‘Do I?’ Tor frowned.
‘Yup. She was living with Harry at the time that the news of my pregnancy quietly rippled into the public consciousness.’
‘And then she kissed and told about their underage affair at Christmas,’ Cress added. ‘Don’t you remember Monty brought the paper back from the pub?’
‘Oh God, did he?’ Kate winced. The thought of it made her heart hurt.
‘I guess that’s it,’ Tor said slowly. But still she frowned.
‘So, have you chosen a name yet?’ Cress asked, one eye on the screen. The nominations were being read for Best Actress. Harry’s award was up next. She felt sick.
‘Hmmmm?’ Kate murmured, hands on tummy.
‘Name?’
‘Oh yes, Ottilie.’
‘Oooh, I love it!’ Cress squealed. ‘I wish I’d thought of it.’
Kate giggled, pleased that someone approved of it, at last.
Tor gasped. ‘No! I know where it was. I’ve got it. It was at Bonham’s.’
‘Come again?’ Cress asked.
‘That girl – Emily . . . ?’
‘Brookner,’ Kate supplied.
‘Yuh, yuh, whatever. She ran into me as I was going back into the saleroom. Anna and I had popped out for a drink because I was so nervous and she just about knocked me over. She didn’t even stop to apologize. I remember it because that horrid picture, the Orion one, had just been sold, and Anna and I were laughing at it.’
Cress looked at her, eyes narrowed. ‘The Orion picture?’
Her mobile buzzed.
‘Well, I can tell you something else, she’s not just rude, she’s also bloody odd,’ Kate said, leaning forward. ‘She lived with Harry for what – five months? She refused point-blank to leave the house with him. Not once, until Oxford.’
Tor gawped. ‘Really? How strange. That doesn’t sound right. From the looks of that dress, she’s not shy.’
Cress got her mobile out of her clutch. It was a text from Rosie. She stared hard at it.
Got a strike on marriage cert in Bern: Bri. Hill. marr’d R. Brookner, 1986.
‘. . .Yuh, I know! I was beginning to think she was agoraphobic. I thought we’d never get a picture of them together . . .’ Kate was saying.
‘Why did you want a picture of them together?’ Tor asked.
‘So that there was evidence of a continuing and consensual relationship. Would have made it harder for her to argue emotional distress from the earlier affair at school.’ She shrugged casually.
‘Ooh,’ Tor said quietly. She paused for a moment. ‘You’re quite frightening, you know that, right?’
Kate winked. ‘I bloody well hope so.’
Cress looked up at the blonde on the screen and back to her mobile.
‘Kate, what did you just say Emily’s surname is?’
‘Brookner.’
‘Brookner,’ she repeated under her breath, looking back down at her mobile. ‘Oh my God. We were looking under the wrong name. It wasn’t Amelie Hillier; it was Amelie Brookner,’ Cress whispered.
‘No, it’s Emily,’ Kate corrected.
Cress looked at her. ‘Yes. But the old lady – she was foreign. Her accent . . . she pronounced it Amelie – but she was saying Emily.’
‘Are you – are you saying Emily Brookner is Brendan Hillier’s heir?’ Kate asked in disbelief.
Cress nodded. ‘I think I am.’
‘James said he wrote a letter to Hillier’s heir, explaining everything that had happened,’ Tor murmured.
Cress bit her lip. ‘And you just said you saw her at Bonham’s, Tor, leaving right after that picture was sold – she bought the painting! And the writing on the note that accompanied the painting was the same writing as on the note telling me to bring the manuscript out here. It must have been Emily who stole the manuscript from my hotel room.’
‘But how would she know you had the manuscript, Cress? James sent the manuscript to you only after he didn’t hear anything from her. She doesn’t know he then sent it on to you. She only knows Harry stole the book from her uncle, surely?’
‘Let’s face it, Tor, once she found out Harry hadn’t written Scion, and she saw he’d
signed to a tiny company like mine, it would be a fair assumption to make that I was involved too – I would only ever have been able to secure him because I held a trump card – the Scion manuscript.’
‘But that doesn’t explain why she deliberately inveigled her way back into the middle of his life though,’ Kate thought out loud. ‘If she only needed to get the manuscript back off you, why go to the bother of blackmailing him about the earlier affair?’ Kate shook her head. ‘It doesn’t quite add up. There’s something else we’re missing.’
Tor thought for a moment, frowning, her hiccups abating with the concentration. ‘The manuscript was originally sent in 1989, wasn’t it?’
Cress nodded.
‘And the message Brendan had written on it said he’d been working on it for two years.’
‘Right,’ Cress said. ‘So?’
‘So, in 1987, no one worked on PCs. They were still using typewriters. Don’t you remember? They had only just got the PCs in the library when we were doing our final year dissertations?’
‘So?’ Cress said, blankly.
‘So if Brendan wrote Scion on a typewriter, then there wasn’t a back-up copy on a computer somewhere. Which means that when he sent Scion off to George Colesbrook for representation, he must have made a copy. He wouldn’t have sent his original and only draft, would he?’
Cress’s eyes danced. ‘You’re damn right he wouldn’t have.’
‘Which means that out there somewhere, there must have been another manuscript,’ Tor finished breathlessly. ‘And Harry had it.’
There was a pause as everyone’s brains raced.
‘So then, Harry played entirely into her hands,’ Kate said, impressed. ‘Harry must have taken the original manuscript from Hillier when he went to sign him, and that’s why she blackmailed him. She needed a way back in to his life and she knew he’d try to neutralize her threats by seducing her all over again. He did what she knew he would – moved her in and gave her access all areas. She played him.’ Kate nodded, delighted. ‘You know, this girl’s growing on me.’
Another message beeped on Cress’s phone.
‘God, what’s going on?’ Cress said agitated. ‘I’ve only been uncontactable for a couple of hours. The whole operation grinds to a halt if I’m not there to – ’
‘. . . What are you going to do, Emily?’ Kate said to the beautiful image on the plasma.
‘Holy cow!’ Cress held up the BlackBerry, and Tor and Kate took in the headline Rosie had downloaded from Reuters. ‘I think she’s already done it.’
Tor looked at Kate, dumbstruck.
‘Oh my God,’ Cress whispered as the cameras swung over the glittering audience and found the most golden smile of all. ‘Why do I have the feeling Harry’s the last to know about this?’
Chapter Fifty-seven
Harry sat in the dark, not listening to a word of Chris Rock’s banter, his mind racing as he tried to absorb the facts that had been bombarded at him like machine-gun fire. George Colesbrook his father? Billy his son? White his step-brother?
His chest felt tight and he loosened his tie, undid his top button, trying to cool down, stay calm. All that was in the past. Behind him. His category was next up. He was the sure thing. He had to get it together. Deal with now.
Harry breathed deeply. He shifted in his seat and looked round the theatre, the red flashing lights of the cameras trained on him like snipers. He saw Cress’s husband three seats away, slightly hypoxic and sitting in a ridiculous position, clearly trying desperately not to touch legs with Scarlett Johannson, who was on his other side.
He swallowed hard again and tried to think about his speech. He reached inside his jacket but the notes weren’t there.
Of course they weren’t! He closed his eyes in despair. If only Kate had left him alone earlier, he could have prepared properly. Stupid bloody woman. He’d have to wing it.
He took a deep breath and tried to focus on the ceremony. Ordinarily, it would be a breeze. Amelia was on stage, accepting her award, her stupendous cleavage drawing attention away from her big belly.
Her cheeks were flushed, like she’d just been shagging White in the aisles, and her speech went on far too long, all breathy and full of sincerity. But eventually, she tottered off stage – managing to avoid the duck waddle that afflicted so many women in the last stage of pregnancy.
The applause died down, and Harry breathed a sigh of relief as the cameras panned back to Chris Rock. He was a lot less pretty than Amelia, but he was the segue to Harry Hunter.
Everyone knew this was his moment. There had never been any doubt that it wouldn’t be.
He could feel the cameras circling him like a panther, taking full advantage of their opportunity to get gratuitous shots. He gave a faint smile, bringing some twinkle into his eyes. An arched eyebrow, a floppy forelock. He knew what the public wanted.
He didn’t see the stunning blonde sashay across the top of the sweeping staircase.
‘And now, to present our next award for Best Adapted Screenplay, we have a world exclusive!’ Rock shouted, striding across the stage like a ringmaster. ‘Yes, that’s right! You heard me. It’s the book that’s at the top of every bestseller list, it’s already been translated into thirty-three different languages – and counting; and it’s been bought by Dreamworks so that they can bring it to a silver screen near you. Her identity has been one of the most closely guarded secrets since Suri Cruise was born. But tonight – at the 69th Annual Academy Awards – it is my deep honour to present to you the author of The Wrong Prince . . .’
Rock paused dramatically, enjoying the suspense.
‘Emily Brookner!’
Even with the pressure of six billion viewers watching him, Harry couldn’t keep his jaw up.
Emily? The author of The Wrong Prince? It couldn’t be! But the thunderous applause that erupted at her worldwide unveiling told him it could.
Clapping mechanically, he watched her sweep down the stairs like an angel, aware that much of the crowd’s appreciation was for the cornflower blue silk mini-dress that was rippling over her body like lover’s laughter. The poor cameramen didn’t know whether to go in tight for a face shot, or to pull out and pan up and down lingeringly over her killer body. A sapphire-studded gold-dipped key hung down from her neck, winking at the audience as it swayed happily from breast to breast.
‘Thank you, Chris. Thank you. Thank you,’ she laughed as she got to the podium. ‘Wow! Thank you. You’re so kind.’ She looked out across the sea of fame, looking for all the world like one of its mermaids, and waited and waited and waited for the applause to die down and people to return to their seats.
The minutes passed and she giggled beguilingly, tossing her hair back, letting the world put that beatific face to the words that had enthralled so many of them already.
‘Gosh! Is there going to be any time left for the award now?’ she giggled to Chris, aware of the strict timings for the show; and the audience laughed with her, charmed.
Taking her cue, the clapping faded away and everyone finally sat back down again.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she said in her particular blend of posh and London accents. ‘It gives me great pleasure to announce that the nominees for the category of Best Adapted Screenplay are: Robert Bush for Blind Man’s Gold; Dan Frinton for Broken Angels; Harry Hunter for Scion; Joseph Rathburne for The Pale Mountain.’
She stepped back as edited clips from the films flashed up on the screens behind her, though Harry was sure no one in the room was watching them. She looked tantalizing, entrancing. He’d had her at two different points in her life, and now that she so clearly belonged to the public, he wanted her back all over again. He’d been a damned fool.
Even her ruinous revelations, which had done so much damage to his reputation at home, didn’t deter his new ambition. In fact, they fuelled it. Few of the audience here tonight would be aware or care that she was his schoolgirl kiss and tell; Errol Flynn, Roman Polanski – they’d paved
the way before him. Besides, British tabloid sleaze barely made a ripple in the American market.
And he knew exactly what to do to make all that go away, put a different spin on it all. Harry knew that the pairing of their talents and looks would be irresistible. He hadn’t been off the mark when he’d argued in Oxford that celebrity was the new religion. Their combined wattage would dazzle the world.
‘And the winner is . . .’
He ran a hand through his hair, feeling his star rise again.
‘Harry Hunter for Scion!’
She read the words as though they made her the happiest woman on earth, and he couldn’t wait to get up there and whisper something filthy in her ear. He’d have her backstage, he decided.
The applause was astounding and he strode towards the stage, a man on a mission. His whole life had built up to this moment and he was going to give them all something they’d never forget. He could trounce that world exclusive in a heartbeat.
He bounded athletically up the steps and, grabbing a microphone from the podium, fell into a dramatic, deep bow at her feet.
‘Emily Brookner,’ he said in his deepest, most Etonian voice, looking up at her with sparkling eyes. ‘We go back a long way. We have loved and fought, made up and broken up. And the truth of the matter is, I’m hideously miserable without you. Please, darling: will you marry me?’
A collective gasp sucked through the room and around the world. The theatre fell silent, Emily blindsided by his Byronesque pose.
In the control room, the directors were going berserk. A commercial break was scheduled in seventy seconds, and there was no way they could go to it. Harry Hunter proposing to the new darling on the block was a ratings winner. ‘Please! Say yes! Say yes, baby!’ they were screaming into their mikes.
