‘Or the brightest star in the firmament. I wouldn’t be surprised if La Stupenda’s limelight days will soon be at an end.’
‘Especially if she carries on like this.’ I folded my arms and raised my eyes heavenward. ‘I mean, how crazy is she?’
‘Well, funny you should ask. Because compared to another one of our clients, she’s positively sane,’ said Ginny.
‘What? Are we suddenly in the business of looking after a bunch of nutters?’
‘That’s a very good question. I’m beginning to think we are,’ Nicky said, shaking her head.
‘So who else has been playing up while I’ve been away?’
‘Well, there was Ted Philips, who wanted advice on a grant application and went a bit potty when he heard you were still away. And I tell you, that mad bastard in the reference library needs to go on loan for good.’ Nicky smiled wanly. ‘I tell you, Penny, it’s been quite a circus. You’d think they were just waiting for you to go.’
‘Yeah, did you train them up to misbehave the minute you got on the plane or something?’ said Ginny. ‘It was like you planned it. No sooner had you headed off for the land of the many-exploding bombs then whoosh, out come all the madsters. It’s been crazy here without you.’
‘But you know us. Nothing is too much trouble.’
‘Funny how all the crises happen just when you go on holiday,’ Nicky said, looking pointedly at me.
‘Hey, don’t blame me, I wasn’t even here!’
‘Precisely,’ Ginny said, folding her arms and giving me the raised eyebrow.
I grinned at her disarmingly. ‘Well, I’m here now. Which clients do I need to settle down first?’
‘It wasn’t just clients,’ Tracey said pointedly.
‘Oh?’
‘Your crazy sister has been on our tail a fair bit,’ Nicky volunteered.
‘Stephanie?’
‘Yes, that’s the one. She’s been hassling us to help her.’
‘Oh God, I’m sorry. She shouldn’t have done that.’
‘Ginny told her she’d left it too late to get help and hung up on her. I don’t think she pressed the right buttons as far as Ginny was concerned.’
‘Too damn right,’ Ginny said. ‘In fact, she pressed all the wrong ones, winding me up until I was ready to explode. I don’t know how you put up with her, Penny. She is so self-absorbed, she thinks the whole world revolves around her. She expected me to drop everything and get onto her case right away.’
‘I reckon she must be a few chips short of a Happy Meal,’ Ginny said. ‘She just doesn’t get it, does she? I mean, she got caught last time having a bit on the side and now she’s gone and done it again.’
‘And she’s complaining how unfair the media are for chasing after her. What does she expect, carrying on with that ageing rock star?’
‘You know, she thinks she’s bullet proof,’ I said. ‘She always got away with whatever she did when she was younger. She’d pass the blame on to somebody else — usually me. But now one of the women’s mags has got pictures of her with old Jumping Jack Flash she’s caught and bowled. Have they published anything yet?’
‘Er, yes, I’m afraid they have.’ Nicky was struggling to hide a smirk.
‘I’ll go get it,’ Tracey said, disappearing out the lunchroom door.
‘Was it bad?’ I could tell by the undisguised grin on Ginny’s face that it must have been.
‘Put it this way, her husband isn’t going to be overjoyed when he sees it.’
‘Which he probably has by now.’
‘Oh.’ I took my coffee mug over to the sink, poured out the dregs and rinsed it out. ‘I guess she’s going to find it hard to explain away.’
‘You bet she will,’ Tracey said, returning with the magazine and holding it out, opened at the page for me to see.
‘Oh dear.’ I scanned the photos, read the first couple of paragraphs — which inevitably focused on his age, his track record and her gullibility — then threw the thing down on the table. ‘She’s in trouble now, that’s for sure.’
‘There’s even a shout line on the cover,’ Ginny said.
I groaned. ‘What does it say?’
‘Flash Jack Jumps on Lady Hack.’ Ginny started to laugh.
‘I suppose all the other mags will be after her?’ Tracey asked.
‘They might be,’ Nicky said. ‘But she might get away with just the one. Since they’ve got the pics as an exclusive, the others might decide to leave it alone.’
‘Here’s hoping,’ I said distractedly. My mind was in a whirl trying to think of something I could do to stop this spiralling into a media frenzy. I recalled the last time this sort of thing happened to some poor misguided woman who’d had a fling with Robbie Williams or one of those big stars. She’d been all over the media for at least a week. And in her case, she didn’t have an irate husband making plans to kick her out of the family home.
‘I’d better give her a call.’
‘I wouldn’t worry. She’ll be on the phone to you before too long,’ Tracey said. ‘In fact, it’s a wonder she hasn’t been calling already. She’s probably left you a thousand messages on your cellphone.’
‘She has,’ I sighed. ‘I listened to the first two and deleted the rest. I couldn’t understand what she was saying. She sounded hysterical.’
‘Would you like me to tell her you’re out with a client?’ Tracey asked.
I hesitated. I knew I ought to talk to Steph, see if there was something I could do, but what with everything else going down, and a couple of hundred email messages to wade through, I didn’t think I could handle a long ‘poor me’ session with Stephanie.
‘Yes, please. That would be good. Give me a couple of hours, at least.’
• • •
Inevitably, Steph demanded I phone her back as soon as I got out of my ‘meeting’. Then, as soon as I phoned, she started on a wailing wall of self pity.
‘Come on, Steph. You’re wallowing in self-delusion here. What happened to the gutsy, feisty woman who sang along with Helen Reddy that she was woman, hear me roar?’
‘I lost her in JJ’s apartment,’ she whined.
‘Well, you go get her right back and stick her on your backbone,’ I urged. ‘If you’re gonna behave like a right cow over there, why stop when you get back home?’
‘I didn’t think …’
‘No? So what’s troubling you now?’
‘Marcus knows all about it now. It’s all the fault of that nasty photographer.’
‘Well, what did you expect? If you hadn’t been running round with such a bad-boy celebrity, he wouldn’t have taken your picture.’
‘But I didn’t think we would get found out.’
‘Come on, Steph, get real. You told me the paparazzi were camped outside his door most days. Of course you were going to get found out.’
‘But we were so careful. It’s not fair,’ she wailed.
This was going nowhere. I took a big breath and decided to let her have it.
‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Stephanie, make up your mind about what you really want. Is it star-fucking fame? Or is it the marital shame you’re after? Do you want to be married with children? Or do you want to be a free radical — in more ways than one — attaching yourself to the next big has-been? Because I’m finding it hard to tell exactly where you’re coming from these days. It’s like you’ve gone completely overboard on your narcissistic, hedonistic, plastic side, deliberately seeking infamy and ignominy. And along the way you’ve lost sight of the warm, funny, real person that you really are. Do you think there’s any chance of finding her again? Or is she lost to us forever in a fog of self-gratification and cocaine or whatever designer drug you’re into these days?’
I stopped for breath, astonished at my honesty. I’d clearly been storing this up for some time and it had spilled out like a torrent escaping from a dam.
‘Why don’t you say what you really think?’ she said sarcastically. But I could tell from
the wobble in her voice that I’d hit home, and that made me immediately regret my harsh words. I hardly ever told Stephanie what I really thought of her misdemeanours and on the rare occasions I did, I always wished I hadn’t. She had a habit of retaliating with a venom and vindictiveness that quickly hit its mark.
Uh-oh, I thought. Here it comes.
But it didn’t. There was nothing but silence at the other end of the phone.
I waited.
Nothing.
‘Er … Steph?’
There was a sort of rasping coming out of the receiver.
Good God, the ice maiden was actually crying. Not wailing, not moaning, not complaining — her usual modus operandi when demanding sympathy. Actually crying.
My big sister never cries. Well, not real tears, and not when I’m around. I recalled the only other occasion I’d heard this sort of sick goldfish noise was when she’d been caught out by Marcus having a fling with the Westie league star. That had been, as far as I knew, the first time she’d ever strayed. But I was beginning to wonder if I knew my sister as well as I thought. If the Westie and the ageing rock star were the latest in a long line of celebrities ancient and modern she’d been shagging, she wouldn’t get upset over a bust-up. Maybe it wasn’t the bust-up she was upset about — maybe it was the thought of losing Marcus? Or maybe — and this was beginning to sound more like it — maybe she was upset at being ridiculed in the media; maybe what she feared most now was being sent up in the press a second time when her husband walked out on her.
‘Look, I might have been putting it a bit on the blunt side, but you must see what I’m getting at, surely? I mean, this is the second time this year you’ve been chasing after a falling star. What’s going on?’
‘They’re not falling stars.’ Her protest sounded very subdued.
‘Whatever.’ I wasn’t going to argue irrelevancies. ‘You seem to have this fatal attraction to men who are in the limelight, for whatever reason, which will therefore sooner or later see you exposed.’
‘You make it sound as if I chase after them on purpose. I don’t, you know. JJ pursued me after we met. He phoned and sent flowers every day. Both of them chased after me, if you want to know.’
‘I’m sure they did, Steph,’ I said placatingly, trying to backtrack from confrontation. ‘You’re a very attractive woman, despite your advancing years.’
‘Well, thanks. You’re not so young yourself.’
‘I’ll always be younger than you.’ I couldn’t help myself; she always managed to bring me down to this pathetic level.
‘In years if not in looks,’ she said spitefully.
‘This is getting ridiculous,’ I said, rejecting the urge to throw back a Botox riposte and drawing breath instead. ‘I’ll call you later tonight, when I’m at home. I’ve got weeks of work to catch up on this afternoon. I have to go.’
‘But what am I going to do? I’ve got all these magazines trying to get me to commit to a feature. One of them even offered me money.’
‘Really, how much?’
‘Ten thousand.’
‘Are you going to take it?’
‘That’s what I want to talk to you about, Penny.’
‘I’m not your conscience, Steph. Only you know what is right for you. No way am I going to get into the rights and wrongs of chequebook journalism.’
‘I thought you’d know what to do.’
‘Nope. That ball is definitely right in the middle of your court. It’s your decision and yours alone.’
I hastened to end the call and phoned Sarah at the library, apologising for being away when she’d needed me.
‘Don’t worry about it, Penny. Nicky was great. You have a good team there.’
‘It’s good to know I’m not indispensible,’ I laughed.
‘Don’t worry, I still need you. In fact, I’d like to see you this afternoon, if you can make it?’
‘Sure.’ I made a time and went to tell Nicky.
‘I’ll miss her — she was a nice lady.’ Nicky pulled a face. ‘But I tell you what, I’m not sad to pass the problems she’s got back to you.’
We talked about what I might say and what options Sarah had in terms of commenting on the situation. We agreed she needed to keep communicating to the people that mattered: the media (to reach the ratepayers) and the council’s chief executive in particular, since the councillors were kicking up a huge fuss about the breach of security. There’d been a hue and cry in the media, Nicky had told me, about all the children that had been in the library after school when Alan lost his rag and how wrong it was that they’d been put at such risk. Sarah had to appear before them at a full council meeting in two days’ time and knew she had to pick her words carefully, as the media would be present.
Chapter 24
I honoured my promise to myself that I would visit the local gym at lunchtime, and by the time I got back to the office I only had time to devour one of Nicky’s yoghurts out of the fridge for lunch. Nicky, of course, soon spread the word that I’d joined the gym-bunny brigade, which caused widespread hilarity.
‘Never thought I’d see this day,’ Ginny chuckled.
‘Ha, ha, very funny,’ I said. ‘You’re next.’
‘Never.’ She pulled a face.
‘Never say never. Look what happened to me.’
‘I’m disappointed in you, Penny. I thought you were with me on this.’
I finished the yogurt then fled to the library to see Sarah.
‘It’s been so stressful,’ she said once we were shut away in her office. ‘I had no idea just how demanding the media could be. Like, they’ve been on the phone every day, and there are so many of them. I’ve even had media calls from Australia and Germany and the United States. Can you believe it?’
‘Yes, Nicky told me.’
‘She was an absolute godsend,’ Sarah said. ‘She parked herself in my office and handled all the calls. She had them eating out of her hand.’
‘Good to know the system works.’
‘There’s been one good thing to come out of this.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘And that’s how easy it is now to get rid of that dreadful man. I mean, before this we were going down that long road of warnings and spending a small fortune on employment lawyers and all the councillors getting involved in the issue. And now … poof! He’s gone. Just like that.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘There’s got to be a silver lining to every cloud, and I tell you, it was a pretty black cloud. We were lucky it didn’t go boom!’ She threw her hands in the air, suggesting an explosion.
‘Did he actually have explosives on him, like he said?’
‘Yes, he did. Though the cops said they weren’t connected up properly so it’s unlikely they would have gone off. But we didn’t know that at the time. We all thought we were going to die. Honestly, Penny, I’ve never been so scared. I was at the front desk when it happened. I saw Alan coming down the escalator dressed like he was going out in the rain, with an umbrella up over his head. But it wasn’t raining — not outside and certainly not inside!’
‘Weird.’
‘You can say that again. It took a moment or two before I realised it was him shouting and a moment or two longer before I could make out what he said.’ She paused and her face clouded at the memory of it. ‘Everyone else on the escalator was trying to get away from him. And when he arrived down on the ground floor, where I was, people started fleeing out the front door or, if Alan was in the way, to the far end of Fiction.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I told Sonia, who was on the desk next to me, to go out the back and phone the police immediately. We couldn’t pick up the phone at the desk — he was looking right at us.’
‘Scary.’
‘Then I got the rest of the staff to sneak out the back way behind the counter and go to other parts of the library and take people out the fire exit doors to safety. Unfortunately, the only way out of the children’s library was past Alan doing his suicide-bomber impersonation,
which is why so many of them remained inside.’
‘Did he confront you?’
‘Yes, he came right up to the counter and screamed at me to stop trying to sack him or he’d blow us both up. He got so close his spittle was hitting me in the face. And he smelt real bad, like he hadn’t had a shower for a week at least. Maybe it was the fear or the state he was in — he’s not usually that smelly.’
‘What on earth did you do?’
‘I told him I’d be happy to talk to him about it as soon as he took his coat off and removed the explosives from around his waist. But that wasn’t enough for him. It was let him keep his job or we were going sky high. So I said okay, let’s get the mayor down here and he could put it straight to him. But that still wasn’t good enough. No, he wanted me to promise he could stay at the library. I was just starting to ask him if he would consider a job where he wouldn’t have to deal with the public when the sirens stopped down at the corner. That set him off again. He looked even more crazed and said “How dare you call the cops.” I shook my head and said no, it must have been someone else, and he said he wasn’t going to muck around talking to the cops. If any cops came anywhere near, he said, he was going to activate his bomb.’
‘Oh no!’
‘Well, I still didn’t know if he was for real or pretending. What does a librarian know about making bombs? Then I remembered reading about how you could make them using instructions off the internet. That’s when I started to get a bit shaky. I just didn’t know what to do.
‘Then the phone on the counter rang. I nearly jumped through the ceiling. I picked it up just as Alan said not to answer it, but he’d been over at the window looking for the cops and didn’t manage to stop me in time. It was Detective Inspector somebody-or-other telling me to keep calm, that they were across the road in the travel agency and all around the place, and if I saw any of his officers I wasn’t to let on that I’d seen anyone. Then he asked me to hand the phone over to Alan, who gave me this deeply suspicious look but took the phone anyway, turning away from me and muttering into it. I couldn’t hear what he said. A few seconds later he threw it back to me and told me to hang up. “Bloody cops,” he said. “I’m not talking to them. I told them, the only man I’ll talk to is the mayor”.’
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