But her behaviour towards his desire to be elected, and elected to serve a party that was not considerably deviant from his centre-right politics, was one that had left him stunned.
He had wondered, and continued to wonder if Paige would give him the same respect and support for his choices as he gave to hers. He wondered if she could ever embrace his right to his own independent path.
If she couldn't, then it had to jeopardise the future of their relationship. He had always thought that their strengths complemented each other and together as a union, they were better than the sum of their parts.
But he had his doubts. For the first time since they had got together, he had wondered if Paige could accept the man he was rather than the man she wanted him to be. She had to accept him and love him for whom he was.
It would be a difficult conversation to have and he was three miles from home before his mind had untangled itself into some clear, logical thoughts on the matter. It was always going to be an emotional chat.
His mental meanderings were interrupted when his mobile phone vibrated in his pocket and it rang off before he could rabbit his hand into the interleaving weaves of his cutting edge sportswear.
It was Andre; Jack dialled him back. “Jack. I've had the Reputational Management people on the phone.”
“The who?”
“You know the people who tell me when one of my clients has fucked up and it's on the news or the bulletin boards.” Jack hummed. “Yeah, they had a hotline to me for Paige.”
“But we're not really your clients any more.”
“You are until the New Year,” he replied, and then sighed. “It's a twelve month contract with them and I renewed it just before you guys split up, so they are still monitoring you. They've rung me 'cause they've found something.”
“What've they found?”
“Pictures. Of Paige. Naked.”
“Andre, there are loads of naked pictures of Paige.”
“These are private pictures. Does Paige have her phone automatically upload her pictures to a cloud-based service?”
“I dunno.”
“Ask her.”
“She's at home. And I doubt if she will know.”
“Well she needs to change her password, revoke all access and be prepared for this. I'm sending the details to your e-mail address now, I presume you haven't changed it.”
“I haven't.”
“You'll get it in five. Good luck.”
“Yeah, and thanks Andre.”
“No problem. Say hi to Paige for me.”
“Will do. Although I can't promise what she'll say in response!” Jack ran the three miles back to his house cross-country, splattering mud up his shorts.
He raced up the stairs, waking Paige with a shout and sat on the bed as he reached for his tablet. “Wake up! Andre's been on the 'phone.”
“What the fuck!” She squealed, groaning as he sat on her thigh. “What's got into you?”
“There's naked pictures of you on the 'net.”
“Oh really?” Paige yawned. “Wake me up when there's some news.”
“Done that joke already. These are your private pictures!” He opened the email application and opened the email that Andre had forwarded from the reputational management company. He clicked on the link that Andre had sent and navigated to the unmoderated, uncontrolled image board. Three dozen pictures from her phone had been posted by the user “hacker_i_am.”
“What's that?”
The first picture was from Hazel's wedding: a selfie taken by Paige with her sister. The last was from two years ago. Each picture was with Paige or her friends, enjoying their daily business. In many of the photos, Paige was undressed.“I never posted these!”
The comments posted by other messageboard users underneath the pictures were unmoderated and crude. “Give me your phone.”
“Why? I never posted these pictures. Those two were when we went to that school to do that private gig for them, and that was when we funded the treatment in America. We promised to keep that a secret.”
“Just give me your phone.” Paige huffed and passed him her device. He opened the camera app and tutted. “All your pictures go to the cloud when you've taken them.”
“So?”
“What's your phone account password. Your Google account?”
“But … I shouldn’t tell anyone my password.”
“Paige, what's your password?” He asked firmly.
“Bob Marley,” she said to his groans. “But don't worry, I put an exclamation mark on the end to stop people from guessing it.”
He scrolled down the list of her e-mails two weeks ago and showed her an automated message from Google advising her of an unknown attempts to access her account. She shrugged. “Didn't know what it meant,” she replied.
“I'm going to secure your account. Password Policy Paige. Random letters and numbers and symbols.”
“How the fuck am I going to remember that?”
“Simple, think of a phrase you will remember.”
“I love Jack Rees-Montague very much but he can be a sanctimonious git at times.”
“So we take the Initials which is I-L-J-R-M-V-M-B-H-C-B-A-S-G-A-T and we turn that into 1LjRMvMbHcB&Sg@T”
“And you think I'll remember that?”
“And Paige, turn on two-factor authentication.”
She sighed. “What the flaming 'ell is two-frack,” she muttered, and slid out of bed. She swore as she reached the doorway. “You never took your shoes off. You've got mud all over the carpet.”
“Sorry. I'll clean it up later. Once I've cleaned up your mess!”
She kissed him on the cheek. “It’s all right, I’ll clean it up. I found the vacuum cleaner yesterday.”
“But do you know how to turn it on?”
“Certainly. As it doesn't require two frack-tour authorising and a password I can't remember. Why can’t things just be simple? You promised me that tech makes my life easier and it bloody doesn’t.”
Chapter XLII
Claire
“It's not quite as you left it.”
Those seven words were perhaps the greatest understatement Jack had spoken for a long time; Claire's house was nothing like she had left it. In place of the rows of empty bottles was clean table and a spray of red roses, jammed into a round vase. The lounge was spotless; no broken glass or drug paraphernalia but the sweet smell of Alpine Pine cleanliness.
The sofa, broken and stained by Claire's excesses had been replaced; the pool had been cleaned, and most crucially, there was no alcohol within a hundred feet of the property. Claire saw the empty drinks cabinet and looked at Jack. He said nothing; neither did she. They conversed through expression.
She looked away; upset that her friends felt that they needed to take away the temptation, angry at herself for leading them to that conclusion and slightly dismayed that she couldn't at least settle down in her pool with a cocktail.
She needed one. After everything she had been through, she needed a glass of refreshing juice topped with a little tipple.
But then, that was the point. Jack's serious expression revealed his thoughts and that the first thing Claire had looked at when she entered her pool room was her drinks cabinet showed what she was thinking. It revealed where her priorities were, and that her recent excesses were not just a fleeting few weeks but something more engrained.
“We've donated your alcohol to a good cause,” Jack said. “Lucinda said she would look after at it at a very generous rate. One dram per day. But then no-one thinks she can keep to that.”
Claire nodded. “You've done the garden too.”
“Yeah, a local firm came in. And found enough bottles to fill the local bottle bank!”
Claire blushed. “Sorry 'bout that.”
“Oh, and your parents are coming to stay,” Jack added nonchalantly. They had not discussed this part of her post-hospital life with Claire, as they knew the objections would be forthcoming. Neither him nor Paig
e could delay the inevitable any longer. Claire groaned.
“Why?”
“Because …”
“Because I can't be trusted on my own. I am a grown adult,” she started.
Paige interrupted from the doorway of the pool. “Because you were an hour away from not being here by taking more narcotics and alcohol to kill a herd of elephants, and we think that you did that, because you fucking told us, that you were bored, lonely and needed support.” She gestured wildly at her friend. “Which meant I got to spend another night with someone in a hospital bed thinking that I might not see them wake up in my life, and maybe, just fucking maybe, having your folks here might just help you!”
“We figured you'd want a support network, and we weren't sure if we were the best people as you'd spent three years living in our pockets with the band,” Jack added. “Which was one of the reasons we decided to have a bit of a break. And your parents really wanted to.”
“Oh, they'll want to,” Claire sniped.
Paige snapped. “And I know if we piss off without someone being here you'll be down the offie and grab a bottle of vodka and we'll be back in the hospital in two weeks time.”
Claire objected, a little half-heartedly; it was pointless to argue with Paige. The doorbell punctuated the silence and Jack left his two ex-bandmates to show Claire's parents to the spare bedroom he had prepared. “Your bedside manner is crap,” Claire mused.
“I don't want to have a good bedside manner. I don't want to have to use it.” Her voice dropped to a barely audible whisper, cracking as she spoke. “Twice I've had this. It was worse with Hazel but twice I've been there all night in the chair as someone I love has been in the bed, inches from death. It's horrible Claire, it really is. I can barely describe it. And I know you think it's us being a bit mean, and inviting someone to keep an eye on you, but whatever put you in that position to experiment with drugs and drink that amount of booze, hasn't been sorted, has it?”
She shook her head. “It's so easy for everyone else. Jack's doing his politics and Lucinda's running the business and you're working on your solo album and you and Jack are an item and I can't find something to make me happy. I can't even find someone to be happy with.”
“So this is all Andre-related …”
“No. I think I just miss the band. It was so easy then. And I think I was drinking a bit too much before. I'd always have a drink or two on tour, and when at home I'd always drink more than Andre when we were together. It became routine.”
Paige nodded. “It always does.” The shrill voice from the main house broke into their conversation. “Come on, your parents want to see you!” Claire groaned again in unnecessarily dramatic fashion.
“But I do have something for you.” She reached behind the bar and pulled a small plastic bag. “We never did find your phone so I got you a new one.”
“Thanks!” Claire muttered and peered into the see a smartphone and a bow on top.
“Jack helped me choose it. It’s the latest model and he’s turned on all the security features for you, so I’d like to get my apology in before you use it if it needs a degree in Nuclear Physics to use the sodding thing.”
“OK. I just never wrote down any of anyone’s numbers, so I’m going to need to nick your phone to copy our friends across. And then let them know my number.”
“Do it now,” Paige offered and passed her friend her phone. “Hang on, I’ll need to sign in to the bloody thing …” She swore under her breath.
“You'll be around, won't you? I mean, not just today, over the next few weeks.” Claire asked.
“Of course! I'm going to travel up most days. It's a shit train journey but I've got Leah coming up with me tomorrow and she's got a car. And a driving license too, I think. Although Jack's seen her drive and thinks her driving instructor must have been Stevie Wonder. I've seen her road rage so my money's on Gordon Ramsay.”
* * *
Paige was true to her word; she visited Claire every afternoon for the next five days. Leah brought the talented singer in her battered vehicle and Paige joked that they had fought their way through the London traffic rather than driving through it.
The first day, they simply lounged by the side of the pool and swam lengths; passing the time through conversation and exercise.
Leah had never visited Claire's house before, and was taken by the large garden. “Can I plant some flowers here?” She asked on the second visit. “In the spring? This is such a lovely sun trap and you have a green-house.”
“Do I?”
Claire's eyes squinted and wrapped a towel around her wet body as Leah pointed into the garden. “Don't you know?”
Claire sighed. “We bought this house six months ago. The idea was that we would sell the apartment and replace it with a small flat in Central London when Andre worked late and I was away, and this would be our main house. But we went on tour a week after we bought it, and then when we came back, Andre had just been out to the Far East with another client and then it all blew up. I'm not much of a gardener.”
“Who did the beds?”
Claire looked blankly at Leah. They stepped onto the cold patio, and walked barefoot into the garden, between the rows of plant beds. The line of conifers denoted the end of her land, and at the end of the trees, pointing south across the valley was a small, pristine greenhouse; it would have only just been visible from the lawn, patio or pool room.
“Why didn't I see this before?”
“Probably was filthy before,” Paige suggested. “And Tom and his gardeners who we got in gave it a damn good clean.”
“I love to grow plants. I can get the seeds from my mate and we can grow some really colourful flowers in the Spring and the Summer.”
“OK. I will kill them. I used to help Jack's gardener plant the flowers he had grown but if I try and grow them they die.”
“I can help,” Leah offered. “It’ll be something to do.”
“You have the time,” Paige suggested and Claire couldn’t argue with that; Ethan from Nuclear Monkeys had sent her a text. She’d been replaced.
She literally had nothing else to do.
Chapter XLIII
Emit
His two guests stared at Emit in disbelief. He slurred his words, but the story was not one of drunken bravado.
“I was there,” Emit repeated and took another slurp of his beer. “And Claire’s not answered any of her messages since I visited her in the hospital.”
Lars and Barry looked at each other. Lars, a native of Sweden and London resident, sat up in his armchair and put his phone on the side table, giving Emit his full attention.
“It was just crazy,” he said. “Fuckin’ mental. For four weeks we had sex, drank so much booze, she was off her tits every night. And she’d make some great music. We videoed so much of it on her phone. And I was there the night she collapsed. We partied, and she just lost it, throwing a champagne bottle at me and I legged it. And when I went back, she was just out of it.”
Lars sniffed. “Bollocks!”
Emit took a deep breath. “Let me show you.” He rose from his chair, passing the blonde-haired Swede, and the chubby Barry, and went to his bedroom; he returned with a USB memory stick and an iPhone.
“This is Claire’s phone. I found it the other day but I’ve text her and there’s no response. And this is the pictures and video I took on my mobile.” He looked at both of his guests. “This stays in this room. I ain’t giving Claire no grief. This stays our secret, OK?” Lars nodded, and Emit plugged the memory stick into the television. The electronic screen loaded the first picture, taken from one of their recording sessions. The photo was of the freckled man with the world-famous musician. They were both naked.
“That’s photoshopped,” Lars claimed. Emit shook his head and skipped to a video; the grainy film was of poor quality but the pornographic material clearly showed Claire and Emit together beside their pool.
“I ain’t been photoshopping a video,” he
claimed and then skipped to the final few pictures – of Claire in hospital and then of the young guitarist comatose. Barry gasped as Emit left that picture on the screen and slouched on the chair. “See, I ain’t been lyin’”
Lars rubbed his nose and got up from his chair. “Gonna get some more drinks,” he said and opened the fridge in the kitchen and opened three beers, slipping a tablet from his wallet into two of them.
Twenty minutes later, Emit and Barry were asleep; thirty minutes later, Lars had run off into the night with Claire’s phone and the USB stick.
And Emit had no idea where Lars lived; he was just a “friend” from the Internet.
Chapter XLIV
Paige
The black car motored towards Central London in the morning rush hour. “Where are we going?”
“A surprise,” Paige replied; the fourth time that day she had told her friend the same response. “I told your folks obviously.”
“Yeah, they didn't tell me.”
“’Cause I told them not too.”
Claire looked healthier and brighter than when she left hospital; her cheeks were rosy and her smile radiant. Three weeks had come and gone since she had been discharged from the hospital and Paige had made daily journeys across London to visit. Leah had regularly accompanied her friend but other times Jack, Lucinda or Hazel had visited with Paige.
The journalists had congregated for several days after she returned home; the first time Paige and Jack visited, the throng of photographers surrounded the car to capture the moment Claire's friends arrived.
As the days wore on, Claire's collapse became yesterday's news. A few barbed comments on the gossip pages slipped under the radar, and only a couple of hardy, desperate papperazi were left at the foot of Claire's drive.
Thus, Paige's attempt to cheer her friend could continue without risk of an army of newspaper vehicles following them. “I have some papers.” Claire produced the three tabloids from her bag and passed one of them to Paige.
Her friend touched the edge of the newspaper with her fingertips, turning up her nose like the newspaper had been sprayed by noxious chemicals. “Why do I want this?”
Bare Necessities 2 (The Bare Necessities) Page 18
