by Alison Bond
‘When?’ she asked, her mouth dry as sand.
‘Yesterday,’ said Jackson. ‘Their father called, said he had to think about their future.’
‘Thinking about their future is my job,’ said Samantha. Or was.
‘I tried to talk him down,’ said Jackson. ‘But he was adamant.’
She knew damn well that it was better for Legends to keep them as clients in whichever way they could. The boys had irreplaceable talent; she was just an agent. And if she was lined up against a wall with a couple of thirty-million-pound players like Monty and Ferris Welstead then she could expect to be shot. She knew because she would do the same thing herself – that was the true shame of it. She could choose to feel betrayed, she could choose to feel hurt, but ultimately those boys weren’t her friends, they were her business, so what right did she have to expect their undying loyalty? Still, it burnt.
‘Don’t patronize me, Jackson, please. I know how these things work.’
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘What else?’ She was hiding her distress as best she could, but inside she was screaming. ‘You said there’d been a couple of other developments. So what else?’
Jackson sighed. ‘It’s the press, Sam.’
‘What about them?’
‘You know this agency has always maintained a cordial relationship with the media. That relationship is an integral part of what we do.’
‘Of course I know that.’ She spent half her working hours at Legends telling reporters very sweetly to piss off one day and asking for a favour the next. The appetite for football stories had not waned over the years, only the tone had changed. Where once footballers had been idolized for their skills, now they were vilified for their scandals. The agency’s relationship with the press was more important than ever. ‘But good God, Jackson, you know I’m not a drug dealer.’
Carl interrupted. ‘So you’re saying there’s no truth in these allegations?’
‘They are wildly exaggerating something that happened years ago.’
Carl sat back with a thin little smile. He had his answer.
‘I can handle a bit of bad press. Don’t worry about me.’
‘I’m not worried about you,’ said Jackson, raising his voice for the first time. ‘I’m worried about my company, and so is the board of directors.’
Carl Higham shot him an odd little look, something like a warning.
‘What I mean to say is,’ he said in measured tones, ‘the reputation of this agency can withstand scrutiny, but I don’t want it to.’
‘What do vicious irresponsible rumours have to do with being a good agent?’
‘Nothing at all,’ said Jackson. He paused. His voice became gentle, something more like that after-hours Jackson she was scared to realize she had been horrendously in love with. ‘There’s a rumour about a brother?’ he said. ‘You told me you didn’t have any family.’
‘I don’t have to answer that,’ she said, looking instinctively towards the lawyer who avoided her eyes. He wasn’t here to help her.
Nobody in this room was on her side.
‘I apologize,’ said Jackson, ‘of course you don’t.’ He looked hurt for a moment, but then toughened and continued. ‘The facts remain, there is the matter of hundreds of thousands of dollars and now with this press attention …’
‘So, what? You’re firing me? You can’t do that, not without proof about the money. And you can’t fire me for PR reasons.’
‘No,’ said Carl. ‘We can’t.’
She sensed the way this meeting was going to end. ‘I have a contract,’ she whispered.
Jackson lifted remorseful eyes to meet her bewildered ones and they stayed there like that for what seemed like an age, Sam and her mentor, closer to equal than they had ever been but still with a generation of experience and knowledge between them.
Jackson had a flash of Samantha Sharp as a young girl, a lost and lonely girl who wept herself into her first job and then clung to it with a tenacity and talent that had surprised them all. She could have had the world at her feet. With his heart he wanted to believe in her innocence, but she wouldn’t be the first great agent to take a bribe, and his head knew it.
Samantha Sharp was far from innocent. She was a player and sometimes, just sometimes, all players were tempted to cheat.
The seconds dragged by until light dawned in her eyes.
‘You’re waiting for me to resign,’ she said.
‘I am,’ said Jackson. ‘I don’t see another way forward. I don’t see how this situation can be resolved to the satisfaction of both parties. If you resign we can make a clean break. There will be no FIFA investigation. You won’t even lose your licence.’
He said it like he was doing her a favour. Like she should be thankful. Like because she once made a mistake, and somebody called S. Sharp had a bank account with dirty fingerprints on it, that she should be grateful.
To hell with that.
‘Stop talking like a bloody lawyer, Jackson,’ she snapped. ‘Everyone in this room understands perfectly well that the only reason you’re not firing me is because I’d sue you for unfair dismissal and you can’t afford the hassle. So you’re ending this to the satisfaction of one party: yours. I resign or what? You stick me in a third-floor office and pick off my clients one by one? If you say I’m over at Legends then I’m over. We both know it. So you can call this my resignation if you like, and protect your precious company, but we both know what’s really going on. Don’t insult me by pretending otherwise.’
‘I would never want to insult you, Samantha.’
‘You just did.’
She needed Jackson now. If there was any love there then she had to believe that he would help her.
‘Someone is framing me,’ she said. ‘This is too much all at once; it must be a coordinated vendetta against me. It has to be. Someone set up that bank account and led you to it, then they made damn sure that everybody knew about it by calling Toby Welstead, by calling the press. Don’t you see? Someone is setting me up.’
‘Who?’ said Carl.
There was a long pause, because that was the big question, wasn’t it? And she had done everything she could think of, but was nowhere near an answer. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘Then I’m very sorry,’ said Carl. But he wasn’t sorry to see the back of her. She looked like trouble from the minute she’d arrived at the firm. He was only grateful she’d never tried to pin them with a sexual-harassment suit over the jokes and general misogyny she’d had to put up with.
She looked at Jackson, but he pressed his lips together and said nothing. Nothing at all.
She had lost. There was nothing left to do but walk away.
‘What do I do now?’ she whispered, thinking aloud. Jackson had shaped the last decade of her life – perhaps he could tell her what to do next. This was all she knew.
‘What about …’ She wished that Carl wasn’t here. She didn’t want to talk to Jackson, her boss, any longer; she wanted to talk to Jackson, her lover. ‘You would do this to me?’ she said.
Jackson straightened up behind his desk, fixed her with his intense stare, the one she found so sexy, just about the only thing in this world that could make her feel weak. She remembered the time he had pinned her down on that very desk and made furious love to her until she was dizzy. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I would. It’s over, Sam.’
‘Bastard.’
She hadn’t been prepared for this. Perhaps she should have, because only a fool expected innocence to triumph these days. Her career, the glittering prize at the end of her onerous journey, had been snatched from under her. All that was left was leaving with dignity. Suddenly it mattered.
She spun on the point of her black high heels and walked away.
15
‘You’re the most selfish person I’ve ever met. Typical fucking woman.’
‘But I’m your sister,’ she simpered, ‘so you have to love me.’
By the time she was nineteen Samantha was working at a much better hotel than the poxy Royal Victoria and making, in those relative teenage terms, far more money, but to Liam’s annoyance she insisted on keeping her outgoings tiny and saving the difference. The Camberwell sofa had been good enough for months so it would be good enough for a few more too.
‘I want to buy a house eventually,’ she said. ‘You can live there as well.’
‘I want to buy some blow,’ he countered. ‘Today.’
They still got drunk together, but he got drunker. She didn’t like turning up at work with a hangover. She refused to spend any of her money on cocaine, his drug of choice. Or at least it was his drug of choice up until the first time he experimented with crack.
‘You have to try it,’ he said, meticulously preparing the little pipe with his precious crystals. ‘It makes coke look like ProPlus.’
Outside police sirens wailed, red buses rumbled by and they could hear voices raised in argument. Liam called the neighbourhood ‘lively’.
‘Try this, Sam, it’ll blow your head off, I swear.’
It was eleven o’clock in the morning.
‘I have to go to work,’ she said.
The hotel was called Seven Dials, after the area where it stood and she had been a chambermaid there for a just a few months. She loved it. Unlike the Royal Victoria the Seven Dials hotel was a home from home for celebrities and captains of industry, not tourists and salesmen, a younger crowd, with money to burn. Their breakfast was à la carte and featured kedgeree and soda bread, not a soggy buffet. The bar served champagne and cocktails, not cheap house white and Carling Black Label. The staff all looked like they might be taking time off between modelling gigs, staff like Samantha with her long legs and her enigmatic smile that made you wonder what she was thinking.
When she walked in, with a red net petticoat peeking out from under her full black skirt, the job was already hers; the interview was just a formality.
She broke her habit of petty theft. If she saw a pile of twenties carelessly left on a bedside table, she would straighten them and weigh them down with an ashtray. Sometimes she still spritzed herself with the guest’s perfume, but that was it. She wanted to be promoted to housekeeper. She was young for the position, but she knew there would be an opening soon. She took evening classes in Japanese because she thought that would help her chances.
Liam was forever nagging her to get him a job at Seven Dials too.
Whenever she refused he looked for a second like he hated her, but swiftly returned to his usual cajoling tactics. ‘But it’s only fair,’ he said. ‘I got you one.’
There was no arguing with his logic, but lately she was worried about his drinking and even more worried about the drugs.
‘You’re sure you have it under control?’ she asked him.
‘Don’t you worry about me, little sis. I’m not stupid.’
‘Maybe you should quit for a while?’
Liam missed shifts all the time. She couldn’t stand the thought of getting him a job at Seven Dials only for him to blow the opportunity, for him and perhaps for her also. So she told him that there weren’t any openings for drivers.
Nobody at work knew she had a brother.
Liam knew she was lying, and he could guess why. She was well out of order, getting a bit too up herself. It was his responsibility, as the older brother, to knock her back down to size. But how? She looked so fucking happy these days, and why not? With her cushy job in swankyland and her growing stash in the bank. Meanwhile he owed his dealer a hundred and hadn’t scored any overtime for weeks.
He hated where he worked. He didn’t like the guests or the other staff, and every single shift felt like too much effort.
He would hang out in the dismal staffroom behind the kitchen and wait to be summoned to work. Sometimes he played cards with the off-duty busboys or flirted with the waitresses but often he walked out back, ostensibly for a cigarette, but he’d smoke a little rock if he had one or sprinkle some charlie into a cigarette to try to get the same hit.
He shouldn’t get high on the job, but really what else was there to do?
One of the Aussie chambermaids dealt a little cocaine on the side, bad shit, tiny twenty-pound bags that everyone knew she filched from the hotel high-rollers and then cut with something dumb, maybe aspartame, to make it go a little further. You were lucky to get a decent high but right now, with his dealer after him for what he owed, he didn’t have much of a choice.
That night, the worst night of his life that would change everything, he had two hours to wait around for a pre-booked job, so he stood out back in the freezing cold and carefully, oh so carefully, placed his last rock, nothing more than a sliver, into his foil-covered pipe.
Even as he sparked the lighter he was already worrying about where he’d buy his next hit and with what. Then the flame melted the precious rock and his worries took flight.
The high was unbelievable. He thought maybe his feet would lift off the ground and he could soar over the hotel and away. He fancied that he could feel every vein in his body dilate so that he could soak up the feeling as it coursed through his bloodstream.
Yeah, just like that.
He sank down onto the cold stone step and relished the sensation.
‘Liam? Yo, Liam, you out here, man?’
It was later, maybe as much as an hour. Time flies when you’re having fun. His boss, a twitchy little Ecuadorean guy was calling his name. Instinctively he palmed the pipe he still clutched in his hand and tucked it into his pocket. He would be fired if he was caught. He knew it.
‘Got a job for you. Be out front in forty minutes, okay?’
Drive? Now? Gingerly he got to his feet. He felt okay. How long had it been? He felt more than okay; he felt like he could do with a line of something to stay on top of this buzz. Forty minutes. He knew a guy in Vauxhall, just a little south, not far. He could make it, though it would be tight. It had been a while, but hopefully he’d answer his door. A buy tonight would wipe out the last of his money. If only he could persuade his little sister to part with some of her cash. He knew she had loads stashed away, she must do, and for what? Some stupid dream of a house? What was the point? Everyone knew the London property market was on the brink of collapse. Perhaps if he told her that they needed the money for something she’d consider legit … perhaps he could take a part out of the fridge or the telly and say it needed fixing.
He made it to Vauxhall and back in under half an hour. He felt so good by then he was whistling as he waited kerbside, holding the back door to the car open and ready. He had enough rocks to last him for the next week or so, plus a neat little bag of blow on tick. The dealer liked Liam because he had a job, not like most of these crackhead losers who couldn’t stay on top of their addiction. Good one, he’d be a return customer there for sure.
He always paid special attention to his passengers. He liked to make up stories about them in his head. It was also the best way to get tips. He opened the door for the ladies and gents alike and made polite conversation if he felt they wanted it.
Tonight’s ride was for a gorgeous redhead and her much older man.
Husband? Boyfriend? Who could tell?
But from the way they were going at it in the back seat he suspected boyfriend. Married couples didn’t go at it like that in the back seat.
They were heading for a quiet piano bar in Pimlico, a little-known place that the hotel recommended to guests all the time in exchange for a similar referral. He wondered where these two had come from. He sounded English, she definitely didn’t. She really was beautiful. Her accent reminded him of James Bond villains.
He played with a little fantasy whereby he was James Bond, undercover, pretending to be a lowly chauffeur so that he could kill the bad guy in the back seat, and when he had revealed his true identity and dispatched the baddie he and Redhead would drive off into the sunset. Nice.
She had her head on her lover’s shoulder now, her
eyes closed, laughing softly at something he’d said, and he was absent-mindedly pulling his fingers through her long flaming hair. The gesture pulled at Liam’s hardened heart. They were in love.
This job was getting boring. Maybe he should aim higher.
Maybe not.
He had driven this route a hundred times or more. The roads were blissfully empty. But he didn’t see the traffic light on red until it was too late and he was already committed to the right-hand turn. He was over the speed limit too, just over but enough to ensure that when the white transit van ploughed into the passenger side both vehicles went spinning across the road in a mess of burning rubber and splintering glass, into the path of oncoming traffic.
There was a rush of unbearable noise, screams and crunching metal, and then nothing – as if the world had stopped and was still.
Only the rhythmic clicking of his indicator. Tick, tick, tick, tick. Look out, car turning.
He could feel wetness on his face, his hands came back covered in gore and behind him there was silence. The woman had been thrown forward over the passenger seat on impact and her head had smashed the windshield; strands of her hair mingled with the blood there. The seat where the man had been sitting was simply gone, obliterated into a twisted heap of metal.
On the streets the late-night traffic stopped to stare in horror.
Tick, tick, tick, tick.
Liam was the only one in the car who was still alive.
Nobody thought to tell her that her brother had been in an accident. The sad and simple truth was that there was nobody who cared about them enough to alert her, nobody who even knew her phone number. When he didn’t come home that night she went to bed as usual. It wasn’t the first time he hadn’t returned. The following evening she went to meet him from work.
‘Hey,’ she said, recognizing the Australian chambermaid but forgetting her name. Had they ever been properly introduced or had she simply handed her money in exchange for drugs now and again? ‘Is Liam around?’
The girl’s hand went to her mouth. ‘Honey, you didn’t hear?’
