by Melissa Hill
“I don’t know how he does it,” Liz said, shaking her head in exasperation as she went to clean up the mess. “One minute he’s playing quietly under the kitchen table, the next he’s on the way to causing World War Three!”
“Ah, he’s just trying to make sense of the place, aren’t you, Tobes?” His dark hair still wet from his shower, Eric kissed Toby on the head. Seeing father and son together like that – both so alike – made Liz’s stomach give a little flip.
Four years on, and still Eric McGrath had the power to make his wife go weak at the knees. Back then, when she’d first met him, Liz had been powerless to resist Eric’s lively green eyes, his hearty laugh and his infectious lust for life. Her husband hadn’t changed that much since and was still a very attractive man – possessing the same lean build and chiselled good looks he’d had when they first met. Liz, on the other hand, had unfortunately changed quite a bit and had put on a few pounds over the years, especially after the pregnancy. And now, with the kennels business, Eric was coming home to find his wife in a pair of wellies and baggy jeans instead of the short dresses and sexy heels she used to wear before they married. Sometimes, Liz wondered what on earth she’d done to deserve such happiness. Eric was her confidante, her lover and her best friend all rolled into one and she knew that she would fall to pieces should anything ever happen to him.
Now he was expertly manoeuvring Toby into his highchair, something that Toby usually point-blank refused to let her do, but now with his dad he was laughing and cooing as if this was all a great adventure. Typical, she thought, smiling as Eric patiently brushed the powder out of Toby’s hair and clothes – he’s like a raging bull for most of the day and then as soon as Daddy appears . . .
“So how are things?” Eric asked, once Toby had quietened down and they were eating dinner. “How’s Eminem getting on? Has he settled down yet?”
One of the dogs they had staying with them – a fabulous St Bernard who’d been unfortunately burdened with the moniker of a famous white rapper – was a first-time boarder and finding it difficult to come to terms with the change in routine.
“He’s much better today,” Liz replied. “He’s stopped pacing and I think he and Bruno took a bit of a shine to one another, actually.”
“Good old Bruno – is he back again? Your woman takes some amount of holidays, doesn’t she?”
Liz smiled, recalling Jill Walsh’s curt manner when she dropped Bruno off. Some pet owners were only too delighted to chat about their upcoming holiday and often left a contact number should anything happen to their pet in the meantime. But Jill Walsh definitely wasn’t one of those.
“I don’t know that she does take holidays – she never says a word about where she’s going. For all we know, she could be travelling with work. Now, Mel Flanagan – you know, the girl who owns little Jasper?”
“Yes,” Eric nodded.
“She was telling me today she’s off to the Caribbean for two weeks at the end of the month.”
“Sounds fantastic,” her husband replied, looking genuinely wistful as he tucked into his tomato and basil penne.
“Doesn’t it? And Tara was saying earlier that she and Glenn are going to –”
“Oh, Tara was down for a visit?”
“Yes, she popped in for an hour this afternoon. She was home visiting her mum and dad before she and Glenn go on holiday to Egypt next week. Lucky things.”
“I haven’t seen either of them in ages.”
“Well, she hasn’t been home in ages. She’s really made a go of that life-coaching business, fair play to her.”
Eric wrinkled his nose. “A load of old codswallop if you ask me. Surely people have more cop-on than to pay good money for someone to tell them what any eejit could. But that’s women for you – more money than sense.”
Liz gave him a withering look. “That’s not how it works, Eric, and according to Tara it’s not all women either. Besides, she’s obviously good at what she does if she can afford trendy sports cars and holidays in Egypt.” She went on to tell Eric all about Tara’s gorgeous new car, which was a million miles away from the ancient embattled Peugeot Liz used to get around the place.
“Well, maybe we should think about doing a spot of coaching ourselves then,” Eric suggested. “We could get the house done up properly and sort out all the Castlegate quarehawks at the same time! Hold on – forget dog kennels, what about dog coaching? I know a few mutts who badly need help in finding their way in life. John Kavanagh’s useless bloodhound for one.”
“Stop it!” Liz laughed.
Eric had been working additional shifts at the security company to raise the extra cash for redecorating (and, in the case of the dining room, restoring) the house. So, while the old cottage was without doubt their dream home, it hadn’t fulfilled its true potential just yet.
Liz had hoped that the kennels would generate some additional income for them, so that Eric didn’t have to work so many long hours up in Dublin and away from her and Toby. When they moved here originally, the plan had been for him to look for some form of alternative work in the village, but so far he’d had no luck. And Liz hadn’t had too much luck in securing customers from the villagers either. It was disappointing because she’d also seen the kennels service as an ideal way to interact with the community and get to know people.
But as Castlegate was a satellite village, the residents were no doubt used to “Dubs” coming to live there and spending their days commuting to and from the capital, and consequently being completely uninvolved in village life. So it was entirely possible that most of the residents viewed her and Eric as “blow-ins” – despite the fact that her husband was one of their own. Also, with Toby being so young, and Liz tied to the house with the animals for much of the time, she didn’t get too many opportunities to get out and meet people during the day. Oh well, they’d barely been here a year; things were bound to improve. And she did know some people – Eric’s friend Colm, who ran the village café, and Tara’s family. And of course, Liz remembered wryly, there was also Eric’s mother, Maeve.
“So anything else strange with Tara?” Eric asked, taking a forkful of pasta.
“Well, now that you say it . . .” Liz paused slightly before going on, “apparently Emma is pregnant.”
Eric’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth. “Oh? I didn’t know she was seeing anyone.”
And how would you know something like that? Liz thought nervously. “Well, that’s the thing – apparently she wasn’t seeing anyone, which is why it’s so terrible for her to get caught – especially at her age.” She was trying to keep her voice casual but feeling a little disconcerted at Eric’s reaction or, even worse, his interest.
Eric continued eating. “I see. And who’s the lucky dad?”
“Nobody knows,” Liz said, shrugging. “According to Tara, she’s refusing to tell the guy – whoever he is – that she’s expecting in the first place and reckons that she can go it alone. In the meantime, she won’t spill the beans on who he might be, even to her family.”
“Right?”
Liz pushed the remainder of her food around the plate. “Tara reckons she got involved with someone she shouldn’t have – hence all the mystery.”
“Really?”
“But she also says that Emma can be a bit over-dramatic at times so it could very well be a big deal over nothing. She might just have got caught out on a one-night stand.”
Eric nodded. “Could be.”
Liz stood up and began to clear the table. “Anyway, I suppose it’s nothing to do with us. Of course I feel sorry for anyone having to deal with something like that, but . . .” she shrugged as she went to the sink, “as they say, she’s made her bed and now the poor thing has to lie in it.”
She sounded nonchalant but, as she rinsed off dinner plates under the tap, Liz couldn’t help but notice how strangely silent her husband had become and just how hard her own heart was beating in her chest.
Chapter 4
&n
bsp; It was Monday and Natalie Webb was having a very bad morning. “What do you mean he’s at it again?” she cried into her mobile. “Bloody hell, can’t he keep it in his pants for more than two minutes? And who is she this time?”
She locked eyes with the cabbie in his rear-view mirror and he quickly glanced away. Natalie was aware that he was straining to hear every word. He’d have been straining even more if he realised who she was discussing – not some errant boyfriend but long-time England football international Michael Sharpe. Sharpe by name, not so sharp by nature, Natalie thought, staring out the window at the London traffic, incensed that the player had landed them in it yet again.
She cursed the day Blue Moon PR had agreed to take Sharpe on as a client. A single PR agency wasn’t enough to manage the amount of scandal this guy generated from week to week. If it wasn’t lap-dancers and football groupies, it was drinking and drunken public bust-ups with his team-mates. And the closer he was getting to the end of his playing career, the more reckless he seemed to become.
“The Sun are planning to break the story some time this week,” Natalie’s assistant Danni informed her. “Apparently they’ve got photos of Michael and this girl coming out of the nightclub together last Saturday night and –”
“What? The idiot! How many times have we warned him?” Natalie shook her head, trying to think straight. There was no bloody point. No matter how often they tried to drill into their clients the importance of being discreet, the message rarely got through.
Blue Moon PR’s client list consisted primarily of successful, and in turn incredibly high-profile, individuals: sportsmen and women, singers and TV actors and actresses, the kind of public profiles on which the UK media thrived.
For this reason, Natalie and her colleagues at the agency were on permanent alert, ready and waiting to skilfully control their clients’ public profiles by putting out fires here and there. But they’d need to employ a full-time fire brigade to handle Michael Sharpe!
“Right.” Glancing surreptitiously at the cab driver, who now seemed to have lost interest, Natalie spoke low into the phone. “Tell him I want him and the missus at the weekend do,” she said, knowing that Danni would understand she was referring to the Player of the Year Awards on Saturday night. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t up for nomination – she wanted them there anyway, on the red carpet, posing lovingly for the cameras and acting the happily married couple. “Send her over –” she hesitated, glancing again at the cabbie, aware that the Sun or their rivals would just lap up an inside story from a London cabbie, “something spectacular . . .”
Danni, as ever, was on the ball. “A new Julien MacDonald number? Something that’ll really wow the cameras?”
“Exactly. In the meantime, we’ll see if we can come to some agreement with the . . . um . . . the others about his latest indiscretion.” She glanced again at the driver, who still seemed to be concentrating on the heavy traffic.
“OK, I’ll talk to Michael and see what I can do about getting his wife a designer dress, but with the amount of weight she’s put on recently, that might be difficult,” Danni said dryly. “Anyway, do you think you’ll be back to the office later?”
Natalie sighed. “I hope so. Depends on how long this lunch takes, really.”
“Try and nab them while they’re young and innocent, eh?” Danni joked, referring to the prospective client Natalie was on her way to meet.
“Savour it while it lasts, you mean,” she replied, before ringing off and replacing her mobile in her bag.
“Everything all right, love?” the cabbie enquired, his eyes in the rear-view mirror again fixed on her troubled face.
“Yes, everything’s fine,” Natalie replied shortly.
Realising that they were now nearing the Embankment Gardens, she took out her compact and quickly checked her appearance in the tiny mirror. Her hair could do with a bit of a trim; her wavy and usually shiny dark mane looked a bit dull, but what the hell, it would pass for today. And the make-up she’d carefully applied earlier that morning was still quite fresh, although her lipstick could certainly do with some touching up. She hastily applied her favourite Bobbi Brown lip-colour. Angelina Jolie eat your heart out, she mouthed silently, before tucking everything back into her bag and then fanning her hair attractively around her shoulders.
The lunchtime traffic was typically manic and, glancing at her watch, Natalie realised it was now close to one o’clock. No time to hang around sitting in traffic, not when English football’s hottest rising star was meeting her for lunch.
“I’m going to just pop out here,” she told the cab driver, and by his blatantly appreciative glance at her generous breasts, Natalie suspected he was thinking something quite different. This was something she was well used to, her curvaceous body having always appealed to the opposite sex. Such attention occasionally came in handy in her profession, but in truth she hated looking like a busty barmaid from Corrie.
Having paid the cabbie, she nipped quickly through the Embankment Gardens and out to the Savoy Hotel, where seventeen-year-old Jordan King and his father Joseph were already awaiting her arrival in the foyer.
A young black footballer of immense talent and skill, Jordan had just signed a lucrative contract with one of the country’s top Premiership clubs and had recently made his debut for England. Within minutes of coming onto the pitch, he had changed the game and sent the team three-two up, scoring a hat-trick in the most spectacular circumstances. Since then, the newest England wunderkind was in high demand, and for this reason, he and his family had been advised to employ someone to help deal with the ever-growing media appetite and to manage his public profile.
“Jordan, Mr King – so lovely to meet you.” Natalie shook their hands. She knew instinctively that Joseph King would be a tough nut to crack. The man seemed suspicious and ill at ease in the hotel’s sumptuous surrounding, as though he’d rather be anywhere else but there.
It was understandable. The Kings hailed from a working-class background in Birmingham, where Jordan had begun his footballing career with a lower-league club, and Natalie wouldn’t have been at all surprised if this were the first time Joseph King had been to the capital.
This made her even more determined to secure Jordan as a client; he and his family were so obviously guileless that they would need all the help they could get when thrust into the relentless and often unforgiving spotlight.
“Let’s go in to eat.” Natalie led them towards the restaurant. She smiled at Jordan. “You’re a wonderful player, Jordan,” she said, “although I suspect you’re used to hearing that by now.”
“Um, thanks.” Jordan blushed a little and grinned sheepishly.
Natalie sorely wished that the kid could remain like that, so innocent and so obviously unaffected by his superstar quality. But she knew such ingenuousness wouldn’t last long. The huge adoration and, concurrently, the vast amounts of money these young teenagers earned tended to quickly put a stop to that. Thinking of the train-wreck that was now Michael Sharpe, Natalie hoped that Jordan would not follow his England team-mate down the same path.
“And you must be very proud of him,” she said to Joseph King, as the waiter led them to their table.
“I am,” Jordan’s father replied, smiling indulgently at his son as they all sat down. “But obviously, I want to make sure his career is handled properly. Since the new signing, and especially after the England game, his mother and I haven’t been able to deal with all the calls we’ve been getting. Newspapers wanting interviews, TV companies wanting appearances, all that stuff. And now all these companies are wanting to use him in their advertising.”
“I presume you have a sports agency looking after your financial interests, club contracts etc.?” Natalie enquired. It was important to explain that managing Jordan’s career as a footballer wasn’t what Blue Moon PR did. Instead they’d look after the valuable currency that was Jordan King’s public image.
His father nodded. “Chris Billing
ham. Do you know him?”
“Not personally, but he’s got a good reputation.” If there was such a thing, she thought inwardly, but at least some of the other vultures hadn’t managed to get their claws into him. “Shall we order drinks? Wine or perhaps a Coke for Jordan?” With potential clients of this importance, she’d normally break out the Cristal, but something told her that this would not be appreciated by the father of a seventeen-year-old.
“A Coke would be great,” Jordan replied cheerily, while his father ran a brief eye over the lunch menu.
“Something for you, Mr King?”
“Yes, a Coke would be fine for me too.”
Yikes! So much for a liquid lunch, Natalie thought, eventually deciding on a sparkling Perrier for herself, although she could have killed for bubbles of the other kind. Oh, well, maybe later . . .
“So,” she began, when the waiter had finished taking their lunch and drinks order, “I suppose I might as well start by filling you in on what it is we at Blue Moon PR do and, perhaps more importantly, on what we don’t do.”
“Jordan’s been offered a contract from MagicBurger,” Joseph King said, before Natalie had a chance to speak further. “It’s great money and the agency thinks we should jump at it. I’d like to know what you think.”
Aha, Natalie thought, the first test.
She sat back in her chair. “Well, as I said before, Blue Moon are not a sports agency in the sense that we don’t secure endorsement contracts for you. However, what we will do is give advice as to how the endorsements you choose can affect your long-term career.” She paused as their drinks arrived, then continued. “Now, if I were managing your image, Jordan, under no circumstances would I recommend that you endorse products from a fast-food company. You’re young, talented and athletic and an inspiration to millions of young people out there. You don’t want to give out the wrong impression.”
