Private Lives

16



Helen was in the shower when the phone rang. It was 7.30 a.m. but her day had started an hour and a half earlier with a tennis lesson at her club; it took discipline to maintain both a body and a career. She snapped off the jets and called out through the steam.

‘Graham, can you get that?’

The telephone continued to ring in the bedroom next to the en suite.

‘Graham!’ she shouted, then under her breath: ‘Where is that bloody man?’

Grabbing a fluffy robe, she strode out of the en suite, leaving wet footprints on the cream carpet, and snatched the phone from the bedside cabinet. She stabbed the button to accept the call, glaring at her husband still slumbering in their bed, his mop of grey hair just visible above the duvet. It had been a long time since Graham had risen this early. In the months after he had lost his seat as a Home Counties MP, he would have been up before her, reading, researching, determined to carve out a new career as a political historian. But when the book deal and the accompanying television series had not been forthcoming, his drive had ebbed away and now he spent his days pottering in their Kensington garden and talking vaguely about ‘shaking things up on a local level’. Not that Helen minded; she had enough ambition for both of them. She was simply irritated because this early in the morning, the call was bound to be work-related.

‘Helen Pierce,’ she snapped.

‘He’s back,’ said a voice.

Helen recognised Jim Parker’s West Coast drawl immediately.

‘Sam?’ she said.

‘Who else?’

‘Well it’s about bloody time.’

‘You don’t have to tell me, sweetheart.’

Sam’s LA agent had been furious when his headline-grabbing client had gone missing three days before. Well, not missing exactly. Eli Cohen, Sam’s manager, knew where he was hiding, but was refusing to tell anyone, even Helen or Jim, for fear his location might leak out. Helen could understand Jim’s anger – after all, they desperately needed to get to work on Sam’s damage-limitation plan as soon as possible, as the column inches weren’t getting any less.

‘So where is he? And where are you?’ she demanded, towel-drying her hair.

‘Sam is back at his country place,’ said Jim. ‘And I’m on my way. I got into Heathrow an hour ago.’

‘Fine, I’ll meet you there in an hour,’ she said and hung up without waiting for an answer. Jim Parker was smart enough to know that Helen Pierce would move heaven and earth to fix this situation: she had to. In truth, Helen didn’t give two hoots about Sam Charles’s career – that was the risk you ran when you were famous and unfaithful – but what she did care about was the reputation of the firm, which was why she had to be on top of her game not just to firefight the situation but to turn it around. And that was why Jim had kept her on the team despite Sam’s sacking of Anna.

She walked into her dressing room and ran her hand along the line of clothes, loving the way the hangers knocked gently together. In the calm orderliness of her dressing room, she took a minute to take stock of the situation. It had actually been fortuitous that she had assigned the Sam Charles case to Anna. She had been sorely tempted to take it herself, for the glory, the spoils. The way things had turned out, it had been Anna’s reputation that had been damaged. Over the next few weeks, Helen would assess how bad that damage had been; she didn’t want to get rid of the smart, ambitious girl – she still thought Anna had potential – but if she had to sack her, then she would do it without a thought.

Finally Helen selected a starched white shirt and a tight navy pencil skirt. Usually she’d only wear such formal, highly tailored clothes on court days; the stiffness of her shirt collars and the structure of her skirt were like a suit of armour. For years the legal community had been debating the pros and cons of getting rid of the barrister’s horsehair wigs, winged collars and gowns. The naysayers thought they were too haughty and ceremonious, relics of a Dickensian era, but Helen could understand why so many lawyers were fond of their regalia – it was protective clothing, a shield and helmet for when you went into battle. Today was going to be one of those days, except instead of the courtroom the battleground was Sam Charles’s country manor. And Helen was an expert in military strategy; she knew she couldn’t afford to lose this one.

‘What time is it?’

Graham stirred, rolling over on the pillow to look at her, his face lined with creases from the linen.

‘Almost eight.’

He grunted and snuggled back under the duvet. ‘Another five minutes then I’ll get up and make you coffee.’

‘Don’t bother,’ said Helen, striding past, picking up her leather briefcase from the desk as she went.

‘Whatever you say, darling,’ he mumbled, and turned over.

Helen looked at him with a mixture of irritation and pity. So strange to think that just a decade earlier, Graham had been the perfect catch. She’d been thirty-eight when they’d met at a cocktail party in Mayfair. Helen had never felt any strong desire to be a wife, and certainly no ticking biological clock, but as she climbed higher up both the professional and social ladder, she’d observed that a husband was a desirable accessory. Singles were viewed with suspicion on her high-flying society circuit. It was fine for men, of course; single men were playboys, dashing roguishly around town, playing the field. Single women, on the other hand, were seen as either predatory or dysfunctional.

Graham was well bred, connected and handsome in that ruddy-cheeked public-schoolboy way. His grandfather had been a leading light in the sixties Conservative government, an old-school-style politician with money, power and an aristocratic lineage, and there were whispers that Graham’s political career could have a similar trajectory. When they had married after a nine-month courtship, Helen had genuinely held high hopes that one day their marital home might be 10 Downing Street. But humiliatingly, Graham had turned out to be a one-term MP. In the new political climate, his style was seen as old fashioned and fuddy-duddy, and he lost his seat to an articulate Lib Dem fifteen years his junior. And that had been it. Graham had spent his life having everything laid out in front of him; he didn’t know how to cope when something didn’t fit the script.

She could have divorced him, of course. Should have divorced him, in fact. If Helen had had any close female friends, this might have been the sort of thing they discussed over long, commiseratory lunches in San Lorenzo. But she had no time for lunch – and no time for divorce. Not yet, anyway.

‘Well, see you later,’ grunted Graham. ‘What time you back?’

Why? she thought. Are you thinking of whisking me off to Rome?

‘Oh, late probably,’ she sighed instead. ‘I’m at a client’s in Wiltshire. I’m not sure how long it will take.’

He pulled the duvet down, his interest evidently piqued.

‘This the Sam Charles thing?’

Everyone was talking about the scandal; the fact that it had penetrated into Graham’s clubby upper-class world was an indication of what big news it was. Helen nodded.

‘Crisis-management talks at his house.’

‘Well, it’s nothing you can’t sort out,’ he said encouragingly. ‘You got that chap Svurak off, didn’t you?’

Just a month earlier, Helen had extracted the Premiership footballer from an even tighter spot. The bad boy of the pitch had been caught with a sixteen-year-old girl in a seedy hotel room. Not only had he gleefully filmed the whole event, he had thought it hilarious to send the footage to all his friends – one of whom had thought it even more funny to send it to a red-top in exchange for a large stack of cash. Helen had only avoided the complete destruction of Svurak’s career by going straight to the top. She had struck a series of deals first with his club, who had agreed to trade the hotel footage for an exclusive – and uncharacteristically candid – interview with the team’s captain for the tabloid. On top of that, the paper was given the scoop on Svurak’s surprise marriage to the ambitious singer of a struggling girl band. The wedding would be held at the luxurious Carlos Blanco hotel in Marbella, whose owner, another client of Donovan Pierce, was only too happy to lap up the publicity.

They should call us cleaners, not lawyers, thought Helen. That’s all we do: clean up the shit before anyone even knows it’s there.

‘I think it’s going to be a long day,’ she said, checking her phone for more messages. ‘It might even run into tomorrow, so if I decide to stay out there I’ll call you tonight.’

‘You go get ’em, darling,’ said Graham as she walked out.

One of us has to, she thought as she closed the door.

‘Jesus! Can’t you leave me alone for one second?’ shouted Sam. He pulled back behind the curtain as the helicopter hovered over the trees at the bottom of his garden. Could they see him? he wondered. Would Sky News viewers see him cowering next to his Smeg fridge and read the guilt on his face? What did they even want from him? It was like a dream he couldn’t wake up from.

Even in LA, Sam had never thought he needed to live in a fortress. At his Hollywood Hills home, he’d rejected Jessica’s calls for a twenty-four-hour armed guard and made do with a state-of-the-art alarm system and a gated drive. Here at Copley’s, his Wiltshire manor house, security was even more lax: just some electric gates and CCTV, which was currently showing him the dozens of reporters and photographers on stepladders crowded around the gate. He’d never needed anything before, even when Jessica had been visiting. The locals in the village had been respectful of his privacy and his attitude had always been, why turn yourself into a prisoner when you didn’t have to? Besides, he’d have felt a fraud with all that movie-star nonsense – it was only pretentious LA wankers who bought into that kind of ‘I’m so important’ bollocks, wasn’t it? But it was at times like these, times when you didn’t dare look out of your kitchen window, that you could see the wisdom of ‘better safe than sorry’.

‘I wish I’d put bloody landmines around the drive,’ he muttered as he watched the helicopter finally turn and spiral off into the clouds. The real shame of it was that Sam usually adored his time at Copley’s. He loved the glorious eighteenth-century house with its honey-coloured façade and its own trout lake and woodland. It was his very own Neverland, with a five-a-side pitch beyond the ha-ha and a rope swing in the woods instead of Jacko’s rollercoasters and carousels. Sam had felt safe at Copley’s, he’d felt at home, even if it did have a dozen bedrooms he never went into. But now . . . now would it ever feel safe again?

He frowned as he became aware of an insistent buzzing. He hadn’t heard it until the helicopter had gone, but now he could tell it was coming from the intercom.

‘Josh,’ he yelled. ‘Is that the bloody reporters again? And where’s Jim?’

His PA scurried in from the study, where he’d been fielding calls. ‘Sorry, Sam,’ he hissed, holding his hand over the receiver of his mobile. ‘I’m on the phone to New York. You wanted me to get Harvey for you? And I think Mr Parker’s in the media room monitoring the TV coverage.’

‘Bloody hell,’ muttered Sam, running over to the silver box on the wall. ‘What’s the point in having staff if you have to do everything yourself?’

He stabbed angrily at the button.

‘Who is it?’ he said, immediately jerking back as a roar filled the room: a hundred voices shouting, the chaotic whirr of camera shutters; it sounded like a riot going on out there.

‘Hel . . . Pier . . .’ said a crackly voice. Sam could barely make out the words over the racket.

‘Who?’ he shouted.

‘It’s Helen Pierce. Let me in.’

Jim Parker shouted down the stairs, ‘It’s the lawyer. Buzz her through already!’

As Sam pressed the switch that would open the gate, he could hear a plummy female voice coming through the intercom.

‘If any of you puts so much as one foot on this property,’ it said with schoolmistress authority, ‘I’ll have you in the nick faster than you can say “parasites”.’

I like this chick already, he smiled.

His new lawyer was surprisingly sexy. Older, more severe than the last one and dressed in a crisp shirt and very high patent pumps, she looked like a 1940s pin-up. Or maybe I just go for uptight chicks, thought Sam as he watched her walk into his dining room accompanied by Eli and Valerie Lovell, the PR powerhouse who had also flown over from the States for this council of war. They all shook hands as they sat down around his redwood dining table. This was Sam’s favourite room in the house, a modern addition to the three-hundred-year-old architecture designed to soften the antique edges of the house. A wall of glass overlooked a grey slate fishpond and the lawns beyond, although today the blinds were drawn to discourage any long-lens photography.

‘Busier than I thought out there,’ said Eli with his usual understated humour.

‘Busy like a war zone,’ sniffed Jim Parker.

‘Sam, I don’t think you’ve met Helen Pierce,’ said Valerie, peering over the top of her horn-rimmed Chanel glasses. ‘I’ve worked with her before and there’s no one better at crisis management from the legal end.’

Sam snorted. ‘If it wasn’t for Donovan Pierce, there might not even be a crisis.’ He knew he was being rude, but he was still angry at Anna Kennedy – and Donovan Pierce as a whole – for letting him down with the injunction. It would take more than sending their top attack dog – the lawyer he should have had in the first place – to placate him.

Josh came through with strong coffee and Sam slugged it back gratefully. The sleeping pill he’d taken at 3 a.m. to stop the endless questions running around his head was still making him feel groggy and detached.

‘Where have you been, Sam?’ asked Helen.

Sam lit another cigarette. It wasn’t even 10.30 a.m. and already he’d smoked a packet. Terrible habit, he knew, but he felt justified today. He needed something to quiet his nerves.

‘Eigan island,’ he said. ‘A tiny place near Mull. You won’t know it.’

‘Actually I do,’ said Helen. ‘It’s a little piece of paradise, isn’t it? I’m surprised you came back.’

Maybe I should have stayed, he thought. It had certainly been tempting, but Mike had urged him to ‘get a grip and go and sort things out at home’.

Instead he was hiding here in his dining room, the table strewn with papers and magazines, all of them boasting ‘exclusive’ takes on the story. ‘Sam and Jess Split: The Inside Story!’, ‘Why I Walked Out, Jess Speaks!’, ‘I Always Knew He Was A Cheat, Jess Tells Friend’. It was mostly speculation; thankfully Jessica had yet to speak publicly about it, although the fact that Sam was here, a thousand miles away from his ‘heartbroken’ fiancée, was a fairly large clue as to what was happening between them.

‘So I guess we all know what’s going on in the press,’ said Jim Parker, indicating the table. ‘I’ve just been scanning the satellite channels; the news media’s pretty much taking the same stance.’

Helen Pierce opened her notebook. ‘What’s the support from the industry like?’

‘Hard to tell,’ said Jim. ‘Everyone’s making the right noises: “Tell Sam we’re thinking about him”, all that crap, but the only way to judge LA is by the movie offers that are on the table.’

‘And what’s that like?’

Jim glanced at Sam, then shrugged.

‘It’s summer. It’s quiet. They’ll be in a wait-and-see position until we know box office on his next movie. But honestly . . .’ He pulled a face. ‘I think we should be worried.’

‘Oh great,’ said Sam. ‘Kick me when I’m down, why don’t you?’

‘Hey, buddy, we gotta get real,’ replied Jim. ‘You’re nothing in Tinseltown unless you’re making money, you know that. If you were making the studios half a billion a picture, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. No one would give a damn who you screwed.’

‘It’s true, look at Charlie Sheen,’ nodded Valerie. ‘He had to really really screw up before they cancelled his show.’

‘And we ain’t in Charlie’s position,’ said Jim. ‘He was the star of America’s biggest sitcom. Sam? Well, let’s be frank, his last two movies tanked.’

Sam hated his career being talked about as if he wasn’t even in the room. He found himself getting defensive.

‘Jim, you were the one who told me to do those movies.’

Jim turned his hands outwards.

‘I get the offers. You and Eli take the decisions. If you choose to make the turkeys . . .’

‘Hey, this is a team effort, Jim,’ said Eli. ‘Don’t pass the buck just because the shit’s hit the fan.’

It was no secret that Eli and Jim disliked each other, both of them fighting for the upper hand in the steerage of Sam’s career.

‘All right, gentlemen,’ said Helen firmly. ‘Let’s focus on what we can control. Sam’s next movie is premiering in a week or two, yes? So the industry is out of our hands until then. I think we should concentrate on the media. Valerie, this is your area.’

‘The weakest link in the chain is the girl Katie,’ said the PR, sweeping back her black bob. ‘We could definitely go after her. Spin it as a set-up, release the story about her trying to blackmail us.’

‘Wouldn’t that just look like Sam was trying to wriggle out of it?’ replied Helen.

‘Isn’t that what we’re trying to do here?’ snapped Jim. ‘I don’t think it’s too late to persuade people that Sam didn’t even have sex with her. She doesn’t really have much evidence, so we threaten to sue, major damages, scare her into a retraction.’

Helen looked thoughtful. ‘It’s possible, but we should have come out with denial immediately. Sam’s all but confessed.’

‘I haven’t said anything!’ he managed to splutter.

‘Yes, and that’s the problem. If you’d denied it and Jessica had stood by you, we could have weathered it, but as it is, she’s effectively kicked you out and now we have all this . . .’ Helen grabbed a copy of the Sun and held it up, showing the headline that read: ‘Kinky Sam Forced Himself On Me’.

‘But that’s just rubbish!’ said Sam.

‘Is it?’ said Helen, scanning the text. ‘Sam was a sex pest, always badgering me for sex . . . Sam wanted sex all the time, we did it five times a night.’

Sam winced. He couldn’t bear to look at it himself and it sounded even worse when someone read it out. The funny thing about show business was that you needed the toughest skin just to get your foot in the door. The auditions, the knock-backs, the humiliations, you couldn’t do it without tunnel vision and an iron will. But once you made it, that rhino hide disintegrated. Suddenly everyone was telling you how wonderful you were, how funny, how handsome, every single day of your life. And you came to expect it, your self-esteem was all wrapped up in the constant barrage of love, even if deep down you knew it was pure sycophancy. So when all that was taken away, the insults and the criticism hurt more than ever.

‘Well, is it true?’ pressed Helen.

‘Yes and no,’ he said uncomfortably.

‘Yes and no to what? To being a sex pest?’

‘No! That girl is an old girlfriend from when I was at university fifteen years ago. Yes, we had sex, of course we did. And yes, I was keen on it – who isn’t when they’re nineteen?’

‘I hear that,’ said Eli. Helen just glared at him.

‘But this story makes me sound like some sort of rapist. And there’s no timeline on it, so readers might think it happened last week.’

Valerie shrugged.

‘Clever reporting. It’s what they do.’

‘Can’t we sue?’ said Sam desperately.

‘What for? Turning back time? Anyway, this is all taking us away from the main problem,’ added Helen.

‘Which is what?’

‘That your reputation is in the toilet and it’s open season on you now. With your disappearing act, the media had nothing real to report on, so they went trawling for dirt and it’s no big surprise that they found ex-girlfriends and disgruntled rivals who were happy to take a few quid to say bad things about you. The trouble is, this is going to run and run unless we give them a better story.’

Sam felt his heart start to pound and tried to calm himself. He really shouldn’t have taken that sleeping pill; they always put him on edge the next day. Everywhere he turned people seemed to want to bring him down, ruin all the hard work he’d put in.

‘A better story?’ said Jim. ‘What are you suggesting?’

‘How about this?’ said Valerie, holding up her hands as if she were imagining the front-page splash. ‘“Sam and Jess: The Second Honeymoon”.’

‘We haven’t had our first honeymoon yet,’ said Sam.

‘What I mean is that a reconciliation story could be all we need. All is forgiven, you both get a huge flurry of publicity and we’re back on track.’

‘It’d certainly put an end to all the Sam-bashing,’ said Helen. ‘What do you think, Eli?’

‘Unlikely,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’ve spoken to Barbara, the mother. She’s still talking about wanting Sam’s balls on a platter.’

‘But the buzz on Jess’s latest movie is that it stinks,’ said Jim. ‘If it’s really that bad, she may want a positive spin to deflect the attention.’

Sam’s mouth almost dropped open. He couldn’t believe they were being so cynical about something as important as his life.

‘Look, this is my relationship we’re talking about here,’ he said angrily. ‘It’s not some smokescreen for a box-office turkey.’

Helen turned to him.

‘Do you want to have a career in films?’

‘Of course!’

‘Then you will do whatever is necessary to get back on track. Now, have you spoken to Jessica? Is a reconciliation an option?’

Sam paused for a moment.

‘I don’t think so,’ he sighed. ‘You know I flew to the Cape to see her. Plus I’ve spoken to her friends. It hasn’t changed what she’s saying.’

‘Which is what?’

‘That it’s over.’

‘Well, of course she’s gonna play hardball,’ said Jim. ‘The people who read US Weekly want Girl Power. They don’t want her rolling over too quickly. She’s got to let you roast for a while.’

Sam glared at him.

‘Or there’s always the possibility that she is genuinely heartbroken about being cheated on and wants nothing more to do with me. Besides, I think splitting up was maybe for the best . . .’

His team looked at him, their eyes wide.

‘How is this for the best, Sam?’ said Jim.

‘Because I’m not sure I was ever in love with her.’

Silence rang around the room.

Valerie whistled between her teeth. ‘I hope the press aren’t bugging this room.’

‘Have you actually said this to her?’ asked Eli.

‘I mentioned it in Cape Cod.’

Jim Parker went pale. ‘Mentioned it. Sam, this is your career.’

‘This is my life,’ he snapped, feeling his chest tighten.

Helen looked down at her notes, tapping the page with her gold pencil.

‘Okay, well, if a reconciliation is out of the question, we need to think rehabilitation. Ideas, everyone?’

Sam looked at Helen as she took control of the meeting. She was certainly impressive. His agent, manager and PR were the best in the business, ass-kickers all, but they were deferring to Helen Pierce without a murmur. Sam had met plenty of players in his time – Hollywood was the natural home of arrogant egotists – but this woman had something more: control and authority. You felt she knew what she was doing and, more importantly, that she could make it happen.

‘I think we send him to Hazelden,’ said Jim Parker. ‘Six weeks in rehab could be just what we need.’

‘Rehab?’ said Sam, appalled. ‘What for?’

‘Who cares? Booze, drugs, sex,’ said Jim. ‘It’s a strong move because it shows you’re admitting you have a problem and that you want to put it right.’

‘Hazelden’s great but is mainly substance abuse,’ said Valerie. ‘I know another clinic. Very small. Very discreet. Sex addiction is their specialty.’

‘But then people will think I’m a sex addict!’ protested Sam.

Eli patted his arm. ‘There’s worse things to be, buddy.’

‘But it’s not true. Before that girl Katie, I’d only had sex twice in the last six months. Me and Jess weren’t exactly active in that department.’

Valerie looked up at the light fittings. ‘I hope to God we’re not being bugged.’

‘I agree with Sam,’ said Helen. ‘If we can, we want to stick to the “one night of madness” story. I’ll be frank, I don’t think the public – and women in particular – really buy the sex-addict story. Michael Douglas got away with it because it was a new angle, but we’ve since had Duchovny, Charlie Sheen, Tiger Woods; it’s become the get-out clause for anyone caught with their pants down.’

‘We need to do a high-profile interview,’ said Valerie. ‘The biggest possible numbers. Letterman’s already been in touch, so has Ellen DeGeneres.’

Helen nodded. ‘We need to present Sam as penitent. I’m thinking Hugh Grant after Divine Brown. Can you do tears, Sam?’

‘Can he do tears?’ scoffed Eli. ‘Sam is one of the greatest actors of his generation.’

‘Yes, I like this,’ replied Valerie. ‘We can go with how you didn’t know she was an escort, you thought she was just a nice ordinary girl. You love Jessica, but you were lonely because you spend so much time apart. And you’re just an ordinary boy who made a big fat lousy mistake.’

Sam could see the sense of what they were saying, but he had stage fright just thinking about it.

‘I don’t care what we do. But can we just be careful that I don’t end up looking more of an arsehole than I already do? And can we keep Jessica out of this as much as possible? This is my fault, not hers.’

‘That’s exactly it,’ said Valerie enthusiastically. ‘That’s what your public want to hear – you’re sorry, but you still care.’

‘Great,’ said Helen. ‘Let’s set up one of the talk shows. In the meantime, we’ll give the Sun an exclusive interview. It should make it more difficult for them to publish sex-pest stories when they’ve run three thousand words on “My Loneliness Hell”. And Valerie’s right, you should use that line, Sam. “It’s my fault. Not hers.” That comes across well.’

‘Let’s play up your trip to Scotland too,’ said Valerie, her Botoxed face looking almost animated. ‘Some sort of wounded-artist-in-the-wilderness angle. Maybe hint at an interest in green issues, that sort of thing. Moving forward, we need to get visiting some soup kitchens, children’s homes, maybe some refugee camps. Haiti perhaps. Sudan. Get you papped doing it.’

Sam flinched. ‘I like that stuff to be private.’

‘Not any more,’ said Helen tartly.

Eli looked at Jim. ‘What do you think about finding Sam a killer script? Nothing’s going to help him like a shitload of good reviews. But we should avoid the lovable rogue thing. We need vulnerable bumbling Brit, like Grant in Notting Hill.’

‘Good luck with finding that one,’ sniffed Jim, adjusting his shirt cuffs. ‘Great rom-com scripts are like gold-dust.’

Suddenly Sam had an idea, an idea he knew could work. He saw light appear at the end of a very long tunnel.

‘Why don’t I write a script myself?’

He looked around the room. Everyone was nodding, but he could tell they were just humouring him.

‘Seriously, why not? I did write a show we took to the Edinburgh Fringe, you know.’

‘Sure, buddy,’ said Eli. ‘You give it a shot.’

Screw them, thought Sam as his agent, lawyer, manager and PR got on with the business of arranging the life of this character called Sam Charles. I can do this, I really can. It was time for Sam, the real Sam, to get on with the business of being himself.