Private Lives

17



‘So. Tell us all about it.’

Anna took a long drink of her wine. Oh God, she thought, the last thing she wanted to do on her night off was relive the nightmare of the Sam Charles debacle for the amusement of her two best friends.

‘Come on,’ said Cath. ‘It’s not every day your best mate makes the News at Ten.’

‘Besides,’ added Suzanne, her eyes wide, ‘we want to hear about your new friend Sam.’

They were sitting around Anna’s small dining table, drinking Sauvignon Blanc as Anna transferred Chinese takeaway from silver-foil dishes on to china plates. It was just like old times, when the three girls had shared a house in Bermondsey when they were at King’s College. They weren’t students any more – Suzanne was now a GP at a practice in Balham, Cath worked for one of the high-street newsagents ‘sourcing bloody Christmas decorations’, as she put it – but they still enjoyed teasing each other and mining for gossip.

‘There’s nothing to tell,’ said Anna, trying to deflect the conversation. ‘Sam Charles was a client, we got stitched up with the injunction. And now I’m being filmed taking my bins out.’

‘I can’t believe you were acting for Sam Charles and didn’t even tell us,’ said Suzanne with mock-offence. ‘I mean, Sam Charles!’

Anna laughed.

‘These things happen really quickly. You get instructed by the client, you get the injunction – or not. That’s it, end of story. It’s not like I’m getting invited to the Oscars, is it? Besides, client confidentiality and all that, I’m not really supposed to tell you in the first place.’

Cath drained her wine and reached for the bottle. ‘To think we actually feel sorry for you sometimes. You always seem so busy, you never have time to come out any more. We think you’re being worked into the ground and then we find out about this exciting clandestine life you’ve been leading the whole time.’

‘Exciting? It’s hard work and stressful,’ insisted Anna.

Cath pouted. ‘Oh, is it hard for you? All the paparazzi and the film stars? I spent the week looking at tinsel snowmen.’

‘Is he as gorgeous in the flesh?’ asked Suzanne. ‘He was so hot in that Blue Hawaii remake. His six-pack is amazing.’

‘Yes, it is,’ said Anna absently, thinking back to the moment when they were standing on the yacht together, the intimacy of the situation, the flash of tanned torso peeking out from under his towelling robe. She felt her neck prickle red.

Cath didn’t miss her discomfort. ‘Hang on, you’ve seen his six-pack?’ she replied, her mouth dropping open.

Anna held up her hands.

‘I had to go and interview him in Capri, on this yacht . . .’

‘Hold on, hold on,’ said Cath. ‘Rewind. You’ve seen his six-pack? On a yacht? In Capri? I knew I should have studied law.’

Anna sipped her Sauvignon, trying to keep cool.

‘Come on. Here we are, three successful, intelligent women, and we’re talking about six-packs.’

Cath snorted. ‘You’ve been hanging out with the world’s most famous philanderer, Sam Charles. What do you expect us to talk about? Tolstoy? Come on, how gorgeous is he?’

‘He’s very attractive.’

‘You fancy him.’ Suzanne grinned.

‘I do not,’ she lied. ‘He’s a client.’

‘Why did he shag that hooker?’

‘What part of client confidentiality don’t you understand?’

Suzanne topped up Anna’s glass.

‘Let’s come back to this later when we’ve plied her with booze, eh?’

Anna was glad her friends had come over. Cath was right: she did work too hard, always making excuses whenever they asked her out for a drink, and she had missed the banter and the cameraderie, especially after the isolation of the past week. In fact, she had been so stressed and grumpy, she had almost cancelled their gossipy night in. She was glad she hadn’t.

‘So, other than the Sam Charles case, what else have you been up to? Is the new firm better than the last place?’

Anna dug her fork into her noodles.

‘Well, both the senior partners hate me. Which I suppose you could see as progress; only my direct supervisor hated me at Davidson’s.’

‘Balls to the boss,’ said Suzanne. She had always been a lightweight; she’d only had two glasses of wine and already her can-do doctor façade was melting away.

‘What else?’ said Cath. ‘And you’re not allowed to talk about work.’

‘Well, Sophie’s getting married,’ said Anna. The casualness with which she dropped it into the conversation surprised even herself.

Cath and Suzanne put their glasses down at the same time, instantly seeming to sober up. ‘Oh no,’ said Suzanne. ‘Why didn’t you tell us? How? When?’

Anna puffed out her cheeks, then shrugged.

‘My parents told me a couple of weeks ago. The wedding’s next month in Italy.’

‘Not at that amazing villa?’

‘The very same.’ She nodded.

She tried to think about it in a detached way, like a news item or a piece of gossip about some remote acquaintance, but it was still difficult to actually say out loud. It must be the wine, she thought.

‘Are you going to go?’ asked Cath.

‘No. I’ve told them I’m too busy at work, even though most of my work has actually dried up since the Sam Charles balls-up.’

‘I think you should,’ said Suzanne decisively.

‘Yes, I agree,’ said Cath. ‘Don’t give her the bloody satisfaction.’

‘You two sound like my parents.’

Suzanne ignored her. ‘It’ll be hard, but sometimes you’ve just got to run at it and hope you make it through to the other side. ’Cos it’s a better place over there, you know. Through it. Over it.’

Anna look a long swig of wine, focusing on the taste of cherries and gooseberries as it slid down her throat.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said finally. Part of her was desperate to discuss Sophie’s wedding with someone – deep down she knew that one of the reasons for inviting her friends around was to offload this tangled mess of feelings, to sort them out, work out how she really felt. But now she had voiced it, she knew she was in danger of getting teary, and had no intention of letting her old friends see that.

‘Oh, did you hear that Maggie McFarlane has got some hot new banker boyfriend?’ she said, moving the conversation to safer ground.

‘Maggie? Yes, she met him on Match.com.’

‘I thought she said she’d never do Internet dating.’

‘Never say never.’ Cath smiled. ‘Not when there are hot bankers out there.’

Suzanne looked at Anna over the top of her glass. ‘I think you need to get back out there. Dating, that is.’

Anna snorted, trying to ignore the remark. ‘Knowing Anna, she’s dating George Clooney in the secret life she’s not telling us about,’ said Cath.

‘I’m too busy for a man.’

‘I thought you said work had dried up after the Sam Charles injunction.’

‘Stop hassling me or I’m going to have to injunct you.’

Suzanne sat forward and squeezed Anna’s hand.

‘Honey, it’s been two years. How much sex have you had in that time?’

Anna felt her stomach clench. That was the sort of question she really didn’t want to answer.

‘What is this?’ she said, trying to deflect their concern. ‘Some sort of NHS survey?’

‘I knew it. None,’ said Cath with disapproval.

‘I thought you were over him,’ said Suzanne finally.

Anna knew immediately what she meant.

‘I am,’ she sighed. ‘The fact that he’s getting married to my sister in four weeks doesn’t make me want to do cartwheels, but he’s not the reason I’m single.’

‘So you’ve got a month to find someone,’ said Cath.

‘I’m not going to the wedding.’

‘But if you really are over him, then what better way to tell the world than by turning up in Tuscany with some sexy young hunk on your arm. Stop being the victim. Get off your bum and make things happen.’

‘What about Sam Charles?’ said Suzanne.

Anna threw a felt cushion at her.

‘What?’ said Suzanne, protecting herself. ‘You’ve hung out in Italy with him once. Ask him for a rematch.’

‘First, he’s my client. Secondly, he hates me. Thirdly, he’s a movie star. Oh, and a cheat.’

‘You’re prettier than that escort girl,’ said Cath.

‘Oh, thanks. Is that supposed to be your idea of a motivational speech?’

‘Yes, and my catchphrase is “Think of the six-pack”.’

It was 10.30 p.m. by the time her friends finally left. Anna scraped the plates into the bin, drained the leftovers from two bottles of wine into one glass and returned to the sofa. Outside, it had finally gone dark, and the solitary lamp in the corner cast a low glow around the room. She’d overstretched herself, three years earlier, buying Rosemary Cottage, a tiny whitewashed terraced house in Richmond, but it was the best decision she’d ever made. She couldn’t quite hear the river, and the frequent roar of the aeroplanes on their way to nearby Heathrow wasn’t ideal, but sometimes she would just close her eyes, pretend she was in some gorgeous little village in the Cotswolds and let all of her worries fall away. Not that it was quite working tonight. There was one worry that was overriding all the others at the moment: the fear of losing her job. And after such a public failure, would she find another one? Media legal work hadn’t been hit as much as some sectors in the downturn – you could always rely on actors and sportsmen to make a mess of their lives – but firms were certainly tightening up, making do with the employees they had rather than taking on more staff. And if she had no job, there was the real possibility of losing this wonderful little house. The thought of how things could unravel so quickly made her shiver.

‘Come on, Anna,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Stop being the victim.’ That was what Cath had said, and it was solid advice. What was really so bad? She had a fab house, nice legs and a good brain, didn’t she? She smiled to herself. That could be her dating profile for Match.com.

Pulling her iPad off the coffee table, she switched it on, typing ‘Match.com’ into Google.

‘Start Your Love Story!’ it instructed.

‘I need a fag,’ she mumbled, reaching down for her handbag at the foot of the sofa. Rummaging inside, her hand immediately touched something crammed in the top. It was the brown envelope Ruby Hart had given her in Green Park. She’d meant to sift through its contents back at the office, but by the time she’d got back to her desk, Ruby’s claims had seemed more ridiculous and irrelevant to her own life than they had when she had spoken to her.

She lit her cigarette and hesitated a moment before she put the iPad beside her, and tipped the envelope out on to her lap. There was surprisingly little inside. Some newspaper cuttings, a copy of Amy Hart’s post-mortem report and a photograph of a pretty blonde girl, no more than nineteen or twenty. She speed-read the document and immediately saw that Ruby was right: the tabloids had shown some interest in Amy’s death in the days after it happened – ‘Soap Star’s Girlfriend Tragedy’ – but after the inquest there was nothing in the press except a tiny story in the Globe reporting that there had been an inquest into the death of ‘a party girl linked to soap star Ryan Jones’.

Anna looked at the date of the story: the Saturday that the whole world had run with the Sam Charles exposé. Amy Hart’s death was lucky to make page seventeen. Anna knew only too well that the Globe had devoted most of the paper to Sam and Jessica.

She stared down at the newsprint, hearing Ruby Hart’s words in her head. I know what sort of law you do, Miss Kennedy. You cover things up for rich people. She smarted at the memory. She knew she hadn’t gone into media law for any more noble purpose than that it had seemed exciting, well paid and interesting. She was a news junkie – it was one of the things she had in common with Andrew – and life as a media lawyer was a thrilling way to be in the heart of it.

But Ruby had made her professional life sound so immoral; and it embarrassed her to know that that was what the young girl thought of it.

What harm can it do to look into this a little? she asked herself, studying one of the early stories more closely. It had run a photo of Amy walking hand in hand out of a nightclub with Ryan Jones. She was barely recognisable from the natural girlie blonde in the family snapshot. Her hair was longer, a brassier blond. A micro-mini showed off long legs in towering heels. This girl was confident, glamorous, in control.

What a waste, thought Anna, feeling a sudden desire to help Ruby Hart. She stubbed out her cigarette, picked up her iPad and typed ‘Ryan Jones’ into Google. There were dozens of tabloid stories about him: a dalliance with a busty reality TV star, a recent drink-driving conviction, an involvement in a punch-up in a west London pub, even a racist outburst at the Notting Hill carnival.

Hmm, nice guy, she thought, sipping her wine as she read on.



In a rare case of life imitating art, soap bad boy Ryan Jones was accused yesterday of attacking a musician and ‘hurling racist insults’ at her during a fracas at Sunday’s carnival. Ryan Jones, who plays car mechanic Jamie Doyle in Barclay’s Place, has been at the centre of a controversial storyline in the soap following the arrival of an Asian family in the street, culminating in the arrest of Jones’s character for arson following a suspicious fire. ‘People should not confuse what happens on their TVs with what happens in real life,’ said Blake Stanhope, Mr Jones’s PR representative . . .





Anna felt herself miss a breath. She reread the last line of the news item more slowly. Ryan Jones was represented by Blake Stanhope.

Time seemed to stand still as the significance of what she had just read sank in, then her pulse started racing. She Googled Blake Stanhope’s own website and scrolled through his clients section. Ryan wasn’t listed. Then again, Blake would have had hundreds of clients over the years, some of whom he dealt with personally, others who’d be handled by his team.

She stared at the grainy photograph of Amy and Ryan in the newspaper cutting. He was a thug and a bully if you believed the stories about him. But could he have been involved in Amy’s death? Was Ruby Hart right that he’d pushed her down the stairs? And had he instructed Blake to minimise the press coverage of his summons to the inquest?

Her mouth had gone dry as she’d thought it through. If Blake was acting for Ryan and had wanted to bury the story, why not kill two birds with one stone by leaking the Sam Charles story to the press? That way he netted himself a fat fee for the exclusive on Katie and Sam’s sexploits while also ensuring Ryan Jones would be kept out of the spotlight.

Anna frowned. Was she being paranoid? A little voice in her head told her to calm down. But no. This was exactly the sort of win-win PR coup that Stanhope could pull off.

She felt angry, used. A spike of injustice swelled in her throat.

You bastard, she thought, staring at Blake Stanhope’s earnest black-and-white photograph on the website.

Her eyes drifted to the photo of Amy Hart. Pretty, smiling, hopeful.

She hadn’t been able to help Sam Charles, but maybe she could somehow help Amy.

She picked up the phone and called the number that had been scribbled on the back of the brown envelope.

‘Ruby? It’s Anna Kennedy.’

‘I knew you’d get back to me.’ She could almost see the young girl smiling down the telephone.

‘I want to help you, Ruby. I want to help you find out the truth about your sister.’

‘Did you read everything I gave you?’

‘I did,’ said Anna, already wondering how she could achieve her next step. ‘And I think it might be worth me meeting with Ryan Jones,’ she said, realising it was her turn to kill two birds with one stone.