Private Lives

7



‘Ecco! Ecco! Taxi! Taxi!’

Anna walked down the ramp as the hydrofoil clunked into dock in Capri’s Marina Grande and pulled her sunglasses down from the top of her head.

Wow, she thought, taking in the pastel sugar-cube houses clinging to the towering cliff, watching the streams of chic daytrippers chattering excitedly as they disembarked from the boat. Thirty minutes earlier she had left Naples, one of Italy’s poorest cities, with its crumbling tenements, and now she was here, the sparkling sea to her left and a branch of Roberto Cavalli to her right. She felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, swept up, whisked away and deposited in a fantasy land.

Where, though, she wondered, were Sam Charles’s people? She picked up her overnight bag and wandered away from the dock. Thankfully she was travelling super-light – there had only been time to grab her pyjamas and her passport when she had stopped at her house on the way to the airport. But arrangements had been worryingly loose about how she was supposed to find her client.

‘Don’t worry, Sam’s people will find you,’ his manager Eli had told her breezily. All right for you to say, thought Anna, feeling the heat in her frankly impractical lawyer’s suit. You’re in an air-conditioned office in LA.

‘Hey there!’

She turned to see a short, skinny guy running down the dock towards her. He was wearing shorts and one of those fancy Bluetooth headsets. He definitely looked like one of Sam’s people.

‘Anna, right?’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘I’m Josh, Sam’s PA. I’m gonna take you to him.’

‘Well, I hope we’re going in one of those things,’ she said, pointing to a line of open-topped taxis with bright striped awnings.

‘Uh-uh,’ said Josh. ‘Even better.’

He took her bag and led her down some stone steps. At the bottom was a beautiful wooden motor launch, all polished wood and chrome.

Oh yes, very Sophia Loren, thought Anna as Josh helped her inside.

‘So where’s Sam?’ she called over the roar of the engine as the boat zoomed out of the bay leaving a trail of foaming white wake behind it.

‘Just around this headland,’ replied Josh, pointing to a white yacht moored about two hundred metres from the shoreline.

‘He’s not staying in a hotel?’ said Anna, surprised.

‘He’s working. Under the circumstances, it’s best he’s out there rather than on land.’

She wondered if Josh knew about ‘the incident’, and if he did, who else had been informed. She had no reason to doubt Josh’s loyalty, but as she understood it, he was a new addition to Sam’s team, and that posed a security risk. No doubt he was being well paid, but a story this explosive was worth hundreds of thousands.

‘I hear you’ve just joined Sam,’ said Anna casually.

‘Yes, great way to start off, huh?’ smiled Josh. ‘And Sam’s such a sweetheart too.’

Anna nodded non-committally. She hadn’t made up her mind about Sam Charles quite yet. She always made a point of swotting up on her clients before she met them, so she had spent the entire flight to Naples reading a file of interviews, bios and news stories about the actor. Sifting through the gushing profile features, the overall impression she came away with was that Sam Charles was an operator. One minute he was just another member of some university revue show, the next he was making indie Brit movies and in the space of just a few years had graduated to Hollywood. That sort of meteroic rise didn’t happen by accident. Even with the right contacts, management and partner, it took more than luck to get on in the most cut-throat town in the world. All the evidence says ‘ruthless player’, but I’m prepared to be proved wrong, she smiled to herself, thinking of Ilina Miranova, and the preconceived ideas of what she would be like before she met her.

The speedboat moored at the back of the yacht.

‘No heels on board, I’m afraid,’ said Josh, looking down at Anna’s shoes.

She slipped them off and with Josh’s help clambered awkwardly aboard.

‘Sam’s aft – that’s the back of the boat to you and me.’ Josh smiled.

Anna found Sam Charles leaning against the railings. His towelling robe hung open. His hair was damp, his tanned feet bare, and he was staring out to sea with a cigarette dangling between two fingers. She couldn’t help but think he looked like a post-coital gigolo, but there was no mistaking that he was absolutely beautiful. It was a moment before he realised she was there.

‘Hello,’ he said uncertainly.

‘Anna Kennedy,’ she said, stepping forward with her hand out. When he still looked confused, she added, ‘Solicitor from Donovan Pierce?’

‘I thought Helen Pierce was coming?’ he said.

‘Helen’s tied up in London, I’m afraid.’ His look of worry was unmistakable. ‘Don’t worry. This is what I do. Injunctions. Privacy matters.’

She stopped herself from giving him a potted version of her CV. She knew he was assessing her, wondering if she was up to the job. She didn’t take it personally. In all her years working in media law, she had learned that celebrities always wanted the best, and that meant the partner with their name above the door. Of course, the figurehead was not necessarily the person most suited to the task, but it was the perception of getting the very best that was important.

‘Well I guess we’d better make a start,’ said Anna quickly. She didn’t want to give him time to start questioning her suitability. She was under strict instructions to get the job done as speedily as possible. ‘Maybe we should go somewhere private?’ she added.

‘Sure,’ he said, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘Come over to my stateroom.’

Anna hadn’t been on many yachts, so she was surprised and a little disappointed to find that Sam Charles’s grandly titled stateroom was just a rather compact bedroom. She sat down at the small desk and opened her notebook as Sam paced about, distracted and anxious.

‘She called me twenty minutes ago, you know,’ he said, running his hand through his damp dirty-blond hair.

For a minute she couldn’t stop looking at him. She’d met models before who looked other-worldly, but that was because of their long, skinny bodies and their exaggerated features. But Sam’s handsomeness, his flawless skin, the intense, extraordinary blueness of his eyes made him look a breed apart.

‘Who?’

‘Katie. The girl. She said she’d been talking to Blake Stanhope.’

Anna nodded. She could well have done without Stanhope’s involvement, but with a story this big, it was only to be expected.

‘What else did she say?’

‘She demanded more money, can you believe that?’

‘You didn’t tell her to eff off again, did you?’

Sam chuckled, the atmosphere between them thawing a little. ‘Not this time.’

He sat down on the bed.

‘Okay, coach,’ he said. ‘What do we do now?’

His gaze unsettled her. In the small room, surrounded by sea, it felt too intimate to be professional.

‘Now you tell me everything. From the beginning.’

He smiled. ‘I was worried you were going to say that.’

Despite his reluctance, Sam told her as much as he could remember about his encounter with Katie. Every now and then Anna would stop him to ask for more detail, scribbling down notes as she went. As she listened, she asked herself how someone so good-looking and successful could be so stupid. But then she had seen this kind of behaviour dozens of times. Whether it was an actor or a sportsman or a singer, celebrities thought they were bulletproof; they didn’t think normal rules applied to them. She wondered how many other women Sam had slept with. Actresses, extras, models, wives. It didn’t matter that he had Jessica Carr, one of the world’s most desirable women, waiting at home for him. The bottom line was always the same: they did it because they could.

‘So you had penetrative sex with her?’ she asked. She felt her face flush; she was glad the light on board was peachy and low.

Sam pulled a face. ‘Yes. We had sex. Well, very probably. But it’s worse than that.’

‘Kinky sex?’

‘No!’ said Sam defensively. ‘She’s a hooker.’

‘You paid her?’

‘No. Yes. Well sort of. I gave her some money to get a cab home and for the hotel. I was trying to be nice.’

Anna frowned.

‘So if you didn’t pay her for sex, why do you say she’s a hooker?’

‘She told me when she phoned just now. She said she’s worked as an escort in the past. That’s not going to look good, is it?’

Anna shook her head. ‘It isn’t ideal, no.’

‘What can we do?’

For a second he didn’t look like the cocksure, arrogant celebrity she had pegged him down as.

‘We get an injunction to stop publication of the story.’

‘For libel? But I slept with her.’

‘She has to prove it.’

‘She’s got a photo on her mobile that shows us in bed. Who knows when she took it? Probably after the tenth tequila.’

‘Can I see it?’

He passed the mobile across.

‘Well, it shows you in bed, it doesn’t show you having sex. Anyway, we won’t get an injunction to prevent the libel, we’ll get a gagging order on the grounds of privacy.’

‘Privacy? How does that work?’

‘Well, you were in a private place. If someone took a picture of your sister in bed without her consent, you’d be outraged, wouldn’t you? Just because you’re famous, it doesn’t mean someone can invade your private space willy-nilly. Plus the story will have repercussions on your family life – the courts take that into consideration. You’re not the only one who could be harmed by it.’

Sam looked more hopeful.

‘So you think we’ll get the order?’

‘The defence could argue that they have to publish the story in the public interest because you’re a celebrity, a role model, but they’re unlikely to be successful.’

Anna scribbled on her pad, sketching out her strategy. It was the thing she loved best about the law. Deciding on the best course, storyboarding the way she wanted it all to go. As she drew up the plan, she began to feel more and more confident. Helen’s idea to stall Katie had been clever. It had bought them some breathing space and a strong chance to get a gag in before Blake Stanhope could go to the papers.

‘Do you really think we’ll be able to stop all the media from reporting the story? Papers and TV and everything?’ asked Sam.

‘Actually I think it’s better to stop her before she can even approach the media,’ said Anna thoughtfully. ‘Once the press get hold of the story they can be mischievous with the information even if they’ve been injuncted – blind stories, juxtaposing pictures and headlines. Ideally we want to avoid the media ever knowing about this story.’

‘So we gag Katie?’

She nodded. ‘And Blake Stanhope. I’d want to check this with counsel – the barrister we instruct – but I think it’s the best way forward.’

‘So you don’t think the newspapers will know about it yet?’

She shook her head.

‘If she was telling you the truth, Katie hasn’t even met Blake yet. He’ll want to see her supporting evidence and make sure she’s completely legit. He’ll also want to make sure she’s not going to pull out at the last moment. After all, it’s a big thing telling the world that you’re a hooker. So I doubt he’ll start approaching the media for at least twenty-four hours, probably longer. And the papers won’t just print it either. First they’ll have to meet Katie, take sworn affidavits, et cetera, et cetera. And by that time, she’ll be gagged.’

Sam still looked troubled.

‘But can we move quickly enough? I won’t be able to get to London until Thursday.’

‘Don’t worry.’ She smiled. ‘You don’t have to be in court. It’s usually swarming with court reporters, so if it’s privacy you’re after, it kind of defeats the purpose you being there.’

She watched him thinking it through. She could sympathise; it was a scary thing to have your whole life hanging in the balance, even if he had brought this on himself.

Finally he looked at her. ‘Thank you,’ he said simply.

His words made her feel confident and flattered.

‘You’re welcome.’

Josh was hovering at the door.

‘Miss Kennedy?’ he said. ‘The tender is here to take you to shore.’

She stood up and closed her notebook.

‘So what do we do now?’ asked Sam.

She smiled at him.

‘I leave you here in beautiful Capri, go back to London and instruct counsel.’

‘What time is your flight?’

‘First flight out of Naples tomorrow morning. I’m going to instruct Nigel Keyes, a very brilliant QC I’ve worked with before, and I’ll give him your witness statement. I’m confident we’ll get the temporary injunction by close of play. Then we go back next week, see the judge and get it extended. But that’s usually just a formality.’

Sam hesitated for a moment, then turned to Josh.

‘Can you get the boat to wait for a few minutes?’ he said, then, turning to Anna, ‘Do you mind if I cadge a lift over with you?’

‘Not at all. It’s your boat.’

‘I think it’s some Italian billionaire’s borrowed for the shoot.’

‘I thought all movie stars had their own yachts.’

‘I spent the money on tequila.’

She waited for him on the deck, watching a flock of starlings wheel and dip over the headland as the sun sank towards the pink horizon. When he emerged, he was wearing chinos and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. One of those simple thrown-together outfits that somehow looked perfect on truly beautiful people.

He’s a client, Anna, she scolded herself. You shouldn’t be getting all gooey-eyed over him. And he’s a cheater too.

‘Where are you staying?’ asked Sam as he helped her down into the launch.

‘Studio Rosso, wherever that might be. The firm’s travel agent booked it. As you can imagine, there wasn’t an awful lot of choice at twenty-four hours’ notice when it’s peak season in Capri.’

‘Tell you what, I’ll give you a lift. Giovanni, that’s my driver, he knows every house on the island. He’ll know your hotel and has probably dated the owner’s daughter.’

As they slid over to the marina, Anna could see a stretch of pebbly beach dotted with umbrellas; the sun-worshippers in their sarongs and tiny Speedos were rolling their towels and packing up for the day. Sam led her along the jetty and across the road, where a deeply tanned man in his sixties was leaning against a bottle-green Mercedes sedan.

‘Anna, Giovanni,’ said Sam. ‘Giovanni, this bella signorina is Anna. Do you think you could drop her off at her hotel, Studio Rosso?’

Giovanni grinned, revealing a set of amazingly white teeth. ‘It would be my pleasure. It is on the other side of the island.’

‘That’s good,’ said Anna. ‘At least I’ll get to see some of Capri on my whistle-stop visit.’

‘Have you never been here before, signorina?’ asked Giovanni over his shoulder as they set off at breakneck speed.

‘No, I wish.’

With the pressure of work, Anna hadn’t had a proper holiday in over eighteen months. Her romance with Andrew had been sprinkled with mini-breaks to Prague, Dublin and Rome; they’d both worked as hard as each other, trying to scramble up the career ladder as fast as they could, but they had still found time for pleasure. As a single girl, there seemed less point taking two weeks off to spend it alone.

‘In that case, I think we need Giovanni’s pat-pending island tour,’ said Sam.

‘Bellissimo,’ beamed Giovanni. ‘I envy you, signorina, you get to see Capri for the first time.’

Anna laughed. ‘That sounds good.’

The car pulled away up the hill towards Anacapri, the sprawling village at the top of the island. The windows were wound down, flooding the car with pine-scented air. Anna got a feel for the island immediately. It was lush but craggy – the sharp edges of the cliffs would suddenly jut up to the sky, then plummet down to the sea, their sides softened by green trees and bougainvillaea. Each villa they passed seemed more perfect than the last, each twist of the road revealed another ravishing view, and everything seemed old and crumbly and yet smart and elegant at the same time. Along the way Sam pointed out the sights of Capri – down the cliffs towards the Blue Grotto, the Faraglioni rocks, the San Giacomo monastery – with the confidence and affection of someone who had spent a lot of time on the island.

He leaned forward and tapped Giovanni on the shoulder.

‘Can you stop here a moment?’

They pulled up in a dusty lay-by and Sam led Anna to a gap in the low boundary wall.

‘Come on,’ he said, offering her his hand. They shuffled carefully down a short, narrow path, brushing between bushes and emerging in a small clearing on the edge of a cliff.

Anna’s eyes opened wide. They could see all the way down to the Marina Grande with its bustling pastel-coloured houses and smart schooners bumping against fishing boats. Beyond that, the jade and turquoise-marbled sea stretched across to the Bay of Naples, where she could see Mount Vesuvius rearing up on the mainland.

‘Brilliant, isn’t it?’ Sam smiled, sitting next to Anna on a rock. ‘It’s hard not to feel like Cary Grant when you’re up here.’

She looked at him in surprise. For some reason she hadn’t expected Sam to feel the same rush of excitement about being here, that same love of old-school Hollywood glamour.

He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one.

‘Can I bum a smoke?’ she asked.

He grinned. ‘Sorry for not offering. I thought I was the last of the smokers.’

They huddled like co-conspirators around his lighter’s flame.

‘I love the romance of this place,’ said Anna, inhaling. The scent of tar tangled with the heady floral aroma from some honeysuckle. ‘And I’m not leaving before I have a go in one of those convertible taxis, just so I can feel like Ava Gardner.’

‘Well, you look the part,’ he said, eyeing her navy pencil skirt and white shirt up and down.

She laughed nervously.

He blew a smoke ring. ‘Jess likes bling,’ he said quietly. ‘The yachts, the private jets, all that conspicuous consumption, but I’ve never been able to get her to sit through To Catch a Thief and she probably thinks Fellini is a type of shoe.’

He gave her a sideways glance.

‘You think I’m an arsehole, don’t you?’

‘I’m not here to judge you,’ said Anna. ‘I’m here to help you.’

He shrugged.

‘I realise that most people think I should be doing cartwheels to be living with one of the most beautiful, successful women in America, but . . . well, I don’t. I feel trapped. Being an actor is the only thing we have in common. Look, I’m not making excuses for having sex with that girl, but . . .’ He gave Anna a look that indicated he wanted to say more. ‘Sorry,’ he laughed. ‘I suppose I should be telling this to my shrink, not my lawyer.’

‘Don’t worry, I get it a lot,’ said Anna. ‘I’ve been thinking about having a couch put in my office.’

It was true: one thing celebrities, captains of industry and sports stars liked to do was offload their problems, to ‘over-share’, as they said on the American talk shows. Anna could sympathise – they were usually in trouble, after all – but she suspected it was usually less to do with introspection and more to do with a desire to talk about themselves. She looked at Sam, wondering if what he was saying was true. Maybe he was in a loveless relationship with Jessica. Or maybe it was something he had convinced himself into believing after he had slept with Katie, a way to justify an action he knew was wrong. One thing her line of work had taught her was that men didn’t have to be unhappy with their partners to cheat on them.

Uncomfortably, her thoughts strayed to the night she had found her own boyfriend, the man she had trusted, in bed with her sister. She remembered Andrew’s protestations that it wasn’t how it looked, how it meant nothing, how it would never happen again. But that had been a lie too, hadn’t it?

When Andrew had finally admitted that he was in love with Sophie, she had understood it. She understood that it was easy to fall in love with Sophie. Whether it was her beauty, her lusciousness, her slightly helpless charm, everyone who ever met her was pulled into her whirlpool.

What Anna could not understand, what had been so painful and made her feel completely stupid, was when Andrew had admitted that he was no longer in love with her, that the spark had gone from their relationship and she no longer made him happy.

Anna didn’t know Jessica Carr and certainly had no idea how she felt about Sam. But she knew one thing: no one deserved to be in a one-sided relationship.

‘If you really want to talk about it, can I give you some advice?’ she said finally.

‘What?’

She hesitated before she spoke.

‘Think about why it happened in the first place. If you’re miserable with Jessica, then maybe you should end it, not sleep with someone and then get an injunction to protect your relationship.’

‘What? So now you don’t want to get the gagging order?’

‘I never said that,’ she said, feeling a tremor of hostility. ‘I just meant that if you’re unhappy, you should change things to make yourself happy.’

Sam’s cheeks flamed.

‘It’s not that easy, though, is it?’

Anna shrugged.

‘It doesn’t have to be this difficult.’

He turned and got back into the car without speaking. Anna silently cursed herself, knowing she had overstepped the mark. She knew she shouldn’t let her personal experiences colour her professional actions.

They drove on through the island, each looking out of their own side of the car, the upbeat mood all but evaporated. Finally they entered Capri Town, where Giovanni stopped beside the bustling Piazzetta.

‘Studio Rosso is down there,’ he said, pointing towards a warren of back streets. ‘Keeping going straight ahead and you’ll see it. Tell Consuela I said ciao.’

‘Thanks, Giovanni,’ said Anna, climbing out. Just as she was about to close the door, Sam leaned forward.

‘Hey, are you hungry?’

‘Yes,’ she said, a little too quickly.

‘There’s a fantastic restaurant just down there called La Capannina. All the greats have been there: Sinatra, Loren.’ He smiled. ‘You said you wanted your own Ava Gardner moment.’

She was glad they were back on civil terms, but she felt a pang of disappointment that he wasn’t offering to accompany her. What did you expect, she thought to herself, a movie star wanting to go out for dinner with you?

‘I’d come with you,’ he said, as if reading her mind, ‘but I think that being seen in one of Europe’s busiest tourist spots with a pretty girl who is not my fiancée might get me in more trouble than I am already in.’

Anna laughed.

‘See?’ she said. ‘You’re learning.’

His expression became more serious, his blue eyes searching hers.

‘Will you call me as soon as you’re out of court? We can’t let them publish this, Anna.’

She knew she was being played, knew her first assessment of Sam had been correct: he was an operator. Celebrities were good at making you feel as if you were the most important person in the world so you would go the extra mile to oblige them.

‘I’ll do my best,’ she said and closed the door, waving as the car pulled away. She knew Sam Charles was probably a terrible rogue with a string of girls in every port. She knew he had probably lied about what had happened with that girl Katie. She knew at the very least that he was a first-class actor.

Even so, as she turned to walk down the cobbled street, Anna couldn’t help feeling that helping him was the most important thing in her life.