It Felt Like A Kiss

Chapter Nine




The funny thing was that when you were expecting the worst, sometimes the worst never materialised. When nothing happened, not even a tiny story tucked away on an inside page of the Sunday Chronicle, Ellie actually felt a little disappointed.

Probably disappointed wasn’t the right word, but it was definitely an anticlimax after a week of worrying and angsting and having insomnia that not even an oxygen facial and huge amounts of Touche Veloutee could disguise.

After scouring all the Sunday papers and not finding a single mention of her name or the phrase ‘secret lovechild’, only a couple of pictures of her half-sisters stumbling out of a Mayfair nightclub after a few too many sherbets, Ellie knew the storm had passed.

She was camping out on their unofficial roof terrace, which could only be accessed by climbing out of the bathroom window and got rather whiffy with the scent of chargrilled meat when Theo had the restaurant’s kitchen door open and the wind was blowing in the wrong direction. There’d been no wind, not even a stiff breeze, for weeks now and Ellie squinted up at the cloudless blue sky and decided to count her blessings, of which there were many.

For a start, she wasn’t that Sunday’s cause célèbre, and the silence from David Gold was deafening, so the story must have been killed. Maybe David Gold had used his charm and connections to call in some favours. Or maybe the editor of the Sunday Chronicle had decided that it was a non-story. After all, her father hadn’t released any new material or organised any global charity concerts for the victims of child poverty lately. He wasn’t exactly newsworthy, which meant that Ellie wasn’t newsworthy either, which was good because she didn’t have time to be newsworthy.

The Emerging Scandinavian Artists exhibition was now eight days away. The exhibits were mostly present and correct and all emerging Scandinavian artists had their travel itineraries, and their hotel bookings, confirmed. If the exhibition went well, then Ellie would earn a hefty commission. Maybe even enough that she could start flat-hunting soon.

Ellie stretched out her legs, which were tanned to a pale caramel colour and leaner, thanks to a week of being too stressed to eat more than trail mix and Greek yogurt, and gave a silent prayer of thanks because her life was pretty good.

Life would have been even better if she’d never had to warn her nearest (Vaughn) and her dearest (Ari and her grandparents) about her impending infamy.

‘I have to tell you, Cohen, you’re skating on very thin ice,’ Vaughn had said after he’d listened to Ellie’s ponderous explanation of the coming media apocalypse. ‘If there are paparazzi camped outside and interfering with my business …’ He’d tailed off with a meaningful look, his right eyebrow arched the way it always did when he was being a dick.

Breaking the news to her grandparents had been a cakewalk in comparison. There’d been a lot of recriminations about how it would never have happened if Ellie had been dating a nice Jewish boy, but they were completely down with the idea of maintaining a dignified silence, ‘though if things get really bad, bubbeleh, then I’m sure the Jewish Chronicle would run a sympathetic piece’.


That had left only Ari, who’d said nothing, had barely blinked, while Ellie had filled her in on all the gory details. She’d poured herself a double measure of vodka, downed it in one, then smashed the shot glass she’d been drinking from. That was followed by two plates, and a shouty, sweary invective about the gutter press, the moral failings of anyone connected, however tenuously, with the Law Society, and Ellie’s father’s inability to man up.

‘If he wanted to, he could stop this,’ she’d raged, as Mrs Okeke from the flat above banged on her floor. ‘But no! That would involve getting his hands dirty!’ Ellie had been surprised that Ari had taken it as well as she had …

‘What are you looking so chipper about?’ said a voice, and Ellie turned to see Tess with her head stuck out of the bathroom window. Her friend glanced down at the newspapers. ‘Oh shit! I was going to get up early and hold your hand while you went through them. Or is it not shit? Is that why you’re smiling?’

‘Bullet totally dodged,’ Ellie said, holding up the Sunday Chronicle for Tess’s inspection.

‘Thank God,’ Tess panted as she tried to manoeuvre herself through the sash window. It was a tricky procedure as the window only opened part-way and you had to fold your body in half while simultaneously trying to get both legs through the gap. ‘Sod it! I can’t do this when I’m wearing only a vest and a thong.’

‘I’ll come to you,’ Ellie decided. ‘I’m wearing bikini bottoms with full coverage.’

Ellie stood up and stretched, revelling in the heat of the sun and a distant but distinct wolf whistle from the four Australian guys across the road, who also had their own unofficial roof terrace.

‘Does this mean you’re going to start eating proper meals again?’ Tess asked. ‘No one can survive on Greek yogurt and trail mix alone.’

‘Too bloody right. I’m starving.’ Ellie looked at her watch. It was just after eleven. ‘If you start getting ready now, we could be having Sunday roast and cocktails at the York & Albany in just under an hour.’

Tess was already disappearing towards the bathroom before Ellie could get her legs through the gap in the window. ‘Make it half an hour,’ she threw over her shoulder. ‘I’m starving too. I had sympathetic stress.’

Ellie sailed through the week on a wave of euphoria. She worked hard – the Scandinavian exhibition was the last big push before the art world’s big hitters spent August in sunnier, beachier climes – but she was playing hard too.

She went to three exhibition pre-shows and after-show parties, attended a Jewish Cancer Care charity ball with Tanya, Emma and Laurel, schlepped all the way to New Cross for a F*ck Puppets gig and accepted an invite to Muffin’s birthday drinks, which was at a chichi Chelsea bar full of braying posh people. Ellie didn’t know what Muffin had been saying about her, but her friends kept telling Ellie that no one would ever guess she’d been ‘to a state school with a load of poors. You don’t look like a chav. You totes look like one of us.’

On Saturday night it was a relief to be back among her own people. Some of Ellie’s old friends from Central St Martins were having a barbecue in the huge back garden of their shared house in Ealing and had hired the biggest paddling pool they could find in direct contravention of the hosepipe ban.

It was the perfect summer party. Ellie sat dangling her legs in the controversial paddling pool, drank far too many glasses of Pimm’s and lemonade and got chatted up by a graphic designer who’d been in the year above her at college. Jacques was good-looking in a graphic designer-y way and listened attentively to what she had to say about the ratio of fruit to alcohol to lemonade in a perfect Pimm’s cup. Ellie gave him her number and responded with determined enthusiasm to his suggestion that they meet up to go to an open-air screening of Singing in the Rain.

Now that everything was back to where it should be, Ellie could start searching for Mr Normal, and if normal meant hanging out with guys like Jacques and not utter lowlifes like Richey, or corporate, suity guys who smiled too much, then Ellie could see herself totally embracing normal.

‘It’s not like he’s boring normal,’ she told Lola and Tess as they caught the tube back to Camden where a friend of Tom’s was hosting a special ‘Girl From Ipanema’-themed night in a pub on the Chalk Farm Road. ‘Like, he’s called Jacques, not Jack. His mum’s Swiss or something.’

‘As long as he is normal,’ Tess said. “I mean, he wants to take you to see a musical. Are you sure he’s straight?’

‘Don’t be so homophobic.’ Lola elbowed Tess sharply in the ribs. ‘Going to see musicals isn’t gay. It’s ironic. Or is it post-ironic?’

‘Maybe it’s post-post-ironic and is back to being ironic again?’ Ellie suggested, because she could never keep track of these things.

They argued about the difference between irony and post-irony all the way to Camden, then trooped up the escalators and down the High Street, grimly ignoring the hordes of beered-up men who’d apparently never seen three girls in short sundresses before.

Ellie was immensely relieved when they got to the pub on a road off Chalk Farm Road and she didn’t have to listen to Tess and Lola argue about hipsters now they’d moved on from the difference between irony and post-irony.

She pulled open the door and took a step back as she was enveloped in a sticky, hot fug that smelled of stale beer and sweat. ‘Yuck. Maybe it won’t be so heaving upstairs. Let’s go and find Ari.’

As Ellie reached the back of the pub, feet skidding over the wet floor, she bumped into Ari coming out of the back room where a cacophonous screech of guitars could be heard. She was with Tom, her face upturned as she said, ‘Sometimes, I think there’s been nothing truly new in music since 1968.’

‘What about acid house?’

‘That was a rip-off of sixties psychedelia with a Roland TB-303 Bass Line generator to give it the wobble sound. Like, the 13th Floor Elevators were—’

‘Ari! Mum!’

Her mother beamed. ‘Babycakes! Shall we go upstairs? This band are making my brain bleed.’

Upstairs Tom’s friend Carl was playing a set heavy on the Tijuana Brass and there was room to dance.

They’d been there for about an hour when Tabitha arrived, though she didn’t so much arrive as throw herself at Ellie. ‘Sweetheart! My darling girl,’ she cried and wrapped her arms around Ellie so tightly that she could hardly breathe. It wasn’t usual behaviour from Tabitha, who reserved her occasional displays of affection for Tom and Aaron Barksdale, their Bedlington terrier. ‘Oh, Ellie, I love you like you were my own and I have your back. Always.’

‘Aw, I love you too.’ Ellie hugged Tabitha in return. ‘Are you very drunk, Tab?’

‘No, you don’t understand.’ Tabitha shook her head. Usually she looked immaculate but her platinum blonde shampoo and set had wilted and her mascara was smudged like she’d been crying. ‘I’m sorry to have to show you this.’

She thrust a newspaper at Ellie, which had become damp and pulpy from being clutched in Tabitha’s sweaty grip. Ellie took it and as she unfurled it, the nagging doubts that had been at the back of her mind all week, like a mild toothache, returned. Then she was jolted so hard she almost fell off her heels.


On the front page of the Sunday Chronicle was a photo of herself taken three years earlier when she was a stone heavier (it was before she’d discovered superfood salads, five-day detoxes and toning trainers) on holiday in Ibiza. Ellie was posing in a red bikini, back arched, bum stuck out and holding aloft a strawberry daiquiri bigger than her head, and that wasn’t even the worst thing.

Not even close.

The worst thing was the headline, writ large in 144 point Times Roman: ‘SIR BILLY’S BASTARD DAUGHTER!’