It Felt Like A Kiss

Chapter Fourteen




Ellie really didn’t want to turn round. For one fanciful moment she thought back to the boring Tuesday afternoons spent studying for her bat mitzvah and the story of the sacking of Sodom and Gomorrah, and how Lot’s wife had been turned into a pillar of salt for looking round. Looking round really didn’t have a lot going for it.

Even so, Ellie turned round. ‘Oh, hello,’ she said to David Gold with all the enthusiasm she could summon up, which wasn’t that much. ‘How did you manage to get past my boss? He’s showing people out, not showing them in.’

That actually sounded rather rude, but apart from a lot of pretty assurances and big talk, he’d been precisely no help and now here he was turning up uninvited for a chat when Ellie wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold it together.

‘It would seem that my Law Society membership card has manifold uses,’ David Gold said, and when he smiled at her it was an echo of the man she’d met at Glastonbury. He wasn’t so buttoned up tonight. His red tie was loosened, top button of his shirt undone, suit jacket carried neatly in the crook of his arm, and his curly hair refused to be tamed by grooming products any longer. Ellie couldn’t look at his face because when she did, and he was smiling one of those glib smiles that never made it to his deep blue eyes, it still made her synapses sing. ‘Is there somewhere quieter we could go and talk?’

‘Can’t it wait until tomorrow?’ Ellie asked. His eyes darted from her to Lola and Tess, then to the floating Perspex bicycle. If they could just postpone this chat until the morning, then Ellie would feel stronger, more able to deal with him and all the difficult, complicated feelings that he stirred up in her. Not just still being attracted to him, even though she should know much better, but also the difficult complicated feelings she had for Billy Kay, which David Gold made even more fraught. He was only one step removed from her father and he made Billy Kay become real rather than remaining just a shadowy totemic figure for all the bad stuff that had happened when she was growing up. ‘I still have a few things to finish up here.’

‘I know it’s late, Velvet, but I’m afraid I really must speak to you with some urgency,’ he said, head lowered so his breath ghosted against her ear. The phantom touch of the dispelled air from his mouth made Ellie feel heavy and weighted down, until Lola snorted in disbelief.

‘Why are you calling her Velvet?’ she demanded, staring at David Gold imperiously. He didn’t flinch, even though Ellie had never seen Lola get fiercely protective before and it was very intimidating. ‘And why aren’t you listening when she tells you that now isn’t a good time?’

Tess looked a little less intimidating. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce us, Ellie?’ She was already holding out her hand to shake. ‘I’m Tess, Ellie’s best friend. We tell each other everything. How come she hasn’t told me anything about you?’

It was a good question. During all the hand-wringing and pearl-clutching that Tess had gamely suffered through, not once had Ellie mentioned David Gold’s name. She’d never even told her about the cute guy she’d met at Glastonbury because it had been so humiliating, and the bits that hadn’t been humiliating she’d wanted to hoard for herself.

‘I’m David Gold, Ellie’s fa—’

‘He’s Billy Kay’s lawyer,’ Ellie interrupted. ‘And this is Lola. Lola, David Gold.’

Lola didn’t shake his proffered hand. ‘So, Ells, what do you want to do?’

‘You’d better go to the after party. I’ll speak to you tomorrow,’ she said to Tess, who nodded understandingly.

‘OK, but if you change your mind, I don’t mind keeping you company tonight.’

‘Me too. We’ve got your back,’ Lola said with another pointed look at David Gold, who looked faintly amused at Lola’s Mama Bear routine. Then she and Tess hurried back to the Scandis.

‘I’m sorry to turn up unannounced but I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important,’ David Gold said in a low voice that made her blood surge, though Ellie couldn’t tell if it was lust or fear about this important new development that simply couldn’t wait. It took a second until she decided that she might be ready to look him in the eye, but before she could there was suddenly a woman right up in her face.

‘You found her, then?’ she barked at David Gold, in the rasping voice of someone who smoked at least thirty a day. ‘Well, well! Let’s have a proper look at you!’


Ellie took a step back. Then she took another step back because there was a lot to take in: a big-haired, buxom, forty-something blonde poured into a white jumpsuit, which shouldn’t have worked but did. Probably because the woman had the most amazing cleavage, was dripping with gold jewellery and the overpowering scent of Dior’s Poison, and obviously didn’t give a f*ck what anyone thought about her, when she obviously thought she was fabulous.

‘Hello,’ Ellie said. She didn’t know who this woman was or what she was doing with David Gold, but she was gazing at Ellie like she was a huge fruity cocktail and she wanted to slurp her right down. ‘Sorry, you are …?’

‘I wondered when you’d show up,’ David Gold said to the new arrival, and bent down to kiss her on each cheek. ‘We were just going to find somewhere a little more conducive to a quiet conversation.’

‘In a minute,’ the woman said in a tone of voice that suggested that she was the one who was used to giving orders and having them followed to the letter. ‘I just want to get a good look at little Velvet here.’

‘It’s Ellie,’ he told her sternly, though Ellie was sure he was faking. ‘She gets quite cross if anyone calls her Velvet.’

‘Hello. I’m standing right here,’ Ellie said and wished she hadn’t as the woman took two steps in towering gold sandals that brought her back into Ellie’s personal space bubble again. She was so close that Ellie could see where her fuchsia-pink lipstick was starting to bleed.

‘I can’t believe you’re all grown up,’ the woman told Ellie. ‘I really don’t know where all the time goes. So stupid of Ari and Billy to let this whole sorry business drag on for so long.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ Ellie said, forehead scrunching up in confusion because she didn’t know this woman, but this woman seemed to have previous knowledge of Ari and Billy Kay. ‘Have we met before?’

‘Ah, Cohen! There you are!’ Vaughn was striding towards them with a woman in tow. Ellie realised they were the last people in the gallery. ‘I see Georgie found you, then,’ he said to Ellie, who looked at him in bemusement. Vaughn knew her? Was she a client? ‘Cohen, Georgie is Billy Kay’s publicist. And Melanie’s been looking for you.’

Melanie was a high-flying, over-achieving VP at Goldman Sachs, who Ellie had been carefully cultivating for months. Melanie got up at four thirty every morning so she could run ten miles, then have a blowdry before she was at her desk at six thirty, and had once told Ellie that if Margaret Thatcher had managed on four hours’ sleep, so could she. She was the last person that Ellie wanted to deal with. Well, not the last person, but certainly one of them.

But Melanie, who was wearing a white Issa dress that Ellie had been lusting after hopelessly on Net-A-Porter, wasn’t interested in talking to Ellie. ‘David!’ Her face lit up when she said his name. ‘You do crop up in the strangest places.’

He smiled at her. It was somewhere between his Glastonbury smile and his lawyer smile. ‘I’d hate people to think I was predictable.’

Then he put his arm round Melanie to pull her in for a kiss and his hand settled just a few crucial centimetres below Melanie’s waist so that Ellie could tell that they knew each other intimately. Even if she hadn’t been sure, then the kiss, a fleeting brush of lips against lips, would have clued her in.

So, that was the type of woman that he went for – and Melanie was a woman; no one would ever dare call her a girl. She was also made from the same mould as the woman he’d been with at Glastonbury. Another glossy, size-six female with a ‘don’t f*ck with me’ attitude, who looked like she never burped or picked her nails or ordered pudding.

Melanie brushed the front of David Gold’s shirt with a proprietorial hand as if she was getting rid of an imaginary speck of dust. ‘You said you were going to call me,’ she reminded him in a playful tone with just the slightest edge.

‘I know, I’m sorry. I’ve been so busy. Had to fly out to LA at a moment’s notice,’ he said, and Ellie filed that nugget of information away; wondered if LA meant California, meant Napa Valley, where he’d had a council of war with Billy Kay. But now wasn’t the time to pursue that when Vaughn was standing there like a beleaguered dad trying to get his children out of the house and into the car.

Melanie glanced over at him. ‘David, do you know Vaughn?’

The two men sized each other up, then David smiled and held out his hand. ‘Didn’t we share an exasperated look at a UNICEF charity auction?’

At least Vaughn wasn’t the type of person to fall for such easy charm. Except, he was smiling and shaking David’s hand. ‘When Larry was sitting next to his mistress as he bid on a pair of limited-edition Louboutins for his wife?’

They had a brief, perfectly cordial conversation about how hideous charity auctions were, Melanie and Georgie chiming in, and Ellie stood there on the edge of the group of the four glittering people who appeared to be at the very pinnacle of their careers, who effortlessly fitted in and were accepted wherever they went. Or maybe they were all riddled with neuroses and insecurities but were just much better at hiding them than Ellie was.

‘I think you’ll find this piece interesting,’ Vaughn was saying as he led Melanie and, by default, David because she had a tight grip on his arm, over to the other end of the gallery, which left Ellie alone with Georgie.

‘Shall we start again?’ Georgie said with a wide smile. ‘I’m Georgie Leigh, Billy’s publicist. I’m not going to call him your father or anything crass like that, because he hasn’t exactly excelled himself in that department.’

Ellie knew she should be on her guard but there was something too unguarded about Georgie. ‘Hi,’ she said, and she dithered for one second about whether to shake hands or air kiss, but Georgie was already pulling her in for a pillowy, highly scented hug, her hand rubbing a circle on Ellie’s back. It felt oddly comforting.

‘Do you know that the last time I saw you, you couldn’t have been more than three months old?’ Georgie asked before she’d even released Ellie. ‘You were a babe in arms. Quite literally. I held you in my arms, though you’d just thrown up everywhere, but you were so beautiful I didn’t even mind.’

‘Oh? Ari’s never mentioned you,’ Ellie remarked in some surprise. ‘Did you know Tom and Tabitha too?’

Georgie threw her hands up so the assortment of gold-studded bangles and bracelets on her tanned wrists jangled. ‘It was so long ago, darling. I was more part of Billy’s scene. Or I hung around on the sidelines, hoping desperately that he’d notice me,’ she added wryly and Ellie knew what that felt like. Did she ever …?

The relief of meeting someone from Billy Kay’s camp that she could relate to, and who wasn’t David Gold, was immeasurable. ‘And now you’re his publicist? I guess he did notice you after all.’

‘Well, he let me do his press for free for a while and that seemed to go rather well. Hard for it not to when he’d released the best British album since Rubber Soul,’ Georgie said, and for a fleeting second Ellie could see the fangirl that she used to be. ‘Then other people wanted me to do their press and were prepared to pay for it and it’s all worked out rather well.’


Ellie bit her lip. She was tired and it was hard to think clearly, but there was a tiny piece of information lurking just out of reach that she tried to grasp. ‘Georgie Leigh … hmmm … Oh! Are you GL Communications?’

GL Communications was one of the best public relations companies in London, representing only a triple A-list, high-end roster of clients including a Rolling Stone, two Oscar winners, Britain’s most beloved TV chef, three thirty-something supermodels and at least five people who were described by the papers as national treasures. Ellie knew all this because the publicists at GL Communications were a terrifying bunch who made her jump through many flaming hoops to get their clients on a guest list for an opening night. A firm assurance that they’d be happy to have their photo taken with the artist usually required a huge bunch of flowers from Jane Packer and first dibs on Ellie’s firstborn.

‘Guilty as charged,’ Georgie said. ‘Imagine you hearing about my little company.’

‘It’s hardly little,’ Ellie demurred. ‘You must be far too busy to have to be bothered with—’

There was another jangle-laden hand gesture. ‘Don’t you dare start apologising! I’m the one who should be apologising,’ Georgie said emphatically. ‘Nobody but me looks after Billy, but I’ve been in Mustique for the last two weeks at a spa retreat. I couldn’t get any reception on my BlackBerry. Whoever heard of such a thing?’

‘Happened to me when I was in the Cotswolds in April …’

‘I don’t know what my assistant was thinking. She should have arranged for a f*cking carrier pigeon or flown out to get me when we first heard the Sunday Chronicle had been sniffing around. Has it been awful?’

All Ellie could do was nod. She knew that she should keep her own counsel until she’d spoken to Ari and got her take on Georgie Leigh, but Georgie had looked her right in the eye and hadn’t tried to spin the situation and she seemed … simpatico. ‘It’s been hell,’ Ellie told her. ‘It keeps getting more hellish by the hour.’

‘Has David been any help at all?’

The question threw Ellie and made her look uncertainly at the far end of the gallery where David Gold, Melanie and Vaughn were standing in front of a stark abstract painting. ‘Well, it’s been complicated …’ she began uncertainly. ‘I thought … he gave me the impression that he could make this go away and that the best thing I could do was to …’

‘… Maintain a dignified silence,’ Georgie finished for her. ‘He’s no PR. In fact, he’s banned from my offices because no one does any work when he comes in; they’re far too busy batting their eyelashes and asking if he wants a chai latte, but honestly, darling, I’m sure he did his best. After all, David’s two top priorities are his career and Billy Kay. They’re not mutually exclusive. The happier he keeps Billy, the more likely he is to make senior partner so I’m sure he did everything he could to get the story buried.’

‘So, is Billy Kay not happy about the story? About his bastard daughter being splashed all over the front pages?’ Ellie’s time limit on not falling to pieces had half an hour left on the clock but she could already feel that white-hot rage lift its head and roar. ‘Because I have to say that Lara and Rose Kay getting involved has just made the whole thing—’

‘Darling, darling, I know, I know,’ Georgie said, and she took hold of Ellie’s hand and squeezed it tightly. It kind of hurt because Georgie was wearing almost as many gold rings as she was bracelets. ‘Again, I take full responsibility. They’re looked after by one of my girls who really should have known better and checked with me, but I was probably having a bloody hot-stone massage or something ridiculous when I should have been putting out these fires.’

‘Well, it wasn’t really your fault,’ Ellie said, because actually if they were apportioning blame then this was still Richey’s fault. There wouldn’t have been a story if he hadn’t told the Sunday Chronicle that there was one, and going further back than that, it was really her own fault for being such a na?ve, trusting sap and being taken in by Richey’s big brown eyes and cheeky grin. Well, she’d learned her lesson and learned it hard, Ellie thought, and her gaze came to rest on David Gold’s back as he and Melanie walked towards the door.

Whatever it was that had been so very important that he just had to talk to her obviously wasn’t as important as leaving with Melanie so they could have sex. Hopefully she’d still manage to get her four hours’ sleep in.

I am being really bitchy, Ellie thought guiltily, which was a sure sign that she was overtired and overwrought and just generally over. ‘It’s been really nice to meet you,’ she told Georgie and she meant it. ‘But if there’s still things we need to talk about can we do it tomorrow? Surely it will keep for a few hours?’

‘Oh, darling, you look done in,’ Georgie all but cooed, and she stroked her hand down Ellie’s cheek, the way that Ari often did, which was a little disconcerting. ‘Do you know that you still have the same peachy soft skin that you had when you were a baby? Anyway … I have to talk to you, but not here. My car’s outside. We’ll go somewhere, we’ll have a little drinkie, get everything squared away and then my driver will give you a lift home. How does that sound?’

In other circumstances, on any other night, it would have sounded quite nice. But these were extraordinary circumstances. ‘Look, Georgie—’

‘The longer you prevaricate, the longer it will take,’ Georgie said with a smile. The smile didn’t disguise the fact that she refused to take no for an answer, which meant that what she wanted to talk about was going to be nothing Ellie wanted to hear. ‘Get your bag and in five minutes, we’ll be drinking ice-cold Martinis.’

It was easier to smile limply and walk in the direction of the stairs than argue the toss, but Ellie had no intention of discussing anything more with Georgie tonight. She almost cannoned into Vaughn, who was coming out of the packing room. ‘Still here, Cohen?’ He followed Ellie as she walked out of the gallery and began to climb the stairs. ‘I think you’d better work off site for the foreseeable future, or for the rest of your notice period, whichever comes first.’

Ellie had been hoping that the success of tonight’s launch meant that she and Vaughn could pretend her firing had never happened, but that wasn’t Vaughn’s style. Not when he could mess with her head. ‘Give me five minutes before you set the alarm. I’m going over the roof and down the fire escape to avoid the paps. Getting tasered by the security company’s fast-action response team is the last thing I need,’ Ellie said lightly, despite the fact her heart felt like a lead weight.

‘I’ll email you tomorrow,’ Vaughn said. ‘Don’t think you can slack off just because you’re not actually sitting behind your desk.’

That made Ellie feel a little better, like she was still utterly indispensable. She carried that comforting thought with her, along with her luggage, as she almost broke her neck going down the narrow fire escape.

It descended to a tiny alley that ran behind the mews, which narrowed to a mere aperture that led out onto Albemarle Street. Ellie hoped that Georgie’s car was parked somewhere else because the only thing she wanted to get into was a shower, then bed.


She’d call Georgie tomorrow morning and explain. Send her some flowers by way of an apology, Ellie decided as she dragged her suitcase along behind her, its wheels making a deathly racket on the cobblestones in the soft dark of the evening. She hoped it wasn’t loud enough to alert anyone to her presence. Anyone in the employ of a major newspaper, that was.

Then her heart quickened as she saw a shadowy figure standing at the mouth of the alley. She wasn’t sure if it was a photographer, or worse, because there were still worse things, like muggers and rapists. She was on first-name terms with panic and fear lately, but now a sense of menace crept over her like a cold fog drifting in from the sea.

Ellie took baby steps because she didn’t want to seize up in terror. She couldn’t continue her planned route unless the person in front of her let her pass, but she couldn’t retrace her steps either. He could easily catch up with her as she was wrestling her bags back up the metal stairs, and even if he didn’t, Vaughn would have set the gallery alarm system by now, shutting her out.

She peered into the darkness, thought about trying to croak out an authoritative ‘Who’s there?’ when the person stepped forward so Ellie could see his face in the dim light from the alley’s one lamppost.

‘So, this is where you’ve got to,’ said David Gold. ‘Let me take that from you.’

Her suitcase was standing next to her and then it wasn’t, because he was wheeling it away. Ellie had a few choices, but in the end the easiest one was to follow him.





Camden, London, 1986

Everything was different this time. Billy wanted Ari and he didn’t care who knew it. He even braved Tabitha’s wrath to meet Ari from work with a bottle of wine and his guitar and walk her back to the playwright’s house.

Though she was still trying hard not to love him, Ari loved watching Billy pick out chords on his custom-made Gibson acoustic guitar. When he worked out a sequence, Ari would improvise a melody line, snatches of words that might become lyrics, and Billy would smile. Like, he was actually taking pleasure in something.

Writing songs together was the key that finally unlocked Billy Kay’s heart so Ari could see inside, and what she saw was a lost, lonely man who didn’t know where he was going. ‘You only get one chance to make it and I f*cked it up,’ he said one night as they sat in the garden with their guitars. ‘It was the wrong time. I was in the wrong band. Had the wrong manager.’

‘Maybe that wasn’t your chance to make it,’ Ari said. ‘Maybe your chance is still there. It’s not about timing, Billy. It’s about the songs, isn’t it? You can change someone’s life with a song. You can change the world with a song.’

Billy smiled at her. He smiled all the time once you got to know him. ‘You’re not an idealist, are you, Ari? That’s not very cool.’

‘Yeah, but that post-punk nihilism thing is so tacky,’ she drawled, as her fingers shaped a chord on her guitar, then another one and another one. ‘What do you think of that? I like it. I like the sad chords.’

‘You know you’re going to make it, Ari, don’t you?’ Billy asked, reaching over to still her fingers on the fretboard. ‘You’re going to get everything you want from life.’

What Ari wanted was too large to be contained or put into words. She wanted everything, she wanted it right now, but she also wanted moments like this to last for ever. ‘I’ll settle for a headline slot at the Town & Country Club and a number-one album.’ She held up her hand. ‘A critically acclaimed number-one album.’

Billy shook his head. ‘More. Bigger. Better. You’re going to be a star, Ari. A legend.’

She laughed because so much naked ambition made her feel uncomfortable. ‘I don’t think legends pull pints in the Lizard Lounge on Monday and Tuesday nights.’

‘Just you wait,’ Billy said. ‘You’ll let me hitch my wagon to your star, won’t you?’

It was always going to be easier to write ‘I love you’ in a song lyric than say the words out loud. Always. ‘Wherever I’m going, you’re coming too,’ she said. ‘Right?’

Billy nodded. Then he grinned. He looked f*cking irresistible. ‘Do you promise?’

These days it was hard to deny him anything. ‘I promise.’

‘It doesn’t count unless you put your hand on your heart.’

Ari laughed. ‘You’re acting like a twelve-year-old,’ she told him, and he pulled a face but she was doing it: putting her hand on her heart.

‘Say that you need me, Ari.’

‘OK, I need you,’ she parroted back.

‘No, like you mean it.’ Billy’s hand was suddenly on hers, covering her heart. ‘Say that you need me, that you’ll never leave me.’

When it came down to it, when you stripped away his studied nonchalance and swagger, Billy Kay was just as scared as everyone else. ‘I love you, Billy,’ Ari said, and it was the first time she’d said it to him, first time she’d said it to anyone, and really meant it. ‘I couldn’t leave you. I’m not whole without you.’

He curved his fingers around her, so he had to be able to feel the thud of her heart tapping out the rhythm of her love. ‘I love you too, Ari, and I promise that I will always be there for you. Even if we’re apart, I’ll still be yours.’

His need was terrifying. ‘I’d never expect you to make a promise like that,’ she said.

‘I don’t care. I’m still making it,’ he said, and he leaned over to kiss her.