It Felt Like A Kiss

Chapter Thirty-four




They were shown into another wood-panelled room with portraits of doughy old men on the walls. Lara and Rose and a gaggle of young blondes were seated at one end of a large conference table, a couple of starchy-looking men in suits gathered down the other end talking to Olivia Kay, who seemed remarkably smiley for someone whose husband was a serial philanderer and, by all accounts, a total dick.

Then Ellie wasn’t paying any attention to Olivia because David walked into the room and he looked stony-faced, which was when he looked his best – apart from those few times when his eyes were all pupil and his jaw was clenched as he thrust inside her. Ellie blushed a bright, rosy red as David strode to the head of the table, ran his eye around the room and settled on her.

Everything else – people, furniture, fittings, ugly portraits – ceased to be, and it was just her and David.

Then David looked past her, as if Ellie wasn’t even there, and folded his arms. ‘Before we get started, if you’re not related to either a Cohen or a Kay or employed by this firm, you need to leave,’ he said coolly. There was a brief pause, then the blondes seated on either side of Lara and Rose got up and left.

‘Oh, but Georgie’s on her way over,’ Olivia Kay said with a bright smile. She looked remarkably poised in white trousers and a crisp navy blouse. She also looked as if no one ever said no to her. ‘She’s one of us.’

‘Only family,’ David repeated in a voice that made every single hair on Ellie’s body stand to attention. ‘I have to insist.’

‘Have I ever mentioned that I hate lawyers?’ Ari groused under her breath. She had, many times. ‘Is that a Wyndham, a Pryce or a Lewis?’

‘Sshh! Stop talking, Mum.’ Ellie gave Ari’s hand a warning pinch as David turned and glared at both of them. Ellie glared back just to show that her feelings hadn’t changed since their showdown yesterday morning.

It was just that her feelings were complicated. Her head was thinking of the hurt he’d inflicted and the hurt that was yet to come if she let him back in her life, but her heart was thinking, oh God, it’s his stern face. I adore his stern face.

‘Now, nobody is leaving this room until we’ve reached a resolution,’ he said grimly. He wasn’t looking at her any more, or Ari, or Lara and Rose. Or even Olivia, who was leaning against the wall and more interested in her BlackBerry than David’s stern face. He was looking at a middle-aged man in dark glasses, wearing a blue suit with a purple pinstripe running through it and a Ramones T-shirt. His hair was a preternatural blend of silver and white and styled in an Artful Dodger cut, which looked odd, though it probably photographed well. It was a man that Ellie had barely noticed as she’d squeezed past him to sit down.

It was Billy Kay. Her body gave a quick painful jerk of recognition, then she was unable to do anything. Couldn’t even keep holding Ari’s hand with suddenly boneless fingers as she stared at Billy Kay, who was steadfastly looking at … it was hard to know exactly what he was looking at as he was wearing shades indoors.

So strange that she hadn’t noticed him because her attention had been focused on David. Even in a room full of people, David was the only person Ellie could see.

Except now. It was creepy to keep staring at Billy Kay. Ari said something but Ellie didn’t hear her. She barely even registered Rose Kay’s shocked giggle as she saw where Ellie’s attention was riveted.

‘This whole business needs to be brought to a swift close.’ David’s voice pierced the miasma that was clouding Ellie’s senses. It was a relief to turn her head and watch him pace up and down. ‘Enough is enough.’

‘But, David, Billy has his retrospective and tour coming up,’ Olivia demurred with a tinkling little laugh. ‘There wouldn’t be much point in going ahead if there was no publicity campaign in place.’

‘In light of the Chronicle’s latest scoop, I think it would be wise for all parties to curtail any press activity. Or maybe I should make all of you write out a hundred times, “I will maintain a dignified silence.”’ He smiled without even trace amounts of humour. ‘It’s time to close ranks, if only from a legal standpoint. After the hacking scandal …’

David talked about the Leveson Inquiry and how the Kays’ right to privacy would be seriously eroded if anyone knew that they or their representatives might be placing false stories in the press. He used lots of long words, which Ellie usually found quite a turn-on, but today he might just as well have been talking Dolphin.

To her left Billy Kay was a shadowy dark presence with tendrils snaking out towards her, ready to reel her in, so she kept her gaze fixed on David.

Then David stopped talking and went into a little huddle with Olivia Kay and his crabby-looking colleagues. There was a lot of whispering and gesticulating, then David shrugged, his shoulders flexing though the view was obscured somewhat by his grey suit jacket. Ellie stared at him like a thirteen-year-old girl greedily gazing at her crush. No wonder Ari was giving her the side-eye.

But if she wasn’t looking at David, then she was forced to look at Billy Kay. He was staring down at his hands, adorned with chunky silver rings. Lara said something to him and he took a long time before he answered her with a terse monosyllable.

‘For goodness’ sake. Really? Really?’ David turned away from the huddle and one of the other men stepped forward.

‘Miss Cohen?’

‘Ms Cohen,’ Ellie and Ari said in unison, which made David smile faintly.

‘Ms Cohen, junior. Our client is keen to effect a mutually agreeable settlement. May I ask exactly what you require in order to facilitate this?’

Ellie looked at him blankly. Then she turned to Ari, who shook her head as though she didn’t have a clue either. ‘What?’ She sounded unbelievably stupid. ‘I mean, can I have, like, um, some clarification, please?’

The two older lawyers and Olivia Kay regarded Ellie coolly, then went back to their huddle, David joining them when Olivia tugged lightly at his jacket sleeve.

He was the first to emerge from this new caucus. The atmosphere in the room was tense and stuffy, and everyone seemed to be watching David as he walked to a small desk to fetch pen and paper and wrote something on it.

‘Is this clarification enough?’ he asked. He leaned across the table so he could push the paper towards Ellie and she caught the citrussy hint of his aftershave.


She hooked the paper with a fingertip and pulled it closer; the marks on it blurry and indistinct. Each time they swam into focus, Ellie would blink and they’d go back to being hieroglyphics again.

Then she heard Ari say, ‘F*ck me,’ and the next time she looked down, Ellie could read the figures quite clearly.

Five hundred thousand pounds was written in David’s immaculate copperplate script. Obviously the massive tax bill hadn’t completely wiped out the Kay coffers and they were still able to scrounge together some loose change.

In terms of sheer numbers and weighted to inflation it recompensed Ellie for all the things she’d missed out on when she was growing up. Not just the everyday burden of food, utilities and new shoes but the ballet lessons she’d desperately wanted. Clothes that hadn’t been bought from one of Camden’s many charity shops. The school trips she’d missed because Ari was too pigheaded to ask Sadie and Morry for cash, which they’d gladly have given.

She wanted to say very calmly, ‘Shall I give you my bank details so you can transfer the funds, and will I have to pay tax on it?’ Of course, she did – she was only human – but she didn’t really need compensation for all the things that Lara and Rose and even Charlie had been given, while she’d gone without. Despite the lack of funds, Ellie’s childhood had been rich in other ways. There’d been trips to the V&A, the National Portrait Gallery and the Science Museum. Long summer afternoons playing rounders and picnicking in Regent’s Park. Dancing like a wild thing on the stage while one of Ari’s bands had been sound-checking. Most importantly, there’d been more love than one little girl knew what to do with.

The only thing missing, the one thing that she’d really wanted, was sitting at the other end of the table and still ignoring her from behind his Raybans.

Ellie glanced at Ari just to be sure. Ari made her feelings obvious with another squeeze of her daughter’s hand. ‘No!’ Ellie said flatly. ‘How rude!’

Lara and Rose nudged each other. The lawyers looked as if their flabber had been well and truly gasted. But David didn’t miss a beat. ‘Seven hundred thousand pounds, not a penny more,’ he said coolly. ‘That’s what’s on the table.’

‘I don’t—’

‘It’s offered without prejudice and on the understanding that you and your mother will sign a confidential agreement that clearly states that you have no claim on any further monies from my clients, who accept no liability for any of the events that may or may not have resulted in this settlement.’ He sounded so bored, like this whole business was beneath him and that he’d much rather get back to his office and draw up a few watertight contracts so some dumb teenagers with a newly minted recording contract would sign their souls away. ‘Furthermore, you will never talk to any media organisations or post anything on any social media sites even tenuously related to the Kay family.’

‘You mean you want to buy me off and hit me with a gagging order at the same time?’ Ellie queried. She rested her chin on her hand and tried out her most piercing stare on Billy Kay. ‘You can’t even look at me, can you? Look at me!’

‘Hey, easy tiger,’ Ari said softly. She took Ellie’s hand again, hidden by the table, and stroked the thundering pulse with her thumb, the way she always had when Ellie was younger and needed to calm the f*ck down.

He, Billy Kay, moved. Rested his hands flat on the polished table top and glanced in Ellie’s direction. ‘I’m looking at you. Happy?’ His voice was sour and sharp like vinegar. It made her die inside a little.

He was looking at her now, but as if Ellie shouldn’t be there. Like she was a minute speck of dirt on a clear, smooth surface.

As she sat there and he sat there with his dark glasses and his sharp suit and silly hair and mocking sneer on his face, Ellie realised that her life had been great precisely because Billy wasn’t in it. Lara and Rose were flawed and a bit f*cked up. They didn’t have any family. Didn’t seem to have much in the way of friends. All they had was money. They were obsessed with it, and not in the honest ‘if you want the good life, then you have to work bloody hard for it’ Cohen way.

Ellie couldn’t bear to look at Billy Kay any more and inevitably because her heart was the brains of the operation, she went back to looking at David. He raised his eyebrows, then was still; wasn’t going to give anything away.

They should have been the two most important men in Ellie’s life and in a really dark, terrible way they were. Because they were taking it in turns to destroy her spirit, to try to make her as cynical and bitter as they were.

Both of them were hopeless, but Ellie still had hope. ‘I don’t want anything from you,’ she said, eyes sweeping round each Kay, her shadow family. ‘I absolve you of any responsibility towards me. I’ll sign whatever you want.’

Ellie stood up on legs that were much more shaky than she would have liked. ‘You’ve spent all my life pretending that I didn’t exist, that I was some shameful secret marring your rock ’n’ roll back story, then you drag me out when it suits you so you can pimp your digitally remastered back catalogue.’ Shoulders back, chin up. ‘Well, you don’t deserve to have me in your life.’

When Ellie stepped out from behind the table, it felt like she had only recently learned how to walk. She waited until she was almost at the door, before she turned and she couldn’t look at David any more, but she could look at his colleagues. ‘Just give David that senior partnership already. Put his f*cking name on the shiny plaque outside.’ It was one of the three worst moments of her life, but she could still manage the moxie to give a hollow little laugh that was pure Bette Davis in All About Eve. ‘Believe me, he really went the extra mile to get it.’





Clerkenwell, London, Present Day

Ellie makes a spit-and-sawdust speech that’s pure gumption, because she’s her mother’s daughter, then she storms out. The lawyer, the tall, intense one with a voice like knives who’s been gazing at her daughter with a dumbstruck expression when he thinks no one is looking, storms after her. Ari can hear them shouting in the corridor outside.

Ellie never shouts.

I’m too old for this shit, Ari thinks.

They sit and they wait and wait for the other lawyer to come back.

The atmosphere in the room is so thick you could cut it into individual slices. Ari doesn’t want to be here with these people. The past is always something she feels guilty about, and yes, she does feel guilty for what she put Billy’s women through. Though it doesn’t compare to how they’d suffered at Billy’s own hands as he moulded their souls until they were as misshapen as his.

It’s obvious the other lawyer isn’t coming back. Before Ari can make her excuses, Billy’s daughters get up and go without a backward glance. There’s a cough and the other two suits, who have been deep in conversation, approach her.

Ari can have the money, same terms and conditions. Isn’t she a lucky girl?

She’s been waiting for this moment for half a lifetime. She should be word perfect as she slowly and deliberately scrunches up the piece of paper. Then she turns to Billy. ‘You think this even begins to compensate me for advances and back royalties, digital rights, licensing? Not even close. Not even in the same ballpark as close.’


No one looks confused, because they all know what he did, and Ari thought she was long past this but the anger feels like corrosive acid running through her veins.

Billy takes off his shades. Ari holds her breath. She doesn’t want to fall again, but his eyes are dead and cold. Not a spark left in him. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he says so calmly that she can’t quite take it in. ‘Sweetheart, back then you only knew three chords and started every song with the “Be My Baby” drumbeat.’

Billy sounds so supremely unbothered by her accusation that Ari’s rendered mute. She’d been expecting defensive bluster, shouting even, but not flat denial.

‘You did. You know you did,’ she says helplessly, because she’s waited three decades for this showdown and this is not how it’s meant to play out.

‘Dear Ari, you’re embarrassing yourself,’ Olivia says coolly, but Ari can see how her hands shake before she folds her arms and tucks them out of sight. ‘Please don’t.’

‘I should have known this was about money.’ Billy stands up and walks towards her, and the lawyers and even his doggedly devoted wife cease to exist. It’s just her and Billy. Ari stands up too and he sidles up close in that snaky way that had always got Ari in a panic that he was going to kiss her. Or that he might not. ‘If you wrote those songs, then how come you never wrote anything that was half as good as them since? Huh?’

Ari wishes she knew the answer, but Billy does apparently.

‘I get it, darling. I get why you’re mad, why you’re flinging accusations around,’ he says, his breath caressing her ear, arm stealing round her waist. ‘It was your decision, Ari. You chose the kid over me. You chose her over the music. I tried to tell you that you were never going to get anywhere if you were stuck with a baby who demanded every single thing you had to give. I warned you.’

So this is what people mean when they talk about epiphanies. This is her eureka moment! Ari actually raises her eyes as if she expects to see a light bulb going off above her head. ‘No, she didn’t,’ she says and she’s laughing because it’s so obvious now. ‘It was you. You sucked me dry and after you went, I was empty. Ellie didn’t ruin me, she saved my life.’

‘Whatever,’ Billy says, and he turns away as if Ari isn’t amusing any more. She’s boring and Billy never got on well with boring. But Ari’s not done yet.

‘Anyway, what kind of man makes the mother of his child choose between them? A really shoddy excuse for a man, that’s who. Jesus, your ego was always the most constant thing about you.’

‘It wasn’t about my ego.’ He’s angry now; it’s the first real emotion he’s shown. ‘I left because you didn’t love me enough.’

He sounds like a lost little boy. Ari can’t bear to see him so diminished. She glances over at Olivia and something fleeting passes between them. It’s not hate on the other woman’s face but resignation – acceptance, even – because she put Billy first and she stood by her choice and wasn’t going to let Ari judge her for it. ‘Billy.’ Ari sighs his name, because she’s wasted too much time being angry with him. ‘No one could ever love you as much as you need to be loved.’

‘No, you mean, you couldn’t. You’re not capable of loving anyone.’

‘That’s not true. Not any more,’ Ari insists, willing away the tears. ‘I’m full of love.’

‘You never even wanted her,’ Billy says, spite making the words sting. ‘You would have had an abortion if I hadn’t talked you out of it. Then you tried to fob her off on your sister. I think that would ruin her life, if someone told her.’

This man tried to destroy her for having the audacity not to love him to the exclusion of everything else. Fine. Ari can take it, but Billy isn’t going to destroy Ellie, simply to punish her for being chosen over him. Ellie should never have to doubt how much she’s loved.

‘I did love you back then but I never trusted you,’ Ari says, folding her arms and looking straight at Billy. He’s put his Raybans back on but Ari knows she has his full attention. ‘You might have the reel-to-reels we recorded but sometimes I ran a tape straight off the mixing desk. Gave them to Tabitha to look after.’ She shook her head. ‘And Georgina only had five minutes to clear out that room. She didn’t think to look in the summerhouse where there were half a dozen of those Black ’n’ Red Notebooks that we wrote lyrics in. Come on! When you rerecorded the songs, you must have realised you didn’t have hard copies of all the lyrics.’

A muscle in Billy’s cheek gives an involuntary spasm. Ari thrills to the sight of it. ‘You’re bluffing.’

Ari grins. Suddenly her heart feels light. ‘You’ll never know. Just don’t come near me or mine again.’ She shakes her head. ‘You’re not capable of understanding that if I lived my life a hundred times over, I’d always choose Ellie over you. Always.’

Ari knows that she’s never going to see or hear from Billy again and that’s reason enough not to look behind her as she walks out of the door straight into the path of Ellie’s lawyer.