‘I didn’t think you had any problems in that department.’ Alex smiled. Sophia Brand had a reputation as a rock chick, a full-on party girl. For five years she’d dated Danny Gregg the movie star, which kept the papers fuelled with decadent stories of orgies in his jacuzzi, but they had split recently in a flurry of juicy accusations of abuse on both sides. As far as Alex knew, Jez was her first new suitor.
‘So you’re in a band?’
‘Year Zero.’
‘Jez’s band,’ she squealed. ‘You’re kidding me.’
Alex smarted. Jez’s band?
‘You must be Alex.’
He grunted.‘So you’re with Jez now, then?’ he asked as he handed her the drink.
‘I like the word with,’ she said, holding his gaze as she sipped.
‘It’s suitably vague.’
She glanced over at Jez, who was now schmoozing the same record executive Emma had gone to speak to. ‘How come you’re not ass-licking your paymasters too?’ she asked with a sour expression.
‘I leave all that to Jez.’ Alex smiled. ‘He’s better at it than me. And also because I think, what’s the point? Is having a laugh and a joke with Clive Benson going to get us a US recording deal or a Billboard chart position?’
Sophia suppressed a smile. ‘Is that being idealistic or just idle?’
He laughed.
‘Can I ask you a question?’ said Sophia, stirring the ice cubes around in her drink.
‘Of course.’
‘Have you ever thought about modelling?’
‘Are you trying to pick me up?’ He chuckled. ‘I’m sure half of those slimy marketing guys over there will be asking the circus girls exactly the same question tonight.’
‘I’m serious,’ she said.
‘No, I haven’t. Why?’
‘Because you look great in jeans,’ she said playfully.
Alex could feel himself blushing again, but Sophia carried on.
‘Look, I have a contract with the fashion label Ellis Cole. I front all their advertisements – jeans, scent, underwear – and we’re just about to do a new campaign. Ellis wants to use a male model with me in this one and he kind of wants rock vibe for it. I think a great-looking musician is going to be better than a great-looking model. I saw you across the room. When you told me you played in Jez’s band, I couldn’t believe it.’
Alex couldn’t help laughing. ‘I’m flattered,’ he said. ‘But why not Jez if you want the rock thing?’
Sophia pouted. ‘He’s not as pretty as you.’
Alex felt a rush of triumph and then immediately looked around for Emma.
‘I tell you what, let’s phone Ellis,’ said Sophia decisively, pulling a mobile phone out of her bag.
‘What for?’ said Alex lamely.
‘I want to tell him that I’ve found the perfect guy for the campaign.’
‘You’re not joking, are you?’
‘No,’ she said, looking at him with those deep blue eyes that had peered from a thousand billboards. ‘I’m not.’
Just then there was a sudden blast of music as James Cook, one of EMG’s most successful solo acts, came on stage.
Sophia grabbed Alex’s hand and shouted in his ear over the music: ‘Let’s find somewhere quieter.’
On the other side of the room he could see Emma laughing with a TV presenter. Ah sod it, he thought. It wasn’t like he was doing anything wrong. Emma had said it herself: you had to flirt with these people, make them think you were their friend. And an ad campaign with Ellis Cole – that had to be a six-figure deal if Nathan negotiated it properly. For weeks now, Emma had been making noises about a place in the country. Somewhere she could ride and he could write and they could have dogs and go for walks. Besides, he thought with a smile, it would really piss Jez off.
They went out into the foyer, where dozens of people were still milling around, pointing at the bored tiger, but even out here the music was deafening.
‘Why don’t we go upstairs to my room?’ said Sophia, leading him towards the lift. ‘We can call him from there.’
Sophia’s suite was on one of the high floors. It had an impressive view across Hyde Park and was decked out with expensive antiques and silk furnishings. She went into the bedroom and opened the minibar, her tight white dress riding up her thighs as she crouched to pull out a chilled bottle of vodka, splashing it into two glasses. Then she took a little paper wrap, opened it and tipped the white powder inside on to a small mirror.
‘Will I need to send over a press photo or something?’ asked Alex.
‘What?’ she said distractedly as she arranged the powder into lines.
‘Do I need to send a photo to Ellis?’
As she shrugged, her dress fell off one shoulder.
‘Ellis tends to listen to my opinions,’ she said, offering him a straw. ‘So you’re coming round to the idea, then?’
He snorted a line of coke. It was only now, with the offer of a major modelling gig on the table, that he realised how much he had hated Jez taking on so much of the publicity and promotion for the band. He hated it that people thought Year Zero were simply Jez’s backing band. Lately he’d been getting the distinct feel that Jez’s increased profile was all part of a plan cooked up by Nathan and the record company to pave the way for a glittering solo career for Jez Harrison and Jez Harrison alone.
‘Where did you and Jez meet?’ Suddenly it seemed very important. Just how did a berk like Jez hook up with a supermodel?
‘At a mutual friend’s dinner in New York last month.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Clive Benson,’ said Sophia, hoovering up a line.
Fuck. He hadn’t even known Jez was in New York two weeks ago. He knocked back his vodka and took another line.
His coke habit had crept up on him slowly. He had resisted at first – he didn’t want to become a rock cliché – but it was insidious: coke was everywhere. To celebrate in the studio after you’d laid down a track; before a party to get you ‘in the mood’. People you’d just met would invite you to the loos for a line; it was like a music industry handshake. It never made him feel bad; actually coke made him feel great most of the time. And he often congratulated himself on not progressing to any of the harder stuff that was rife on the circuit. Smack to come down. Crack to go back up. Coke was subtle and had a sheen of sophistication, how could it be that bad?
‘You don’t do things by halves, do you?’ said Sophia, coming up behind him, running her hands over his shoulders. ‘Now, before I call Ellis,’ she whispered in his ear, ‘I’d better check there’s no pasty body hiding under there.’
She slipped her hands under his T-shirt and pulled it over his head.
‘Mmm . . . very nice,’ she said, stepping away and admiring his six-pack. ‘Why don’t you hold that thought for me,’ she purred, turning to go into the bathroom.
Alex knew he should leave the room, but his feet felt welded to the floor. He looked up and Sophia was standing in the doorway to the bathroom, naked except for her black heels. Alex could only stand there, staring. Her breasts stood round and firm, her pert nipples begged for a mouth to suck them whole. A lick of pubic hair between her thighs, not like Emma’s slightly untidy bush, looked soft and inviting. She slowly walked over to the bed and knelt down in front of him, brushing herself against his chest. He groaned as her lips swept the side of his neck.
He forced himself to pull away.
‘Look, Sophia. Jez . . .’
‘Do you know what I love doing?’ she said, her warm mouth nuzzling into his ear.
His throat was too dry to speak.
‘Fucking on coke,’ she whispered, pushing him back on to the bed and straddling him.
Hell, I’m only human, he thought as her hand sank to the waistband of his jeans, unbuckling them and pulling them down. His cock was erect and almost painful with need, pushing at the material of his boxer shorts. Looking deep into his eyes, she took his index finger and lifted it to her mo
uth, sucking it, swirling her tongue around it, then slowly, slowly, pulled it out, saliva glinting in the soft light. She stretched over to retrieve the mirror and dipped his fingertip into the small mound of cocaine. Putting the mirror down, she slid off him and knelt on the bed, lifting her perfect arse towards him, licking her own fingers and stroking the dark crease, opening her tight rosebud, and leaving him in no doubt about where she wanted the cocaine administered. Alex got up and went behind her.
‘Oh God, yes, there,’ she panted as Alex ran his free hand down her spine, towards her peachy buttocks.
He was mesmerised by this woman, drunk with desire. Fuck you, Jez, he thought as he pushed his finger into her.
He didn’t even hear the click as the bedroom door opened, but he heard the gasp. He whirled around to find Emma standing there, her hand over her mouth.
‘Oh shit, Em, I ...’ he stuttered, but she turned away and ran. By the time he made it to the corridor, she was gone.
He ran through the fire escape and took the stairs down, guessing she would have taken the lift. He clattered down the concrete steps four at a time, crashing into walls, finally bursting into the hotel lobby and startling the tiger, which finally lifted its head and gave a half-hearted growl.
‘Emma, stop!’ he shouted as he saw her push through the revolving doors. He rushed out on to the street just as she sprinted across Park Lane, barely looking at the speeding traffic.
‘Wait! Please!’ he called, as a bus came from nowhere, causing him to stumble backwards on to the pavement. It had started to rain, but he could see her on the other side of the road, her red dress as vivid as a poppy. There was a break in the traffic and he ran across the road.
Where had she gone? Then he saw a flash of red a hundred yards ahead of him; she’d run into the park.
‘Emma! Come back, please!’
He pounded after her, so full of adrenalin he didn’t feel the cold drizzle soaking his thin T-shirt. And then finally he saw her, slumped on the steps of the bandstand, her shoulders heaving. She was sobbing, her face buried in her arms.
‘Em, I’m so sorry,’ he began, reaching out to touch her shoulder, but she jerked violently away, scrambling backwards.
‘Sorry?’ she screamed, bending at the waist from the effort.
Yellow light from the old-style streetlamps illuminating the park pathways fell on to her face, and Alex could see she was ghostly white, except for sickly pink spots in the middle of her cheeks.
She closed her eyes and he could see a cloud of breath escape from her lips.
‘You are so predictable,’ she spat, her entire body shivering.
‘Nothing happened,’ he said lamely.
‘Nothing?’ she said with a harsh laugh. ‘You were naked, putting coke up her arse, like some sad fucking rock cliché.’
‘We . . . we went upstairs to phone Ellis Cole,’ he said, knowing how pathetic it sounded.
‘Of course!’ said Emma, flapping her arms at her sides. ‘That’s what you go upstairs to a hotel room for. Well it’s a good job I saw you go off with that tart, isn’t it?’ she said sarcastically. ‘A good job I followed you, a good job the housekeeper let me in, because otherwise something might have happened.’
‘She said I could be in this campaign,’ he pleaded. ‘She pulled my T-shirt off to see if my body ...’ He trailed off.
A guttural part sob, part laugh pierced the night air. ‘Don’t stop,’ she said. ‘I’m dying to hear the part about how Ellis answered the phone and told you to take all her clothes off and stick coke up her backside.’
‘We didn’t have sex,’ he said, looking at the wet ground.
‘Yes, you did,’ she said quietly, then turned and walked away.
He followed her slowly, at a distance, not knowing what to do or say. She looked so small and vulnerable, all he wanted to do was hug her and tell her how sorry he was and how he would make it up to her. Finally they came to the Serpentine lake, long, black and still save for where the rain pitted the dark surface. Alex reached out to touch her.
‘Don’t, Alex. Just don’t.’
‘I’d had too much to drink,’ he said sheepishly. ‘It was Sophia Brand. I was impressed. She was with Jez ...’ But as soon as the words came out of his mouth he could tell that honesty was not the best policy. He fell into silence, listening to the hiss of rain on the water, the distant growl of the traffic.
‘Do you think it’s easy for me?’ she said softly. ‘I don’t have a beautiful face or a fantastic figure, I’m not famous or clever. Don’t you think I hear the whispers every time we walk into a room? “What’s he doing with her? Surely he could do better?” And I try not to listen, but I’m not stupid, Alex. I love a man that half the women in the country want to sleep with, because you’re beautiful and because you write songs that touch them. Women are always going to want you. But you don’t have to take up those offers. You’re better than that. We’re better than that. Or I thought we were.’
His mouth was stale from alcohol, dry from remorse.
‘Just go,’ she whispered.
But he couldn’t go. He needed her and the thought of leaving her here was making his heart ache.
‘I love you, Emma. Please, please forgive me.’
She looked at him with such a probing gaze that he was frightened of what she could see, that she could see right inside him, see his faults and weaknesses. See his secrets.
‘I love you too, Alex. But things have got to change.’
Hope sparked in his heart. ‘What? Anything! Just tell me.’
‘No more other women. Groupies, models, whatever. And the drink, the drugs, they’ve got to stop.’
‘You’ve never mentioned that before,’ he said defensively.
‘Alex, I have. How many times have I told you to go easy at the bar or backstage or in your hotel room? How many times have I asked you to come to bed and you’ve stayed up caning it on your own? I know you’re a rock star, but it’s getting out of control and I think you know that. The bottom line is that I won’t share you with other women and I won’t share you with an addiction either.’
‘I’m not addicted to anything!’
She looked at him fiercely. ‘Then prove it to me.’
‘Em, I don’t know if I can,’ he said, looking down at his hands. ‘I feel lost, I feel empty, I ...’
She took his hands and held them tight, painfully tight.
‘Do you love me?’ she asked.
The thought of her walking out of the park, out of his life, made him feel as if every organ was about to be ripped out of his body.
‘Yes, God yes. You mean everything to me, Emma.’
‘Then don’t hurt me again,’ she said.‘Because if you do, you really will be on your own.’
29
Grace jumped out of the limo with a spring in her step, smoothing down the red light woollen suit and smiling for the photographers waiting on the pavement outside the Palumbo Hilton. Inside the foyer, she drew an elegant hand across her forehead. It was a particularly muggy day and she would have liked nothing more than to be by the pool with her children, but with the elections only twelve weeks away, every minute of her day was filled up helping Gabe on the campaign trail, in keeping with the promise she had made to her husband at Christmas. That morning she had shown a journalist from London’s Sunday Times around a Palumbo orphanage and then been interviewed for a six-page feature on Parador for that publication. And now she was on her way to support Gabe at a press lunch. On the way to the hotel, her assistant Manuela had read out the latest election polls from the local paper. Since Grace’s involvement with Gabriel’s campaign and the launch of her orphanages charity, CARP’s popularity had increased by two per cent. It wasn’t a huge amount, and anyway, she doubted the reliability of these polls – this was Parador after all – but it still made her feel good.
Nor could she ignore that her relationship with Gabriel had vastly improved since she had joined the campaign trail. For a sta
rt, they were together much more often, which not only gave them more to talk about, but meant that they often shared the same bed at night. Their sex life, which had dwindled away to almost nothing over the past year, had reignited; it was like they were discovering each other all over again. It made her remember how much she missed it. But the truth was, while she wholeheartedly believed in the aims of the CARP party, Grace wouldn’t weep if they lost the election. Win or lose, though, it had to be better than the tense limbo they were now in. She loved Gabriel and wanted him to succeed, but most of all she just wanted it over.
Kiss Heaven Goodbye Page 27