In true red-top style, the bulk of the spread had been given over to the gorgeous girlfriend. She may not have been as famous as Pat, but her coltish curves were much more to the Sun readers’ tastes. As it would turn out, those pictures would be the girlfriend’s launch pad to fame and fortune. Within a few years, she had all but eclipsed her by-then ex-boyfriend Pat.
‘Quite reminds me of one of Princess Diana’s early holidays.’ Mike topped up my glass. When he talked, his hands were always moving, adding vigour to his words. ‘We’d had a tip that they were on this deserted beach in some jungle in… I can’t even remember! Might have been Chile. So I’ve bought a machete and I’m carving my way through the jungle with the chief photographer and finally, after about three hours, there we are! We’re in pole position on these cliffs above the beach, all tucked away, and things are not looking much better. What do you think happened next?’
‘She took all her clothes off?’
‘Nice try,’ said Mike. ‘But no. We’d been there about ten minutes when there was this awful racket coming from the jungle. All this noise! We were expecting an elephant to come out. Know what it was?’
‘The police?’
‘No, it was the bloody team from the Mirror!’ Mike clapped his thigh and laughed. ‘They’d followed us out to Chile and then they followed us through the jungle!’
‘And what did you say to them?’
‘I asked him if they’d like nuts or a cigar.’
‘And you got the pictures?’
‘Pictures? She wasn’t in the country! She wasn’t even on the continent! I think she was in France for Paris Fashion Week! So we had a couple of days boozing in Chile and then shipped back home again.’
‘I want this job,’ I said.
‘Get yourself a job on a local paper. Pass your NCTJ exams—’
‘NCTJ?’
‘National Council for the Training of Journalists, dear boy, you will come to love it. Then after you’ve had a year on an agency, you’ll be ready to start shifting on the old Curranticus Bunticus.’
‘I’m in,’ I said. In a matter of minutes, I had at last seized on a career. ‘I’ll start applying for jobs tomorrow.’
‘Call me if you need a reference.’
‘Thank you!’ I was overjoyed. After years of floating like so much flotsam, I at last had a plan.
‘Might take you a while to get a job on a local paper, so in the meantime you could do worse than going to a secretarial college. Learn to touch type, get your shorthand—’
‘I’ve got to learn shorthand?’
‘Can’t be a hack without it, dear boy. They don’t allow tape recorders in court, and, if the deadlines are tight, which they always are, you won’t have time to transcribe the tapes. So yes, you will have to learn shorthand. You will come to love your teeline and all those tapes at one hundred words per minute. But you may well enjoy going to secretarial college.’
‘Why’s that then?’
‘Not a man to be seen!’ His hand crashed to the table, setting the glasses ajangle. ‘You’ll have an absolute field day!’
‘I think I will.’
‘It goes without saying that should you get any more of your red-hot little tips, you know who to come to!’
‘I’m in!’
Mike patted his pockets. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Some money.’
He produced an inch-thick white envelope.
‘That’s very kind of you.’
‘Plenty more where that came from.’
‘Thank you!’ I pocketed the envelope.
‘Don’t you want to know how much is in there?’
‘How much?’
He flashed up the palm of his hand, showing all five fingers.
‘Five?’ I said. ‘Five hundred quid?’
‘No, my boy,’ he said. ‘We pay five hundred pounds for page leads. But for splashes and spreads, we tend to pay a little more. Five grand.’
Five grand! My mind reeled. It was more than double what I’d earned during my entire time at the Knoll House. It was an astronomical sum. It meant that I could buy something for Cally. Something splendid. Something that she’d treasure. I’d take her out for dinner, properly wine and dine her; maybe we’d spend the night at the Ritz. Then I felt this queasiness in the pit of my stomach as I realised that Cally and I were through.
‘Cally mentioned something to me,’ I said, shaking the thoughts of our love out of my head. ‘She said you’d helped her when she’d nearly had her fifteen minutes of fame.’
‘Did I?’ he said. ‘Perhaps I did.’
‘And what was it?’
‘The usual.’
‘What is the usual?’
‘Sleeping with someone who’s famous.’
‘So how famous is that? Are we talking a rock star? TV star? Movie star?’
Mike grinned at me. ‘I can’t tell you.’
I was very intrigued. Not jealous as such, but curious as to the identity of the famous man who had also been with Cally.
‘A politician? One of these seedy cabinet ministers?’
‘My hands are tied,’ said Mike. ‘Stories may be my trade, dear boy, but I never betray a confidence.’
‘Are we talking royalty?’
Mike just shook his head. ‘I still can’t tell you.’
And the grin just got bigger.
We finished the wine and had Armagnac with our espressos, and then in a delightful haze of alcohol and goodwill, I walked through St James’s and down to the river. It was teatime when I got back to my parents’ house in Chelsea. My father was in the drawing room, feet up on the settee. He was happily puffing away on a cigarette as he read the Telegraph. He was in pinstripe, his tie at half-mast and his jacket flung on one of the chairs.
‘Hallo!’ He smiled. He was genuinely pleased to see me. ‘You’re looking very dapper. Been out for lunch?’
‘I’m going to be a journalist,’ I said.
‘Splendid!’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m going to get a job on a local paper; work my way up to Fleet Street.’
‘Can’t say we’ve had any journalists in the family before now; about time we started,’ he said. ‘Let’s celebrate! I’ll get some fizz.’ Away he bustled to the kitchen.
I flopped into one of the armchairs, alone with my thoughts.
A journalist. I, Kim, was going to be a journalist. It had a ring to it. I liked it. For the first time in my life, I was hungry. Better by far than any of those other dull jobs in the city. It might not pay much compared, at least, to those multi-millionaire accountants, but it had the allure of fun and excitement and adventure.
My father was still clattering away in the kitchen. I could hear the reassuring sound of ice rattling into the ice bucket.
I stared sightlessly at the fireplace. It took me some time to spot the new addition.
For a few seconds I couldn’t comprehend what it was that I was looking at. Was that really what I thought it was?
It was Cally’s picture, in pride of place above the mantelpiece. I went over to look at it more closely. It was the picture she had painted by Old Harry, with me in the flash of red in the corner as I’d sipped my sloe gin.
I smiled wistfully at the memory of that afternoon on the rock. And as I looked at the picture, I recalled one small detail that I had all but forgotten.
After Cally had painted the picture, she had written something on the back. What was it she’d said to me? She’d said it was a little reminder of the day and of the company.
I lifted the picture off the wall. It was now in a large black frame. It was quite heavy. I turned it round. Cally’s words stretched all the way across the canvas, scrawled in thick black pencil in her usual round hand. I read it and it was the first time that the loss of Cally had really hit home – as sharp and as keen as a stiletto into my side. ‘There is only one thing that I want in this life,’ she had written, ‘and that, my darling Kim, is you.’
CHAPTER 18
I became a journalist, starting on a weekly paper in Cirencester; then on an evening paper in Cambridge; then with an agency in Los Angeles. After some years at the pit face, I was about ready to start working on the red tops. To my utter astonishment, I found that I rather took to the trade. I flourished. I built up a bank of stories of new towns and new loves, but these are all for another time.
In stories such as this, it is difficult to round things off neatly. A few strings can be cleanly tied, but not many. The threads of Greta and Darren and Roland and Anthony and Janeen and all my other compadres, alas, cannot be wound up. I have not heard a single thing since the day that I left the Knoll House. I’ve often wondered about them. But though I wish them well, I have no clue how it turned out for them all.
Louise became another of those great and wonderful stories that happen so rarely but which we hold so close. Ours was also a story to be told another day.
Oliver, my closest friend at the Knoll House, remains one of my closest friends. He is the chief executive of a prosperous hotel chain. Oliver still occasionally visits the dining rooms; he visits and he may even eat, but he takes especial care never to lift a cup, plate or saucer. And his lovely Annette? Reader, he married her! I was Oliver’s best man, and managed to feel only mildly envious of this friend who was marrying such an extraordinary beauty. They give every semblance of being just as much in love as they were all those years ago in the Knoll House.
This leaves Cally.
You would be mistaken if you thought for a minute that I adhered to her final command. Despite the fact as she had told me that it might make things difficult for her, I wrote. I wrote her kind cards to Dorset and loving letters. At the beginning of September, I sent her a single red rose. I called a few times too, but there are only so many messages that you can leave on an answerphone.
But I never went down to Dorset to see her again.
I never heard word from Cally. It was the most complete amputation I’ve ever been through. We had no mutual friends, so there was no one to keep me abreast of the goings-on in Cally’s life.
That might very well have been that. Our summer together would have become one of those beautiful memories that are preserved for ever in the amber of the moment.
Then: a house-warming party in London in 2008, south of the river. I was there with Elise and with the girls. My three daughters are the one shining constant in my life. Elise, my wife, is in PR. She is tall and poised, with auburn hair that is still just as straight and as perfect as when I first touched it. Elise got one over on me when we first met in New York in 1998, and generally speaking she has had the whip hand ever since. Despite all we’ve been through together, we have come to realise that we would rather be with each other than be apart.
It was a Sunday afternoon. We’d brought along the traditional housewarming gifts: salt and bread and that king of the reds, a bottle of Chateau Musar.
Elise was taken on a guided tour and was doubtless making the appropriate comments. The girls were let off the leash and joined the other children in the basement.
I helped myself to a beer and went outside. It was a dull grey day and the barbeque was only just stuttering to life. Gerry, our host, was standing by in his pinny. I bantered with him, admiring the herbs that had been planted by the back door.
I saw some old friends and stood about chatting and laughing. I helped myself to a sausage, its skin thick and black and almost turned to charcoal; it was delicious. The party was taking off; children were pouring out of the house to be fed. I helped out at the barbeque. Gerry flipped the burgers and the sausages, while I stuffed them into rolls and passed them to the boys and girls; I was interested to see who thanked me and who did not. I didn’t care either way, but children’s manners always intrigue me.
When all the children had been fed and watered, it was time for the adults. I was reminded of my summer at the Knoll House. For everyone, there had to be a quip and a smile and a plate of food.
By now, there must have been sixty or seventy people milling around in the garden. I was looking down as I buttered some bread rolls.
‘You’re doing that very professionally.’ A woman’s voice, a deep hum that resonates.
‘Years and years of training.’ I looked up. Immediately a small fuse blew in my head. My face must have been registering a look of slight puzzlement. Haven’t I seen you somewhere before? I thought.
The woman was wearing blue jeans and a blazer. She looked at me, smiled.
‘What can I get you?’ I asked. I flashed my tongs, and all the while, my brain was whirring, probing, trying to work out the connection. She was married, I could see that. Wedding ring and a large sapphire engagement ring.
‘A burger please,’ she said. ‘That would be lovely.’
‘One lovely burger coming right up.’
‘Thank you.’
She took a spoonful of ketchup, smiled one last time, and joined the garden melee.
‘What’s her name?’ I asked Gerry.
‘Her?’ he said. ‘Fiona. She’s Hooper’s new wife. Only met her a couple of times. She’s great.’
‘She is.’ I put the tongs down. ‘Excuse me one moment.’
I followed her across the garden, easing my way through the guests. She was sitting alone on a bench. For a moment, I hovered. ‘Do you mind if I sit here?’
She smiled at me, very warm. ‘Be my guest.’
I sat next to her, a hissing trickle of memories suddenly turned into a thundering tsunami. It wasn’t just her hair, which was near identical. It was the shape of her face, her beautiful cheekbones, her height and her buxom figure. But it was the smile that was the clincher. The smile was a total giveaway.
For a while, I just looked at her, taking it all in. I rubbed my hands together, palm to palm, as I wondered what it was that I wanted to say and how I was going to say it.
She was about to take a bite from her burger, but she must have seen something in my eye, for she returned the untouched burger to her plate.
‘What is it?’ she asked. No smile now, but rather a look of slight concern.
I looked at her, looked at my hands, and looked at her again. I could feel my thighs shaking against the wooden bench. ‘I wondered,’ I said, ‘you remind me of a woman I once used to know. She lived in Dorset. Her name was Cally. She was an artist.’
Very, very slowly, Fiona nodded. She put her plate on the ground. ‘Cally,’ she said, and now she too studied her hands. Strong, capable fingers. ‘She was my mother.’
My heart did a backflip. ‘You’re the very image of her,’ I babbled, before I realised what she’d just said to me. ‘Was?’ I repeated. ‘Was your mother?’
‘I’m afraid she passed away,’ she said. She had a paper napkin in her hands and she was screwing it into a tight ball. ‘She died a long time ago.’
‘Ah.’ My brain convulsed. I felt as though I was on a speeding train heading full tilt for the buffers, but even so, politeness and good manners still kicked in. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’
‘So you knew her?’ Fiona said. ‘Was that in Dorset or in London?’
‘In Dorset,’ I said. ‘I used to work in a hotel near where she lived—’
‘The Knoll House,’ she said. ‘What year?’
‘It was 1988.’
Fiona nodded, still disconsolate, even twenty years on, at the thought of her mother’s death. ‘The year she died.’
I gaped at her.
‘What?’
Fiona nodded. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You didn’t know. Was she far gone when you knew her?’
But I was still playing catch up. ‘Far gone?’ I said. ‘What do you mean? I don’t understand.’
‘Cancer,’ she said.
‘Cancer?’ I repeated, dazed.
‘It started in her lungs,’ she said. ‘It ended in her heart. She fought it right to the end, Harley Street, everything that could be done, but in the end, there was nothing that could be done…’<
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I reeled, stunned at how casually she had delivered this news. ‘But… But she always looked so healthy… And she was so strong. And her hair, and… There was nothing to be done?’
‘You never knew?’
‘No, she never told me. She never once mentioned it.’
‘That was mum,’ she said. ‘She only told me in the summer, just a few weeks before she died.’
‘But…’ I was still struggling to make sense of it. ‘When? When did she die?’
‘September,’ she said. ‘September the second.’
‘Jesus!’ I said. I raked at my hair, staring at the sky, and then the tears come in a torrent. I leaned forward, head buried into my elbows. How could I have been so ignorant not to realise that all of Cally’s trips to London had had nothing to do with her exhibition and everything to do with treating her cancer? Why hadn’t I seen it? How could I not have spotted it? She must have died three weeks after we’d broken up. The thought of it all was so enormous that I could barely take it in.
‘I’m sorry,’ Fiona said. She stroked my neck, her fingers soft on my shoulders. ‘I’m very sorry. You must have been very close to her?’
‘I suppose I was.’ I looked up at Fiona, wet, red-eyed, monstrous. ‘Where did she die?’
‘In her bed.’
‘The four-poster?’ I sniffed and smiled at the thought of that old black bed and all its history. ‘She’d have liked that.’
‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know your name.’
I sniffed again and wiped the tears from my cheeks with my fingers. I shook myself, the shudder arching up my back as my heaving emotions were once again brought into check.
‘I’m Kim,’ I said.
‘Kim?’ she said, and now it was her turn to gape. ‘You’re Kim?’
I nodded, trying to regain composure, aware that the other guests were now starting to look.
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Did she ever mention me?’
The Woman Who Knew What She Wanted Page 26