Scandalous

by Martel Maxwell

  Oh good, just what I need to kick the day off, Max thought as she negotiated yet another hangover. Last night she had reviewed the opening night of Arctic Monkeys’ European tour at the Carling Academy. The band’s after-party with free bar got the better of her plans for an early night.

  One too many Jack Daniels and Cokes had clouded her judgement and somewhere around 2 a.m. she made a booty call to Phil, a guy she had seen for about a month before ending it a few weeks back when she realized that other than an animalistic sexual attraction they had nothing in common.

  She never did quite figure out what he did for a living – a bit of bar work, the odd gig DJing at his local club in Camden, which is where they had met. At thirty-three, he was living a Peter Pan existence, poised always for the next phone call to party. Mind you, so was Max, but then that was her job. He had piercing blue eyes, broad shoulders and wispy brown hair that curled slightly over his forehead. Max was, at base level, hugely attracted to him and the sex was amazing. That and the fact he made the infamously well-endowed Tommy Lee look like a button mushroom had kept her interested. But Max found him intensely boring – and a bit whiffy. He was into ‘nature’ and despite drinking like a fish – and Max had no doubt he had a fondness for the white stuff (though he had never indulged in front of her) – he loved to talk of his love of everything organic. This included no deodorant, with Phil preferring to smell the way nature intended. But at 2 a.m., with blurred vision, which made it difficult to find his name in her phone, and impaired logic, Max invited him to her flat. Twenty minutes later he was inside her.

  Phil was on top, Max pulling his firm bum into her. Biting her lip, Phil told Max he had been dreaming of fucking her since they split. Drunkenly, Max told him she had wanted him badly too, but even as she said the words they made her cringe and she knew she had lost interest. She tried to concentrate on him inside her, grabbing his peachy buttocks so he was as deep as possible. She didn’t want love with Phil. He was good for wild sex, for making her abandon her senses momentarily. But tonight it wasn’t working. Even his perfected skill of rubbing her nipples, the part of her body she found most sensitive, between his saliva-moistened thumb and first finger was having no effect. She’d had too much to drink to climax and had caught a whiff of his body odour, sour and pungent after vigorous missionary. Turning her head to the side, she let him thrust away, making small groans in the right places until she felt his spasm and heard his breathless grunts.

  ‘Wow, babes, that was awesome.’

  ‘Sure was,’ Max said, lacking conviction.

  ‘I was thinking, babes, me and you… we make a great team. I miss you.’

  Get the fuck out of my flat, you malodorous twat, Max wanted to scream but instead feigned exhaustion.

  ‘Let’s talk in the morning, Phil. I’m really tired.’ She smiled, squeezing his hand before turning from him and curling into the foetal position. Within seconds she was fast asleep, her last thought a daydream of finding her soulmate: in a scene a decade from now she was eating tapas and drinking wine on holiday with a man she loved and their children.

  Come the shrill tone of her alarm at 8.30 a.m. and a killer headache, Max felt almost sorry for Phil, who was gazing into her eyes as she woke. Perhaps there was something wrong with her. Why was it she behaved more like a boy – losing interest in guys, preferring to be by herself than with someone she didn’t adore, fancy, love? Did the man of her dreams even exist?

  Max smiled as she remembered her phone call with Suzie the day before.

  ‘Guess what?’ her friend had screamed so loudly Max had to hold the phone away from her ear.

  ‘You’ve slept with one of your laminated three?’ Max asked. She’d never heard her sound so excited and had more than an inkling of what was coming.

  ‘I’m engaged. David proposed!’

  Everyone at the showbiz desk had heard. Max laughed.

  ‘I’ve got to go – I think David’s mum is trying to get through – but you’ll be my bridesmaid?’

  ‘Of course. I’m so happy for you.’

  And she was. Rarely had she seen a couple as suited or as in love as Suzie and David. He put up with her getting so drunk he had to carry her home; but that was a monthly occurrence now as opposed to twice-weekly when they first met a few years ago. But she looked after him in so many other ways, driving him on at work, giving him more confidence than anyone ever had.

  Another school friend had got engaged a few weeks ago. Max wondered if this was the start of the deluge. Being fussy was one thing, but what if Max was still ignoring calls after a second date a decade from now? Maybe she’d end up like some Patsy from Ab Fab: fag in mouth, bottle of Jack in hand, slouched on a sofa while all her girlfriends bounced their babies on their knees at the monthly book club. Fuck, what a thought.

  She and Suzie, Max’s height and frame with tousled mousy-brown shoulder-length hair and green eyes, had been partners in crime ever since school. Suzie had studied fashion design at Dundee University’s Duncan of Jordanstone and moved to London around the same time as Max. For years they had met every week or two at the Italian restaurant chain Strada near Oxford Circus, sometimes joined by other friends, and made their way through bottles of house red and packs of Marlboro Lights.

  After Suzie had met David, they still kept their Strada appointment. But when David was offered a new job as an accountant in Glasgow, she agreed to move back to Scotland with him. Since then, Max had seen Suzie only every couple of months. Sometimes she craved her company. But it was always the same when they met up. Time or distance could never touch a great friendship.

  So there Suzie was with the man of her dreams while Max was still looking for love after more than a decade. She had tasted love after falling passionately for Alfie when she was just seventeen. He was two years older. They dated for three years and split because Max’s feelings had weakened and she wanted so much to experience the world. She knew that by staying with him she would end up resenting him for clipping her wings. Alfie did not share her drive to succeed and had started to question why she spent so much time working at the local paper, the Dundee Courier. He wanted to settle down with Max and have babies, but at just twenty Max knew she had to live her life fully first. Taking a job on a local Manchester paper had signalled the end of their relationship. She knew she had broken his heart and in truth she too was devastated, but she knew it was what she had to do.

  Since splitting with Alfie, Max had dated for six months here, a year there, with no shortage of flings in between. But nothing had come close to the attraction, then raw love she had first felt for Alfie. He had inherited his Brazilian mother’s grace – those beautiful big brown eyes, her silky black hair and creamy caramel skin. His broad back and muscular tall frame came from his father, who had grown up locally in Lochee in Dundee and had won some acclaim as a boxer in his youth. A delicious mix, unlike anyone Max had known. Perhaps, she often thought, he was the love of her life and she would never match it again. Everyone had laughed when she said she was in love; they said she was too young. But Max knew it had been real. If she found such happiness with another man now she would have no hesitation in making a commitment, but she didn’t want to settle for less.

  Looking at Phil beside her, she smiled faintly, kissed him on the cheek and said she had to rush. Watching as he pulled on his jeans, she caught another whiff. She hoped she would never call him again, no matter how wasted she was. When he left moments later, she was overcome with guilt, with a grubby feeling the shower did not wash away. She was on the pill – mainly to regulate her over-frequent periods – but he could have given her chlamydia, which she always thought sounded like a posh girl’s name, or worse. And what about him? He deserved better too. He deserved someone who wanted to be with him come the morning. Panic overcame Max as she hailed a taxi to work, a feeling of intense self-loathing rising within.

  But here she was, bang on 10 a.m., at the large rectangular desk which accommodated another three s
howbiz reporters, Derek, Simon and Jade, and their editor, Claire, and secretary, Emma. Professional hat on, she got down to the business of finding stories.

  ‘Max, did you hear me?’ Emma’s voice cut into Max’s thoughts. ‘Sheri’s called for you three times.’

  ‘Thanks, Emma,’ Max said, wondering what star Sheri would have slept with last night for another juicy kiss-and-tell to fund her Champagne Charlie lifestyle. Or maybe she was just chasing payment for her last story.

  Max smiled as she logged on to Facebook and noted Suzie’s status update: ‘Suzie is… engaged!!!!’

  ‘Oh and these came through from Splash agency in LA,’ Emma said, reaching over her computer to hand Max a pile of A4-size photos.

  ‘Jesus, Emma,’ Max groaned, glancing at them. ‘You want to see last night’s tequila make a comeback?’

  Emma laughed while filing her nails and Max studied the pictures of the latest celebrity heiress exiting a car wearing a short skirt and no knickers. By the time the snaps made it into the paper, a little fig leaf would cover her privates. But for now Max had full view of the unedited version. Eugh. Disgusting. But Max couldn’t help squinting to see her bits. Wow. No hair. Wonder if she waxed. Oh God, the pain. Was it worth it, to have bits that looked like ludicrously inflated collagen lips? She shouldn’t be looking at a stranger’s bits, but what the hell? It was no doubt a PR stunt to get some publicity. Like so many stars who moaned about their privacy being invaded, she actually loved the attention and judged her success on how many column inches she took up. Why else live in the paparazzi centre of the world that was Los Angeles and holiday in that other paparazzi magnet, London? Why else choose to stumble out of a club known to have hundreds of photographers waiting outside to snap stars and flash your undercarriage in its full glory?

  Right, on to Shagger Sheri, another woman who was economical with ladylike positions when getting out of cars. Max didn’t need to look up her number, she knew it by heart. Dabbing Touche Éclat concealer under her eyes as she punched the number into her desk phone, she thought about Sheri.

  She must have paid Sheri at least twenty grand in the last six months, ever since persuading her to change allegiance from a rival daily paper to which she normally sold her kiss-and-tell stories. How easily loyalty could be bought in the vacuous world of Z-list celebrity when you offered to pay more.

  Max pulled down her white DKNY summer dress so it was a little closer to her knees than her bottom and buttoned her pastel-green Urban Outfitters cardigan at the top. There was still an old-fashioned ‘time and place’ logic on the editorial floor among the middle-aged male reporters, although showbiz writers, unlike news reporters, were not expected to look like they were suited for a funeral.

  Max waited for Sheri to pick up.

  ‘Hello?’ came a croaky voice.

  ‘Hi, it’s Max.’

  ‘Awright, darlin’, ’ow are you?’ Sheri’s Essex whine grated at the best of times. But with the taste of vodka and tequila still in her mouth Max found it almost unbearable.

  ‘Wait till you hear this, darlin’. Guess who I shagged last night. Go on, you’ll never get it.’

  ‘David Beckham?’

  ‘Na, one day, Max, then you’ll give me fifty grand, right?’

  ‘Sure will, Sheri. Listen, I’ve got an interview in a minute,’ Max lied. ‘Sorry to hurry you, but…’

  ‘OK, OK, mate. I only bloody had sex with Kirk Kelner.’

  Really? Kirk Kelner?

  Now that was a result for Shagger Sheri. She had slept with so many famous football players and soap actors she had become a marked woman, avoided like the plague by any British star who ever read a newspaper.

  She’d been in so many tabloids, showing off her 32GG falsies, that men knew their wives or girlfriends would find out and they stayed away no matter how much dirty sex they wanted.

  But of course American Kirk Kelner would have had no idea who this big-boobed beauty with dead coke-fuelled eyes was when they met at whatever party they had been at the night before.

  It made sense. Kirk had stayed on in London after promoting Man of Steel 4 to start filming his next movie, some romantic comedy with Jennifer Aniston.

  He would be keen to sample the single life with a string of obliging English girls. Sheri was hardly girlfriend material. But she was just right for a one-night stand for the Hollywood star.

  Max thought of her scoop that had landed Mr Kelner on the front page of the paper.

  ‘WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Kelner Cheated With Nanny’ had been the headline. The story told how the movie star admitted to friends that he had slept with his children’s nanny behind his wife’s back.

  The picture desk had dug out a snap of their nanny, a twenty-two-year-old Spanish girl called Maria, and tracked her down to her mum’s house in Madrid where she had fled, no doubt with a wad of money from Kirk to keep quiet. It hadn’t been enough because the nanny had broken down in front of the paper’s Spanish correspondent and told how used and dirty Kirk had made her feel… with the help of a cheque from the paper for £10,000. He had declared his undying love for her, promising to leave his supermodel wife. But he had dropped her the instant his wife found out.

  Thankfully, Max’s picture hadn’t accompanied her name in the first exposé. So if Kirk had read the paper that day he’d have had no idea ‘Alison the children’s author’ was in fact Maxine Summers, tabloid hack.

  Although the reporter in Spain had his name on the nanny’s confession, Max was credited within the office for bringing in the original story.

  Max had been the toast of the showbiz desk after the stories broke. Her ability to work a room, get in any VIP enclosure and talk to anyone was becoming legendary among her fellow journalists. She’d been given a pay rise and told to make the most of her expense account by taking pals to dinner, so long as they went to the right restaurants, like Nobu, the Ivy, the Caprice or the Wolseley, where she might see stars misbehaving. Far better to be there with a chance of getting a story than in front of the television at home, her boss, Claire, had told her.

  But her last front page, on Kelner, had been two weeks ago and she hadn’t had a big hit since. For all the perks of her job, her boss expected at least one big exclusive every week in return.

  ‘Ten grand. Minimum.’ Shagger Sheri’s whining voice cut through her thoughts. For her, life was about fame and money. That and getting on the guest list for China White, Funky Buddha, Penthouse, Embassy, Boujis, the Wellington or any other club in which she could snare a star. The likes of Soho’s Groucho Club for media movers and shakers or Maddox, full of wealthy Arabs, trust-fund kids and the rich Euro set, were, however, too discerning and off-limits.

  But Maddox was a place she’d like to go every night. Even if there were no stars, it was heaving with money. Sheri had managed to get in once, when a rich Arab spotted her at China White and invited her, along with three other girls. Tables competed for the highest bar bill. Rich Russians would think nothing of ordering jeroboams of vodkas for £800, while the fabulous-looking girls they’d invited gyrated in their tiny dresses to the blaring music.

  Sheri was expert at letting men know what the night had in store if they chose her over the dozens of other wannabes grinding to the R ’n’ B music beside their table. She would sit opposite them, lick her collagen-enhanced top lip smeared with Bobbi Brown pink gloss and open her legs. With her micro dress hitched a few inches, it was easy to see she was commando and completely shaven. After that, the men would go over to their male pals, nudge, wink, point at Sheri and escort her out of the club.

  Then it was back to a nearby hotel – often the Sanderson at Sheri’s request because she’d already tipped off a photographer to get there for a snap of her and her famous pull – and fuck each other senseless. Well, when the men weren’t too wasted on drink and drugs to get it up.

  More than once Sheri had woken feeling raw, her mind flashing back to the previous evening’s debauchery. To hungry, hard sex where he t
hrew her on the bed, made a feeble attempt at foreplay by squeezing her inflated breasts and entered her angrily.

  Sometimes they asked to take pictures of her naked on their mobile phones. She knew it would flash on the phones of dozens of footballers or soap stars. She liked that thought.

  Sometimes they asked if a friend could join them. Sheri, fuelled by a few lines and expensive champagne, always agreed. She wanted to please them and she wanted a killer story to sell the next day. Sometimes they didn’t ask. Their friends would just happen to turn up at the hotel room and join in. Of course, they’d been text messaged on their mobile phones by their pal with details of the hotel, room number and positions that had been done so far. Sheri pretended not to know any of this.

  She never said no. Occasionally, she wondered what they would do if she refused. She had no doubt some would take what they wanted anyway, some would find someone who would give it to them and others would return home to their wife or girlfriend and wake them.

  Rarely did these guys call her again. When they did they were fuelled with champagne and cocaine and wanted a debauched night of sex, sometimes with other girls they’d picked up. So why shouldn’t she make some cash through the stories? They were using her as much as she was using them.

  ‘Sheri, I’ll see what I can do,’ Max told her. ‘You know you get the best rates from me. Whatever you do, don’t tell a soul. Where are you?’

  ‘I’ve just left his hotel room. I’ll be back at my flat in twenty minutes.’

  ‘OK, I’ll see you there in half an hour. Have a think about the juiciest details from last night. You know the score – the juicier it is the more cash I can get you, OK?’

  ‘Right, doll. See you then.’

  God, this job could be sordid, Max thought. But she was grateful to get out of the office and into the warm summer’s day.

  HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

  Max went over to Bermondsey, just south of the Thames, and made her way to the flat that Sheri shared with a gorgeous black topless model called Envy.