Exposé

by Paul Ilett

  Valerie’s chin dropped.

  “What?” Twigg shouted. “First husband? What?!”

  “No,” Valerie whispered, her heart pounding so hard in her chest she thought it was going to burst. “He wouldn’t. He absolutely wouldn’t.”

  “Valerie, FIRST husband?” Twigg yelled. But when Valerie didn’t respond, he looked back to Felicity. “First husband?” he asked again.

  “Yes,” Felicity replied. “It’s an interview with Valerie’s first husband. And his boyfriend.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Valerie didn’t wait for the shock or humiliation to set in. She marched from Twigg’s office, collected her things and left the building as quickly as she could. She ignored the protests from Twigg and Oonagh, the appeals to stay and explain what was going on. She saw the faces of all those reporters, her colleagues, who seemed relieved, jealous and amused in equal measure. And she saw the triumphant headline on the Project Ear website, hanging over the newsroom: “Ex-Husband Exclusive: Valerie Pierce turned me gay”. She knew she would have to give the Ear her rebuttal at some point, but even the security guard in the lobby (who had been told to stop her leaving the building) knew it was not that time. Valerie was driving down to Kent to see her ex-husband and his boyfriend, and nothing was going to stop her. Her mind was set and everything else blurred around her. In what seemed like just seconds she had swept down the stairs to the underground car park, found her car, programmed her satnav and sped up the ramp to the road outside. A few photographers had been smart enough to loiter by the exit, and rushed over to snap pictures of her as she accelerated away. Valerie didn’t notice. She was too busy blurting out random expletives and cursing the day she had ever met Raymond Vaughn. How could he? After all those years, everything they had agreed, all the things she had generously failed to share with her readers. With anyone, in fact. Even poor old Jeremy hadn’t ever heard the whole story, and her daughter didn’t have a clue that her mother had been married before.

  “Married? Pah! Bollocks!” she howled as she swerved around a bend, momentarily mounting the curb as she did. “Fucking stupid lying cheating devious stupid idiot!” she screeched. She tried to rationalise what had happened, and the more she thought about it, the more obvious it seemed. “Oh, of course he would spill the beans to Adam Jaymes,” she sneered, her tone brimming with disgust. “He probably asked for a quick grope, came in his pants and then told him everything. And that’s a better sex life than he ever gave me.” The rest of the journey continued in a similar fashion. Valerie hit 100mph for most of it and screamed and shouted as though her ex-husband were sitting in the passenger seat next to her. She knew, of course, what the exposé had done. It had ridiculed her, it had undermined every single article and every single argument she had ever made against gay rights, gay marriage and Adam Jaymes. It had made her look like little more than a bitter, shrieking ex-wife and made it virtually impossible for her to write anything on the topic in future. As her journey drew to its conclusion, Valerie turned on the car radio. She knew Five Live had late night phone-in shows and decided to see if her humiliation would get a mention. Of course it did. In fact, it was the topic of conversation. The host had been joined in the studio by a collection of old hacks and celebrities, and a spokeswoman from Stonewall had been shoe-horned into the discussion by phone once the details of the exposé had become clear.

  “So, in a nutshell, you’re asking Valerie Pierce for an apology?” queried the host.

  “I’m not sure we’re talking about an apology, but certainly an acknowledgement that this unfortunate personal experience has been the driving force behind years of relentless homophobic campaigning,” the spokeswoman replied. “We have challenged Valerie Pierce’s anti-gay rhetoric for the better part of two decades and her particular obsession with Adam Jaymes is well-documented.”

  “Obsession? What?” Valerie squawked.

  “She has always presented herself as some sort of moral guardian, willing to put herself in the firing line to stand up for Middle England,” the spokeswoman continued. “But should this revelation be true, I think the Daily Ear will have to admit it’s done little more than hand a scorned woman endless resources to vent her personal frustrations. It’s not as if Valerie Pierce likes to keep her own life private. This is a woman who is paid to share, some might say over-share, every detail of her private life. The fact she has kept something as fundamental as a marriage to a gay man a secret for all these years demonstrates - ”

  Valerie switched the radio off. Her fears had been confirmed. Her opinion, which was her livelihood, was now worthless.

  “You have reached your destination,” the satnav told her. She hadn’t been to Ray and Pete’s house before. But once, years ago, she had allowed her curiosity to get the better of her and typed their address into Google. She had quickly found they had created an entire website dedicated to their cottage renovation and the landscaping of the surrounding grounds. She had sneered at their gay attention-seeking, but still saved the web address under her ‘favourites’ so she could keep track of any on-going work. Valerie screeched to a halt, stepped from the car and slammed the door. And there it was, Ray and Pete’s twee little country cottage. Picture postcard-perfect, with the sort of garden that would make Alan Titchmarsh jealous. She stormed up the little garden path to find the front door was already open, and could see Ray’s tall muscular physique silhouetted in front of her. Even after so many years, she recognised him immediately.

  “I thought you’d show up,” he said, glumly.

  “I bet you fucking did,” she replied and stamped straight past him.

  The inside of the cottage had been completely refurbished. It was modern and open-plan, with a huge extension at the back that couldn’t be seen from the road. Valerie looked around the room, a sneer on her face. It was exactly the sort of ostentatious home she would expect from a gay couple. Ray followed her into the room and she turned to face him. He hadn’t changed, not really. He’d obviously been working out and his hairline had receded a little. But he was still ridiculously handsome with the same brooding matinée idol looks she had fallen head over heels in love with, the same man she had foolishly married when they were both just 18. At the time they’d joked about being a modern-day Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, but now she knew they had been more like Doris Day and Rock Hudson.

  “I want you to calm down,” he said.

  “That would be nice for you, wouldn’t it?” she replied. “A nice, calm conversation with the woman whose career and life you have just destroyed.”

  “Can I get you a drink, a merlot?”

  Oh, she thought, he remembered. Clever. “I don’t want a drink. I want an explanation.”

  “Will you sit down?”

  “I’m not staying. I don’t want your hospitality. I just want you to explain how you could have done this.”

  Ray shrugged his shoulders, and looked defeated. “I had no choice,” he said. “Honestly, it was completely out of my control.”

  There was a noise from the other side of the room. Valerie peered through the opening to the kitchen area and saw Pete drying a plate, as though nothing interesting was going on. She was pleased to see he had put on a good few stone and lost his hair almost completely. “Val,” Pete said curtly, with a nod. He had been part of their group of friends, and had even attended their little wedding ceremony and acted as one of the witnesses. It had been difficult enough for Valerie when Ray had told her their marriage was over after less than a year, but was even harder when he left their home hand-in-hand with Pete. She was still angry with Ray, but she despised his partner.

  “This is between Ray and me,” she said and turned her back on him. To her annoyance, before the conversation could continue, Pete went to Ray’s side and took his hand.

  “Actually, sweetie, this is my house and my partner. You want to talk to him, you talk to me too.”

  “Oh,” Valerie groaned, and looked scornfully at Ray. “The missus and the ex,
fighting for your attention. It must be like you’re living a Bette Davis movie.”

  “God, she hasn’t changed has she?” Pete said.

  Valerie looked him up and down. “I couldn’t say the same for you, Pete darling,” she purred.

  “Val, if you want to hear how this happened, that’s fine. I will tell you,” Ray said. “But let me make it clear to you now. We don’t buy your rag of a newspaper because we won’t have your homophobic bile in our home. The same goes for you. One more snide comment and you can get back in your car and piss off back to London. Is that clear?”

  Valerie wished she had taken his offer of a drink, so she would have something to throw in his face. As it was, she knew he had her at a disadvantage. “Fine, I’ll behave,” she conceded.

  Ray and Pete sat down together, and although Valerie would have preferred to stay standing she forgot herself for a moment and sat down as well. She couldn’t believe how many years had gone by since she had last seen them. What was it, she wondered, 30, 35 years? She had not seen Ray, face to face, since the day he had left and yet it was like they’d seen each other just the week before.

  “I assume you were both thrilled when Adam Jaymes turned up at your door,” she said. “I’m surprised you haven’t got a signed photograph framed on the wall.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake, Valerie,” Ray snapped. “We never met him. We didn’t even know this had anything to do with him. He’s got people working for him. He’s got his own team of journalists.”

  “Funny that, isn’t it?” Pete said, sarcastically, “Reporters screwing over other reporters. It’s almost as if people in your profession have no ethics.”

  Valerie glared at Pete and wished he would die, right there in front of her. But she knew he was probably right. The previous years had not been kind to the newspaper industry, and there were likely to be thousands of out-of-work journalists happy to take money off anyone to do pretty much anything. “So, did you meet anyone at all?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Ray said. “A woman and a photographer turned up at our door a couple of months back. They said they were doing a piece about country homes and had seen our website.”

  “We have a website,” Pete interjected, proudly. Valerie wasn’t about to let them know she’d seen it, so faked a totally uninterested expression and gestured for Ray to continue.

  “They took loads of photographs of us, all over the house and in the garden. It seemed really legitimate. But once the photographs had been taken it all, well, the woman changed tack completely. Suddenly, she was telling me how she knew I was your secret ex-husband and how they were doing a piece about you for some new publication.”

  “How did she know?”

  Ray shook his head. “She wouldn’t say. She wouldn’t even tell us which newspaper she was working for. We had no idea it was anything to do with Adam Jaymes until that Newsnight episode, and then we put two and two together.”

  Valerie stood up and walked to the window, quietly pondering the situation. “I can’t believe they could have offered you enough money to sell your story,” she said, sadly.

  “It wasn’t money,” Ray replied. “It was blackmail. They told us if we didn’t agree to an interview then they had a much worse story they were going to run. They had evidence of a court case that had been hushed up. That you had been caught drunk at the wheel of your car with your granddaughters in the back seat.”

  Valerie span round. “What?” she yelled. “But we knew about that story. We had prepared for that story. I could have handled that story coming out.”

  “Well, I didn’t know that,” Ray said, defensively. “They told us it was far worse, that they could prove the whole story had been covered up and the repercussions were more serious. Much more serious.”

  Valerie was clenching her fists and looked as though she was about to stamp her feet with rage. “Oh for God’s sake, how could you think that would be worse? You stupid bloody idiots.”

  Pete shot to his feet. “Get the fuck out of my house, you evil old witch!” he shouted. “We tried to help you, and this is how you treat us? Fuck off!”

  Ray gently tugged at Pete’s hand and tried to ease him back onto the couch, but Pete pulled his hand away. “No, no, I’m not having it,” he said. “All these years we’ve seen the evil crap she’s written about gay people, and we still tried to do the right thing by her. Keep your marriage a secret.”

  “Why, out of guilt for stealing my husband?”

  “Guilt? Why would I feel guilty? You’re the one who pushed a man into marriage when he was clearly gay.”

  “Clearly gay?” Valerie yelled back. “According to the headline, it was that year he spent married to me that turned him gay.”

  Ray stood up, and put his hands arms out, like a teacher trying to break up a playground fight. “Stop it, the pair of you,” he bellowed. “Enough.”

  After a moment of silence, Pete stormed back to the kitchen. “Tell me when she’s gone,” he said. “I’ll open the fucking champagne.”

  “For the record,” he said, “I did not say you turned me gay.”

  “Well, you must have said something like that,” Valerie replied.

  “No, I didn’t. I just said that during our marriage it became obvious to me that I had made a mistake. That I could never be with a woman, not honestly. And the more months that went by, the more I realised I was being unfair to you. That I could never be the husband that you deserved.”

  Valerie huffed. “That’s all they would have needed from you. A year married to me turned you gay.”

  “But it’s not what I said.”

  “But you said enough that they could write that headline,” she replied. “That’s how they operate, how they ... ” Valerie realised what she was saying and quietly decided not to continue the sentence.

  “How they ... twist things?” Ray suggested, eyebrows raised. “Well, I guess you would know.”

  Valerie folded her arms and stared at her ex-husband, with a lonely coldness in her veins she hadn’t felt in a long time. How wretched, she thought, that all these years later she could still feel so utterly rejected by Ray. And to make matters worse, she knew she had let herself down that evening and behaved like some parody of the bitter ex-wife. It was as if she had gone out of her way to show Ray how right he was to leave her.

  “You still could have warned me,” she said, quietly. “Come on now, you could have picked up the phone and warned me. Even after all of this time.”

  “I couldn’t,” he replied. “They said they would know straight away if I told you. And if I did tell you, they would run the drink-drive story too. Honestly, Val, I was just trying to minimise the harm. I know you think I made the wrong call but everything I did, I did with the best of intentions. And believe it or not, that goes for Pete too.”

  Valerie knew all the tricks in the book, and certainly knew how a good journalist could easily get a decent man like Ray to make a bad choice by convincing him he was doing the right thing. This situation was not Ray’s fault and as much as she hated to admit it, it wasn’t Pete’s fault either. But at least she had the truth, and all she needed now was a dignified way to end the dramatic scene she had created and extract herself from Ray’s life once more. She noticed the half-empty wine glasses on the coffee table in front of the TV, and the heavy aroma of Italian cooking and garlic bread that was still hanging in the air. It was the sort of simple, warm luxury she knew many couples enjoyed together during a quiet Friday night in, the sort of private moment she had shared with Ray during their time together. But there and then she felt very much an intruder, the unwanted guest storming into someone else’s personal space. It was time for her to leave.

  “I’m sorry you were dragged into this,” she said softly, and although she didn’t mean it, she then added, “and I’m sorry for Pete too.” She was determined that Ray’s last memory of her would not be the screaming harpy he had clearly been expecting, but instead a composed if heartbroken woman who
walked from his home with her head held high. And as she made her way back to the entrance she heard Ray gently call her name. She turned and stared at him, desperately hoping his parting comment would be some gesture of kindness. “Be careful, Val,” he said. “This was a real operation. There’s money behind it. I know tonight is a bad night, but I honestly think the worst is yet to come.”

  Valerie gently nodded in agreement, and then returned to her car and drove away knowing she would never see Ray again. She had taken the precaution of packing an overnight bag so she could go straight to her flat in Leigh-on-Sea if the worst happened. It was a much longer drive than back to her house in Barnet, but too many journalists knew her London address and she had no intention of pushing her way through a media throng just to get to her own front door. Her journey to Essex was a very different affair from her drive to Kent. She was silent and introspective after seeing Ray again after all those years. Beyond the intensity of their confrontation she could see how happy, how content he was with his lot. And it was the fact that Ray could still make her feel so inadequate, so rejected, that had troubled her the most. It was that cold and unwelcome greeting as she had arrived at his door, and the relief on his face as she had left. He clearly hadn’t wanted her there, and was happy for his life to continue without ever seeing her again.

  But it had never been that way for Valerie. For her, Ray had always been there in the back of her mind, in the background of her life. She had often wondered where he was, what he was doing and if he ever thought of her. But the kind memories, those moments of gentle reflection, were only ever fleeting. Mostly she hated him, him and his big gay life. And then there had been Pete, loitering in the kitchen and clearly amused by her pain and sense of betrayal. Pete, the dreadful little queen who had stolen her husband all those years ago and who, that very evening, had the gall to behave as though he somehow had a role to play in the drama of her predicament. But just as her fingers tightened around the steering wheel and her temper was about to flare up again, she remembered the phrase “pretended family relationship”, and she smiled. It had been a slogan of 80s right-wing electioneering, something her late husband Jeremy had always claimed was his. She remembered how delighted he had been at putting those very words into law, to prevent gay couples from ever claiming recognition. And she remembered how spitefully thrilled she had been about it at the time. She had written extensively in her column about the wonders of the Local Government Act 1988 and how Thatcher’s government was protecting real marriage and family values from the onslaught of perverted, political correctness.