Exposé

by Paul Ilett

  The moment Audrey heard the clunking of Estelle’s platform shoes along the passageway toward the kitchen, her heart sank. Quietly, somewhere at the back of her mind, she had allowed herself the luxury of thinking she would have Howard to herself for just one more evening. But Estelle and Howard had obviously reunited, either happily or unhappily, and Audrey sadly realised she would once again be relegated to the role of ex-wife. She tried not to let it distract her or change her demeanour in any way, and instead popped open a bottle of vintage Dom Perignon and started to pour them each a champagne flute. She assumed Howard hadn’t told Estelle about their conversation, and chose to act as though in complete ignorance of their recent estrangement. And as Howard loomed into view, Audrey carried herself with a breeziness that belied her true feelings. “Good evening,” she said warmly, as though she had fully expected them both. Howard entered the kitchen first and left his wife standing awkwardly behind him in the passage. He kissed Audrey on the cheek and took a glass of champagne. “Something smells good,” he noted and walked around the table and sat down. Audrey held up a glass to coax Estelle through the doorway. “And one for you, Estelle?” she asked, smiling sweetly. Estelle stepped forward and kissed Audrey on both cheeks. “Thank you Audrey,” she said, immediately looking more relaxed. She then took her glass and sat down at the table opposite her husband.

  At some point it had become a Harvey family tradition to get together the night before the Amazing People Awards. Howard had always factored it into his plans and made sure he was able to fly back to London regardless of where he was or what he was doing. And when Sam had relocated to LA, he always set aside a few days each year to fly home for the awards, ensuring he arrived a day early so he could attend his mother’s pre-event supper. It even continued when Howard married Estelle, with his young wife simply becoming part of the tradition too. And although Audrey hadn’t spoken to either her son or ex-husband that day, she had prepared the usual supper without a hint of doubt that both of them would make an appearance. “There are going to be hot and cold canapés, and different cheeses,” she said, trying to prevent the room from falling into a hate-filled silence. But Howard was staring into the distance, ignoring Estelle to the very best of his ability within such a confined space. Estelle, meanwhile, was staring directly at him with an exaggerated look of loathing on her face.

  “And I’ve made some mini puddings, as well, just for tonight. Thought it might be fun,” Audrey concluded, embellishing the sentence with a little chuckle at the end. But neither of her guests laughed, smiled or even acknowledged what she had said. “There’s a New York cheesecake you can fit onto a single dessert spoon. Just pop it straight into your mouth.”

  Howard continued staring into the distance and Estelle continued to glare at him.

  “I think they’re Nigella’s recipes but they might be Delia’s. I can’t remember. But they’re all delightful.”

  Estelle sipped her champagne, her top lip curled as though it was vinegar, and then she turned in her seat to look towards Audrey. “Sounds lovely,” she said. “I do like New York cheesecake. And I’ve certainly had plenty of time to enjoy New York cheesecake over the past few days. Haven’t I, Howard?”

  “Estelle, not here!” Howard barked.

  Audrey pulled out a chair and sat down, gently drawing one of the champagne flutes towards her. “Well. I’m very glad you are both here tonight,” she said. “Now all of that nastiness with Adam Jaymes is over, I’m glad we can still get together as a family.”

  “Oh, but that’s not really the case, Audrey,” Estelle replied with a tone that was deep and sarcastic, having completely lost her tolerance of Howard for that day.

  “Estelle. Behave!” he ordered sternly, looking directly at her for the first time since they had arrived.

  “No, apparently my attendance here this evening is a test, Audrey,” Estelle continued. “A test! You see, apparently, I’m on very thin ice. According to my husband. Very, very thin ice.”

  “Estelle!”

  “The final straw,” she continued, louder, ignoring her husband’s protests.

  “Estelle!”

  “Drinking at the last chance saloon!” she yelled and then downed her champagne.

  The room fell silent. Howard glared at his wife, gently shaking his head to indicate his disgust at her behaviour. “My apologies, Audrey,” he said. “Apparently Estelle’s appalling behaviour in New York wasn’t enough. We’re going to get a repeat performance here this evening for anyone who missed it.”

  Estelle leaned forward towards Howard, ready for a fight, but Audrey piped up before either could get another word out. “Enough!” she said loudly, with a harshness to her voice that caught Estelle by surprise. Audrey looked at each of them in turn with a severe, disapproving scowl on her face. “Let me make it perfectly clear to both of you,” she said crossly, “that we are going to have a perfectly pleasant evening. We will drink champagne and eat canapés, and chat about nice things, pleasant things. And we will use our indoor voices at all times. Because in spite of an awful, awful couple of weeks we are still here, as a family. And the Amazing People Awards are going ahead, as planned. And tomorrow night, when we are sitting at those awards and the cameras are on us, and we are live on national television – and, mark my words, we will be live on national television – all the viewers will see is a completely happy, unchanged, united family. Is that clear?”

  Howard and Estelle both lowered their faces slightly, like scolded children. Audrey had laid down firm ground rules for the following 24 hours and left them in no doubt that their marital problems, no matter how severe, were not to be discussed or even referenced until the awards were over.

  “Sorry Audrey, honey” Estelle said quietly, a gentle hint of warmth seeping back into her tone as she realised someone other than Howard was suffering by her actions.

  “Yes, sorry Audrey,” Howard echoed. “And you’re right. If we keep acting like this, it’s like Adam Jaymes beat us.”

  Audrey was pleased to have made her point but no longer had the patience to be the sole source of conversation and so she busied herself with her canapés. After a few moments, the stony silence gently eased into an uncomfortable conversation. Estelle began to detail her quest to find a gown for the awards during her stay in New York. And then Howard talked about his plans to make a sizeable donation to the NCTJ’s training programme in Leonard Twigg’s honour. Both directed their words at Audrey rather than each other but Audrey was content that at least a conversation of some description was underway. Before long Sam arrived, appearing at the kitchen door with a bouquet of flowers for his mum. “Oh, they’re lovely,” Audrey said and embraced him. She took the flowers and then proudly paraded them across the kitchen before popping them into a clay vase that she had filled with water earlier, just in case. “I’ll sort them out later,” she said, and then kissed Sam on the cheek. “Thank you.”

  To her surprise, Audrey then noticed another figure entering the kitchen from behind Sam. She almost asked “May I help you?” but caught herself just in time as she recognised the unexpected guest as Oonagh Boyle from the Daily Ear. Decades of good hosting quickly kicked into gear and she greeted Oonagh with the same warmth and familiarity that she had the others. “Oh, I’m so delighted you were able to make it,” she said, pretending she had known all along that Oonagh might attend. Audrey embraced her and then poured two more glasses of champagne. “You must have had an absolutely horrendous day,” she said.

  “Nothing she couldn’t handle, I’ll bet,” Howard said, and then raised his glass at Oonagh as a greeting. “Come on you two, grab some champagne and sit down. Tell us everything. Is the Ear still in business or has Valerie Pierce finished you off?”

  “It’s been quite something,” Oonagh said with a sigh. Sam pulled out a chair for her and once she was seated he sat next to her and handed her a glass, his arm rested across the back of her chair.

  “Are you still in business?” Howard asked
again, less jovially this time.

  “We are still in business, Howard, yes,” Oonagh replied. “We’ve got a tough few days ahead of us, but Sam’s people from LA have hit the ground running. I have to be honest, though, we’re getting a lot of mixed messages about what Valerie will do next and that’s currently our greatest concern.”

  “It’s great isn’t it?” Estelle said, unexpectedly wading into a conversation about the family business. “You survive everything that Adam Jaymes throws at you, and then it’s one of your own who tries to finish you off. Bloody Valerie Pierce, I never liked her. And it’s not because she never met me for lunch. But purple, always in bloody purple. OK, OK, we get it. You have a signature colour but you don’t have to live in it. I half expected her to paint herself bloody purple. Any every time I saw her, she had a glass of red wine in her hand. How she ever got any work done, God only knows. It’s like she had it on a drip.”

  Audrey laid plates of food on the table and then sat down and joined the others. “I was going to give her a call,” she said. “But I was so cross with her, I realised I would probably only make matters worse. After everything we’ve done for her, the way we protected her through all those dramas, Pearl Martin and all the others. It just beggars belief that she would do something so treacherous.”

  “It is what it is, Audrey,” Howard said, glumly. “But I don’t think Valerie wanted to ruin the paper. She just wanted to give us a bloody nose.”

  “And now Adam Jaymes has finished with his stupid project, we think we’re on the home run,” Sam concluded. He and Oonagh smiled at each other and then clinked their glasses together. For a moment everyone else in the room paused, expecting them to kiss, but they just sipped their champagne. Audrey glanced over to Howard and noticed a hint of a smile on his face. She knew he would approve of a relationship between Sam and Oonagh. He had always spoken proudly of her, of how he had discovered her in the Dublin coffee shop. And it hadn’t been so very long ago that he had told Audrey he was thinking of moving Oonagh into a new strategic role within Harvey Media International. But then Adam Jaymes had launched Project Ear and the moment Sam returned from LA, Oonagh’s planned promotion had evaporated. Howard knew Sam would need someone like Oonagh at his side if he had any chance of surviving not only Project Ear but the Daily Ear itself. Audrey had no doubt that Howard was proud of their son. She knew that he didn’t think of Sam as a disappointment, that he considered him to be much closer to a success than a failure. But she also knew he had always given Sam his most talented people to work with. He believed their son would only truly thrive when surrounded by excellence and that’s why he had kept Oonagh where she was, to help their son save the company and the family name.

  “Well, now we’re all here, perhaps I can make a toast,” Howard said. Audrey quickly topped up everyone’s glass and then raised hers aloft. Everyone did the same.

  “To the Harveys,” Howard said. “We’re still bloody well here.”

  They all laughed and sipped their champagne.

  “We certainly bloody well are,” Audrey agreed. Howard then smiled at his ex-wife with such obvious affection as to catch the eye of his current wife, who began to wonder what had gone on during her extended stay in New York.

  Oonagh put down her glass and dipped into her handbag. “I think that’s me,” she said, as everyone else became aware of a buzzing noise. She drew out her Blackberry and then operated a few keys before uttering a quiet “It’s from Felicity ... oh no,” and then she tapped the screen a few more times and showed it to Sam.

  “Oh shit!” Sam cried. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  “Oh God, its Valerie Pierce isn’t it?” Estelle said. “What’s the silly cow done now?”

  “No, no, it’s not Valerie,” Oonagh said. “I wish it was, but it’s not.”

  “Well?” Howard demanded. “What is it?”

  Oonagh handed him her phone and he stared at the little glowing screen that was showing Oonagh’s Twitter feed. There, right in front of his eyes, was an update he most certainly did not want to see and, more than that, did not want to show Audrey.

  Adam Jaymes @RealAdamJaymes - 3m

  #ProjectEar concludes tomorrow night, live on @channel5_tv

  CHAPTER 24

  We’re throwing a #ProjectEar party tonight. Can’t wait! Go get ‘em @RealAdamJaymes

  “The awards have suffered dwindling viewing figures over the past few years, culminating in the event being dropped by ITV. But a single tweet last night from the actor Adam Jaymes and they’ve unexpectedly become the country’s ‘must see’ television event of the year, if not the decade”

  quickly became a national obsession, with Project Ear dominating newspaper coverage for the past fortnight and being the topic everyone in the country has an opinion on. But with recent events casting a dark shadow over the whole affair, one has to question the recklessness of the man behind Project Ear, Adam Jaymes

  I went to put £50 on Estelle Harvey being a man but none of the bookies are taking bets anymore because of bloody #LeonardTwigg

  “and like a ruthless murderer in an Agatha Christie novel, Adam Jaymes has announced his final act of vengeance in advance. We’ve all been sent an invitation to the party and can watch from the side-lines with unbridled glee as he takes down another member of the Daily Ear family. So, we know all know Whodunit. The question is, who is going to be his final victim?”

  CHAPTER 25

  Leonard Twigg’s greatest ambition had been to destroy the NHS. If he had lived long enough to see it dismantled and abolished he would have died a much happier man. During 30 years as editor of the Daily Ear, he had done his upmost to carefully and methodically fashion its public image into that of a lumbering, archaic money pit riddled with corruption, cover-ups and soaring death rates. He had printed a seemingly endless procession of shame-filled stories about slipshod doctors, uncaring nurses, greedy executives and dirty wards. As a result, NHS employees tended not to like the Daily Ear.

  Colin had never really been involved in the NHS stories, not that it made a difference to the staff at Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary. Any Daily Ear reporter was considered to be little more than a scabby, immoral, lying bawbag. But despite this he’d been treated with an incredible amount of care and compassion. The hospital’s press team had organised for him to be secreted into the building in the back of an ambulance to avoid the crowing group of rival journalists at the entrance. They had then dressed him as an orderly, complete with surgeon’s mask, and a small team of student nurses escorted him through the corridors of the hospital to a private waiting area not far from Fiona’s guarded room. Although the student nurses hadn’t really said anything to him, their expressions and whispered exchanges made it clear they didn’t approve of him. Clearly, they knew he was the ‘Newsnight man’ and that his young wife’s life had been ruined and nearly ended because of his indiscretions.

  As the hours of waiting and thinking and bizarrely hot coffee in foam cups drifted by, Colin found he had an unfortunate amount of time to consider the irony of his situation; his pregnant wife had been dragged from a wrecked car after being pursued by the press. And now here he was, the Daily Ear reporter, sitting in a clean, modern £200m NHS hospital where the staff had performed little short of a miracle and saved not only Fiona’s life but that of his new baby son, too. The charge nurse visited at regular intervals and offered reassuring updates about his wife and baby. She was a thickset, sturdy Scot who was clearly too proficient to waste any time on unnecessary pleasantries or humour. But far from disliking her, he quickly grew to appreciate her bossy and no-nonsense attitude. She was always very serious and seemed to have a permanently furrowed brow, but it gave her a distinct air of confidence that made Colin feel Fiona and his son were in safe hands. And the news she delivered with each visit became increasingly more positive. His wife and baby were doing well. In spite of everything, both were doing well. She took Colin to the maternity ward to meet his son, a little bundle of miracle
with a wisp of Fiona’s red hair. For the past few months, Colin had been dreading that moment, when he would have to hold his baby in his arms for the first time. He was paranoid about dropping it. But the nurse introduced them in a very matter-of-fact manner as she passed him his baby boy. “This is your son, and he is very pleased to meet his daddy.” And somehow having that nurse there, with her indisputable air of authority, made it less alarming because he knew she would never hand a baby to anyone she thought would drop it.

  In spite of everything Colin had said to himself during the previous 24 hours, the blame he had laid at the feet of Adam Jaymes and the curses he had muttered under his breath, the first thing he said to his tiny baby son was an apology. “Sorry. I’m so, so sorry. It shouldn’t have been like this. I’ll make it up to you, I promise. You and your mum. I promise.” Colin was then returned to his private waiting room, solemn rather than euphoric, and sat quietly with his head in his hands while the nurse went to see if he could visit Fiona too. She returned quickly, and gestured with her hand for Colin to stand. “You can see her now,” she said, “but she needs her rest so only 10 minutes. Is that clear?”

  Colin nodded. “Yes of course,” he said. “And thank you. For everything. All of you. You’re all amazing.”

  “Yes, we are,” the nurse replied. “And perhaps you’d be so kind as to remember that when you’re back at that disgusting arse-wipe of a newspaper.” She then gently nudged Colin out of the waiting area.

  As Felicity gazed at herself in the full-length mirror fixed to the inside of her bedroom door she felt cold inside, as if there was very little of herself left. The girl staring back at her could not have looked more out of place in the small untidy bedroom surrounded by piles of un-ironed clothes, half-read magazines and empty coffee mugs. The plain, studious intern was nowhere to be seen. Audrey’s people had swathed her in a glamorous façade for the award ceremony, a bright sparkling disguise that would allow her to mingle with the great and the good, the famous and the infamous without anyone questioning whether she should be there. She was wearing a short dress made from tumbling folds of grey silk. Around her neck was a silver chain with a crystal encrusted orb pendant, and her shoes were a pair of croc-printed leather platform pumps. For once she had agreed to wear her long black hair down, sweeping across one side of her face and onto her shoulders.