Girls' Night In

by Jessica Adams

  ‘I am cheap,’ I muttered. ‘Now it’s out in the open.’

  You see, the press had finally turned against me big time on this one. ‘Sadie the Heartbreaker’ ran the bylines, ‘Was Roth Right To Leave Her?’ ‘Mac and Smack the Bitch Uptown.’ Sympathy for Bill was creeping into the alliterative, double-entendre prose. Rumours abounded that I had always been a serial tart, that Bill Roth had been at the end of his tether when he left me, that I was the reason his shows had started to suffer in the UK. The public was ready to forgive Bill at last; they wanted their big, loud, angry star back on home turf. It had done Mac no harm either, although Al was lampooned.

  ‘You’ve totally discredited my work,’ he fumed. ‘My name’s all over this.’ It was true. The Mac thing was one set-up too much for the press and the long-prepared features about the Alchemist ran side-by-side with the latest Smack story. To say I’d blown his cover was an understatement – I’d napalmed his roof.

  ‘You knew what you were letting yourself in for when you agreed to help me,’ I said quietly, wishing it didn’t make me feel quite so bad.

  Darling Mac had sent a box of chocolates around to the hotel that morning with the note: Mine’s a soft centre, but please take it because you’re eating me up already. I looked at it for a long time, listening to Al’s breathing on the other end of the phone.

  ‘I know why you’ve done this, Sadie,’ he said finally. ‘And I hope it works, because you’ve not only burned my boats, you’ve burned your own too, and it takes a hell of a long time to swim to a desert island.’

  I closed my eyes. He’d guessed at that first ever lunch. That’s why he’d been so reluctant to agree to do this stupid dating thing. I still had no idea why he’d said yes.

  ‘I think,’ his voice shook, ‘that we can help each other out here.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Al,’ I sighed. ‘If I do employ you, then I’m afraid you’re fired.’

  ‘Wait! I have to ask you something,’ he pleaded.

  ‘Forget it,’ I hung up on him, wishing I cared less, that the Alchemist had been a vulture after all, not the wise owl I’d grown to like.

  I cried all the way home on the train, hours and hours of sliding past blurred green fields. My heart was hanging like a small corpse in my chest, wrenched from its strings. I wrote a letter to Mac to apologize for my behaviour. I knew his soft centre would harden up and go stale sooner or later – they all did – but I hoped that he got lucky.

  Despite the dark glasses, I was still recognized constantly, which almost finished me off. I was sure my tear-stained autographs would make a mint in years to come if I finally committed the ultimate publicity stunt by committing suicide. I guessed that was what A1 would want. It would make great press; at least three of his clients would have more column inches than the Coliseum in coming weeks and the posthumous biography would sell shed-loads, so Sly would be happy too. He’d always wanted to write and he was the only person besides Bill who knew the entire truth.

  Back at my made-over, disgustingly twee cottage, I ignored the Al’s increasingly irate answer phone messages and cuddled Carrot to my chest as I counted.

  Seventy-eight sleeping pills. More than enough. But I knew I couldn’t do it. Not while Bill’s future lay in my hands.

  Al turned up on my doorstep the next morning, armed with his slimline briefcase, like an estate agent arriving for a valuation. His wild curls had been slicked back and his blue eyes burnt with furious determination.

  ‘I’ve brought you a file in the hope that you will consider one last job,’ he handed it over and looked around. ‘Nice place.’

  It looked disgusting, Colefax and Fowlered to within one inch of its sixteenth-century life with swags, stipples, indoor water features, distressed furniture and a distraught owner looking like sin from a sleepless night. It only took a moment for AI’s professional cool to crack. Underneath, he was jumpy and nervous.

  ‘OK, it’s awful,’ he admitted. ‘I’m sorry. The magazine promised the best interior designers. We’ll sue.’

  ‘Thanks, but I have no interest in designer libels. And I appreciate you bringing this, but I told you, you’re fired.’ I threw the file on the dresser and waited for him to leave.

  ‘I drove all the way from London,’ he stayed put in my doorway. ‘I brought you this too.’ He fished a slimline orchid out of the case, looking embarrassed. ‘It reminded me of you,’ he cleared his throat. ‘Fragile and rare, and desired by too many people for its own safety.’

  I looked at it for a long time and felt the sun flooding through the open front door on to my face. It gave Al an ill-deserved halo as he stood in front of me.

  ‘I understand all your cuttings now,’ he said, his face a dark silhouetted shadow. ‘What interviewers meant when they wrote about your old-fashioned star quality, about how dangerous you are, how irresistible.’ He looked at me curiously. ‘I hope Bill knows how lucky he is.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Cornered, I pretended not to understand.

  ‘You hate the limelight, don’t you?’ his shadow moved, blinding me with sun. ‘That’s why you seemed so reluctant to go back into the public eye when I first met you, why you insisted on taking the fast-track to feature-spreads. You were doing it for love. Not revenge, nor self-glory. Love. Call Bill now,’ he offered me his mobile. ‘Call him. Tell him it’s worked. That it’s time to come home.’

  ‘No,’ I turned the flower around in my hands, voice choked.

  He waited until a tear splashed on the cellophane before he spoke. ‘Your relationship hasn’t ended at all, has it, Sadie? It’s simply on hold until Bill’s career picks up. He staged that scandalous defection with Ash Numan to further his American interests with your support. He knew that if you went on a celebrity datefest a few months later, you’d create enough personal publicity to negate all his love-rat bad press over here. That’s why you waited a dignified amount of time after your “messy” bust-up and then approached me. You agreed to turn yourself into a media whore so that he’ll receive a hero’s welcome when he comes back. You did all this for him, didn’t you?’

  Stifling a sob, I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth. ‘Yes.’

  A1 whistled quietly, almost incandescent with anger. ‘What a sacrifice you made, Sadie. First he’s a rat, now you’re the bitch. First he’s a tired shock-jock-turned-TV-star who’s lost his edge, now he’s Britain’s lost misunderstood bower-boy everyone wants to come home. Nice one, Smack – the ultimate publicity stunt. Clever old Sadie and Bill. The press will go wild when you two finally get it back together. No wonder my career’s up in smoke. You made me look like an amateur, didn’t you?’

  ‘Faking a break up is no worse than faking relationships to get your clients in the headlines,’ I howled. ‘You do it all the time.’

  ‘And I did it once too often with you, didn’t I?’ he laughed. ‘Why couldn’t I say no to you? Why?’

  I couldn’t answer that one.

  ‘So now that you’ve more or less wrecked my career, why refuse to call Bill home for the romantic reunion?’ His eyes blazed furiously. ‘At least give me the satisfaction of knowing that I helped Loved Up’s young dream team get back together.’

  ‘No! He needs more time,’ I sobbed. ‘He’s not ready to come back yet.’

  Then A1 whistled again as the irony fist hit him in the face at last.

  ‘Oh Jesus. Oh poor Sadie,’ he shook his head, laughing bitterly. ‘It hasn’t worked, has it? You did all this for love and now you find out that he no longer needs you. He likes it in the States. He likes working with Ash – might be in love with her even. Is that it? Now he can bring her back here with him whenever he wants to and you’ve got zip-all except a zipped lip. He’s used you just like you’ve used me. Well, I hope you’re taking a cut, because I’m just taking a stab in the back here.’

  ‘It’s not like that,’ I muttered tearfully.

  But Al wasn’t listening. He grabbed my hand and pulled it away from my face, blue
eyes digging around for my tarnished soul. ‘You have to help me out here, Sadie. Can’t you see, I need you even if Bill doesn’t?’

  Ducking my head away from the shafts of sunlight, I looked into those curious, quirky blue eyes and fell in. I fell so deeply that the blood rushed to my head, the oxygen was punched from my lungs and my vision tunnelled until all I could see was blue, blue, blue. Christ, it was like coming home.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ I tried to blink, to look away, but I couldn’t.

  ‘Save me,’ he breathed, his mouth so close to mine that I could feel his breath on my lip, as warm and sweet as a patisserie. ‘Save me like you saved Bill.’

  Frantically shaking off his gaze, I turned away. I knew what I had to do. Sadie the sacrificial lamb had one more task. It was about time she performed a striptease and showed off her mutton.

  ‘You’d better sit down,’ I closed the door behind him and whistled Carrot from the sofa. ‘There’s something I should show you.’

  Feeling charred with self-hatred, I went back to the dresser and pulled out a drawer. It was cram-full with airmail envelopes. Letters from Bill, increasingly desperate, telling me how much he missed me, how lonely he was and how much Ash got on his nerves. They asked me how things were going, why I wouldn’t return his calls, when he could come home. The last few letters were the most heartbreaking, saying that he realized I no longer wanted to help him, that he could understand why, but begging me to reconsider.

  Al read them in silence. When he finally looked up, his blue eyes were bewildered. ‘Why, Sadie?’

  I scrunched my eyes tight shut. ‘Can’t you see? I don’t want him to come back to me, Al. I set him free. I did this so that he’d stop relying on me.’

  I could hear his sharp intake of breath. ‘You went through all this to what – to chuck him? Jesus, Sadie! I mean, I know you’ve done his career no end of good, but wasn’t this all a bit elaborate, not to mention hurtful?’

  ‘You have no idea!’ I leapt up furiously, snatching the letters back. ‘Bill and I had an agreement from the start. Our relationship was always a sham – not the sort that lasts a few weeks or months like the ones you set up, but one that has lasted for years and years, one that almost destroyed me. You see, I committed the ultimate sin by believing the hype and starting to love him for real. I know him better than anyone; I think he’s wonderful and talented and warm and funny, but he could never love me in return, not in the way I wanted. God knows, he’s tried. Yes, I’m “chucking” him, if you want to put it that way. I’m chucking him because sooner or later, he’ll realize that he can live without me and he’ll move on, find real love – one that matters. I had to hurt him to do this. It was the only way short of – short of –’ I stopped myself short, knowing I’d said enough.

  Al was mute with surprise.

  ‘Now you have your story,’ I opened the door. ‘Go and tell that to your tabloid friends. It’ll save your credibility, after all. Tell them Smack the Bitch dumped Bill Roth by sending him away to America to get famous there – she even paid Ash Numan to pretend to love him, which is why she’s boracic. You can’t make me look cheaper than I already do. Now fuck off and sell the story. If you want to double-up your PR while you’re at it, I’ll happily pose with a box of tissues. I’m sure one of your clients manufactures them. Why waste the opportunity to product place?’

  ‘This isn’t what I wanted, Sadie,’ he pleaded. ‘I don’t need this.’

  ‘Well, it’s all you’re getting,’ I screamed, pushing him outside.

  Carrot was old and rheumatic, but he always rose to the occasion. Al left the cottage with a small terrier attached to one leg, gnawing frantically.

  When I finally heard his car engine roar away, I turned back to the dresser and spotted the file that he’d left. To my amazement, it contained a large photograph of just one man. Al Matthews, PR Guru, smiled at the camera with his lop-sided could-be-beautiful face and dishevelled comb-me-with-your-fingers hair. That, it seemed, was the final favour he’d come here to beg. Al wanted me to fake-date him.

  It suddenly made such horrible sense that I started to laugh. He was caught up in his own spin and it had started to snowball. The press no longer trusted him. They didn’t like the sham relationships, the client incest, or the manipulation. He’d had his fifteen minutes cubed and was now too famous to get away with a career as a Svengali. A future in panel shows or politics beckoned. And now that he’d been hoist by his own PR petard, he had to make himself even more notorious, more famous to survive and prosper. In his eyes, that meant hooking up with the most talked-about bitch in the country right now.

  All he’d wanted was to trawl me around a few parties. Instead I’d told him my darkest secret. Shit.

  I waited all week for the story to break. I bought the papers each day, scoured them obsessively. They reported that George Brian was now dating Ruby Red after her dramatic no-show at her wedding earlier in the year (yes, gratuitous photo of me at non-wedding). They reported that Mac’s Number One single ‘Older Woman’ had turned platinum (cue another photo of me), that Vizza was hotly tipped for Sports Celebrity of the Year and believed to be seeing a Spice Girl whose solo career had bombed (small shot of her, huge one of me). There was nothing about Bill. The letters kept flooding in from America, but I had stopped opening them. They hurt too much.

  In anticipation of the hacks calling, I’d changed my telephone number and only passed it on to the select few I trusted. After a full fortnight, when I’d just started to believe I was safe and that Al had gone to live in an ashram, Sly called. It was early morning and I’d been up all night bingeing on ice cream.

  ‘What have you done?’ he screamed. ‘The News has dedicated three pages to it. The photo of me is awful.’

  My face drained of colour and I fought to breathe as I dashed to the hall where the papers were waiting in a soggy pile. What had Al told them? How could he possibly know Sly was involved?

  But the story that unfolded with more puns in bold italic than ever disgraced a Carry On script wasn’t Al’s. It was Bill’s.

  ‘Loved Up Star Comes Out’ ran the headline. ‘Bill tells how love for gay agent ruined life with sexy Smack.’

  Bill told his story with the minimum of sentiment, outlining how his feelings for me had changed over the years, how he grew to rely on me as a sister, a mentor, and a therapist, but no longer as a lover. He told the nation how he clung to me even though I wanted to leave, how he begged me to stay, threatened suicide and even once locked me in our London flat for several days. He named Sly as his lover of close to five years, a man who had stood by him with unending patience and support. He spared himself no embarrassment as he finally exposed the true nature of our relationship and set me free. Christ, he was brave.

  It was just after dawn, but the press had already started to gather outside. I ignored the knocks on the door and let Carrot bark himself hoarse as I hid from them all and took the phone off the hook. I’d been through it all before and wearily prepared for the long siege. ‘Cross your legs, Carrot, mate.’

  It was only when I hear a familiar voice yelling through the letterbox that I opened the door a crack. Al burst inside, looking unshaven and exhausted.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me he was gay?’ he demanded.

  ‘It was none of your business.’

  We both jumped as a flash at the window almost blinded us. I closed the curtains on the photographer and buried my forehead in their dusty folds. ‘Coming out will probably destroy Bill’s career.’

  ‘No it won’t,’ Al shook his head. ‘He’ll have to cling on to the sides of the boat for a while but he’ll weather the storm. Look at Elton John, Michael Barrymore, Rupert Everett. They all came out and survived. Bill could see it was time. All he needed was good advice and a hand to hold.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I didn’t get these red eyes from staying up partying,’ he muttered, sagging down on the sofa. ‘I’ve just got off a pla
ne from California. Bill had no idea how much you’ve been suffering. Typical starry attitude, only thinking about himself. Still, he’s a nice enough bloke. He’d just had lousy PR management, that’s all.’

  ‘You went to see him?’ I was appalled. ‘Christ, you’re a bloody hyena, aren’t you? Is there no bone you won’t pick for your pound of flesh?’

  ‘I gave him good advice, Sadie,’ he sighed, looking even more tired. ‘I thought that at least I could do one decent thing before I quit to prove I haven’t been in the wrong career all these years.’

  ‘But why Bill?’

  ‘For you, of course,’ he walked to the dresser where his ‘file’ still lay under a pile of unopened mail. ‘I hoped you might reconsider my final offer?’

  I looked at the photograph and laughed. ‘You must be joking! I couldn’t fake another love affair. Can’t you see what a mess that would make?’

  ‘I don’t want to fake it, Sadie. I never did. Like I just said, I quit PR.’ Al was opening the most recent of Bill’s letters. ‘Sadie darling, he still won’t go away. Christ, he’s persistent. He says he loves you and says I have to set you free –’

  ‘Give that here,’ I snatched it away and started to read. I’d trust Bill with my life – after all I’d trusted him with my love life for years. He’d clearly confided in Al a great deal. They had talked for hours, discussing the nature of fame, the way it destroys, creates untruths, damages souls. Bill liked Al, was clearly smitten, and even had the nerve to be irritated with me for using him. ‘He’s very like you, Sadie darling. He fell into this twinkly world by accident. Give him a chance. Don’t let me down – now I’m allowed to be camp at long last, I simply must wear a ridiculous Versace suit to the wedding.’

  ‘Oh God, Bill, you daft bugger. Why wait so long?’ I put the letter down with a sob and looked at Al’s sad, dishevelled face. ‘You don’t want to fake it?’

  He shook his head, cupping my face in his hands. ‘I want the real thing, far away from the public eye. Just you and me and normality.’