The One That I Want

by Lynne Shelby

  ‘She’s got herself in a state,’ Daniel said, ‘but she’ll be fine. She might be out of work, but she’s hardly going to be short of money. And she’s still an A-lister.’

  ‘I’m really not interested in Cassie’s celebrity status,’ I said. ‘It’s her relationship with Ryan I care about.’

  ‘They’re not the first show business couple to break off an engagement,’ Daniel said. ‘By the time the next issue of Goss hits the news-stands, they’ll have found someone else.’

  I stared at him. Il est tres superficiel.

  ‘Where is Ryan, anyway?’ Daniel asked.

  ‘He’s gone,’ I said. ‘Cassie told him to go and he went. It’s all such a mess. I wish I could think of a way to make it right.’

  ‘You can’t make her love him,’ Owen said, quietly. ‘She has to decide she wants him herself.’

  ‘What Cassie wants right now,’ Daniel said, ‘is barbequed steaks and salad. I suggest we go and join her in the garden...’

  The steaks, which Ryan had been cooking on the barbeque, were inedible. Daniel and I, and Owen, sat at Cassie’s garden table, pushing bits of charred meat around our plates, while Nadia told us exactly what she thought of the producers of Princess Snowdrop (if she’d voiced her opinions to anyone else, she would have been arrested for slander). Cassie didn’t eat much, but she drank almost a whole bottle of wine, and laughed too loudly at anything Nadia said. Even when it wasn’t funny. Everyone studiously avoided looking at Ryan’s empty chair.

  ‘I think I’m going to sell my house,’ Cassie said, suddenly.

  ‘Why would you do that?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t want to live in it anymore. Did I ever tell you that I only bought it because it reminded me of your dolls house?’

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  ‘How ridiculous is that?’ Cassie said. ‘Almost as ridiculous as a twenty-five year old woman skipping round a magical kingdom in a white puff-sleeved dress.’

  ‘Would you like me to phone an estate agent for you?’ Nadia asked.

  ‘Please, Nadia. First thing on Monday. While I’m at the studios getting fired.’

  ‘You’re not being fired,’ I said. ‘The show’s been cancelled. There’s a difference.’

  ‘Is there?’ Cassie pushed away her plate. ‘Do you guys have plans for tonight? Maybe we could all go to a club?’

  She’s lost her job, I thought. She’s broken off her engagement. And now she wants to go clubbing?

  I said, ‘Is that such a good idea, Cassie?’

  ‘I’m single now,’ Cassie snapped. ‘I need to get back out there.’

  Not tonight, you don’t, I thought.

  ‘You’ll come out clubbing with me tonight, won’t you, Owen?’ Cassie said.

  ‘I can’t tonight,’ Owen said. ‘I’ve told a friend that I’ll go and watch her band.’

  ‘Viper?’ It seemed an age since I’d seen them play in Camden.

  ‘Yeah,’ Owen said, ‘they’re one of the support acts for Blaze at the Sound House.’

  ‘That’s a step up from the pub circuit,’ I said. I’d never heard of Blaze, but I recognised the Sound House as the venue whose stage had hosted the early performances of several bands, Silver Dollar among them, who’d gone on to acquire managers and record deals (and presumably roadies who didn’t have a different job to go to in the morning).

  ‘It is,’ Owen said. ‘I’m sorry Cassie, but it’s not something I can get out of.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Cassie said. ‘You can’t let down your friend.’

  ‘I’m not doing anything tonight,’ Nadia said. ‘I have to go shopping this afternoon, but only for a couple of hours.’

  ‘Aren’t you seeing Leo tonight?’

  ‘No, he’s gone camping this weekend with some of his tedious colleagues.’

  ‘In that case, we should have a girls’ night out,’ Cassie said. ‘You, me and Lucy. You don’t mind if I borrow her this evening, do you Daniel?’

  ‘Of course he doesn’t mind,’ I said.

  Daniel looked taken aback, but he said, ‘No, I’m cool with that. Lucy and I hadn’t made any definite plans.’

  He does mind, I thought. Well, he’s going to have to get over it, because Cassie needs me a lot more than he does right now.

  Daniel turned to Owen. ‘How about I come with you to this gig tonight?’

  ‘Sure,’ Owen said. ‘I’ll give Jess a call – she’ll get you a backstage pass.’

  I was shocked by the unexpected feeling of possessiveness towards Owen that suddenly shot through me. He was my friend, not Daniel’s, and now they seemed to be embarking on a bromance. Almost immediately, I realised how juvenile that would sound to anyone else.

  Telling myself to get a grip, I said, ‘Say ‘Hi’ to Jess for me.’

  ‘Do you want to go to Owen’s friend’s gig, Lucy?’ Nadia said. ‘Don’t feel you have to come out with me and Cassie if you’d rather go out with the guys.’

  Did Nadia seriously think I’d abandon Cassie, in the state she was in, to go to a concert? Unbelievable. ‘It’s OK, I’ll catch Viper some other time.’ I locked eyes with Nadia and gave her my brightest smile. ‘We haven’t had a girls’ night out in months. It’ll be fun.’

  ‘Great.’ Cassie said. ‘We’ll go to Attitude. Nadia, if you’d arrange for a car to pick us up at nine… And now I’m going to spend the rest of the afternoon lying in the sun. Princess Snowdrop can’t get a tan, but Cassie Clarke can do whatever the hell she wants.’

  CHAPTER 26

  A muscular guy in his mid-twenties stood in front of me, blocking my view of the dance-floor. ‘Wanna dance?’ he said.

  ‘Thanks for asking, but no,’ I said. ‘I’m here with my boyfriend, and he doesn’t like it if I dance with other men.’ My mother had taught me that I never had to do anything with a guy that I didn’t want to, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t let them down gently.

  ‘Fair enough.’ The guy moved off, and approached another girl at the other end of the bar.

  I returned my attention back to the crowded dance-floor where Cassie was dancing with an older man (he had to have been over forty), gyrating her hips and tossing her hair. The music changed to another track, and she spun away from him, dancing next to a young actor from one of the soaps. He moved behind her, pressing his body against her, and slid his arms around her waist. They writhed together, vaguely in time to the pounding house music. The crystals on Cassie’s dress glittered in the club’s flashing lights. As the dress was flesh-coloured, she looked as though she was naked, with the gems stuck strategically onto her skin.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned my head to find myself face to face with goalkeeper Fabio Rossi. The thunderous expression on his face told me that he was not about to ask me to dance.

  ‘You are Lucy Ashford, yes?’ he demanded, raising his voice so that I could hear him above the music. ‘You are here with Cassie Clarke?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘My name is Fabio. I am a friend of Ryan Fleet.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘We’ve met.’

  ‘Have we? I do not remember. I see your photo in a magazine. Where is Ryan?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. He…didn’t come out with us tonight.’

  Fabio gestured angrily towards Cassie and the soap actor. ‘She makes the fool of Ryan. How can she do this?’

  On the dance floor, Cassie twisted around in the soap actor’s arms and kissed him on the mouth. I actually felt sick. Fabio said something in Italian. I’d no idea what it meant, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t very complimentary about Cassie.

  ‘È ubriaca,’ Fabio sneered. ‘She is drunk.’

  ‘Yes’ I said. ‘She is.’

  The queue to get into Attitude that Saturday night had stretched down the street and around the corner, but Cassie’s celebrity status, and mine for once, if I’m honest, had got us straight in the door, and secured us a table in the roped-off VIP area. From there, we cou
ld look out over the main dance-floor, where the usual motley crew of models, footballers and soap stars were rubbing shoulders with City boys, Essex girls and several of the more disreputable scions of the aristocracy. Cassie had immediately ordered us a round of cocktails, and then another, downing her second Long Island Iced Tea while I was still sipping my first. She’d then moved on to shots, before dragging me out of the VIP area and into the heaving throng on the dance-floor. She’d spent the next few hours throwing vodka down her throat and dancing with increasingly uninhibited abandon. I’d shuffled and jerked next to her, trying unsuccessfully to remember how I’d managed to match my movements to the music when I’d danced at the Star Gazer Gala with Owen. Nadia (who’d returned from her afternoon’s shopping expedition in such a good mood that I suspected she’d been with some guy who wasn’t Poor Leo) had danced with us for a while, but then the attractions of a TV Reality Show Contestant offering to buy her a drink had proved irresistible. I’d last seen the two of them making their way through the crowd towards the rest rooms. Disgusted with Nadia, worried about Cassie, who was apparently determined to get completely and spectacularly wasted, I’d retreated from the dance-floor to the bar, bought myself an over-priced mineral water and wondered just how long it would be before I could persuade the pair of them to call it a night.

  That was before Cassie had decided to play tonsil hockey in front of five-hundred clubbers with cameras on their mobile phones.

  Fabio said, ‘She behaves like a slut.’

  Considering that Fabio had been all over me when I’d met him in BarRacuda, I thought this remark was completely out of order. Then I remembered that as far as he knew, Cassie was marrying his friend and team-mate.

  ‘Cassie and Ryan split up,’ I said. ‘Excuse me, Fabio, I need to get her out of here.’

  Turning my back on Fabio, I texted Nadia to let her know that we were leaving – it was up to her if she ditched the Reality Show Contestant and came with us. I debated phoning for a hire-car, but decided we could make do with a taxi. Then, to a disorientating backdrop of relentlessly pulsating sound and light, I went up to Cassie and the soap-actor, whose faces were still glued together, and put my hand firmly on her shoulder.

  Cassie started, and broke away from him. The heat of the club had made her mascara run and her lipstick was smeared around her mouth.

  ‘We’re going home,’ I said. ‘Now.’

  The soap actor leered at me. ‘Whatever you say, baby.’

  ‘Not you.’ Fabio Rossi had followed me onto the dance-floor. He positioned himself between me and Cassie and the soap-actor, who took one look at the goalkeeper’s biceps and backed away.

  ‘Fabs!’ Cassie lurched towards him, lost her balance, and if Fabio hadn’t caught her, she would have fallen to the floor. ‘Fabio… Fabulous Fabio. That’s what Goss magazine calls you, isn’t it?’

  ‘We get you home now, Cassie.’ Fabio put his arm around her and started to walk her through the jostling dancers towards the club’s exit. She took only a couple of stumbling steps before once again she almost fell.

  ‘I don’t feel too good,’ she said, slumping against Fabio’s chest.

  ‘That is because tonight you drink too much,’ Fabio said. Holding Cassie firmly about the waist, he guided her off the dance-floor. I followed after them, conscious of the number of people watching us with undisguised interest, and drawing their friends’ attention to us as well. The days when Cassie could dance in a club unrecognised were long over. Her engagement to Fleet Feet had brought her a whole new fan-base.

  At the edge of the dance-floor, one of Attitude’s trademark female bouncers, (black leather jumpsuit, scarlet lips and nails, rumoured to be expert in karate), planted herself in our way. At around six feet tall, she was exotically beautiful, but also incredibly scary.

  ‘Do we have a problem here?’ she said to Fabio. ‘Is medical assistance required?’

  ‘No, grazie, we are leaving,’ Fabio said. ‘My friend is tired.’

  ‘I’m ver’ tired,’ Cassie said.

  The bouncer gave her a long look and then, apparently satisfied that she wasn’t about to pass out before she was off the premises, nodded and said, ‘I’ll escort your party to the door, Sir.’ With the bouncer clearing a path before us, Fabio managed to get Cassie to the club’s entrance without further mishap. Nadia was waiting for us in the foyer.

  ‘There you are at last…’ Nadia’s petulant voice trailed off and her eyes widened as she saw that Cassie was barely able to put one foot in front of the other. ‘Oh my God, she’s completely pissed.’

  ‘Hey, Nadia,’ Cassie slurred. ‘Thish ish Fabio. He’s taking me home.’

  ‘Well, it’s good to know that you have someone responsible looking out for you.’ Nadia smiled at Fabio. To me, she said, ‘Honestly, Lucy, how could you let her get in such a state?’

  I saw red. ‘How exactly was I supposed to stop her?’

  ‘That’s what friends do on a girls’ night out,’ Nadia said. ‘You’ve really let Cassie down.’

  I thought, I wasn’t the one having sex and/or snorting cocaine in the toilets.

  ‘Because you’re such a great friend to her?’ I snapped. ‘At least I was with her most of the evening. Where were you?’

  Nadia raised her eyebrows. ‘You’re very aggressive tonight, Lucy. Are you drunk too?’

  ‘Basta!’ Fabio said. ‘Enough. We are leaving. Subito!’

  I wasn’t quite sure who’d put him in charge, but at that moment, I really wasn’t feeling up to giving him a lecture on feminism. The bouncer had been talking to one of her equally glamorous colleagues, but now she re-joined us.

  ‘There are a lot of photographers outside,’ she said. ‘My co-worker and I will accompany you to your transport.’

  With Fabio keeping Cassie upright, flanked by the bouncers, we left the club. And were met outside by a solid wall of flashing lights, hand-held mics and rabid paparazzi. A photographer crouched in front of us and aimed his camera straight up Cassie’s skirt. The bouncers manhandled him away. A reporter from Celeb magazine thrust a mic in Cassie’s face.

  ‘Word is that your TV show is cancelled,’ he said. ‘Any comment?’

  Cassie shrank back against Fabio, as we were surrounded by mic-wielding reporters shouting her name.

  ‘Cassie, is it true that you’ve been fired from your TV show?’

  ‘Over here, Cassie.’

  ‘Cassie, is it true that you’ve broken off your engagement with Ryan Fleet?’

  ‘Did Ryan dump you, Cassie?’

  ‘Are you and Fabio Rossi dating now?’

  ‘Is it true that Ryan dumped you because you slept with Fabio Rossi?’

  Fabio went rigid, and his eyes blazed with anger. He snarled at the reporters in Italian. They surged closer. A camera flashed directly in front of my eyes and I was momentarily blinded. I felt a growing sense of panic.

  Then more bouncers piled out of Attitude, leather-clad glamazons and herculean men who formed a human barricade around us. With them holding back the press, we were able to move away from the club’s entrance and head towards the line of cabs drawn up at the taxi-rank a short distance along the street. Their drivers, who presumably saw scenes like this outside nightclubs every Saturday night, looked on with bored indifference. One of the bouncers opened the back door of the first taxi in the line.

  Fabio said, ‘Get in the cab, Cassie.’

  A female reporter, who wrote a column for one of the tabloids and was almost a celebrity in her own right, ducked past the bouncers.

  ‘Cassie,’ she said, holding out a microphone. ‘Is it true that when you were a child you were taken into care?’

  Cassie stared dazedly at her.

  The reporter said, ‘Is it true that your father was a drug addict and your mother a prostitute?’

  Cassie leant forward as if to speak into the mic. And collapsed in a drunken sprawl in the gutter.

  CHAPTER 27

  The taxi drew
up outside Cassie’s house. Nadia jumped out, ran up the front steps, opened Cassie’s front door, and went inside. Fabio got out and handed the driver a fifty pound note.

  ‘Wait here,’ he said. He helped Cassie out of the cab, and led her up the steps and into the house. I followed, carrying her clubbing purse, which she’d dropped on the floor of the cab, as well as my own. Nadia switched on the hall light. As soon as Fabio let go of Cassie, she slumped down onto the stairs and shut her eyes.

  ‘It’s so kind of you to see us home, Fabio,’ Nadia said. ‘Can I offer you a coffee?’

  ‘No, grazie.’ Fabio looked at me. ‘I will say goodnight. Unless you need my help –’ He gestured at Cassie. ‘Her bedroom is upstairs? Maybe I carry her?’

  ‘Please, Fabio,’ I said, ‘I don’t think Nadia and I’ll be able get her up there on our own.’

  Fabio lifted Cassie up in his arms and with her head lolling on his shoulder, carried her up the stairs, with me and Nadia bringing up the rear. Since we’d left the club, Cassie had been a very docile drunk, but as we reached the first landing, she started shrieking.

  ‘I feel awful,’ she wailed. ‘I’m going to throw up.’

  ‘Bathroom?’ Fabio said.

  ‘This way.’ I hurried past my, Nadia and Owen’s rooms, and flung open the door of the family-sized bathroom at the other end of the landing.

  Fabio set Cassie down on her feet. She immediately sank to her knees in front of the toilet and was violently sick in the bowl. I stood behind her and held back her hair as she heaved.

  From the landing Nadia said, ‘This isn’t in my job description.’ A moment later I heard the slam of her bedroom door. What a terrific friend you are, Nadia, I thought.

  Fabio was hovering just outside the bathroom. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘No, I can manage now,’ I said. ‘Thanks, Fabio, for helping me get her home. You’re a star.’

  ‘Ryan is a good friend of mine.’ Fabio sighed. ‘I must phone him in the morning and tell him what happened.’

  Cassie moaned. I stroked her forehead.

  ‘There were many photos made of us tonight,’ Fabio said. ‘They will be on the internet. They may be there already. I do not want Ryan to think that I have been with Cassie.’