The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp

by Sarra Manning

  They were going to an End Of Summer party at an exclusive Mayfair nightclub. There was rumoured to be a brace of young royals attending, as well as everyone. When you and all your friends lived in one postal code, had all attended one of several boarding schools and your mothers all sat on the same committees, then your everyone was actually quite small.

  There were paparazzi outside when Jos gallantly handed Amelia and Becky out of the car and for once Amelia was happy to pose for photos. The hope of … (not being ravished because, try as she might, Amelia knew that George wasn’t the ravishing sort) … George’s face lighting up when he saw her put a sparkle in Amelia’s eyes, gave her a giddiness and an allure that she didn’t normally have. And when she saw Becky’s hand tucked into Jos’s meaty paw, saw the way that Becky leaned into her brother and whispered in his ear, Amelia felt nothing but happiness for them. Maybe one day, let it be soon, she’d know that same kind of happiness. With George.

  But the first person she saw, when they found the table that Jos had reserved for them, wasn’t George at all.

  One sweet pang of regret pierced Amelia’s heart to be replaced by a genuine pleasure as the man who’d been sitting there got to his feet and promptly knocked over his drink.

  ‘Dobbin!’ she cried as Becky stared in amazement at Captain William Dobbin of Her Majesty’s Royal Regiment. She’d heard his name in passing from Amelia because when she wasn’t mooning over Gorgeous George, her conversation still revolved around him, and this Dobbin was his best friend. Dobbin had distinguished himself with honours several times in war-strewn, dusty places and so Becky had expected some dashing and glamorous war hero.

  Not this tall, ungainly man with large hands and feet and even larger ears, shown in all their massive glory by his close-cropped black hair, while the rest of him was poured into a hideously tight suit. Perhaps he shared the same tailor as Jos.

  In fact, Dobbin might have been a good back-up plan (a plan C), but one look at those ears – so big they had to be a hazard on the front line … A world of no. She’d asked Amelia why everyone called him Dobbin instead of William and now she knew; he was like a great big carthorse in a world full of sleek thoroughbreds.

  ‘Emmy!’ Dobbin said in a rusty voice full of wonder. ‘How long has it been?’

  He took Amelia’s hand, realised his own was wet after spilling his drink and pulled out a voluminous white handkerchief to mop at both of them.

  Becky hid her smile in Jos’s shoulder. Jos was quite the heart-throb next to the hapless Dobbin.

  ‘Dobs, it’s fine. I’m hardly damp at all,’ Amelia said, taking pity on him. ‘And yes, it’s been ages. A couple of years. You were just shipping off to Helmand Province.’ She put her hand on his arm without any of the agony she experienced when she dared to put her hands anywhere near George. ‘Was it very awful?’

  ‘Quite awful,’ Dobbin conceded. Amelia eyes filled with tears at the thought of anything being quite awful and he hurriedly corrected himself: ‘But it wasn’t so bad. The Big Brother house looked a jolly sight worse.’

  Dobbin had never seen anyone blush so prettily as Amelia Sedley when she covered her hands with her face. ‘Oh, Dobbin, you didn’t watch it, did you?’

  ‘I did and I’m looking into having that Gav fellow court-martialled,’ he said and he wasn’t joking – he barely knew how to – but Amelia giggled and his heart melted.

  ‘I’m pretty sure that you can’t have somebody court-martialled if they’ve already left the forces,’ she gulped, tears forgotten.

  ‘If he was ever in the forces. If that’s the calibre of soldier the Marines are taking on, then God help us if there’s a war,’ Dobbin declared to more giggles from Amelia until the saccharine display was interrupted by George, deftly threading his way through the throng to break up their little tête-à-tête.

  ‘Sorry, Emmy,’ he said. ‘Is this oik bothering you?’

  ‘Never!’ Emmy said with another giggle that made Becky grind down on her back molars.

  ‘Shall we order some champagne?’ she asked Jos as she sat down. Amelia appeared to have no plans to introduce her to Dobbin the talking horse and anyway, what was the point of being introduced to him?

  ‘Is it table service, do you know?’ Jos asked, peering about the room.

  For someone so rich, Jos was absolutely lacking in panache and suaveness and all the other qualities that Becky imagined they gave out on the first day at Eton, along with those funny top hats and tailcoats.

  ‘I’m parched,’ she said. ‘But if you don’t want any … Look! It is table service. There’s a waiter! Oh, he doesn’t seem to have noticed you.’

  ‘I’ll run after him,’ Jos promised and he was gone, his shoulders looking especially wide in his white dinner jacket. Unfortunately, the wait staff were also in white jackets which meant that on his way to the bar Jos was stopped by three different groups of people who tried to order drinks from him.

  Becky settled back in her chair to watch the rich and entitled at play. Amelia was caught between George and Dobbin and over the chatter of the party and the DJ dropping slow beats, she could still be heard giggling in the same inane fashion.

  Jos was at the bar now and when he turned round he was bearing aloft a huge bottle of champagne with a sparkler stuck in it so that on his journey through the club, he was given a wide berth. It was a very romantic gesture but when Jos reached their table and proudly placed the bottle in front of Becky, she heard George murmur to Dobbin, ‘God, how common.’

  Becky was sure that she was meant to have heard because when she gave George a reproachful look – the faintest puckering of her forehead, a little pout – he raised his glass in what could only have been a mocking salute.

  Well, Amelia was welcome to him, for all the good it would do to love a man who thought he was superior to everyone around him. No wonder he had political ambitions. Becky turned starry eyes to Jos.

  ‘This is the loveliest thing that anyone has ever done for me,’ she informed Jos with the adoring gaze that always made him put a finger in his shirt collar like it was suddenly choking him. ‘I know you don’t drink, but could you have one glass of champagne? For me?’

  ‘No carbs plus alcohol are a dreadful combination,’ Jos protested. ‘And anyway, this stuff is pure sugar.’

  ‘I think it’s mostly bubbles,’ Becky said as she hefted up the bottle, tilted one of the empty glass flutes on the table and expertly poured. ‘Anyway, aren’t we celebrating?’

  ‘Are we? What are we celebrating?’ Jos asked, as dense as the pads he strapped on when he and Becky were boxercising in the park.

  ‘Well, we’ve known each other three weeks,’ Becky said with a heavy-lidded glance that made Jos adjust himself when he thought she wasn’t looking.

  ‘Th … three weeks,’ he gulped. ‘Only three weeks? It seems longer.’

  ‘Doesn’t it?’ Becky agreed, holding out a glass. ‘It feels like I’ve known you all my life. Here, have just one drink so we can toast our … friendship. Though I suppose all good things come to an end.’

  ‘It’s coming to an end?’ Jos echoed, his brow furrowing as he took the glass in his meaty paw and manoeuvred it with some difficulty to his lips. He didn’t really have the right build for drinking from delicate champagne flutes.

  ‘Yes, that’s why we’re here, silly!’ Amelia said, sitting down next to them and leaning across Becky to help herself to a glass. ‘To celebrate the end of summer. I expect you’ll be going back to LA soon, Jos.’

  No one had ever treated Becky with as much kindness and sweetness and without any kind of expectation, but in that moment, Becky could quite happily have throttled Amelia Sedley. She wouldn’t even have bothered to make it look like an accident.

  ‘I suppose,’ Jos sighed, as if the thought of going back to a place where it was sunny all the time and he had a beautiful, architect-designed house in Malibu with three different kinds of pool in its landscaped grounds, was about as appealing as a
fortnight in Scunthorpe.

  ‘Becky’s never been to LA, have you?’ Amelia said, nudging Becky’s arm. ‘You’d love it.’

  Maybe she wouldn’t kill Amelia. Not just yet. After all, Amelia was the only person who wanted Jos to make an honest woman of her as much as Becky did.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to go to LA,’ she said wistfully. ‘Do you know lots of famous people, Jos? I bet you do.’

  Jos gulped down the rest of his champagne and puffed out his chest. ‘Well, I’m very good friends with Ryan Gosling’s personal trainer.’ He didn’t even notice when Becky refilled his glass. ‘We sent him some protein balls and apparently he loved them.’

  ‘Wow! Ryan Gosling,’ Amelia gasped. ‘Who else?’

  More stars than there were in the heavens. An Oscar-winning actress next door who was always having loud parties with no consideration for the fact that Jos got up at five to do his first workout of the day. A legendary film director lived up the hill who was obsessed with shooting coyotes and had accidentally killed two of his own bichon frises. And all manner of rap artists, hotly tipped young actors and even a couple of Real Housewives’ husbands, who all worked out at Jos’s gym.

  Jos polished off most of the bottle of champagne as he got into his stride; namedropping all the celebrities he’d seen as he queued for his collagen berry lattes or hiked in the Hollywood hills.

  ‘You’re so well connected. I suppose you have lots of friends. Lots of very glamorous, very beautiful friends who are girls. Girlfriends,’ Becky said, with just a hint of a quiver of her bottom lip. ‘No wonder you can’t wait to go back to LA. We must seem so dull by comparison.’

  ‘Never. You’re the most beautiful of them all,’ Jos declared rashly and loudly so that George Wylie, who was still hanging around like a bad smell, smiled thinly. ‘They’re all stuffed full of silicon and Botox and actually they’re not friends at all because they’re very unfriendly.’

  ‘They sound awful,’ Amelia said but then her attention was caught by one of the M’s and with a coy flutter of her lashes at Becky, she slipped out from between them. ‘Must go and say hello to Muffin.’

  ‘It sounds to me as if you don’t like LA as much as everyone thinks you do,’ Becky commented. Although this was said gently, she was the daughter of Frank Sharp, con artist, hustler and trickster, so there was something hardwired into her DNA that gave her the ability to sniff out a person’s weaknesses. Once she’d identified what made them tick – the dark, secret heart of them – then of course she was going to use that knowledge for her own advantage. Anyone with any sense would do the same.

  ‘It’s good for the protein-ball business. I don’t think there’s a single person in the 90210 zipcode who’s eaten gluten since Obama became president but, Becky …’ Deep set within his roughly hewn face, Jos’s eyes were troubled.

  Becky placed her hand on his knee. ‘You can tell me anything,’ she whispered, leaning forward so that Jos could tell all his fears and worries to her breasts. ‘I would never judge you.’

  ‘Oh, Becky, I’m so lonely,’ he confessed. He’d never told this sad truth to anyone. ‘Also, and I … I know you might find this hard to believe, but … but … well, I’m shy. Very shy. Always have been.’

  Becky shook her head then turned her face away, then sighed, and the hand that was on Jos’s knee slid up a few centimetres, not enough to cause alarm or raise eyebrows, but Jos’s heart was thundering away as if he’d just done thirty minutes of high-impact cardio. ‘There is a way that you wouldn’t ever have to be lonely again,’ she said, leaning up to whisper in his ear so that her breasts almost brushed his chin and Jos had to close his eyes and practise mindful deep breathing. ‘And, a secret for a secret: I’m shy too. The whole reason I went on Big Brother was to build up my confidence.’ Her hand, almost of its own accord, moved up another inch or so. ‘It’s like we’re kindred spirits, isn’t it?’

  ‘Soulmates,’ Jos agreed and Becky’s face was still tilted up towards his own and he licked his lips nervously and … and … and …

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’

  ‘What the hell?’

  Their romantic moment was cut short by a sudden dousing of cold champagne from the bottle Dobbin had attempted to pour into Jos’s empty flute.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he muttered. ‘Didn’t want to interrupt you, thought I’d be all stealthy like, but the bottle slipped.’

  ‘I’m soaked!’ Becky snapped, furious both at the interruption and that she’d been taken unawares and sworn, when nice, shy, orphaned young ladies didn’t go round dropping the f-bomb. ‘You should be more careful.’

  Dobbin actually dared to try and mop at her with a napkin held in his huge hands, then caught his cufflink on one of the crystals sewn on to Becky’s borrowed dress, which tore. Not enough to do much damage, to the dress at least, but enough that he apologised again, profusely, and Jos subsided back on his chair with a hopeless look, and the moment was ruined. Completely ruined.

  ‘Bad luck!’ said a silky voice and Becky looked up to see George Wylie standing over her, with a smug expression that made her curl her hands into fists, her nails digging into her palms so hard that she’d still have little half-moon marks the next day.

  It was a lost cause after that. Jos drowned his sorrows not just with champagne but with whisky chasers, even though Dobbin warned him that he shouldn’t mix grape with grain.

  ‘I’ll drink what I bloody well like,’ he bellowed belligerently, swaying back from the bar with yet another round. Becky felt her heart sink, knowing only too well that how a man behaved when he was hammered revealed his true nature.

  ‘I’m going to find Emmy.’ She extricated herself from Jos’s clutches: he had also become very handsy, trying to touch what he wouldn’t dare go near when he was sober.

  By the time Becky returned with a predictably agitated Amelia in tow, a large crowd had gathered around Jos who’d attempted to run after Becky but had slipped in the spilt champagne and toppled over on to his back.

  He pitched one way then another like an upended turtle while the crowd of braying posh types roared their approval and held up their next-gen iPhones to record the moment for posterity.

  ‘Up you get, fatso!’ cried one young wag.

  ‘I’m not fat, I’m big boned and heavily muscled,’ Jos panted to even more hoots and jeers.

  ‘We have to help him,’ Amelia cried but Becky held her back. That was a sure way to end up in a video that could well go viral by the next morning.

  ‘We can’t manage him on our own,’ she pointed out reasonably. ‘Where’s your George?’

  George Wylie, of course, had slunk off at the first sign of trouble, as he didn’t want to end up in a viral clip any more than Becky did, so it was left to Dobbin to valiantly step in and hoist Jos to his feet, to a helpful commentary from the peanut gallery.

  ‘Heave! Heave! Heave ho!’ they shouted as Jos was finally levered upright so that he could then lurch unsteadily against their table and send all the glassware flying.

  ‘More champagne!’ Jos shouted, trying to click his fingers to summon a waiter and almost blinding poor Dobbin. ‘Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends!’

  ‘Jos, I am cutting you off!’ Dobbin said very sternly, clamping his arm round Jos’s shoulders and steering him out of the club, with Amelia and Becky bringing up the rear.

  Becky would much rather have stayed. She was sure she’d spotted a couple of young royals at the bar, but Amelia was crying. Much as the missed opportunity stung, she had no option but to leave with their sad, humiliated little party.

  Once they were in the club foyer, George joined them. ‘There you are!’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

  ‘You couldn’t have been looking very hard, then, as you were at our table until poor Jos fell over and then you disappeared,’ Becky pointed out.

  Amelia stopped crying for long enough to gaze damply and disappointedly at George. ‘Y
ou didn’t do that, did you?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t. Your little friend must be confused,’ he said firmly as if nothing could be further from the truth. ‘Fell over, did he? But no bones broken? Well, let’s get him and you girls home.’

  Then he took Jos’s other side and the three men lumbered out of the club like some mythical three-headed beast, only to run into a pack of paparazzi who sprang into action in the hope that one of them might be a rat-arsed young royal.

  The popping flashbulbs had a disastrous effect on Jos’s centre of gravity. Or it might have been because George took one look at the cameras and abruptly let Jos go so he could slither back into the shadows. He was a prospective Member of Parliament, after all.

  It was left to Amelia to take up the slack and help Dobbin to support the considerable weight of her brother, to the delight of the smudges. Two posh boys weren’t worth the effort but a Big Brother winner might do for a page-seven lead.

  Then the drunk young Hooray lurched around towards the pretty redhead who’d come second in Big Brother, trailing a few steps behind as if she had nothing to do with the unfortunate trio in front of her, and he broke free of his captors so he could take her in a very enthusiastic embrace. This could be a front-page story after all.

  NEW BALLS PLEASE!

  Big Brother Becky Caught In Clinch With Protein-Ball Millionaire!

  Friends say he wants to put a ring on it!

  She might have only come second in this year’s Big Brother, but beautiful Becky Sharp, 20, looked like a winner last night as she was caught canoodling with Jos Sedley, 33, brother of Amelia Sedley, who snatched the title from her best friend.

  Jos, the brains behind a health-and-fitness lifestyle brand which makes a successful range of protein balls, divides his time between London and LA. But judging by the way he locked lips with Becky, to the delight of the crowd, he’s thinking of making London his permanent base.

  ‘It’s been a whirlwind romance,’ a close friend of the couple reports. ‘They might only have known each other a few weeks but they’re already talking about marriage.’