In the morning, on Jane and Pitt’s advice, Rawdon waited for the Crawleys’ family lawyer to arrive so they could go back to Charing Cross Police Station and he could turn himself in.
But when a lawyer turned up on the doorstep in sombre suit and sombre expression, it turned out that he was on retainer to Lord Steyne.
‘You’ve had a wasted trip, I’m afraid,’ Rawdon told him, as he pulled on his leather jacket. ‘I’m just waiting for my man to come so I can go and confess my crimes.’ He held out his wrists as if they were already cuffed. ‘It’s a fair cop and all that.’
‘I’m Mr William from William, Makepeace and Thackeray. Is there somewhere we can talk?’ the man asked, his voice smooth and unhurried, but with a pointed look at Jane who was lurking in the hall. He ushered Rawdon into the drawing room on his left and firmly shut the door with all the confidence of a man who charged £2,000 an hour. ‘You misunderstand my intentions, Mr Crawley. Lord Steyne has no intention of pressing charges.’
‘Say what?’ Rawdon grunted incredulously as he collapsed into a chair.
‘A very unfortunate set of circumstances,’ said Mr William, placing his briefcase on an end table and opening it. ‘Nothing more than a misunderstanding, and to show that he bears you no ill will, I’ve been instructed to give you this.’
He handed over the bulky, familiar pages of a script and the less bulky pages of a contract, which Rawdon took with nerveless fingers. He tried to read the top sheet of the contract but the words swam in front of his eyes.
‘If I may précis?’
Rawdon nodded dumbly.
‘It just so happens that the creative team at Lord Steyne’s company, Gaunt Productions, think you’d be perfect for the lead role in a new film franchise. Quite an exciting project, as I understand it …’
The lawyer went on to name the box-office darlings already signed on and the director, who had an unimpeachable track record when it came to critically acclaimed but commercially successful movies. He had won more Best Picture Oscars than any other director, ‘Except Spielberg, so I’m led to believe. Of course, you’d have to commit to making all three movies back to back and you’d be shooting in New Zealand – well, quite a remote island off New Zealand – but your fee more than makes up for that inconvenience. Plus, there’ll be a percentage of box office and all manner of product tie-ins. You’ll want to get your agent to take a look at it, but he’s already spoken to Lord Steyne and assured him that you’ll do it.’
‘I’m sorry, what?’ Rawdon hadn’t taken in half of what the man had said but he’d picked up the highlights. Like a particularly stinky, slimy piece of rubbish, he was being ruthlessly disposed of – sent as far away as it was possible to send someone without shooting them off into outer space.
But if and when he came back, everything would be different. He’d be different. He’d be rich. He’d be famous. A household name. Men would want to be him, women would want to have him, everyone would want to know him. It would show that worthless wife of his that actually, he could manage perfectly well without her. Even if it was thanks to the largesse of the man who had been pulling all their strings these last few months. But Rawdon found that he didn’t care very much about that any more.
‘Where do I sign?’ he asked hoarsely.
‘There are tabs on the contract showing you where,’ the lawyer said helpfully. ‘You’ll want a pen. Here, you can borrow mine.’
He held out a fountain pen that cost the same as a small two-door hatchback, then whisked it away before Rawdon could take it.
‘Just one thing before you sign,’ he said. ‘Lord Steyne wonders if you might do him a personal favour? The smallest of favours? A mere trifle, if you will.’
SUNDAY HERALD
‘MY MARRIAGE IS OVER!’
Heartbroken Hollywood hell-raiser Rawdon Crawley reveals his shock split from reality-TV star Becky Sharp, after she bedded countless other men and her out-of-control spending left him millions of pounds in debt.
SUNDAY NEWS
‘BECKY SHARP STOLE FROM MY DYING AUNT!’
Agent to the stars Barbara Pinkerton on how a teenage Becky Sharp preyed on her beloved aunt and national treasure, Jemima …
NEWS OF THE PEOPLE
BECKY THE BULLY!
Finally! Big Brother housemates break their silence to reveal what really happened in that swimming pool – the truth will shock you!
GLOBE ON SUNDAY
HAS THE BECKY BUBBLE BURST?
From con artist to reality TV to queen of Instagram: how Becky Sharp fooled the world, ten million Instagram followers and a Parisian couture house …
Chapter 36
They say that revenge is a dish best served cold, and how patiently Becky’s enemies had waited with their stories on ice until Lord Steyne’s lackeys came calling.
The only person that Becky could forgive was Rawdon because his revenge wasn’t cold. It was the fiery-hot act of someone recently betrayed and Rawdon always did have very poor impulse control. But what she couldn’t forgive Rawdon for was serving divorce papers on her and naming some man she didn’t even know as her lover. Not when he was using the same firm of lawyers who did all of Steyne’s dirty work.
It wasn’t just Steyne’s newspapers. The rest of the fourth estate couldn’t wait to line up and give her a kicking too. They were all there outside the house. Ringing on the doorbell, banging on the windows. Her phone was ringing off the hook with everyone from The Times and Access Hollywood desperate for the inside scoop while Phillip and Holly wanted Becky live on the This Morning sofa so that their viewers could phone up and call her terrible names.
The Sunday Sport had even found a troupe of stripper dwarves called The Seven Inchers who claimed that they’d all had her during one riotous, chemsex-fuelled night in a Blackpool Travelodge. She’d never even been to Blackpool!
Only the Guardian had come to her defence in some long-winded opinion piece about social mobility and how there weren’t many routes open to working-class girls from broken homes, and so who could blame Becky for weaponising her sexuality?
Becky pushed the papers off the bed with her bare feet because she couldn’t stand to see her downfall spelt out in black and white and 72 point on all those front pages. Even as a little consoling voice in her head said, ‘Still, you made the front pages. At least you didn’t end up on page seven or worse!’
It wasn’t that much of a comforting thought and Becky burst into tears again. She’d cried so much over the last three days that she expected Amelia Sedley (about the only spectre who hadn’t drawn up a seat at the feast) to sue her for copyright.
In seventy-two hours, Steyne had destroyed everything that Becky had achieved in the last four years. Her reputation, her carefully constructed image and those lovely, lucrative sources of income – all gone!
She’d been fired by every single one of the companies that had kept her little gravy train chug-chug-chugging along. One of them had even sent round a couple of recovery agents to repossess all the clothes they’d given her.
Becky’s publicist had blocked her number, her agent had put on an Eastern European accent when Becky had got through then pretended to be the cleaner, and her business manager had said, ‘No offence, sweetheart, but right now I’d rather deal with an incurable case of herpes than with you.’
And all because she wouldn’t sleep with Tom Steyne, though she doubted the evil old gnome could even get it up. For one tiny moment, Becky even wondered if she should have just let him have his way with her, but the thought of Steyne thinking he’d conquered her, owned her, would have been more than she could bear. Even when she’d had nothing, she’d still had her pride. Though even her pride had taken a beating over the last three days.
‘How could I have been so stupid?’ she wept and she was still weeping when Briggs, with the help of Firkin and a video they’d watched on YouTube, took her bedroom door off its hinges so they could finally gain admittance.
It had be
en three days since Briggs had taken up the papers in trembling hands, and the only reason they knew Becky hadn’t killed herself was that they could hear her crying at all hours of the day and night.
They found their mistress a snivelling, snuffling, forlorn heap on the bathroom floor. Her glorious red curls tangled and matted, the face that had launched a thousand #spon #ads swollen and blotchy from crying so long.
‘Oh, Becky, this will all blow over,’ Briggs said consolingly but not at all truthfully as he met Firkin’s eyes over Becky’s sobbing figure. Firkin made the sign of the cross so that they wouldn’t be struck down for such a wicked lie. The former foes were now united once more – the only people in the world prepared to stand by Becky Sharp, because hadn’t she done the right thing by them?
So, they would be Becky’s staunch defenders and willing supporters, until such a time as she could no longer afford to pay them.
‘Mrs Crawley, don’t cry. Sadness wrecks the complexion,’ Firkin said. She patted Becky’s shoulder. ‘Have a shower, wash your hair, because it smells like old socks, and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.’
They shared another helpless look as Becky wailed and writhed on the bathroom tiles.
‘Honestly, Becky, I understand that you’re grief-stricken but … Oh!’ Briggs scooched back from his kneeling position as Becky unfolded herself and he could finally see her face.
It wasn’t the blotches or the puffiness which stood out, though they were both impressive, but the wild, raging pools of her eyes.
‘I’m not grief-stricken,’ she spat. ‘I’m fucking furious! How dare he! And Rawdon can go fuck himself too! As for Babs and Martha and that whole other parade of losers and sad-sack wankers, I will destroy them. I’m going to make what’s left of their sorry lives an endless round of misery and pain.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ Briggs said. He’d heard a similar refrain from Dame Matilda when she’d seen some of her opening-night notices. ‘You get it all out of your system.’
‘I’m going to buy anthrax on the dark net,’ Becky vowed, as Briggs and Firkin helped her slowly to her feet. ‘I’m going to frame Babs Pinkerton for child sex trafficking. I’m going to make sure Martha Crawley gets syphilis and …’
They pushed Becky into the shower as she promised a great and terrible retribution on those who had wronged her, and when she emerged from the bathroom half an hour later, she was calm and composed.
Briggs looked enviously at her smooth, pale face. Not a sign of the traumas and trials of the last three days left.
‘I’m not really going to do any of those things,’ she told Briggs as she sipped on the green tea that Firkin had made her. ‘What must you think of me?’
‘Oh, we all say and do silly things when we’re racked with grief. When my mother died, I tried to kill myself by sticking my head in the oven,’ Briggs recalled fondly. ‘I’d completely forgotten that we had an electric cooker.’
‘I mean, why waste all that time and energy on finding ways to bring them down?’ Becky mused. ‘I should be focusing on myself.’
‘It’s all lies in the papers,’ Briggs said stoutly, though he did wonder about the dwarves. He’d heard from a friend who’d had an uncle who’d worked on The Wizard of Oz that the male munchkins were all hung like horses. Who could blame a girl if that were the case? ‘You’ve never been anything but kindness itself to me.’
‘Dear, sweet Briggs,’ Becky sighed, clasping her faithful retainer’s hand. ‘I’m going to have some time out, I think. Take a dip in Lake Me. Decide what I really want from the rest of my life. Like, spiritually and stuff.’
‘That’s my girl,’ Briggs said. Hopefully Becky wasn’t planning to go to an ashram, expecting him to accompany her. Vegan food went straight through him.
‘Yes, I’m going to dedicate myself to enlightenment and self-improvement,’ Becky said, her eyes shut as if she was already on a higher plane of being. Then her eyes snapped open. ‘But first, I’m going to make that limp-dicked fucker Steyne wish that he’d never been born.’
*
Becky had haemorrhaged Instagram followers over the last three days. The comments on her last picture, of her arranging some flowers in a vase with a beatific smile on her face (due to the huge endorsement fee she was getting from an internet florist), could be summarised with a pithy ‘Die u whore!’
But the followers that she had left, and anyone curious to know what you posted on social media when your entire world had crumbled to dust, were delighted to see a new post from Becky.
There was a ‘play’ symbol to indicate that a clip had been uploaded. But there was no film, just an audio recording of an old man with a cockney accent barking orders at someone who was clearly David Smirk, editor of the Herald, the UK’s biggest-selling daily newspaper:
‘Dave? Tom here. Was just wondering if someone had cut your balls off? Yes, it’s very sad that all those poor little kiddies got mown down by some retarded fucker in an articulated lorry just because their teacher once turned him down for a date. Boo fucking hoo. But I don’t give a fuck that you and your little editor mates have agreed to spare their families at such a difficult time. I want to know which grieving mother is having an affair. I want to know which gutted father has been done for domestic assault. What? They’ve already suffered enough? Good! Suffering sells! Now get into their phones, listen to their voicemails, hack their email accounts. I want every stringer in the North-East on their doorsteps to get me a week’s worth of front-page scoops. Christ, you useless fucker, do I have to think of everything? Hang on … Mrs Crawley, I hope you’re not eavesdropping, I’ll have to spank you if you are … Dave? Are we clear? Doorstep ’em. Hack ’em. Hound ’em. Or I’ll cut off your balls myself.’
And then Becky Sharp disappeared off the face of the earth. Or at least off the face of social media, which was pretty much the same thing.
A year later
BLOOD STEYNES ON HIS HANDS!
Evil media tycoon due to give evidence to Parliamentary Select Committee on Press Ethics today …
Chapter 37
The elderly man who limped into the conference room at the Palace of Westminster looked so frail that George Wylie wondered if the breeze coming in from an open window might knock him over.
After Becky Sharp’s spectacular takedown of the most powerful media mogul in the world, the headlines had written themselves, and although the press (including some of the papers he used to own, which had been sold off after they had lost most of their advertising revenue) depicted him as a despicable despot, it was an apparently broken man appearing before the Select Committee today.
Steyne was accompanied by a bevy of dark-suited lawyers and his three eldest children – Lady Steyne having been granted a quickie divorce on the grounds of emotional cruelty. The two forty-something sons were shifty-eyed and pale, and only his daughter, Laura, the heir-apparent to a now-tarnished crown, walked into the room with a confident stride and an easy smile.
George was happy to take a back seat as a chippy Labour MP, whose Midlands accent grated on his nerves, was desperate to have her fifteen minutes.
‘So, Lord Steyne, do you accept responsibility for the campaign of harassment against the grieving parents of the children murdered at Fairlands Primary School? Harassment that contributed to the suicide of Alison Hall, who had waved two children off on that fateful Friday morning, never to see them alive again?’
‘I accept nothing of the kind!’ Lord Steyne barked, tapping his cane on the floor for emphasis. ‘That recording were faked …’
‘It’s been verified by several forensic audiologists …’
‘I won’t have it!’ Lord Steyne barked again, but since his stroke his bark was much worse than his bite, and his bark sounded a lot like the yapping of a tiny Chihuahua that had had all its teeth removed. ‘That bloody Crawley woman.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Laura Steyne – elegant, poised and married to the founder of a powerhouse blue-chip public-relat
ions company – leaned forward. ‘Could we take a break for ten minutes?’
After the break, Laura Steyne came back into the room. ‘If I may, I’d like to read a short statement,’ she said. Saying no evidently wasn’t an option.
‘“Owing to ill health, Lord Steyne will resign as chairman of Gaunt News, Gaunt Entertainment and all affiliated companies, effective immediately. His daughter, Laura, will serve as chairperson in the interim.
‘“And while Gaunt News is not admitting liability in any way, we personally want to offer our sincere apologies to all the families who lost loved ones at Fairlands Primary School for any distress they may have suffered.
‘“Going forward, Gaunt News welcomes any recommendations from this committee in respect to better working practice, but would stress in the strongest terms possible that freedom of the press is the cornerstone of democracy.” Thank you.’
There was a moment’s silence and the member for Wolverhampton West clicked the lid of her pen on and off several times.
‘Your sincere apologies won’t bring back Alison Hall,’ she said at last, fury unabated.
‘What my right honourable colleague is forgetting is that Alison Hall’s tragic suicide wasn’t solely due to the misguided and unfortunate tactics of the press,’ George said smoothly, because what his mouthy colleague was also forgetting was that he was chair of this committee, and God knows he’d had to do a lot of dreary drinking with dull backbenchers to make that happen. ‘As a devoted father myself, I couldn’t begin to imagine how devastating the loss of her two children must have been. However, this committee looks forward to working closely with Ms Steyne on implementing a code of conduct for the media, without hampering press freedom. Now, it’s nearly four on a Friday afternoon. I suggest we reconvene on Monday morning when we’ll be hearing from a panel representing the news agencies. Agreed?’
Afterwards, as George made to hurry away before he could be buttonholed by any coarse-voiced Labour MPs, or, God forbid, anyone from the SNP, Laura Steyne fell into step beside him.
The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp Page 30