his investments and avoid messy mergers. It was common knowledge that Al’s sham get-togethers were starting to irritate the tabloids.
‘I’m ready,’ I shrugged far from enthusiastically. ‘I need the money.’
His eyes didn’t leave mine. ‘I wish I could be so sure that’s all you’re after.’
I stared back at him and instantly knew that he had rumbled me. I wanted to run back to my cottage. I wanted to bury my face in Carrot’s neck until the bailiffs arrived to throw us out. But Al Matthews said no more; he simply nodded at me and looked away. He seemed weary and surprisingly indifferent. I followed his gaze around the Course dining room, totally alienated from all the little power-hunches over power lunches taking place all around us. I half suspected that if I suggested Al and I slope out for a quiet pint he’d be game on, but Sly was calling the shots and picking up the Bill today.
‘You heard her, damn it, she says she’s ready,’ he was almost off his chair with excitement. ‘Tell us who you have in mind. Sadie won’t let you down, we promise.’
Sighing, Al delved into a slimline briefcase to pull out several folders. ‘Next week is the Sound Awards, followed almost immediately by Elvis James’ annual ball, the Duke of Suffolk charity gala and then Red and Slim’s wedding. I am responsible for the smooth-running of all four events, and a big part of that is making sure the guest lists are topped up with newsworthy stars and their, er, partners.’ He fanned the files out in front of him and looked up at me tiredly. ‘Take your pick.’
I couldn’t focus as I glanced at the names and faces swimming in front of me – druggy teenage pin-ups, fading comics, drunken footballers and wife-beating celebrity chefs all in need of an image boost. What did it matter? They were all in the same boat. I picked one at random. ‘Have him washed and dressed and brought to my hotel in a limousine an hour before the party,’ I joked feebly.
Al slid a finger beneath his collar and cleared his throat. ‘Are you sure?’ Again, his eyes seemed to bore into my soul.
‘She’s sure,’ Sly grabbed the file and looked at it. ‘Oh yes, he’s gorgeous. Shame about the paedophile rumours. The papers will write anything these days.’
A week later and the papers were all writing that I was dating the Premier League’s top striker. We had been seen at several parties together, plus shopping at Brown’s, lunching in Paris and out walking Carrot in Hyde Park. That annoyed me – I didn’t want Carrot exploited, but I was determined to be a consummate professional. I wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible.
I wasn’t yet headline news, but I was back on the Tiffany chain gang. The phone in my hotel suite rang constantly, mostly calls from Al who was picking up my bills and making sure I gave good quote.
‘The Mirror want an exclusive. Your new-found love with Vizza, how he saved you from near-suicide. They’re offering good money.’
‘I won’t talk about Bill,’ I threatened. We argued about it endlessly, but I always got my way. He was annoyingly fascinated by our break-up.
Of course, I couldn’t stop the press from writing about Bill anyway. Stories of my new romance had stirred up the whole love rat thing again, as I’d known they would. His name took another knocking as the nation was reminded how he’d dumped the pocket Venus for the six-foot Amazon to further his career over the Pond. The mud didn’t reach him in the States, but it was looking more and more unlikely that he’d be popping back to see his old ma in Guildford in the near future.
‘It’s what you wanted, isn’t it, Sadie?’ Al laughed cynically. ‘Revenge?’
Knowing he couldn’t have been more wrong, I didn’t answer. Something about Al got under my skin, struck me as odd. He seemed almost as reluctant to be in this business as I was. If it weren’t for his reputation, I’d say he hated it.
My ‘relationship’ with Vizza lasted just over a fortnight, and Al gave me a week off for good behaviour while Vizza revelled in increasingly outlandish exclusives, revealing his broken heart. Yeah. Like he knew how it felt – not.
I installed satellite in my cottage, courtesy of the Mirror exclusive. Together, Carrot and I watched primetime television from America in the UK early hours. Night after night, I studied Ash Numan’s face, wondering how one woman could be so flawless. Watching Bill made me cry. He was back to his old form, just like the early days, almost deranged with energy and anger, not the self-satisfied overweight smug-bugger he’d latterly become in the UK series. Christ, he was operating. He was cruel and funny and sexy. I couldn’t take my eyes from the screen.
To my amazement Vizza called several times a day, sometimes in tears, begging me in his broken English to reconsider ‘our love’. What love? He’d barely talked to me. Admittedly he’d tried to kiss me, but he’d also tried to kiss two members of a boy band in Kabaret, and Frankie Dettori at a sports charity dinner. At least Bill had been discreet.
Al phoned me on Sunday to demand I buy the News and read a feature they’d cobbled together about me in the light of my latest doomed love affair. I snorted with laughter as it talked of my ‘inexplicable, compelling, dangerous sex appeal’, which brought grown men to their knees. If only they could see me now, schlepping around in shorts and wellies, eating ice cream at two in the morning as I watched Bill on television. The gap between truth and tabloid had never been greater. The plan was starting to work.
‘It’s time for the big guns,’ Al told me. ‘Are you sure you’re ready?’
‘I’m sure,’ I insisted, knowing that I had no choice now that the ball was rolling.
Soon afterwards, I was officially the love of George Brian’s life. George was a tricky one. He was far more persistent than camp, confused Vizza, and he treated me as little different from a hired escort. Al had to repeatedly warn him off and remind him that it was just publicity.
‘I can fight my own battles,’ I told him, but he still appeared at most of the parties we went to, like a discreet bodyguard. To be honest, it was good to have someone to talk to – George communicated only in grunts. But the more I talked to Al, the more I realized that he resented saving celebrities from their own excesses.
‘Take George,’ he sighed, pointing out my supposed faithful new boyfriend slipping his hotel key card to a teenage model at a film premiere. ‘He thinks his fame makes him invincible. That’s my fault. I expect Bill was like that too, wasn’t he?’
I ignored the question and made Al go and discreetly fetch George’s key while I resumed my duties at his side, acting the adoring girlfriend, jokily deflecting journalists’ questions about marriage and babies.
George Brian was far hotter property than Vizza, a big-name actor with a long criminal record. As his girlfriend, I was instantly headline news, and the press swarmed all over me. My hotel was besieged, my face was everywhere, and Sly delightedly reported that offers of work were now flooding in.
‘You are so, so lucky going out with lovely George,’ he giggled. ‘Tell me, are the rumours true? Does he have a tattoo on it?’
‘I wouldn’t know – it’s strictly business,’ I snapped, although fighting him off was getting harder and harder. If only Bill had been so keen.
Despite my resilience, I couldn’t take George for long. After a month, my body was black and blue from being felt up; I hated his stale breath and stupidity. George wanted me to join him on location in Italy, but I’d had enough and called time, asking Al if he could set me up with someone less demanding.
To my alarm, the once-ambitious Alchemist refused, saying that we needed to cool my hot date image. ‘You’ve amazed me, Sadie. The press love you. You have the X factor they can’t get enough of. But you can go it alone now.’
Much as I wanted to stay at home and watch Loved Up, I knew I was too close to my goal to give up. ‘I have to do one more. Just one more.’
‘They’ll