Paula Byrne - Look to Your Wife

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com

This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2018

Copyright © Paula Byrne 2018

Cover design by Heike Schüssler

Cover photograph © plainpicture/Mihaela Ninic

Paula Byrne asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008270612

Ebook Edition © April 2018 ISBN: 9780008270599

Version: 2019-02-11

For Matthew

So will I turn her virtue into pitch,

And out of her own goodness make the net

That shall enmesh them all.

William Shakespeare, Othello

Without the Tweets, I wouldn’t be here.

Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America, interviewed in the Oval Office

Twitter is an online social networking service that enables users to send and read short 140-character messages called ‘tweets.’ Registered users can read and post tweets, but those who are unregistered can only read them. Users are identified by a ‘handle,’ indicated by an ‘at’ sign.

Lisa Blaize@Lisa_Blaize

Twitter may be my undoing!

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

PRELUDE: The Letter

PART ONE: Innocence

CHAPTER 1: Hamlet Cocks Up

CHAPTER 2: Lisa

CHAPTER 3: After the Party

CHAPTER 4: The Truth Will Set You Free

CHAPTER 5: ‘I’m Going to Rescind that Ticket, Sir’

CHAPTER 6: Missy

CHAPTER 7: The Fashion Mistress

CHAPTER 8: Drugs Chat

PART TWO: Guilt

CHAPTER 9: DMs

CHAPTER 10: Meaningful Coincidences

CHAPTER 11: All My Pretty Chickens

CHAPTER 12: What’s Happening?

CHAPTER 13: Sandflies

CHAPTER 14: The Cabinet of Curiosities

CHAPTER 15: Queenie

CHAPTER 16: The End of the Affair

PART THREE: Accusation

CHAPTER 17: Belinda Bullrush

CHAPTER 18: An Unexpected Letter

CHAPTER 19: Flattered and Followed

CHAPTER 20: The Albion

CHAPTER 21: ‘I’m Not a Troll’

CHAPTER 22: Malicious Communications

CHAPTER 23: @FreddieSwings

CHAPTER 24: My Fabulous Life

CHAPTER 25: #Lovelyme

CHAPTER 26: Literary Ladies

CHAPTER 27: Hacked Off

CHAPTER 28: A Shed of One’s Own

PART FOUR: Expiation

CHAPTER 29: Honeytrap

CHAPTER 30: The Mystery of the Missing Author

CHAPTER 31: The Evening Shift

CHAPTER 32: Hit and Run

CHAPTER 33: Blaze

CHAPTER 34: Suspicion

CHAPTER 35: Christmas Market

CHAPTER 36: ‘What You Know, You Know’

CHAPTER 37: Launch

EPILOGUE: Ratby, Leicester

Acknowledgements

Also by Paula Byrne

About the Author

About the Publisher

PRELUDE

June 17th

Dear Headmaster,

Please, please, please do something about Lisa. When you first came to Blagsford School, we were all thrilled to have a man of your calibre and academic excellence. Edward Chamberlain is a name that inspires awe and reverence in the educational world. I, amongst many others, was full of admiration when you took on that academy ‘sink’ school in the north of England. How brave and clever of you. Everyone knew that you would turn it around. But you surpassed all expectations, raising it from ‘Unsatisfactory’ to ‘Outstanding’ in such a short time, before coming here.

Naturally, some whispered that you would use it to your advantage, only to gain the coveted knighthood for services to education. Congratulations, by the way. Well deserved (though we all know that you only got it because of your background). We know how lucky we are to have you. I have been one of your most loyal supporters since you came to the school a year ago. It pains me to have to write this: I can barely believe that I am doing so.

But please, Edward, silence your wife. She is a liability, and she is damaging your reputation. Blagsford is a small world. The community of public schools is even smaller. Social media is a very useful tool, but Lisa’s embarrassing and vulgar tweets are presenting a very bad image for the school. The woman is barely literate, for heaven’s sake. She has no idea how to use French accents. Her grammar is appalling. I winced when she tweeted about meeting the opera singer ‘Jesse Norman’.

To many of us, it beggars belief that Lisa Blaize has published a book. Still more that it got some very good reviews and was shortlisted for the Fashion History Book Prize. Did she flash her boobs at one of the judges? Many say you wrote it. At the very least, her copy-editor must be first rate. I’ll wager the poor thing dreads the day when Lisa’s next typescript comes in.

I was invited to your celebration party, but, like quite a few other people, couldn’t face being subjected to another episode of The Lisa Show. Like many others, I was dreading what becoming Lady C would do to Lisa’s already grossly inflated ego. I am pleased for you, Edward, and would have happily attended the party if all I had to do was talk to interesting, intelligent and perhaps even inspirational folk. But I simply don’t have the time, let alone the inclination, to seek out ‘glam’ clothes to feed Lisa’s attention-seeking fantasies.

It’s clear from Lisa’s Twitter account just how obsessed she is with designer clothes and shoes and skin potions, and how much time and money she devotes to her appearance, but it’s naïve of her to expect the rest of us to do the same when we are extremely busy people, and, I might add, far less vain than Lisa.

I don’t know how much attention you pay to Lisa’s Twitter account, but if you have a look at her tweets over the past five or six months you will get a sense of what people are concerned about and why Lisa has become an object of ridicule, not just at Blagsford, but across the public school network more widely. You will be able to see that she comes across as almost pathologically vain and egotistical …

* * *

‘Lisa, I’ve had a poisonous letter. It’s unbelievably cruel. And very funny. It claims to be from a member of staff. It’s a vicious attack on you. Of course, I don’t believe a word of it. These idiots know nothing about you.’

‘Why do you say “about you”, and not “about us”? Is the letter aiming to hurt you or me? Is it about who you are and where you’ve come from?’

‘Probably me. First there was Airfaregate and now this. You’re my Achilles’ heel. They know that.’

‘Does it mention Sean?’

‘No. Would you like to see it?’

‘No, Edward, certainly not. I make it a rule not to read anonymous letters. People who write things like that are rarely “well” people. And I don’t want spiteful things sticking in my head. In fact, I’m surprised that you read it, knowing that it was unsigned. The person who did this wants to sow a seed of doubt in you. Please don’t read it again. Throw it away and forget about it. In fact, just give it to me.’