Tilly Bagshawe - Friends and Rivals

Ivan digested all this with interest. While Kendall perused the menu for a main course, intermittently exchanging shamelessly suggestive smiles with Prince Harry, Ivan considered the pros and cons of Jack’s strategy. On the one hand, it made sense, keeping a relatively new artist like Kendall with a small label that would be guaranteed to prioritise her. Matador had a good reputation and had certainly done well by Kendall so far. On the other hand, Ivan could smell this kid’s ambition through her pores. She wanted Sony because they were the biggest, and for Kendall Bryce, biggest meant best. She was impatient to make it to the next level, demanding superstardom like a screeching baby cuckoo demanding to be fed. Clearly, Jack’s organic, slow-build approach to her career was frustrating her and driving a wedge between them.

Equally clearly, for all her bitching and moaning, Kendall plainly idolized Jack Messenger. In the cab on the way over to The Wolseley, she must have dropped his name into the conversation a good fifteen times. Jack thinks this, Jack says that, Jack wants the other. Ivan sensed an opportunity here. He wanted to make the move into pop, and what better way to start than with Kendall Bryce, a rising US star with ambitions in his, Ivan’s, home market? But if he were going to prise her away from Jack, he would have to tread very carefully indeed.

‘Listen,’ he said, once Kendall had ordered a large plate of lobster thermidor with a side of fries and Gustavo had brought them a bottle of perfectly chilled vintage Chablis, ‘I want you to relax here in London and leave all the work shit to me. Try and think of it as a vacation.’

‘With a couple of live performances in front of thousands of people thrown in, right?’

‘Right,’ grinned Ivan. ‘The gigs’ll be a piece of cake.’

‘I hope so,’ sighed Kendall, biting her lip, the first hint of anxiety she’d betrayed so far. ‘I only have a few days to rehearse before the show at the Hammersmith Apollo on Thursday.’

‘You’ll do great. Just focus on all the fun stuff you’ll be doing as soon as it’s over.’

‘Like what?’ Kendall said morosely. ‘I don’t know a soul here. Jack gave me a list of friends of his I can call, but they all sound boring as fuck. I swear to God one of them was called Sister Mary Theresa. Maybe the two of us can go to matins together. Fun!’

Ivan laughed. He liked this girl.

‘Look. I have to be in town tomorrow for a meeting on the Friday after your show,’ he said, ‘but I’ll be done by four. After that I’m driving down to my country house for the weekend. Why don’t you join me?’

Kendall looked doubtful. ‘I don’t know. Thanks for the offer, but I wouldn’t want to impose on your family time. Besides, I’m not exactly what you’d call a country girl. I’m high maintenance.’

Ivan raised his glass to hers. ‘So am I, my dear. So am I.’

‘Oh Jesus. I can’t go out there. Seriously, I can’t.’

Kendall hovered backstage at the Hammersmith Apollo, holding Ivan’s hand so tightly she’d cut off the circulation to his fingers.

‘The place is half empty. No one knows who the fuck I am over here.’

It was strange, but for some reason the smattering of vacant seats made Kendall feel infinitely more nervous than the packed stadiums she was used to back in the US. Having ten thousand people watching you was like being alone. With that size of audience, and the stage lights blinding you, there were no individuals to worry about, just a screaming, adulatory wall of noise. Here, in this gloriously old-fashioned 1930s theatre, you could look out from backstage and see individual faces. A middle-aged woman here, a pair of teenage boys there. Real people, who’d paid real money to hear you sing. It was terrifying.

‘Everyone knows who you are,’ Ivan reassured her, not entirely truthfully. ‘And remember, you’re here to support Adele. You think people don’t know who she is?’

‘I guess not,’ said Kendall through chattering teeth.

‘Exactly. The venue’s sold out, with a line outside as long as your arm. It’s only ten to eight. Trust me, there’ll be no empty seats by the time they call you.’

He’s right , Kendall told herself. Calm down. Pacing up and down in a skintight PVC leotard and thigh-high silver boots, a tribute to the great Ziggy Stardust, who’d performed his final concert at the Apollo back in 1973, she knew she looked the part. Adele might be a mega-star with the best voice since Aretha, but no one nailed superstar raunch like Kendall Bryce. If Jack were here he’d have expressly forbidden her outfit. ‘Don’t cheapen yourself,’ was one of his favourite catchphrases. ‘You don’t have to dress like a hooker, or a poor man’s Britney, to get people to buy your records.’ But Jack, thankfully, wasn’t here. While it was true her profile was lower in the UK, the purpose of tonight’s concert was to raise it. She wasn’t going to do that by dressing like Karenfrikking Carpenter.

Suddenly the lights dimmed and the low bass boom boom boom of Kendall’s backing track began to thump around the auditorium. Ten minutes had passed already? How was that possible? She turned around to look for Ivan but he was gone. In his place were two distracted-looking sound-check guys and the four male backing dancers Kendall had been rehearsing with all week. All of them looked white as sheets, but ironically their nerves calmed Kendall’s own.

‘Smile, guys,’ she said confidently. ‘We’re gonna have fun out there, right? Right? Because if we don’t, nobody else will.’

The curtains lifted. There were a few whistles and whoops from the audience as, still in pitch darkness, Kendall and her dancers took their places. Kendall just had time to tap her headset and nod curtly to the sound engineers that her mic was working properly when the lights exploded into life and the track to ‘Shake It Loose’, her biggest hit to date, erupted into the theatre to wild shrieks of applause.

After that it was easy. Leaping and gyrating her way through three tracks straight, belting out the lyrics that were as familiar to her now as breathing, Kendall drank in the high of the crowd’s approval like a drug addict plunging the needle into her vein. Watching from backstage, Ivan was entranced. She was a different person onstage, radiating energy and excitement and joy like a one-woman power plant. The music was unremarkable – basic, hip-hoppy, commercial pop of the sort that hundreds of young artists were churning out all over the world. But in live performance, Kendall took it and transformed it into something unique. Her voice, her body, her angel’s face, but most of all her stage presence, screamed one thing and one thing only: star. No wonder Jack was so focused on her as a client. Managing her must be like trying to hold a flame in your hand.

‘Good evening, London!’ Kendall shouted hoarsely after the third track, leaning on her mic stand for support and swigging from a water bottle. ‘I gotta tell you, it is wild to be here.’

The audience cheered and wolf-whistled loudly, although at this point Ivan suspected that they would have applauded the shipping forecast if it had come out of Kendall’s ridiculously sexy, rosebud mouth.

‘I know you’re all here to see Adele.’ More applause. ‘So I won’t keep you in suspense too much longer. But I’m gonna perform one more track. It’s from my last album, and some of you may know it. It’s a little song called “Whipped” . ’

The most explicit track she had yet released, ‘Whipped’ was famous largely due to the fact that it had been banned from the airwaves in a number of US states due to its risqué lyrics. In her live routine, Kendall and her dancers hammed up the ‘naughty’ element, with Kendall at one point engaging in a simulated orgy with all four of her leather-clad boys. Yes, it was cheesy, but it was also sexy as all hell. The audience lapped it up like cats in a room full of cream. Even Ivan got a hard-on watching her. When Kendall finally bounced backstage, her faced flushed with adrenaline and triumph and her hair tangled wildly down her sweat-soaked back, it was all he could do not to jump on her then and there.