Tilly Bagshawe - Friends and Rivals

‘Joyce!’ Ivan’s voice boomed out from the drawing-room doorway. Jack looked up to see his partner grinning like the Cheshire Cat. ‘Put Mr Messenger down, darling. You’re scaring him.’

The Asian girl released Jack and scurried over to Ivan, who slipped an arm around her tiny waist. Jack looked at her face more closely. Good God. It was Joyce Wu, the virtuoso violinist, one of Jester’s most successful classical artists. Known for her awesome discipline and focus, Joyce Wu was still only nineteen. Her publicity pictures showed a serious young woman, usually dressed in a polo neck and long skirt, clutching a Stradivarius. It was hard to connect that girl to this one, drunkenly trying to cover at least one of her breasts while Ivan idly ran his fingers through her silken black hair.

‘Good to see you, Jack. Can I get you a drink?’ Ivan stopped a passing waiter with a tray of cocktails.

‘I’ll have a Diet Coke, please.’

‘No you won’t. It’s a party,’ said Ivan, thrusting something colourful and umbrella-ed into Jack’s hand. Before he had a chance to protest, Jack was accosted by both the Charles children, leaping up at him and yapping like a pair of puppies. Rosie, at twelve, looked distinctly pre-teen in her ‘sophisticated’ Monsoon evening dress and blue-streaked hair. But Hector, her younger brother and Jack’s godson, was still very much a child at eleven. Physically, he was a carbon copy of his father, dark-haired and handsome with a deliciously naughty twinkle in his eye. But in temperament, Jack had always thought of him as more like Catriona. Laid-back, gentle, sweet.

‘Did you bring me a present?’ he asked Jack, guilelessly.

Jack grinned. ‘I might have. I guess it depends. How well behaved have you been lately? Do you deserve a present?’

‘He’s been bloody awful,’ said Ivan, letting go of Joyce Wu and grabbing his son affectionately by the arm. ‘Kicked out of St Wilfred’s. Catriona’s at her wits’ end.’

‘I got my green belt in karate, though,’ said Hector cheerfully. ‘Anyway, I know you’ve got me a present, because you always do. Is it an iPad 2?’

‘If it is, I’m confiscating it,’ said Ivan, shoving both his children towards the playroom where various kids were watching movies and gorging themselves on salt-and-vinegar crisps. ‘Now sod off, would you? Uncle Jack has people to see.’

Ivan led Jack through the heaving drawing room, stopping every few seconds to introduce him to new clients and remind him of the names of the old ones. The room itself was beautiful in an old English sort of a way. The walls were panelled in original dark oak, worn to a rich gleam over centuries of use, and the fireplace was a vast, baronial effort in rough-hewn Cotswold stone, tall enough for a woman to stand up in without stooping. In the wintertime, huge pine logs crackled and spat in the hearth day and night. Tonight, however, the flags were swept clean and an absolutely enormous display of white flowers exploded in its centre: roses and lilies and freesias, all of them so powerfully scented that a passing bee would have fainted if it had come within a yard of them. Above the fireplace, where one might have expected to see a giant mirror or an oil painting of some illustrious ancestor, one of Catriona’s photographs hung in pride of place. A brilliant amateur snapper, her specialty was portraits, but this piece was a landscape shot of the Windrush Valley in winter. To Jack it conjured up nothing so much as the forest of Narnia; a magical, snowy wonderland too strange and beautiful to be of this earth. He’d offered to buy it countless times, but neither Ivan nor Catriona would contemplate letting it go.

‘Joyce Wu seemed a little unhinged earlier,’ Jack whispered in Ivan’s ear as they made their way towards the bar. ‘Is everything OK there?’

‘Joyce is fine,’ said Ivan breezily. ‘Better than fine actually. Polygram just made her a whopping two-album offer.’

‘That’s not what I meant. I meant is she coping OK with the fame, the pressure? She’s still very young.’

Ivan put a hand on Jack’s arm. ‘Jack. She’s fine. As you say, she’s young. She’s letting her hair down at a party, that’s all. It’s called having fun. You should try it some time.’

They emerged onto a stone terrace. It was twilight now, and the view of The Rookery’s gardens with the meadows and river beyond was unutterably lovely. Jack sipped his cocktail and soaked up the beauty of it all. Ivan’s right. It’s a party. I should try and relax.

‘Speaking of unhinged clients,’ said Ivan, ‘ how’s Kendall?’

Jack felt the tension surge back into his body. Kendall Bryce, a twenty-three-year-old pop sensation with Kim Kardashian’s body and Aretha Franklin’s voice, was probably Jester’s most famous client. She was also Jack Messenger’s personal protégée or, as he preferred to think of it, the cross he had to bear.

‘Kendall is Kendall. She’s difficult.’

‘Is she using?’ Ivan asked bluntly. Kendall Bryce’s cocaine problems were as well documented as her love life. She was a good kid deep down and Jack was very fond of her. But she was insecure as all hell.

‘No. I’ve got her doing tests weekly. She knows if she slips up again she’s off our books for good. I meant to talk to you about that, actually. I need you to make sure she keeps up with the drug tests in London. Every Friday, without fail. And she’s not supposed to drink either.’

‘Sure,’ said Ivan. But he said it with a nonchalance that made Jack profoundly uneasy. Kendall was due to perform six concerts at UK venues over the next three weeks, a thought that filled Jack with dread and relief in equal measure. Relief because it meant he got a three-week break from playing bad cop. Policing Kendall Bryce’s lifestyle was becoming a full-time job. But dread because he had no control over what she might do once let off the leash.

‘Jack!’ Catriona Charles came running across the lawn, her face flushed with happiness, tendrils of dirty-blonde hair escaping from pins in all directions. Jack had a sudden flashback to Oxford, and Catriona tearing barefoot around the quad at Magdalen on the night of the ball. Give or take a few laughter lines around the eyes and the odd pound of extra weight, she hadn’t changed. ‘You made it!’

‘Of course I made it. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world,’ lied Jack.

‘We’ve been catching up,’ said Ivan, swapping his empty glass for a full one. ‘Discussing our most badly behaved clients.’

‘Well, I hope you aren’t going to be boring and talk business all night,’ Catriona said firmly, taking Jack’s hand. ‘Come on. Loads of the old gang are here.’

By ‘the old gang’ she meant Oxford friends. Old turned out to be the operative word. For the next hour Jack found himself shaking hands and reminiscing with a series of paunchy, balding men, none of whom he’d have recognized had Catriona not told him their names. It was depressing.

‘We’ve aged,’ he said to Catriona, once he finally managed to get her alone. ‘Jamie Grayson looks as old as the fucking hills.’

‘Poor Jamie,’ Catriona frowned. ‘He’s had a rough year, what with the divorce and everything. Anyway, you haven’t aged. You and Ivan both look disgustingly young and handsome.’

Jack laughed. ‘Ivan maybe. Not me. How is he, anyway? How are the two of you?’

‘We’re fine.’ Catriona smiled, hoping it didn’t look as forced as it felt. Jack was too tactful to spell it out, but she knew what ‘ how are the two of you? ’ meant. About five years ago, she’d discovered Ivan had been having an affair with one of the girls at Jester. He’d broken it off, and seemed genuinely remorseful at the time. But then a year later, she’d caught him at it again. Since then, things had been a lot better. When Ivan was in London he called every night to say goodnight to her, and to reassure her he was alone. He’d started going to therapy, and talking to Catriona more openly about his insecurities. Turning forty, in particular, bothered him, but rather than boosting his ego with another fling, he’d started spending more time with the children, especially Hector who worshipped his father like a god.