Tilly Bagshawe - Friends and Rivals

‘I think Ivan’s finally growing up,’ Catriona told Jack. For some reason she felt the need to expand on ‘we’re fine’. ‘I don’t mean that nastily. It’s just that, you know, he’s struggled with his age and the changes in our lives. But he seems more peaceful now. More content.’

‘Who’s more content?’

A pretty American woman in a shapeless Ali Hewson black dress sidled up to them. Jack’s heart sank. ‘Hello, Stella.’

Stella Bayley was the wife of Brett Bayley, lead guitarist of supergroup The Blitz. Brett and his bandmates were clients of Jack’s in Los Angeles, but were currently halfway through a European tour, so Brett and Stella were temporarily based in London. Brett was thick as a plank with an ego the size of Kansas and, if the groupies were to be believed, a dick to match. His wife, oblivious to Brett’s affairs but accepting of his long absences, had devoted her free time to becoming a tireless (and tiresome) eco-campaigner. Her blog, Stella’s World, in which she doled out lifestyle and parenting advice to the masses, was an inexplicable hit online. Inexplicable because anyone who had actually met Stella Bayley knew that her entire life was run by a fleet of exhausted staff, and that she herself had about as much maternal nous as a banana skin.

‘How are you liking England?’ Jack asked politely. ‘Are you settled in yet?’

‘Settled in?’ Stella gave her trademark tinkling laugh. ‘If you call living out of packing cases settled in, then yeah. You know the other day, Miley comes up to me and she’s like “Mommy, Mommy, can we have a picnic?” And of course it was raining outside, so I got some sheets and draped them over two of these damn cases, like a little tent, you know? And we had an indoor picnic! How cute is that? A little quinoa, some rice cakes and raisins made to look like smiley faces. I put it on the blog and my readers were like, Oh my God that is so cute. And I’m like, I know. I love England! I love the rain! You should hear Miley’s accent. I swear she sounds like Princess Diana, doesn’t she, Catriona?’

‘Erm …’ said Catriona. She had only met Miley Bayley once. As she remembered, the three-year-old barely spoke, but when she did she sounded like Mickey Mouse on helium.

Stella prattled on. ‘I’m always telling my readers: having fun with your kids doesn’t have to mean spending a lot of money. Brett and I are all about the simple things.’ She tossed her expensively highlighted mane of blonde hair and flashed a new set of porcelain veneers in Jack’s general direction. ‘But anyway, enough about me. I came over to talk to Catriona about this fabulous new personal trainer I’ve found – Morten. He’s based in Primrose Hill, but he has lots of clients in the country. Morten’ll help you shed those excess pounds faster than you can say colonic irrigation. I’ll give you his number.’

Eventually Stella fluttered off to share her words of wisdom with Ned Williams, a well-known tenor who lived locally and was another of Jester’s clients. The look of wild-eyed panic as Stella approached was enough to make even Jack Messenger chuckle.

‘Maybe I should get a trainer,’ sighed Catriona, looking down at her escaping bosom and yanking up the bodice of her dress.

‘And shrink the best bust in England? Don’t you dare,’ said Jack, kissing her on the cheek. He could have strangled Stella Bayley. ‘Don’t ever change, Cat. Especially not on the advice of that ridiculous woman.’

‘She means well.’

‘She’s horrendous. You’re wonderful.’

He says the nicest things , thought Catriona, watching him weave his way back into the house. She so hoped he and Ivan managed to patch things up.

Inside, Jack suddenly realized he was famished. Ignoring the dainty silver trays offering caviar blinis and mini vol-au-vents, he headed straight for the kitchen and helped himself to a large peanut-butter sandwich and two mugs of tea, ignoring the death stares from Catriona’s catering staff. The Rookery kitchen was a cosy, welcoming room, dominated by a pink six-oven Aga and a gnarled old farmhouse table that looked as if it hadn’t been moved for centuries. Hector and Rosie’s artwork covered most of the available wall surfaces, with the remainder given over to family photographs, all taken by Cat. Hector as a baby, his chubby face smeared with chocolate cake. Rosie, aged seven, on her first pony, beaming a gap-toothed grin as she held up her ‘Highly Commended’ rosette. Jack was ashamed to feel a stab of envy. He and Sonya had never had children, though they’d both wanted them. Sonya was halfway through her first round of IVF when her cancer was diagnosed, poor darling. Am I tougher on Ivan because I’m jealous? Because he has a family and I don’t? It was an uncomfortable thought.

Pushing it from his mind, Jack went upstairs in search of a bathroom. The queue for the downstairs loo was enormous and all that Earl Grey had gone straight to his bladder. There were two sets of stairs at The Rookery: the grand, sweeping mahogany staircase that led up to the principal bedrooms and that tonight was lit by simple white candles and bedecked with yet more flowers and greenery from the garden; and the back, servants’ stairs, a narrow, steeply winding passage that spat one out into a long corridor, giving on to a series of smaller, pokier rooms. Vaguely remembering there was a guest bathroom at the end of this corridor, Jack took the back stairs. Pushing open the last door, he stopped dead.

‘Jesus!’

Ivan was standing at the foot of the bath with his pants around his ankles. Joyce Wu was bent over the bath, spread-eagled and moaning as he took her from behind, thrusting so hard that Joyce’s tiny apple breasts quivered like twin jellies with each jerk of the hips. The young girl’s eyes had a familiar, glazed look. Sure enough, when Jack glanced at the sink, a fine line of leftover white powder was clearly visible.

It took Ivan Charles a second to realize that they had been interrupted. Joyce, lost in her own world, took longer, only registering Jack’s presence once Ivan stopped moving. She opened her mouth to scream, but Ivan lunged forward, covering her mouth with his hand.

‘Now, now, darling. We don’t need a bigger audience. One’s enough.’

Shaking, Joyce grabbed her red dress off the floor and held it protectively over her naked body. Jack Messenger held open the bathroom door. ‘Go home,’ he said quietly.

Joyce darted into the hallway, sobbing. Ivan, meanwhile, looked distinctly unruffled. He’d pulled up his pants and was busy smoothing down his hair and removing lipstick marks from his face and collar with a damp flannel.

Jack spoke first. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘I don’t know,’ drawled Ivan. ‘Am I?’

‘Anybody could have walked in!’

‘Indeed. But it had to be you who actually did , didn’t it Jack? You’re like an old housemaster, prowling the dorms looking for miscreants. And lo and behold, you found me.’ He held out his hand in mock supplication. ‘Go ahead, whip out your cane. I’m used to it.’

Jack’s stomach turned. ‘You think this is funny.’

‘Well, I don’t think it’s tragic, let’s put it that way,’ Ivan shot back. ‘OK, so I’ve been a naughty boy. But nobody knows, so there’s no harm done.’

‘No harm?’ Jack spluttered. ‘She’s a client!’

‘So?’

‘She’s a teenager!’

‘Only just,’ said Ivan, cleaning up the cocaine remnants before swigging from a bottle of mouthwash and spitting into the sink. ‘It’s my birthday. Joyce was my present. Oh for God’s sake, stop looking so thunderous. It was a one-off, all right? It won’t happen again. Jack. Jack!’