Val McDermid - The Vanishing Point

But I couldn’t stay there for ever. After a lot of thought, I’d decided to move to Brighton. I’d always liked the seaside, in spite of dispiriting childhood holidays in the teeth of easterly gales at Cleethorpes and Skegness. Parts of Brighton reminded me of the bits of Lincoln I’d liked – the narrow twisting streets of the Lanes, the less grand terraced streets, the green spaces at the heart of the town. There was a cultural life and easy access to London. But perhaps most importantly of all, I’d never mentioned Brighton to Pete. Not even casually, in passing. I’d never said, ‘I fancy a day out in Brighton,’ or ‘One of my favourite authors is doing the Brighton Festival, let’s go down and make a weekend of it.’ There was no reason on earth why he should come looking for me there.

I eventually found a sweet little Victorian terraced house ten minutes from the sea. There were local shops, a couple of bustling pubs where easy acquaintance seemed to be on offer, a neat little park where I could take the air when I needed to have a pause for thought. The house was tall and narrow, with a converted attic that served me well as an office. The master bedroom revealed a sliver of sea between the houses opposite, and the previous owners had installed a generous conservatory that caught the morning sun. It was perfect, tucked away in a quiet street with parking for residents only. I felt safe.

I didn’t see much of Scarlett while I was settling into the new house. I was painting walls and choosing curtain fabric, having sofas reupholstered and scouring the Lanes for bits and pieces to replace items that Pete had broken during his malicious spree. She came down a couple of times with Jimmy, who loved the beach. He could sit for ages sifting through the chunky pebbles, picking his favourites and building little piles around his chubby legs. But there was too much going on in her other life for Scarlett to have much free time.

Her reinvention was coming along apace. Her show focusing on reality TV stars had developed a cult following. It had become a favourite with the student audience, who apparently enjoyed it in a post-modern ironic way. It had also won an audience among the older viewers, the staple of daytime TV. Between the two groups, the show had earned significant ratings. Advertisers loved it and the punters loved Scarlett. Now she was in talks to front a late-night chat show on a popular digital channel. Every now and again I’d stumble on a piece in one of the broadsheets exploring her apparently inexorable rise with a slightly bemused air. But she hadn’t let go of her core fan base. There were still the features in Yes! magazine and the occasional Leanne appearance in the gossip columns. Scarlett even guest-presented a celebrity special of the reality makeover show Ladette to Lady . She was well on the way to becoming a cultural icon.

There was a downside to her success, however. I had a rare opportunity to see it at first hand when she persuaded me to come to a book signing in an Oxford Street department store. Of course, the person who’d actually written Jimmy’s Testament wouldn’t be the one doing the signing, but that was fine with me. I’ve never had a hankering for the limelight.

We were smuggled in via the delivery entrance to avoid the crowds I’d clocked as we’d crossed Oxford Street in the Mercedes with the tinted windows. The queue stretched out of the brass-bound double doors and round the corner. ‘Good turnout,’ I said as we swept past.

‘Yeah, they always do well for me here.’ Scarlett allowed herself to preen a little, then gave me a cheeky smile. ‘People love the book, Steph. You did a great job helping me knock it into shape.’

It was always good to hear a morsel of praise. And of course, a morsel was all I generally got from my clients. Scarlett was more generous than most, but even so, it felt like scant acknowledgement of the work.

Still, the champagne and canapés that were waiting for us were a welcome acknowledgement. The signing was a joint event between our publisher and the perfumier who produced Scarlett Smile. They’d provided special pens that would write on the high-gloss finish of the perfume’s packaging; the store had provided a handler who would make sure Scarlett always had the correct writing implement to hand. I would have grumbled at the condescension but she didn’t seem to mind being treated like an idiot.

Once she’d been coached in how to sign books and perfume boxes, we were led through to the event space, an area in the cosmetics department that had been cleared of product islands for the occasion. All the available space was crammed with fans – mostly young women – who broke out in whoops and cheers and screeches of delight when they caught sight of her. The store had tried to corral them into a queue via metal pillars and webbing, but the system broke down within minutes.

Cameras were flashing, punters shouting and bodies pressing forward against the table separating Scarlett from the hordes. To me, it seemed both terrifying and precarious, as if Scarlett could be overwhelmed at any moment by the sheer weight of numbers. The noise was insistent, beating against my ears in brutal waves. I wanted to turn and run. God knows what it was like for her.

Just when the hysteria approached the tipping point, the store security guards finally moved in. Firmly but gently, they moved the front line a few inches backwards, putting a little distance between Scarlett and her public. At least now there was some semblance of order at the front of the mob. And Scarlett was able to begin signing.

After an hour, it seemed she’d barely made a dent in the crowd. But when I peeled away from her minders and circled round the back of the mob, I could see it was beginning to ease up. On the fringes, I clocked three fans with cameras, relentlessly shooting pictures of Scarlett. They were obviously not paparazzi – neither their cameras nor their clothes were expensive enough. But they were not going anywhere. Towards the end of the signing, when only a few customers remained, all three – a woman and two men – made their way to the signing table and, instead of books, produced folders of glossy photographs downloaded from the Internet that they wanted Scarlett to autograph. None of them looked wholesome. I imagined them back in their lonely bedsits, printing out their photos, searching for the image that would make them feel they’d finally captured Scarlett.

I reckoned capture was what they wanted. It creeped me out to think of those strange obsessives following her round the country, convincing themselves they were her friends. The truly scary thing was that Scarlett knew them. She bestowed her smile on them, even though I could readily see it was a low-wattage version of the real thing. But you couldn’t fault its sincerity.

In one sense, her career was carefully choreographed by Scarlett herself. But it only worked because there was nothing cynical about what she was doing. The real Scarlett was the one she was gradually releasing into the wild, and at bottom, the person she was revealing was a good-hearted person. She was well aware of how far she had come and how lucky she had been to make her escape, and unlike so many who have made that journey, she was willing to reach out a helping hand to others who shared her determination to change their futures.

It was that willingness that opened the door for her greatest act of generosity. Back when Jimmy was nearly three, she was invited to take part in the Caring for Kids telethon. The initial idea was for an upbeat piece where Scarlett would visit Romania and reveal how the orphanages that had shocked the world after the downfall of the Ceaușescu regime had been transformed. And there was a lot of truth in that version of events. Money raised in the UK had helped to change the lives of thousands of children and disabled people who had been condemned to conditions that gave most of us nightmares to think of. The word coming out of Romania was that the hellhole institutions were a thing of the past, and that’s what Scarlett was supposed to go and celebrate. To show the viewers how their donations worked at ground level.