Friends & Rivals Read online

  ‘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.

  ‘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 maho
gany 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!’

  But Jack had stormed off down the corridor, ignoring Ivan’s shouts. The servants’ stairs were blocked by a kissing couple so he veered left, practically running down the grand main staircase, so eager was he to get out of there. Bloody fool. I should never have come tonight. So much for Ivan turning over a new leaf.

  ‘Oh, there you are.’

  Jack was so caught up in his own thoughts that he almost knocked Catriona flying.

  ‘You’re not leaving already, are you?’ Her face fell. ‘We haven’t even had the fireworks yet. You must stay for those.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled awkwardly. ‘Something’s come up. I have to get back to London.’

  Goddamn Ivan for implicating him in his bullshit. Now Jack was forced to stand here and lie to one of his oldest friends.

  Catriona tried to be understanding. ‘Oh. Well, I suppose if you have to. Anyway, before you go, I just wanted to let you know that I’ll look out for Kendall when she comes over. As you know, lots of Ivan’s clients come up here to stay when they’re burned out or stressed or whatever. We’ve become quite the heartbreak hotel, haven’t we?’ she laughed. ‘I doubt even Miss Bryce can get into too much trouble in the bright lights of Widford on a Saturday night.’

  ‘Thank you. Really. That means a lot.’ Jack looked at Catriona, then hugged her tightly, squeezing as if he might never let her go. ‘You’re a good woman, Catriona Charles. Ivan doesn’t deserve you.’

  Catriona smiled wryly. ‘He probably doesn’t deserve you either, Jack darling. I know he must be difficult to work with. But don’t give up on him. For my sake.’

  Speeding back towards London half an hour later, Jack Messenger felt as depressed as he had in months. Every time it seemed as if Ivan might finally have turned a corner and developed some scruples, he went and did something so shatteringly stupid and selfish it beggared belief.

  Jack wished he could give up on Ivan. But after fifteen years as partners in Jester, their lives and interests were irrevocably intertwined. Being in business with Ivan Charles was like walking through life with a bomb strapped to your chest. The unpredictability, the selfishness, all wrapped up in a lethally charming package.

  Come to think of it, Ivan Charles had a lot in common with the other giant headache in Jack Messenger’s life. But, he reflected with relief, at least she was safely ensconced in his Brentwood guesthouse under the watchful eye of her twenty-four-hour sobriety coach.

  Not even Kendall Bryce could get into too much trouble in those circumstances.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘Harder! Oh my God, what is the problem? Why do you keep stopping?’

  Kendall Bryce looked over her shoulder at her red-faced sobriety coach with withering disdain. Weren’t these sober health-freaks supposed to be fit? This guy screwed like a grandfather.

  ‘My electric toothbrush makes me come faster than this. Come on, Kevin. Do it!’

  Kevin Dacre closed his eyes and tried to recapture any of the sexual excitement he’d felt when Kendall Bryce, the Kendall Bryce, had opened the front door to him half an hour ago in nothing but a pair of Trashy Lingerie panties. Half an hour ago, Kevin was worried he might come before he got his pants off. Now, after being ordered into countless different positions, with Kendall berating him for his poor performance like a particularly ticked-off drill sergeant, all Kevin wanted was to be allowed to go home. That, and for Kendall Bryce not to tell his employer, Jack Messenger, what had happened this evening.

  The worst part was that Jack had warned him, in so many words: ‘She’ll try anything in the book to get you off her case. If she wants drugs or a drink she’ll stop at nothing to get them. She’ll probably offer to sleep with you, and let me tell you, Mr Dacre, Kendall’s offers can be tough to refuse.’

  ‘I’ve worked with Charlie Sheen, Mr Messenger,’ Kevin had replied confidently. ‘If I can keep him clean, I’m pretty confident I can handle Kendall.’

  Now Kevin Dacre knew better. Nobody ‘handled’ Kendall Bryce. She was a force of nature, as impossible to resist as a twister or a riptide. And she had him by the balls, literally as well as metaphorically. If Messenger heard about this – if anyone heard about it – Kevin’s career was finished.

  At last, with a wild moan and arch of her back, Kendall climaxed. Kevin Dacre whimpered with relief. Easing himself out of her, he slumped down on the bed, exhausted.

  ‘I’ll order some pizza,’ Kendall announced cheerfully. ‘We can wash it down with a couple of bottles of Jack’s Mouton Rothschild, and then we can go again.’

  Again? Kevin started hyperventilating. ‘Kendall, come on. This was fun but we both know it shouldn’t have happened. And we also both know I can’t let you drink.’

  Kendall laughed loudly. ‘Let me? I like that. That’s a good one. Besides, it was coke I went to rehab for. I’m not an alcoholic.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ said Kevin. ‘You’re an addict and you’re in recovery. No substances means no substances. You know that.’

  Kendall’s eyes narrowed. ‘All I know is that you’re gonna break into the main house and raid Jack’s wine closet for me. Because if you don’t, you know I’m gonna pick up the phone and tell him about the great sex we just had.’

  ‘I thought you said the sex was terrible?’

  Kendall looked at him pityingly ‘It was terrible, Kev
in. I was trying to be kind. But you know what they say: practice makes perfect. Now, how about that drink?’

  Kendall Bryce had first come to prominence in her teens as the breakout star of reality show, Hollywood High. Small but perfectly formed, her body had the exaggerated, pneumatic curves of a porn star. Her waist was waspishly narrow, her breasts cartoonish in both their size and gravity-defying perkiness, her butt was as high and tight as a male baller-ina’s. But it was Kendall’s face, a perfectly defined set of smooth planes illuminated by neon green cat’s eyes, as well as her attitude, that ensured her swift rise to fame. Kendall Bryce was brattish – certainly – and spoiled; Hollywood High was a show about movie-industry kids, so those two attributes were prerequisites. But Kendall could also be devastatingly funny. Her pithy put-downs of contemporaries rapidly became the stuff of legend and she was embraced as a sort of young, insanely hot Joan Rivers.

  What Hollywood High failed to show was Kendall Bryce’s deep, searing insecurity, and the terrible loneliness of her home life. Kendall’s father was the producer Vernon Bryce. He divorced her mother when Kendall was twelve, and since then had laid eyes on his eldest daughter a grand total of three times. Two of those occasions were court appearances, for DUI and cocaine possession respectively. The third was for Kendall’s twenty-first birthday, when Vernon showed up for the cameras with a ribbon-wrapped pink Maserati complete with Ken 1 number plates, but was too busy to stay for dinner, insisting he had to rush back to his younger kids, Donny and Aiden, the twin boys he had with his new wife and whom he unashamedly adored.

  Kendall’s mum Lorna was a sweet, pleasant woman, but she knew nothing about her daughter’s wild lifestyle, or if she did she was too weak to do anything about it. The truth was, Lorna Bryce was afraid of Kendall. Her younger children, Holly and Joe, were both so much easier to handle. They hadn’t been affected by Vernon’s abandonment the way that Kendall had. That was the problem. From babyhood, Kendall Bryce had always been a daddy’s girl.