Scarlett rocked with laughter. ‘I know, it’s excruciating to watch. But it didn’t half grab the headlines. I wasn’t drunk at all, you know. I made it look like I was drinking a lot more than I did. And I was totally stone-cold sober. I played them all for suckers, Steph. And look at me now. I’ve got my own house and money in the bank. You’re going to make me a bestseller. And my baby’s going to have a daddy.’
‘What about Joshu? Is he part of the game?’
She looked outraged. ‘Of course not. I wouldn’t be that cruel. I wouldn’t play with somebody’s emotions like that. I love Joshu, and he loves me.’
I wasn’t entirely sure about the second half of that sentence. Especially if Joshu ever realised that the woman in his life was about seven times smarter than him. ‘As long as you’re happy, that’s what counts. But I have to congratulate you, Scarlett. You’ve done a terrific job. When I was just another punter, I had no idea that you were anything other than a nice-but-dim bimbo.’
Scarlett scooted forward to high-five me. ‘Props to you, Steph. You’re the only one who’s ever worked it out. All the hacks, the TV producers, the business people that make my brands – they think I’m thick so they patronise the arse off me then funnel everything through Georgie. And bless him, Georgie’s like most people. He made up his mind about me before he even met me. He thinks he knows my limits and he plays to them. He never actually looks at me or listens to me. He only pays attention to the surface. It’s one of the reasons why I chose him. That and his reputation for being honest. Let’s face it, if you’re supposed to be thick, you need to be bloody sure you pick an agent who’s going to take care of you and not rip you off.’
I had to admit she’d made a good job of it. ‘Don’t you get fed up, though? Always pretending?’
‘I do sometimes. Being pregnant’s done me a big favour. I was getting knackered with having to be out on the lash three or four nights a week. But now I’m supposed to set a good example and stop at home. Early nights, no smoking or drinking. Because you know there’s a whole world of media out there who would give their right arms to catch me being a shit mum-to-be. You’ve no idea what it’s like. Every time I leave the house, they’re on my tail. I go to the supermarket, they’re snapping my groceries. I go to lunch and talk to the parking attendant, they’re all over him, asking what I said. I have no fucking privacy unless I’m in here, behind these walls. They’re all waiting for me to end up on my arse outside some nightclub six months pregnant. And that’s not a headline I could come back from. So I have to pull the tragedy face for poor Joshu and tell him I can’t come and watch him doing his pumping rideouts all over town.’
‘“Pumping rideouts?”’
She snorted. ‘DJ wankspeak for a set. He takes it all seriously, bless him. He’s got a little studio out the back, he spends days in there putting stuff together in the right sequence. He’s doing really well, you know. He’s starting to get some top gigs.’
‘Which might have something to do with being your boyfriend.’
Scarlett gave me a dark look. ‘That might have raised his profile, but he is actually good, you know.’
‘Even when he’s off his face?’ A small test of our incipient friendship.
‘What do you mean?’ Now the old belligerent Scarlett came leaping out of the cave.
‘About half of the times I’ve seen Joshu, he’s been high. You’ve spent too much time round people who abuse drink and drugs not to see that for yourself.’
‘So he uses. That doesn’t make him a junkie. He likes to have fun. That doesn’t mean he’s hooked.’
This wasn’t the time or the place to point out to Scarlett that I wouldn’t have Joshu anywhere near any child of mine, with his drugs and fake guns. But I had made my point. If we were going to be mates, it was as well that I’d got my reservations out in the open sooner rather than later. At least Scarlett knew now that she could rely on me to be honest with her, even when she didn’t like what I had to say.
We turned a corner that day. I only wish I’d had a clearer view of the road ahead.
11
Once I’ve finished the interviews, I generally don’t see anything of my clients until I’ve completed the first draft. When I have queries, I email or phone them. It was different with Scarlett. Five days after we were done talking, she texted me to say she was in town, could she come round to mine?
I never let clients into my life. They don’t know my address, they don’t come to my home. They are professional acquaintances and they stay in my professional sphere. But Scarlett had blown a hole in her barriers to let me in. The least I could do was to return the favour. So I texted the address back and put a bottle of mineral water in the freezer to chill.
She turned up in the red Mazda sports car. My house is the end one of a grimy yellow-brick terrace in what barely scrapes by as Hackney. The car stuck out like a pickled onion on a cream cake, but Scarlett had the good sense to stuff her hair in a snood and cover her eyes with a pair of tinted glasses. Not big, outrageous ‘look at me’ sunglasses but understated specs that made her face look different. She made it up the path without dragging anyone’s attention away from the car.
Once inside, she made no secret of the fact that she was curious. While I made tea, she poked around downstairs, checking out the CD collection, the books and the pictures on the walls. ‘Nice,’ she offered in final judgement as she wandered back to the scrubbed pine table that occupies the dining-room end of the open-plan space I live in, trailing a miasma of Scarlett Smile, the sweet floral signature fragrance the perfumiers had created for her.
‘A bit different from yours.’ I poured boiling water into the mugs and stirred the bags around.
‘Tell you the truth, I didn’t have a bloody clue when I moved into mine. Half the décor I inherited from the bankrupt geezer I bought it off. The other half, Georgie organised.’ She gave a half-laugh. ‘Nobody I knew ever had “interior décor”.’ She used her fingers to signal quotation marks in the air. ‘You just slapped a bit of paint on the walls. Or picked up some wallpaper off the market. So I’m learning as I go along. This here—’ She gestured at my lemon walls, stripped boards with their blue-and-white striped jute rugs and pale wooden cupboards and shelves. ‘I like this. I could live with something like this. I like coming into people’s houses and seeing what they’ve chosen. I’m learning all the time, Steph. I’m getting the hang of stuff that people like you take for granted.’
I’d never really stopped and considered how much people in Scarlett’s shoes missed out on. It’s not that I’m posh. My dad works for an insurance company, my mum’s a primary school secretary. But Scarlett was one of Thatcher’s illegitimate kids, the workless underclass. The rest of us, we’re too busy taking the piss or patronising or judging to stop and wonder why people suddenly thrust into the spotlight have such crap taste. When you did bother asking, the answer was uncomfortable.
Scarlett broke the seriousness of the mood. ‘Got any biscuits? I’m starving.’
I found the remains of a packet of chocolate digestives that Pete had been working his way through the previous evening. ‘You’re in luck. I don’t usually keep biscuits in the house. It’s too tempting when I’m working at home.’
‘Where do you work, then?’ She looked around vaguely, as if she’d missed something.
‘I had the loft converted about five years ago. I’ve got an office up there.’
Scarlett took the offered cup of tea and sat down, stretching out her legs under the table as if she belonged. ‘You live here all by yourself, then?’