The Club (2 page)

‘Ready when you are,’ Jenna called, turning and waving at his silhouette in the booth. Crossing her fingers then, she turned back to the staff. ‘What say we get this party started?’

Gritting his teeth when the grandfather clock chimed twelve, Leonard Drake cursed under his breath. Damn Avril! They were supposed to be at the club already, and he’d been ready and waiting for a good half-hour while the driver sat in the car outside clocking up a nice bit of overtime. But
she
was still at her vanity table, plastering yet more muck onto her jowls.

Well, he wasn’t bloody well having it!

Pounding up the stairs, he burst into his wife’s room and jabbed angrily at his watch.

‘You
do
know what time it is, don’t you? We’re supposed to be there by now.’

Pausing with the lipstick halfway to her mouth, Avril flicked him a cool glance in the mirror. Then she slowly carried on with what she was doing.

‘You are so infuriating sometimes,’ Leonard complained. ‘You know how much I’ve been looking forward to this. If you didn’t want to come, you should have bloody well said so and I would have gone by myself!’

‘No, you wouldn’t,’ Avril muttered, smacking her raspberry lips together. ‘You never go
any
where new without me to hold your hand. I’m just a crutch, as far as you’re concerned – an old pair of shoes that you slip on and walk all over.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he retorted. ‘James Lorde was a bloody good friend of mine, in case you’d forgotten, and I will
not
be late for his daughter’s party!’

‘You already are,’ she reminded him flatly. ‘And, for the record, dear, you and he were
not
good friends, you were acquaintances. There
is
a difference.’

‘He was my
friend
,’ Leonard asserted indignantly. ‘My
father
’s friend, and then
my
friend. If he weren’t, I wouldn’t have received a VIP invitation, would I?’

‘Temper, temper,’ Avril clucked as purple blotches sprang up all over her husband’s face. ‘Mustn’t get ourselves worked up. You know what it does to your complexion.’

Shaking his head with frustration, Leonard turned on his heel and marched out of the room.

Sighing when she heard the bathroom door slam shut down the landing a second later, Avril put the lipstick down and reached for her comb.

No doubt he’d gone to splash his face with cold water, but a blotchy complexion was the least of his worries. God only knew what he saw in the mirror these days, but he didn’t seem to have realised that he was no longer the slim, handsome young man he had once been. His lovely thick hair had thinned considerably, and his once-sparkly eyes were just piggy little blobs in their puffy sockets now. But it was the belly bulging over the waistband of his suit trousers that betrayed just how far he’d let himself go. And the jacket sleeves were surely constricting the blood flow to his arms, but the vain bugger had squeezed himself into it nonetheless.

Coming back just then, Leonard tutted when he found Avril exactly where he’d left her. But knowing they would never get out of the door if he started a row, he mustered every last ounce of self-control and calmly said, ‘Will you
please
hurry up?’

Without answering, Avril took a few more moments to tease her newly combed hair into shape. Then she gave it a quick spritz of lacquer before standing up.

‘Thank you,’ he muttered, heading for the door. ‘I’ll be in the car.’

Avril hissed a breath out through her teeth. She knew that she was being a bitch, but she couldn’t help it. Theirs had not been the easiest of marriages, what with the demands of Leonard’s political career pulling them this way and that. But she had hoped that things would mellow between them when he retired last year.

And he
had
adjusted quite well, seeming content to potter about in the garden, or shoot some holes – or whatever he called it – at the golf club. It helped that they were still invited to his ex-colleagues’ dinner parties, giving him the opportunity to meet up with his cronies and keep abreast of the latest gossip while Avril and the wives swapped recipes. But just when she’d finally begun to believe that their future was settled, that damned invitation for the nightclub reopening party had arrived, and he’d started acting like a kid who’d been handed the keys to the sweetshop.

‘
AVRIIILLL!
’ Leonard screeched up the stairs now. ‘Bloody well come
on
, will you!’

Rolling her eyes, Avril checked herself one last time in the mirror. Then she switched the lamp off and settled her mouth into an unconcerned smile before heading down the stairs.

The sooner this was over, the sooner she could get back to her book.

Across town, in his plush third-floor hotel suite, Tony Allen stopped his impatient pacing and yanked the curtain aside. In the car park below, his right-hand man, Eddie, was leaning against the white stretch limo they’d hired, chatting to the driver. When a sleek black Mercedes pulled in behind it, Tony watched the long-haired guy who was staying in the penthouse suite swagger towards it. He was dressed in tight leather pants and a girly-pink silk shirt, and was flanked by an uptight-looking older man and three blonde bimbos in micro-miniskirts. He was supposed to be some sort of megastar singer, according to Melody, but Tony couldn’t say that he’d ever heard of him.

Chase Mann
 . . . What kind of homo name was that, anyway?

Dropping the curtain when the group had climbed into the Merc and taken off, Tony glanced at his watch. Twelve-fifteen. What the fuck was Melody playing at? She always liked to be late to be sure of making a big entrance, but this was the one night of the year when you had to be there on the fucking dot! How many times did she need to brush her hair or take her make-up off only to put it back on exactly the same, anyway?

Marching into the bedroom, he snatched the blusher brush from Melody’s hand and hauled her up off the stool.

‘What are you
doing
?’ she squawked. ‘I’m not ready.’

‘Yeah, you are,’ he grunted, marching her into the living room. ‘Here, you can finish off on the way.’ Snatching her handbag off the table he shoved it into her hands, then pushed her out the door and down the corridor to the elevator.

Melody complained all the way down to the foyer. But Tony ignored her, possessing that rare quality other men would pay to acquire: the ability to completely blank his women out.

Even those as gorgeous as Melody Fisher.

And she
was
gorgeous: angel face, devil of a sexy body, waist-length honey-blonde hair, and the most perfect tits he’d ever got his hands on – all bought and paid for by him. At thirty-two, and five-ten, she was a good deal younger than him and a little taller in her heels. But he was more than man enough to hold his own beside her, because he had that certain something about him: a menacing, brooding darkness, which, when added to his larger-than-life personality and the twinkle in his piercing eyes, created a powerful aura.
We’ll have a laugh, but don’t even think about fucking with me.

‘For Christ’s sake, Tony!’ Melody complained now, tottering helplessly on her stilettos as he pushed her out of the entrance doors. ‘Do you have to act like such a fucking thug? You might get away with the He-Man shit in the fucking States, but we’re in
England
now, remember?’

‘Whatever,’ Tony said dismissively, shoving her onto the limo’s spacious back seat and climbing in beside her. Waiting until Eddie had got in up front, he tapped on the dividing window to tell the driver to get going.

Sighing loudly, Melody sat petulantly back, muttering, ‘I can’t be
lieve
you’re stressing me out like this. Christ, I’m actually
trembling
– look . . .’ Thrusting her hand out, she gave it an exaggerated shake. ‘I need a cigarette,’ she said then. Getting no response, she clicked her fingers sharply in front of Tony’s face. ‘A
smoke
, Tone, I need a smoke!’

‘Not in the car,’ he snapped, swatting her hand aside. ‘And don’t call me that. You know I can’t stand it.’

‘
Sorry
, I’m sure!’ Pulling her skirt down over her thighs with a huff, Melody folded her arms.

Reaching across, Tony pushed the skirt back up. ‘Leave it there. I don’t want people thinking I’m hanging out with a fucking nun.’

‘No,’ she sniped. ‘You’d rather they thought I was a fucking
whore
.’

‘Not just any whore,’ he countered, giving her a sly grin. ‘
My
whore. And don’t you forget it.’

Melody complained all the way to the club, only stopping when they pulled up outside and she saw all the heads in the queue turn their way as people tried to see who was behind the blacked-out windows. Getting her first real buzz of the night, she fixed her top for maximum cleavage and manoeuvred her skirt to pussy level, then waited for the driver to open the door, eager to get out and bask in the admiring glances.

Tony was having none of it. He’d just spotted the paparazzi hanging about on the other side of the road, and the last thing he wanted was to wake up and find his picture splashed across the papers. Taking a firm grip on Melody’s wrist when they hit the pavement, he raised an arm to shield his face from the barrage of flashing lights and yanked her to the head of the queue.

‘Tony!’ she griped, twisting to free herself as he paused to show the doormen their invitation. ‘You’re hurting me.’

‘So quit wriggling.’

‘These people wanted to see me. I am
famous
, you know. It kind of comes with the territory.’

Giving a scornful snort, Tony said, ‘Two films does
not
a superstar make.’

‘
Hollywood
films,’ she reminded him tartly.

‘You still ain’t no Jolie,’ he flipped back. ‘And I’d bet my life none of these idiots have got a fucking clue who you are.’

Not yet, maybe
, Melody thought resentfully, folding her arms while they waited to be admitted.
But you just wait till my agent tells me I got that part I auditioned for. Angelina flaming Jolie won’t know what’s hit her when I get started!

PART ONE

1

Jenna Lorde seemed to have it all. At twenty-six she could still pass for twenty-one, even on a bad day. Slim and curvaceous, with sleek shoulder-length black hair, a flawless complexion, and exotically slanted sea-green eyes, she had a good job at a major fashion house in the West End, a nice little flat in Maida Vale – and a shattered heart, having recently discovered that Jason, her charming, funny, passionate, unbearably handsome boyfriend of six years, was married.

Dumping him as soon as she found out, Jenna spent the next few months fielding the texts and phone calls claiming that his wife meant nothing to him, that it had all been a terrible mistake, and that Jenna was the only woman he’d ever loved. When that didn’t work, he tried self-righteous anger, turning up at her flat, and – more embarrassingly – her workplace, accusing her of being selfish, and telling her to stop feeling sorry for herself and think what this was doing to
him
. And, finally, he tried reasoning that, as she’d already been sharing him with his wife all along, what was the difference if they carried on now as if nothing had ever happened?

And in one particularly weak, bleak moment, when she’d been missing him like crazy, and wishing that she’d stayed in blissful ignorance, Jenna had found herself actually considering it.

Which was when she came to the conclusion that she had to get as far away from him as possible if she was ever going to get her life back on track. But just as she was about to hand in her notice at work and give up the lease on her flat, fate stepped in. She got the call telling her that her dad had died.

Going home to Manchester to arrange the funeral and sort out her dad’s affairs was a shock to Jenna’s system. She’d been away for eight years, and in some ways it felt like she’d never been gone. But in others, it was truly weird to be back – especially knowing that her dad wouldn’t be there when she reached the house.

Having kept in touch mainly by phone over the last few years, and only paying the occasional flying visit, Jenna hardly recognised the place when she stepped off the train. Piccadilly Station had had a major revamp since she’d last been there, and so had the rest of the city. But the people were exactly the same, she soon discovered – stoically determined to retain their northern-ness as the landscape mutated around them into a pastiche of the south. She didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing, but as she wasn’t planning on sticking around after the funeral she didn’t really care.

The funeral was a small affair, because Jenna didn’t really know any of her dad’s friends to invite them. In the end it was just her, a handful of their old neighbours, and Ruth Wolff – the widow of her dad’s old solicitor, who had been the one who’d let her know that he’d died.

Jenna’s older sister, Claudia, didn’t come – but then, Jenna hadn’t expected her to, considering that she hadn’t bothered coming back for their mum’s funeral either. Claudia had moved to Australia fifteen years earlier, and they hadn’t clapped eyes on her since. Now she claimed that she couldn’t afford the air fare – despite the fact that she and her husband ran their own business and owned a sprawling ranch-style house. But she’d always been selfish, which was why Jenna wasn’t surprised when Claudia demanded that her share of the inheritance should be sent over as soon as possible.

Going back to Ruth’s house after the service for a small buffet, Jenna felt like an outsider as Ruth and the elderly neighbours swapped stories and reminisced about her dad. It was obvious that they had known James Lorde as a man in his own right, had chatted to him on an adult level and knew how he thought and felt about the world. Whereas Jenna had only ever known him as the dad who had been too busy running his precious nightclub, Zenith, to spend more than the occasional hour with his children every now and then. Who had nipped in and out of the house as if visiting an hotel, giving his wife perfunctory kisses on the cheek in passing and leaving the scent of Old Spice in his wake. But the man his friends talked of, who had, apparently, been the life and soul of every gathering and would give you the shirt off his back; the man who had kept the collection of porn magazines that Jenna had found hidden in his wardrobe when she was clearing the house out, who had left dirty clothes scattered around his bedroom floor, a stack of unpaid bills in the kitchen drawer, and a whole heap of empty whisky bottles beside his bed – she didn’t know
that
man at all.