Beautiful People (19 page)

    Dragging Hengist violently out of the car, she pushed the shocked boy, clutching his plastic king, up the steps and banged on the door. As she waited for it to open, she looked with contempt at the hand-drawn cat's face stuck on it, with a speech balloon coming out saying, "Happy Birthday, Hero."

    The door was opened by a medium-height blonde wearing what Totty, eyes everywhere behind her Chanel sunglasses, guessed was head-to-toe Boden. Or perhaps that skirt was MaxMara. And, at a pinch, those shoes could be Emma Hope but were more probably LK Bennett. Either way, none of it was the couture Lady Westonbirt preferred and which Totty often amused herself trying on in her Ladyship's bedroom when Hengist's parents were out. No more, however. Damn it. Where was she going to get another job?

    "Totty, isn't it?" The woman was smiling at her. Totty recognised that smile. Lady Westonbirt had worn it at first. It was a smile of acknowledgement of her lineage as much as it was of herself personally. With the native cunning often gifted to those with no intelligence to speak of otherwise, Totty sensed possibility. She pushed her enormous sunglasses up on top of her head, swung her shining hair about, and beamed. "Hi there," she barked in her grandest, most gravelly tones.

    "I'm Vanessa Bradstock, Hero's mother. You probably know me from my columns." Vanessa flashed her an expectant smile.

    "Absolutely," Totty assured her, although she had no idea whether the columns referred to were of the newspaper sort or the sort that stood, eight strong, supporting the portico of the family stately home in Wiltshire. Vanessa nodded, gratified.

    "And you must be Hengist," she mewed, bending over the snivelling boy Totty had been shoving roughly before her but who she now made a great display of stroking comfortingly on the shoulder.

    As she followed Vanessa down the narrow hall, Totty heard the sound of singing and laughter from behind the sitting-room door. Vanessa pushed the door—whose white paint was rather battered, Totty noticed—open.

    Totty stared in astonishment at the sight of twelve or so of London's most difficult, spoilt children all clapping and singing a nursery rhyme against a cat-collage background and amid a sea of evidently homemade cupcakes.

    "You've been busy," she remarked to Vanessa in surprise. Hero's mother had never struck her as the homemaking sort, much less the cake-making.

    "My nanny did it," Vanessa admitted. Totty caught the bitterness in her voice and filed it away for future reference.

    Totty now recognised Emma. Of course, it was that fat, northern one. The one she'd been so rude to when she'd first met her. She sniggered at the memory.

    Vanessa pounced on the snigger. "What's so funny?"

    Totty's cunning ear caught encouragement. She guessed that criticism of this apparently perfect nanny would not be unwelcome. "Oh, just that when I first met her I asked her what part of Eastern Europe she was from," she tittered in an undertone.

    "Ha, ha," guffawed Vanessa, unnecessarily loudly. Emma, hearing the laugh, looked up from pass the parcel to see her employer and Totty de Belvedere both looking at her with smirks on their faces.

    She returned resentfully to the game in hand. As she comforted a hysterical Hengist Westonbirt, who had missed by one place the unwrapping of the prize in the parcel, Emma felt rather like wailing herself. Just what did one have to do to please Vanessa?

"I mean, it's not as if there's any money in taking pictures anymore," Keith, alongside Ken on the wall, was lamenting the golden days that had passed. "I mean, it used to be good fun. A bit like hide-and-seek. But now there are too many muppets hanging around."

    "Clampers!" someone yelled.

    Ken, Keith, and the eight or so other photographers idling along the wall outside the hotel entrance suddenly snapped to attention.

    "That's all I need," groaned Keith. "I've already been bleedin' ticketed today."

    "You're joking!" yelped another pap into his mobile. He flipped it back together, shoved it into his pocket, and shared with the rest of the group the unwelcome news that Leonardo DiCaprio had been spotted going into one of the hotel's side entrances while they all monitored the front. There was a groan of disbelief.

    "What a life, eh?" said Keith to Ken.

    Ken nodded. "Wouldn't it be nice," he said, rather dreamily, as the thought occurred to him, "to do something more useful? Take some pictures that mattered for once? That meant something?"

    Keith stared at his colleague. "You feelin' alright, mate?"

    A few minutes later, Belle's limo pulled up. They all recognised its registration. Despite hers being a steadily sinking star, there still was, Ken noticed, as he always did with someone famous, that unmistakable change in the temperature.

    But it wasn't until she got out that the mercury really soared. Belle was not alone. She was with a man. A young, handsome man. With red hair and jeans. There was no mistaking their relationship. Belle's dress was hanging open, exposing almost the whole of one breast, and the man's face was covered in red lipstick.

    The pack, so passive and lethargic even a mere few seconds ago, were now leaping about, electrified, frenzied. "Belle, Belle. This way, Belle. Who's your friend?"

    Not that it mattered that they didn't know. The journos found all that sort of thing out. Ken snapped away with the rest. Finally, some shots he could actually sell.

Totty was in the kitchen with Vanessa. She had lost no time in driving her advantage home. The possibilities proved to be far more extensive than she had ever dreamed.

    "You can't be serious," she was exclaiming in a low voice, her eyes wide over the rim of the champagne glass Vanessa was refilling. It wasn't often she had a duke's daughter in her kitchen. "She's really after your husband?"

    Vanessa nodded. Her own eyes, with their fixed-bayonet lashes, were bulging with all the indignation she could summon, as well as with alcohol, which always loosened her tongue. Somewhere within herself, she rather wished it hadn't, but the cat was out of the bag now, and she had the satisfaction of holding an aristocrat in thrall with her conversation.

    "I caught them in the kitchen," Vanessa confided. "He was telling her she was wonderful."

    "Wonderful!" Totty's unusual yellow eyes were staring into hers with unadulterated fascination. "Slept with her yet, has he?"

    "I—I don't think so." Something within Vanessa struck a vague note of warning, that the waters she was about to enter were deeper and more dangerous than any she had ever encountered before. But she ignored it.

    "Well, it's only a matter of time, obviously," Totty said briskly. "Have you," she added in a voice of sweet solicitude, batting her thickly blackened eyelashes at Vanessa, "ever thought of getting rid of her? For your own sake," she emphasised. "Your own peace of mind…You need to be able to trust the person who looks after your most precious possessions, after all."

    Vanessa looked back at her speculatively. "Ye-es. I'd need a new nanny though. We're going on holiday soon, and I won't be able to go immediately. The children and the nanny will have to be the advance party."

    During the silence of some seconds that Totty now allowed, she wondered where the holiday destination was. Hopefully the Caribbean. Asking would be a distraction, however.

    "A new nanny," she repeated eventually. "Well, what about me?"

    Across the kitchen table, Vanessa gasped. "You!"

    "Me."

    "But you work for Lady Westonbirt!" Awe and excitement brimmed in Vanessa's voice. Totty de Belvedere, the smartest nanny in London, the daughter of a duke, no less, was offering to work for her!

    "That could, um, change. With, ah, immediate effect, actually." Totty beamed at Vanessa.

    "Aren't you on a month's notice?" Vanessa's words were galloping over each other.

    Totty pursed her glossy-pink-painted lips. "Yah. In theory. But…"—her voice dropped confidingly—"to be really honest with you, I'm not very happy there at the moment. Actually, I might leave. There've been a few problems…"

    "Problems?"

    Totty looked carefully down at the table. "Drugs…that sort of thing. Parties."

"Drugs!" Vanessa almost shrieked. "Parties! Lady Westonbirt?"

    It never occurred to her to doubt what she was hearing. Or what she thought she was hearing; Totty was careful to do no more than insinuate.

    "Yah. Cocaine and parties…yup." Totty shrugged. "I'm not sure it's an environment I want to be in, you know what I mean, yah?"

    "Oh, absolutely. Absolutely." Vanessa blinked, still absorbing the stunning news. Then she shook herself. "And of course I'd love to have you, Totty," she ardently assured the girl across from the table.

    "Great. Perfecto. Start Monday, yah?"

    Doubt shadowed Vanessa's face, "Well…the thing is, I've got Emma on a month's notice…"

    But Totty, with her goal in sight, had no intention of letting anything block her path. "You can sack someone on the spot," she insisted.

    "Are you sure?"

    "There are certain situations when dismissal on the spot is entirely justified," Totty stated, adding, by way of bold invention, "I know a nanny who just got fired for having drugs in her handbag, in fact. She was sacked on the spot."

    Drugs again. Vanessa had not appreciated how prevalent narcotics were in the childcare business. "I can't believe it. What sort of a nanny would do that?"

    Totty did not answer. But she thought of the wrap of cocaine in her handbag at this minute and her yellow eyes gleamed. It was possible, just possible, that she could speed the process along a little. Given the right opportunity. "Perhaps," she smiled, "you should show me the nanny's room. Let me see where I'll be living."

    Vanessa stood up hurriedly. She was eager to seal the deal before Totty changed her mind.

Belle was triumphant. The audition had gone better than she had ever imagined it could; the director had actually looked impressed as she had parroted the few lines Niall had taught her. Then she had whipped off her dress for a grand finale. The director had looked even more impressed. He had hired her on the spot. She had yet to hear as what, exactly, but what did it matter? She'd play a dormouse if she had to. The point was she had a part in a proper play in London. Her career was saved.

    Niall, too, had made an impression.

    "The director was really taken with your joyous and loose interpretation of the part," Niall's agent now called to say.

    "Jesus," said Niall. "I should go into auditions pissed more often. That's where I've been going wrong."