Beautiful People (36 page)

    Directly below his balcony was the children's playground by the church. It had been a bit noisy when Ken arrived. It was teatime, and the kiddies had been having their last runabout. Probably some people might have objected; their Italian village idyll ruined by screaming brats and all that, but Ken didn't mind it at all. Who could possibly mind the sound of children playing? He liked kiddies. Had always imagined at some stage that he'd have a few of the little blighters himself. Hadn't happened though, but that was another story.

    Dinnertime, Ken told himself, patting his stomach. There'd been a restaurant he'd spotted on the winding hill up through the village: nice little place on a corner, set on a courtyard with white parasols. It had been crowded even then, but hopefully they'd have room for one.

    Ken proceeded in leisurely fashion down the winding main street towards where he remembered seeing the restaurant. The contrast with what he would have routinely been doing in London—what Keith was no doubt doing that minute—struck him forcefully. Sitting on the wall opposite the Portchester, most likely, waiting for some self-regarding celebrity to emerge. But now, here, without the long lenses permanently slung round his neck, Ken felt lighter in more ways than one.

    His practised eye had not shut down however, and Ken found a certain pleasure in spotting all the shots that, normally, it would have been second nature to take and sell to the photo libraries. There were subjects aplenty. At the turn of every street, and particularly the winding main street that twisted up like a snake from the bottom of Rocolo to the top, there was something picturesque: a faded icon in a niche; an ornate fountain; an ancient, sunny windowsill ablaze with geraniums; the dark glint of red wine bottles in the depths of a cool shop; a child large-eyed under a mop of dark curls.

    And the smells! Winding with the warmth and aftershave in the evening air was the scent of a hundred individual cooking dinners from the houses he was passing; the sharp spike of garlic, the mouthwatering surge of tomato, the dry burst of herbs, the nose-nipping rush of onion. He was starving now, Ken realised. And for proper food. After all those years of crisps and nasty coffee, ready meals and dodgy takeaways, he longed with his soul as much as his stomach for something real to eat.

    He had been right to come here, Ken felt, spotting gratefully, as the road bent round, the lights of the restaurant on the next corner. For a refugee like him, a casualty from the front line of a world obsessed with fame, what better place than somewhere so old, so peaceful, a place that must have seen it all in its time and that cared nothing for the vicissitudes of stardom—was barely aware of them, in fact.

    The church clock chimed, a thin, foreign sound most unlike the more full-throated bells of home. London seemed so far away. Lurking for hours outside hotels waiting for celebrities seemed even further.

    "Scuse me," Ken exclaimed, skipping deftly aside to avoid banging into someone.

    "Hey, watch it, willya?" snapped the other in an American accent, irritably shaking a shiny black shoe that Ken had not been entirely able to avoid all contact with.

    "Sorry." Ken repeated his apology to the disdainful youth, who was, he noted, flashily dressed in wraparound shades and with a great many necklaces draped about him. He had jet-black hair, wore nothing but a waistcoat on his top half, was muscularly built, and rather reminded him, Ken thought, of an actor called Christian Harlow.

    The reminder was not pleasant. Harlow's dogged and seemingly unstoppable ascent up the Hollywood greasy pole had been greeted with dismay by every paparazzo Ken knew, all of whom loathed the actor to his fingertips. Even in a world where paps were in general immune to the diva strops thrown by stars, where egos were rampant and brattish behaviour expected and even encouraged, Harlow had distinguished himself.

    Ken paused and turned as the Harlow look-a-like continued on his way downhill, his muscular legs in their white linen trousers flashing in and out. The engine of recognition that had started up within him was urging him to look again. The Rolodex in his mind whirred. Ken had not spent years as a successful paparazzo for nothing. Hardwired into his memory were millions of images of well-known people.

    He knew most famous faces so well that he could identify a celebrity from the tiniest of clues: a pair of lips, a nose, a way of walking even. And all these clues, as he stared after the man in white trousers, were telling him that this, incredible that it seemed, wasn't just someone who looked like Christian Harlow. It actually was Christian Harlow.

    Ken felt that all the magic had been drained from the evening. With a heavy heart, he continued toward the restaurant.

    His spirits rallied a little as he neared Marco's, however. It was a nice little place, bright, optimistic, and stylish with all those little tables set out on the courtyard, all those candles and those fairy lights twinkling in the vine behind. It was obviously very popular. Every table was crammed with people laughing and talking; it seemed very vivacious. Excited, almost. And the food looked and smelt just the ticket, Ken thought, watching strands of spaghetti winding round forks and remembering how hungry he was.

    Just as he was about to step into the courtyard, someone knocked him out of their way. "Don't they know who I freaking well am?" a woman, apparently exiting, was complaining in an American accent to her companion.

    Ken froze. His Rolodex whirred again, but for a split second only. There was no doubting the identity of the sunglassed blonde hobbling out of the restaurant in shoes so high they were, strictly speaking, stilts. Just as there was no doubting the identity of that nasty-looking dog she clutched in her skinny arms. Belle Murphy.

"Did you hear that? She told him to empty the restaurant!" Georgie gasped to Richard.

    Richard nodded distractedly. His mobile phone was ringing again. Please God, not Mrs. Greatorex again. He still hadn't got hold of his man on the ground. Except that Richard now saw that the number on his display panel was that of Guy, after all.

    He got up from his chair and hurried hastily out to the relative privacy of the street.

    "Guy! At last!"

    "Oh. Richard. Hello," came Guy's light and vaguely sardonic tone. "To what do I owe this pleasure? I thought you were on holiday."

    "Yes, I am. But I've been called."

    "Called? By"—Guy took a deep breath—"the Leader?"

    "By Mrs. Greatorex."

    "Oh." Guy sounded disappointed.

    "About the, um, dogging in Wellover. Is it really happening like she says?"

    Guy snorted. "They're calling it Legover now, apparently." He snorted again.

    Richard felt Guy's attitude lacked something. But then again, Guy's attitude always had. He affected a lofty, patrician amusement with the world and its doings that sat oddly on a supposed servant of democracy.

    "Well, it's a bit shocking, isn't it?" Richard demanded. "Mrs. Greatorex says Russell's Leap is heaving with people at it every Friday night."

    "So I hear," Guy confirmed with a snigger.

    "Well, shouldn't we be doing something about it? It sounds one hell of a mess, Guy." Richard assumed his best Battle of Britain tones.

    Guy sniffed. "Yes, well, now it's all out in the open, as it were, they rather seem to expect us to sort it out at the double. Bend over backwards as it were, ha, ha."

    "Ha, ha," said Richard mirthlessly. "But has anything been done? Have the police been informed, even?"

    "Yes, but from what I can gather, some of them are worse than the punters."

    "You don't sound very worried," Richard remarked heatedly. "This beautiful village is being defaced."

    "From
Domesday Book
to dogging websites, you mean?" Guy chuckled.

    No wonder, Richard thought, Guy had never made it as a candidate and was reduced to running the constituency office. "There are all these confused old people—outraged, disgusted, and possibly even frightened by these lewd acts being committed on their own doorsteps." Richard's voice rose as his conviction mounted. "They're our constituents, Guy. They're turning to us for help. They need our protection…"

    He was interrupted by a guffaw from the agent. "Need our protection? Mrs. Greatorex? Come off it, Richard. She could tear a burglar's head off with her bare hands."

    "But she sounded very disturbed, Guy," Richard protested.

    "All that's scaring Greatorex is that the value of her house will be affected. She wants us to protect the price of her property. That's the only reason any of them care."

    Richard felt rather punctured. "But…"

    "Believe me. Morality's got nothing to do with it."

    Richard subsided. He suspected, miserably, that Guy was right. He had worked himself up into a righteous and defensive lather only to be told he was being used as an adjunct to the local estate agent. Was this all democracy now meant?

    "We have to do something about it, nonetheless," he maintained stoutly. "Though God knows what I can do from here."

    "Well, you need evidence of what's going on, for a start," Guy advised, his manner switching, to Richard's relief, from the satirical to the more-or-less sensible.

    "Yes. Yes. But how?" Richard asked sharply. "I'm not breaking off my holiday to go sneaking through the woods to watch…well… whatever there is to watch."

"Not necessary, old chap. You just need to look at the websites."

"There isn't a computer here."

"Well, are you near any big towns?"

"Florence."

    "Bob's your uncle then," Guy said comfortably. "An Internet café's what you need. I'll give you the website addresses. On second thoughts, ring me up when you're sitting in front of a screen. You're hopeless on the Internet and finding these dogging websites can be complicated. Knowing you, you'd end up sitting in front of the Kennel Club site all afternoon."

"Brooke Reed on the line for you," whispered Xanthe.

    Sam snatched up the receiver eagerly. Brooke was no doubt calling to congratulate her on the Rumtopf shoot.

    "Brooke! Hi, great to…"

    "That Rumtopf shoot with Darcy Prince?" The NBS PA cut in. "I've just been sent the images on JPEG."

    "Great, wasn't it?" Sam purred complacently.

    "No," said Brooke uncompromisingly, cutting straight to the chase as usual. "I'll be straight with you, Samantha."

    At the other end, Sam twisted her fleshy, beige-painted lips in disapproval. If there was one thing she disliked more than being called Samantha, it was people being straight with her. It always meant that they were about to say something unpleasant. She knew this because she herself was often straight with people.

    "Well, what's wrong with it?" she blustered. "Getting Rumtopf was a serious coup. He was booked up until 2012…"

    "Yeah, yeah, yeah," Brooke interrupted. "Thing is, she looks fat. She's bursting out all over. This is not the image we wanted."

    Rattled by Brooke's lack of appreciation, Sam fought to retain her self-control. She'd got Rumtopf for the studio, for Pete's sake. And the pictures had been fine. Darcy had looked a little rounded in some of them, but so what?

    "Darcy's a woman," she pointed out. "She's got a few curves, but so what? Curves are where it's at, you know," she added, gaining confidence as the hit on a theme. "You know, after Size Zero and all that trouble about being too skinny…"

    "Screw that," Brooke thundered. "Darcy's a long way off being even slightly skinny, let alone too skinny. She's seriously huge. Belle Murphy's in this picture, remember. She's a zero. Next to her, Darcy's gonna look like Nellie the goddamn elephant."

    "Now just hang on. Just wait a minute…"

    "We can't have a fat star in this picture. You gotta do something."

    "Like what?" Sam snapped. "Go and trim some flesh off her or something?"

    "Whatever. She's your client."

    "She's Mitch Masterson's client too," Sam sulked. Why did she have to sort everything out?

    "He does acting. You do looks. Just do something. Now. Or Jack's gonna start principal photography without her."

    Sam put down the phone with a hand so shaking that it rattled all her bracelets. Then she raised her beringed fingers to her throbbing temples and thought hard. Darcy, she knew, was scheduled for another magazine shoot tomorrow, in Florence, with Carlos Cojones. It should have been the triumphant second salvo in the campaign; the publicity that conclusively launched the actress as the hottest and most beautiful new star around.