The Queen of New Beginnings (6 page)

It wasn’t often that an author came into the studio, not unless a bonus author interview was being added to the CDs and cassettes, but James Montgomery always came into the studio for the first day of recording, he said he liked to be a part of the process.

Alice had a real fondness for his spirited protagonist, a twelve-year-old girl called Mattie Munroe. To all intents and purposes, Mattie was a perfectly normal girl who lived in a perfectly normal house with a perfectly normal mother and father and two perfectly normal older brothers. She wasn’t a posh, clever child like Hermione from Harry Potter, nor was she one of those angsty troubled types coping with a dysfunctional family, playground bullies or teenage gangsters. But as with most children, she had a secret world into which she disappeared. Her secret world just happened to be a bit different from the usual level of make-believe children created for themselves. Hers was real, for a start. Whenever she opened a magic umbrella in her bedroom she and the family pet—an African grey parrot called Eric—would be transferred to faraway lands where they would be caught up in all manner of hair-raising adventures. During these adventures, Eric had to act as Mattie’s interpreter for the many strange languages they encountered, but on their return to her bedroom—the umbrella neatly furled and put away in the wardrobe—Eric reverted to his usual level of who’s-a-pretty-boy? communication. Just occasionally, though, he let slip a word or two regarding their escapades, ensuring that both the reader and Mattie knew that what took place was real and not a figment of Mattie’s imagination.

As a child Alice would have loved James’s books; she would have read and re-read them. She enjoyed them as an adult, too. But then she was biased. She would love anything James wrote. He once told her that Mattie was based on a girl he had a crush on when he was a young boy. “It was the freckles that did it,” he’d confided. “They made her look so charmingly kooky. I’ve never forgotten her.” As a child Alice had had plenty of freckles but she had never dreamed that anyone might find them charming, least of all a boy who would one day grow into a man as divine as James. Looking through the glass to where James was sitting with Josie, she regretted having grown out of those freckles. Was it possible nowadays to have them painted on with the aid of cosmetic surgery?

It was probably seriously uncool to have a crush on someone at her age, but Alice couldn’t help herself. Nor was she alone in her adoration. Josie always came over all of a dither whenever James came to the studio, and she was way,
way
older than Alice. More than a decade older, practically menopausal and at an age when she should be thinking about grandchildren, never mind making disgraceful eyes at James. It wasn’t just the females at the studio who batted their eyelashes at him. In his own words, Chris, the sound engineer, considered him as majorly droolworthy. Only when James came into the studio did Chris wear his best Dolce & Gabbana T-shirt with indecently tight white jeans and diamond stud earrings. Any other day and it was skanky khaki from head to toe and boring silver hoops through his ears.

This morning James was indeed looking majorly droolworthy. His trademark lopsided fringe of dark-brown hair was flopping sexily across his wide intelligent forehead and brushing his sapphire-blue eyes. His publicity photographs didn’t do him justice; in the flesh he was sinfully good-looking.

He was chatting with Josie on the other side of the glass. They were taking a break while Chris twiddled the knobs—the noise of an aeroplane flying overhead had been picked up and they would have to redo the last page. Alice took a long, thirsty swig of water from her bottle on the desk, got up and stretched. Her shoulders ached from sitting still for so long. She imagined James offering to rub her neck and shoulders and instantly felt the tension drain out of her.

She had once read that the greater part of any relationship was carried out inside one’s head. The hopes, the longing, the erotic fantasy of desire, in short, the best of a relationship, was all acted out in the mind. Alice couldn’t disagree with the theory. In her own head (putting aside all the great sex they’d had—it went without saying that they were a perfect match in bed) she had been on countless dates with James. They had been on romantic dinners, enjoyed long weekends away in country retreats with roaring log fires and expensive Frette bed linen, and strolled along the Champs Élysées in Paris. And naturally, they had lain on sun-drenched beaches in exotic locations.

The life she led inside her head was far more interesting that the one she really lived. The most excitement she’d had this last week was to clean for a strange man whilst fooling him she was Latvian.

She had to concede, however, that as strange as Laughing Boy clearly was, he was not unobservant. He had sussed her feelings for James with disturbing alacrity. Was is possible that others had picked up on the effect James had on her? Had James himself? Was that why he had invited her out for lunch today? To put her gently right, to explain that whilst he was enormously flattered there could never be anything other than a working relationship between them? He’d probably be very apologetic, push a rueful hand through that fringe of his, and say that he hoped he hadn’t given out any misleading signals.

Well, it wouldn’t be the first time that had happened to her. Given the crumpled road map of her failed relationships, misleading signs were par for the course.

Following her last visit to Cuckoo House, she had told Ronnetta what had happened, that her Katya act had been rumbled, and in her typical come-what-may fashion Ronnetta had told Alice not to lose any sleep over it. She had said she would ring the contact number she had and see if the agency’s services were still required.

• • •

She might have known that she had got the wrong end of the stick. Lunch was not the cosy intimate affair Alice had imagined, or hoped for. Instead, James had invited Josie and Chris as well. What on earth had made her think that James would single her out for lunch?

A stonking great dose of wishful thinking, that’s what! Funny, though, that neither Josie nor Chris had mentioned anything earlier about having lunch with James. Perhaps they had also leapt to the mistaken hope that they had been chosen for special treatment and hadn’t wanted to let on.

Oh, well, another misread sign.

They were sitting at a corner table in the Fox and Barrel, a drab pub within walking distance of the studio. Snow Patrol’s latest dreary offering was playing in the background, adding to the dismal mood. The middle of Alice’s pizza was stone cold—judging from its rubbery outer ring, it probably hadn’t spent long enough in the microwave—and she was struggling to rally any enthusiasm to eat it. In fact, such was her disappointment she was struggling to join in with the conversation around the table. Chris was telling them a supposedly hysterically funny story about how he’d locked himself out of his house wearing only a towel and a smile. What a tart he was, thought Alice. Chris was only telling the story so that James was obliged to picture his body naked.

It wasn’t like Alice to feel to petulant, but really, why couldn’t Josie and Chris have done the decent thing and declined James’s suggestion for them all to have lunch together? Why did they have to be so selfish? She mentally kicked herself. Great! Why not add irrational paranoia to petulance?

At this rate she’d soon be as nuts as Laughing Boy.

“Aren’t you going to eat that?”

Alice looked up. Josie’s fork was pointing at her barely touched pizza. “I’m not really hungry,” Alice responded.

“Waste not want not,” Josie said with a cheerful laugh.

This from the thirteen-stone woman who claimed that she ate no more than a sparrow. Yeah right, a sparrow the size of an ostrich! “Be my guest,” Alice said. She pushed the plate nearer to Josie.

“Eu-ew!” said Josie, after she’d taken a mouthful. “That’s disgusting. It’s barely cooked.”

“Really? asked James, putting down his knife and fork. Concern was written all over his handsome face.

“I think it may need a minute or two longer in the oven,” Alice murmured.

“It needs binning, more like,” asserted Josie. “Take it back, Alice and demand they give you something else.”

The perfect gentleman, James was up on his feet, the offending plate of pizza in his hands. “Come on Alice, let’s go and order you something that’s edible.”

Alice didn’t need asking twice. In a flash she was out of her seat and at James’s side. Hurrah, alone with him at last!

The young girl behind the bar was working solo and had her hands full with a sudden influx of customers. “Looks like we could be here for a while,” Alice said, adding, but not meaning it, “You’d better go back and eat your lunch.”

James smiled. “No rush. My Caesar salad won’t spoil. In fact, I’m pleased that we’ve got this chance to be alone. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

She was just thinking how grateful she was that James was the kind of man who ate salad for lunch, and how his smile was the most devastating smile she had ever been on the receiving end of, when her thoughts came to a crashing stop. Oh God, was this going to be the I’m-flattered-but-there-can-never-be-anything-between-us pep talk? “Something you wanted to discuss with me?” she said casually. “What’s that then?”

“The thing is—” His words hung in the air, his attention diverted by a messily folded newspaper to the left of him. He reached for it, opened it and smoothed out the pages. “What do you make of this story?”

“What story’s that?” she asked, moving closer to James, her shoulder ever so slightly pressing against his arm.

“I was at school with him. Well, actually that’s stretching the truth a bit. We were at the same school; he was in the sixth form when I joined aged eleven.”

“Who?”

James laughed and pointed at one of the photographs in the newspaper. “You’re obviously above sullying yourself with grubby tabloid tittle-tattle, aren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say that exactly. Who is he?” she repeated.

“Only one of the greatest comedy writers this country’s ever produced.”

“Really? What’s he known for?”

“Latterly for all the wrong reasons. But you must have heard of him. His name’s Clayton Miller and he and his writing partner, Barry Osborne, wrote
Joking Aside
. They were right up there with the greats in double-act comedy writing: Perry and Croft, Galton and Simpson, Gervais and Merchant—”

• • •

“
Joking Aside?
” Alice interrupted. “I loved that; I never missed an episode. It was brilliant.”

“It still is. Which is more than can be said for Clayton Miller. He’s disappeared, apparently. Gone crackers maracas if the papers are to be believed.”

Alice looked at the double-page spread. There was a small photo of a man wearing a tuxedo minus the bow tie and holding up an award. He had a wide grin on his face; he looked nothing short of ecstatic, like a man on top of the world. Below it was another picture of a very different-looking man, dishevelled, shoulders hunched, and a hand partially covering a scowling face. On the opposite page was a picture of a man and a woman sitting on a sofa; they were holding hands and looking adoringly into each other’s eyes. They looked very staged, like one of those couples who’d just undergone a makeover. They were both immaculately dressed in what appeared to be matching straw-coloured linen suits and their hair was coiffured to perfection. Alice had the feeling she had seen them before, on the television or maybe in a magazine. Yes, that was it; she’d seen them in a copy of Ronnetta’s preferred choice of reading material,
Hello!
It had been something about a big charity event.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. What can I get you?”

Alice looked up to see the young girl behind the bar wilting beneath the strength of James’s devastating smile. “I think your chef must be having an off day,” he said good-naturedly whilst handing her the plate.

“My pizza wasn’t cooked properly,” explained Alice. James or no James, she was quite capable of fighting her own battles.

“No problem,” the girl said brightly. “Shall I put it back in the oven for you? Or would you prefer to choose something else?”

Her gaze was fixed on James; Alice was as good as invisible by his side. James turned to Alice. “I’ll have a sandwich,” she said. “Cheese and pickle.”

“No problem. I’ll bring it over to your table. Where are you sitting?”

“Over in the corner,” James said.

“No problem.”

Wondering if the girl lived a permanently problem-free life, Alice turned to go. James put a hand on her arm. “Alice,” he said, “before we join the others, can I just—” But he got no further. He delved into his trouser pocket and pulled out his ringing mobile. “Sorry about this,” he said.

Alice stayed where she was, fighting the urge to snatch the mobile out of his hands and tell whoever was calling him to call back later because right now James had something important to say to her, and that something was clearly meant for her ears only. Doing her best to convince herself it was something nice he wanted to share with her, she allowed her mind to race with happy speculation while she pretended to be fascinated by the newspaper article they’d been looking at.

James’s call seemed set to go on and on. In between making apologetic faces, he kept giving her twinkly looks with his mesmerizing blue eyes. The sensible thing to do would be to leave him to it and go back to Chris and Josie, but no way was she going to do that.

By now she was no longer pretending to read the newspaper article but reading it properly. She was halfway through it when she began to get a funny feeling. She stared at the photographs closely. Not the large one of the couple whose names she now knew were Barry Osborne and Stacey Cook, but the two smaller pictures; the ones of the two very different-looking men. She now knew that it was the same man in the photographs, a classic comparison of before and after pictures. There was something distinctly familiar about the “after” shot.

But did you have your every misfortune, failure and cock-up written about in the newspapers? Did you have journalists doorstepping you all hours of the day and night?