Friends and Rivals

‘Darling?’ he called out hoarsely. ‘Is that you? What a nice surprise.’

He heard the slam of the door and thud of a suitcase hitting the floor. Surely she wasn’t thinking of staying?

But it wasn’t Catriona.

Kendall Bryce looked amused to find Ivan Charles, red in the face and flustered, wearing nothing but his boxer shorts. Well, well, she thought, what have we been up to? Judging by the pervasive smell assailing her nostrils, Kendall could make an educated guess. As soon as he saw her, Ivan’s colour deepened.

‘How did you get in?’ he stammered. ‘I thought you were my wife.’

‘No,’ Kendall smiled knowingly. ‘Luckily for you, I’d say. Kendall Bryce.’ She extended a slender, diamond-encrusted hand. ‘Ivan Charles, I presume.’

‘I … I thought you were staying at the Dorchester,’ said Ivan, hurriedly pulling on a pair of jeans.

‘I was,’ said Kendall, ‘until Jack decided it was “unnecessarily extravagant”. He said that Jester had an apartment here and gave me the key. I had thought he wanted you to keep an eye on me. But perhaps it was the other way around?’

Ivan studied her properly for the first time. She was shorter than she looked in publicity shots, not much over five foot tall, and altogether tinier. In a skintight black minidress that left little to the imagination, Kendall’s waist was so doll-like that Ivan could have closed his hands around it. Her dark hair was pulled back in a messy bun and her stunning face looked uncharacteristically tired, with smudged purple shadows lying under each of her virulently green eyes like bruises.

‘If I’m in your way, I’ll happily check into the Dorchester,’ she announced blithely, lighting up a cigarette without asking Ivan if he minded. ‘But you’ll have to tell Jailer Jack it was your idea.’

‘No, no,’ said Ivan. He was over his embarrassment now, and could think of few things more delightfully distracting than having this wanton girl of Jack’s under his roof. ‘I wasn’t expecting you, that’s all. Jack never said anything. Let me show you the guest room and you can settle in.’

‘Actually,’ said Kendall, blowing smoke in perfectly formed rings, ‘what I really want right now is some food. The shit they served on the plane wasn’t fit for a dog. How about you take me out to lunch?’

Ivan took Kendall to The Wolseley. As he led her to their prestigious corner table, she was suitably impressed to see Kate Winslet enjoying a salad a few feet away and Prince Harry sipping a Bloody Mary with his latest squeeze at the bar.

‘Nice place,’ she said casually. Despite her own fame in the US, Kendall still got star-struck, especially around people who were well known globally.

‘You must have been here before,’ said Ivan, ordering champagne and oysters on the half-shell for both of them.

‘Uh uh.’ Kendall shook her head. ‘This is my first trip to London. First trip to Europe, actually. I toured Japan and the Far East last year, but other than that I’ve never really been abroad.’

‘My goodness. A Euro-virgin,’ Ivan said flirtatiously. He’s attractive, thought Kendall. Not as handsome as Jack, but there’s a definite devilish spark there. ‘Well, we’ll have to do something about that. I’ve got three weeks to introduce you to the delights of the Old World. Not long, but I’ll do my best.’

‘I bet you will,’ Kendall flirted back.

‘Seriously, your parents never travelled with you when you were younger? Wasn’t your old man fabulously wealthy? I’m sure I remember Jack saying—’

Kendall’s pretty face instantly darkened. ‘My dad was never around. He probably took his new family to Europe, for all I know. But not me.’

Aware he’d touched a nerve, Ivan changed the subject. ‘So you’re here for the gigs, obviously. Jack sent me the scheduling for rehearsals and sound check. And you want me to organize some media appearances? I thought we could shoot for Graham Norton, and maybe Radio One Breakfast.’

Kendall inhaled an oyster and took a big slug of champagne.

‘To be honest, I don’t give a fuck,’ she told Ivan. ‘Jack’s the one who keeps harping on about building my UK profile. He seems to think that breaking into the market in London will open up all the other European territories.’

‘You don’t agree?’

Kendall shrugged. ‘What do I know? I’m just the talent, right? I wanted to sign with Sony, but Jack insisted I stay with Matador. He said a small label would give me more focus. So now I’m with this tiny, local LA record company with, like, zero global presence, and suddenly Jack wants me to fly all over the world and “build my profile” from scratch. Go figure.’

Ivan digested all this with interest. While Kendall perused the menu for a main course, intermittently exchanging shamelessly suggestive smiles with Prince Harry, Ivan considered the pros and cons of Jack’s strategy. On the one hand, it made sense, keeping a relatively new artist like Kendall with a small label that would be guaranteed to prioritise her. Matador had a good reputation and had certainly done well by Kendall so far. On the other hand, Ivan could smell this kid’s ambition through her pores. She wanted Sony because they were the biggest, and for Kendall Bryce, biggest meant best. She was impatient to make it to the next level, demanding superstardom like a screeching baby cuckoo demanding to be fed. Clearly, Jack’s organic, slow-build approach to her career was frustrating her and driving a wedge between them.

Equally clearly, for all her bitching and moaning, Kendall plainly idolized Jack Messenger. In the cab on the way over to The Wolseley, she must have dropped his name into the conversation a good fifteen times. Jack thinks this, Jack says that, Jack wants the other. Ivan sensed an opportunity here. He wanted to make the move into pop, and what better way to start than with Kendall Bryce, a rising US star with ambitions in his, Ivan’s, home market? But if he were going to prise her away from Jack, he would have to tread very carefully indeed.

‘Listen,’ he said, once Kendall had ordered a large plate of lobster thermidor with a side of fries and Gustavo had brought them a bottle of perfectly chilled vintage Chablis, ‘I want you to relax here in London and leave all the work shit to me. Try and think of it as a vacation.’

‘With a couple of live performances in front of thousands of people thrown in, right?’

‘Right,’ grinned Ivan. ‘The gigs’ll be a piece of cake.’

‘I hope so,’ sighed Kendall, biting her lip, the first hint of anxiety she’d betrayed so far. ‘I only have a few days to rehearse before the show at the Hammersmith Apollo on Thursday.’

‘You’ll do great. Just focus on all the fun stuff you’ll be doing as soon as it’s over.’

‘Like what?’ Kendall said morosely. ‘I don’t know a soul here. Jack gave me a list of friends of his I can call, but they all sound boring as fuck. I swear to God one of them was called Sister Mary Theresa. Maybe the two of us can go to matins together. Fun!’

Ivan laughed. He liked this girl.

‘Look. I have to be in town tomorrow for a meeting on the Friday after your show,’ he said, ‘but I’ll be done by four. After that I’m driving down to my country house for the weekend. Why don’t you join me?’

Kendall looked doubtful. ‘I don’t know. Thanks for the offer, but I wouldn’t want to impose on your family time. Besides, I’m not exactly what you’d call a country girl. I’m high maintenance.’

Ivan raised his glass to hers. ‘So am I, my dear. So am I.’

CHAPTER FOUR

‘Oh Jesus. I can’t go out there. Seriously, I can’t.’

Kendall hovered backstage at the Hammersmith Apollo, holding Ivan’s hand so tightly she’d cut off the circulation to his fingers.

‘The place is half empty. No one knows who the fuck I am over here.’

It was strange, but for some reason the smattering of vacant seats made Kendall feel infinitely more nervous than the packed stadiums she was used to back in the US. Having ten thousand people watching you was like being alone. With that size of audience, and the stage lights blinding you, there were no individuals to worry about, just a screaming, adulatory wall of noise. Here, in this gloriously old-fashioned 1930s theatre, you could look out from backstage and see individual faces. A middle-aged woman here, a pair of teenage boys there. Real people, who’d paid real money to hear you sing. It was terrifying.

‘Everyone knows who you are,’ Ivan reassured her, not entirely truthfully. ‘And remember, you’re here to support Adele. You think people don’t know who she is?’

‘I guess not,’ said Kendall through chattering teeth.

‘Exactly. The venue’s sold out, with a line outside as long as your arm. It’s only ten to eight. Trust me, there’ll be no empty seats by the time they call you.’

He’s right, Kendall told herself. Calm down. Pacing up and down in a skintight PVC leotard and thigh-high silver boots, a tribute to the great Ziggy Stardust, who’d performed his final concert at the Apollo back in 1973, she knew she looked the part. Adele might be a mega-star with the best voice since Aretha, but no one nailed superstar raunch like Kendall Bryce. If Jack were here he’d have expressly forbidden her outfit. ‘Don’t cheapen yourself,’ was one of his favourite catchphrases. ‘You don’t have to dress like a hooker, or a poor man’s Britney, to get people to buy your records.’ But Jack, thankfully, wasn’t here. While it was true her profile was lower in the UK, the purpose of tonight’s concert was to raise it. She wasn’t going to do that by dressing like Karenfrikking Carpenter.

Suddenly the lights dimmed and the low bass boom boom boom of Kendall’s backing track began to thump around the auditorium. Ten minutes had passed already? How was that possible? She turned around to look for Ivan but he was gone. In his place were two distracted-looking sound-check guys and the four male backing dancers Kendall had been rehearsing with all week. All of them looked white as sheets, but ironically their nerves calmed Kendall’s own.

‘Smile, guys,’ she said confidently. ‘We’re gonna have fun out there, right? Right? Because if we don’t, nobody else will.’

The curtains lifted. There were a few whistles and whoops from the audience as, still in pitch darkness, Kendall and her dancers took their places. Kendall just had time to tap her headset and nod curtly to the sound engineers that her mic was working properly when the lights exploded into life and the track to ‘Shake It Loose’, her biggest hit to date, erupted into the theatre to wild shrieks of applause.

After that it was easy. Leaping and gyrating her way through three tracks straight, belting out the lyrics that were as familiar to her now as breathing, Kendall drank in the high of the crowd’s approval like a drug addict plunging the needle into her vein. Watching from backstage, Ivan was entranced. She was a different person onstage, radiating energy and excitement and joy like a one-woman power plant. The music was unremarkable – basic, hip-hoppy, commercial pop of the sort that hundreds of young artists were churning out all over the world. But in live performance, Kendall took it and transformed it into something unique. Her voice, her body, her angel’s face, but most of all her stage presence, screamed one thing and one thing only: star. No wonder Jack was so focused on her as a client. Managing her must be like trying to hold a flame in your hand.

‘Good evening, London!’ Kendall shouted hoarsely after the third track, leaning on her mic stand for support and swigging from a water bottle. ‘I gotta tell you, it is wild to be here.’

The audience cheered and wolf-whistled loudly, although at this point Ivan suspected that they would have applauded the shipping forecast if it had come out of Kendall’s ridiculously sexy, rosebud mouth.

‘I know you’re all here to see Adele.’ More applause. ‘So I won’t keep you in suspense too much longer. But I’m gonna perform one more track. It’s from my last album, and some of you may know it. It’s a little song called “Whipped”.’

The most explicit track she had yet released, ‘Whipped’ was famous largely due to the fact that it had been banned from the airwaves in a number of US states due to its risqué lyrics. In her live routine, Kendall and her dancers hammed up the ‘naughty’ element, with Kendall at one point engaging in a simulated orgy with all four of her leather-clad boys. Yes, it was cheesy, but it was also sexy as all hell. The audience lapped it up like cats in a room full of cream. Even Ivan got a hard-on watching her. When Kendall finally bounced backstage, her faced flushed with adrenaline and triumph and her hair tangled wildly down her sweat-soaked back, it was all he could do not to jump on her then and there.

‘What’d you think?’ she panted, her green eyes gazing up into his, searching for approval. ‘It was good, right? They liked me?’

‘They loved you,’ said Ivan truthfully. Pulling her into a bear hug, he started to laugh. ‘Poor old Adele. Talk about upstaging the star! I’ll bet her people are spitting blood right now.’

Despite herself, Kendall grinned. ‘D’you really think so?’

‘Definitely.’

‘Jack would have hated all the sexual stuff,’ said Kendall. ‘But I think it worked, don’t you?’

‘Everything worked,’ said Ivan. ‘And if Jack can’t see that, he’s an idiot.’

He’s an idiot anyway, for leaving you here with me.

Tonight confirmed what Ivan Charles already suspected. Kendall Bryce was more than just a pretty face. The girl had something very, very special. Something Ivan wanted, very, very badly.

Boy was he looking forward to this weekend.

‘I don’t understand it.’ Ned Williams ran a hand through his floppy brown hair and sighed. ‘How can she prefer that tosser to me? The new bloody Pavarotti indeed! Just because he’s fat. Badger can do a better Don Giovanni, can’t you boy?’

The scruffy springer spaniel thumped his tail loyally on The Rookery kitchen floor.

‘Armando bloody Lucci, I ask you, Cat. He’s a lard-arse, he’s boring and he’s as old as the hills.’

‘He’s forty, Ned.’

‘Exactly. What on earth does Diana see in him?’

‘Erm, well …’ Catriona was too kind to say that perhaps Diana Grainger, Ned’s ex, saw a private jet, an exquisite palazzo in Tuscany and a Tiffany diamond the size of a cobnut on her finger. Whereas Ned’s idea of a romantic gesture was a day spent in the woods gathering actual cobnuts. Catriona had never much liked Diana. She was very beautiful, of course, but she’d always seemed to be on the lookout for what Jack Messenger referred to as a BBD – Bigger Better Deal. Apparently, in Armando Lucci, the biggest-selling tenor in the world, she’d found it. ‘I expect she just wasn’t ready to settle down, darling. She’s only twenty-two, after all.’

Ned nodded glumly, helping himself to another industrial-sized slab of Catriona’s home-made fruit cake. A broken heart did not appear to have put him off his food.

Only twenty-four himself, Ned Williams was another of Ivan’s clients, one of the few who lived locally. An immensely talented tenor, Ned was still in the early stages of a promising career. He was already well known in England as a pretender to Alfie Boe’s crown, and his debut CD had peaked at a respectable number six in the UK classical charts. But he was not yet in Armando Lucci’s league. So far his modest success had afforded him a charming but distinctly tumbledown cottage in Swinbrook, a battered old MG sports car that was older than he was, and Badger, his wildly unkempt and poorly trained springer spaniel, which accompanied him absolutely everywhere. Handsome in a dishevelled sort of way, Ned’s most striking feature was his height. At almost six foot five, he towered above other opera singers, and never seemed to quite know what to do with his ridiculously long limbs on stage – or anywhere else for that matter. Catriona adored him, but even she could have done without playing agony aunt this afternoon.

It had been a long day. Starting at eight o’clock this morning, when Rosie had announced she didn’t feel very well then, seconds later, projectile-vomited Frosties right across the breakfast table, Catriona had been fighting one fire after another. In between frantic trips to the doctor’s surgery in Burford and Waitrose in Witney, she’d been called in to Hector’s school for the second time in a month after he’d super-glued a sleeping classmate’s hair to his desk and the boy had ended up having to have a crew cut.

‘Why do you do these things?’ an exasperated Catriona asked her son on the short drive home. ‘Do you want to get kicked out of St Austin’s?’

‘Wouldn’t mind,’ Hector shrugged. ‘Have you told Dad?’

‘Not yet.’

Catriona couldn’t tell if Hector wanted Ivan to know, or dreaded it. Certainly his attention-seeking antics seemed to be aimed more at his father than at her. Now that Ivan spent so much time away in London, and increasingly took work calls and meetings even when he was home, he had less time than ever for the children. Rosie, at nearly thirteen, had bigger fish to fry than hanging out with her old man. But eleven-year-old Hector clearly missed his dad. Ivan knew it, and felt guilty, but as a result both he and Catriona were loath to punish the boy, and the bad behaviour got worse. This weekend, Ivan had absolutely promised to take Hector fishing, and assured Cat that he wouldn’t pick up his BlackBerry or see a single work-related person for two whole days. But at two o’clock this afternoon, he’d blithely rung home to announce that he was bringing Kendall Bryce, Jack’s problem client, back with him, and could Catriona please make up the blue bedroom?

‘You arse!’ she shouted at him, losing her rarely seen temper. ‘You promised Hector it would be just the two of you.’

‘Oh, Hector won’t mind,’ breezed Ivan. To his astonishment, Catriona hung up on him. Then Ned had arrived, slump-shouldered and morose, and before Cat knew it was six o’clock, she hadn’t even begun making supper, and the blue bedroom remained as sheet-less and towel-less as it had been four hours ago.

‘Can I stay for supper?’ asked Ned, through a shower of cake crumbs. ‘I can’t face going back to the cottage on my own. All Diana’s horrible vegan food’s still in the fridge.’

‘Well throw it out,’ said Catriona, ‘and of course you can stay for supper, as long as you help me make it. Ivan’s bringing someone up from London with him so we’ll be six with the children. Do you know how to stuff a chicken?’

In the end, inevitably, Friday-night traffic on the M40 was grizzly and Ivan and Kendall were more than an hour late. By the time they staggered through the door at nine, Catriona and Ned had already polished off a bottle of Montepulciano and ‘tested’a good half of the roast potatoes. Rosie – who’d made a miraculous recovery once she heard Ned’s voice in the kitchen – and Hector had both decided they were too hungry to wait, and had polished off a family pack of Hula Hoops in front of The Simpsons. Despite the beautifully laid table and enticing smell of rosemary chicken wafting down the hall, the overall atmosphere that met Ivan and his young VIP guest was one of semi-drunken chaos.

‘Oh, there you are,’ Catriona giggled, tripping over a snoring Badger as she came out to greet them. ‘We’d almost given up hope. You must be Kendall. Welcome.’

‘Thanks for having me.’ Kendall smiled sweetly. ‘I’m sorry to gate-crash your weekend like this.’

‘Not at all, we’re thrilled you could come. I hear your concert was a huge success.’

Kendall smiled, gratified. ‘Thanks. I’m relieved it’s over, but I actually really enjoyed it. Ivan’s been so supportive.’

Jack had described Catriona Charles to Kendall as some sort of goddess, as kind and funny as she was beautiful, and ‘far too good’ for Ivan. He’d waxed so lyrical about her, in fact, that Kendall couldn’t help but feel a little bit jealous. So it was a relief to find that, while Catriona certainly did seem kind, she was actually a rather blowsy, red-faced, middle-aged woman.

Ivan kissed her on the cheek. After the hanging up incident earlier, he wasn’t sure what reception he’d get, but Cat seemed to have forgiven him over the Hector thing, or was at least prepared to let bygones be bygones until they were alone. ‘Shall we eat?’

Dinner was delicious. One of the few talents Jack Messenger hadn’t credited Catriona with was cooking, but Kendall didn’t think she’d ever tasted such succulent chicken or such meltingly soft sweet potatoes. But it wasn’t just the food that delighted her. The Charleses’ house was utterly charming, from its crumbling, wisteria-clad Cotswold stone walls to its warm and inviting shabby-chic interior. Even the dining room, often the coldest and most formal room in a house, was full of colour and life, with overflowing jugs of wild flowers plonked on the table and sideboard, mismatched floral china glinting in the candlelight and Catriona’s exquisite photographs hanging on the walls instead of stuffy old oil paintings. Ivan and Catriona’s children were adorable too, funny and chatty without being precocious, and the other dinner guest, Ned, seemed charming. It was exactly the sort of noisy, happy, close-knit family atmosphere that Kendall had longed for when growing up. She hadn’t been sure about accepting Ivan’s invitation, but now she was delighted she’d come.

‘Did Cat tell you,’ Ned asked Ivan, ‘the record company want to talk to me about doing an album of duets?’

‘Not a bad idea,’ said Ivan, helping himself to the last roast potato. ‘Did they have someone else in mind?’

‘I think it would be a variety of people. Other tenors, maybe, or sopranos. Solo instrumentalists too. Sort of a “rising stars” thing. They mentioned Joyce Wu. She’s with Jester, isn’t she? Have you seen her recently?’

‘Joyce? No. Not recently.’

Was it Catriona’s imagination, or did Ivan seem uncomfortable all of a sudden?

‘Isn’t she the violinist you were telling me about?’ Kendall said innocently. ‘The one who left her music at the flat?’

‘That’s right,’ Ivan said evenly. From the stiffness in his jaw, Kendall realized too late that she’d put her foot in it. Remembering the sex smell at Eaton Gate and Ivan’s evident discomfiture when she’d shown up unannounced, she put two and two together.

Ivan smiled at Catriona. ‘Joyce came over weeks ago to talk about renegotiating her contract. The silly girl left some sheets of one of her concert pieces behind. I haven’t had a chance to return them.’

‘Oh. I see.’ Catriona smiled back, stamping down her creeping sense of unease as she cleared away the plates. It had been years since Ivan had last cheated on her – those days were behind them – but old anxieties took a long time to fade. Catriona’s own parents had divorced bitterly when she was eight, and the thought of anything threatening her own marriage filled her with utter dread. Still, Joyce Wu was hardly more than a child. I’m being ridiculous.

Ned caught Kendall’s eye and gave her a sympathetic smile. She seemed like a nice girl, and was certainly drop-dead gorgeous. How was she to know that Ivan Charles was a philandering prick?

‘Kendall … er, do you like riding?’ Hector asked shyly. Ivan and Catriona’s eleven-year-old son had been in an almighty sulk about his father bringing a ‘work person’ home, until he’d laid eyes on Kendall, since when he’d barely been able to stop drooling into his chicken. Cat didn’t think she’d ever seen Hector blush in his life, but he was certainly making up for it now.

‘I do,’ said Kendall, grateful for the change of subject. ‘I used to ride all the time in Malibu when I was a kid. I adore horses.’

‘Great,’ Hector beamed. ‘We can go for a hack tomorrow then. You can ride Sparky if you like. He’s Rosie’s pony but he’d be the right size for you.’

‘Hey. Don’t offer people my pony,’ said Rosie on autopilot. Then, realizing she might have been rude, added to Kendall, ‘You’re welcome to take him, though, if you’d like. And you can borrow my riding gear too.’