Chapter One
Sexy Lexy was on the warpath. Her target was Frank Callis, striker for Kensington, top of the Premier League table, and come hell or high water, she was going to make sure she took him up the aisle . . .
Caroline paused, fingers fractionally raised from her laptop keys, considering what she had just typed. Had she pushed it too far? Would Lexy think it was funny, or that it sounded too much as if she had chased Frank till she let him catch her, as Caroline’s grandmother had said disapprovingly when she thought a woman was setting her sights too blatantly on a man?
And what about the style? Caroline wanted to flatter Lexy, make her sound clever and sophisticated. Was this opening a little too crude for that?
She tried a spin on one of the most famous lines to ever begin a novel:
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a glamour model in possession of a great pair of boobs must be in want of a footballer husband . . .
But regretfully, she deleted it. Lexy wasn’t likely to recognize the start of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and nor were her fans. It was a shame, though; this actually worked very well. Maybe Caroline could use it for her blog?
She retrieved the line, cutting and pasting it over to a blank document, then switching back to her draft of Lexy’s life story. The woman sitting next to her cast a desultory glance at the screen of Caroline’s laptop, saw that it was just boring text, no tweets or gossip, and looked away again, scrolling down the Daily Mail website on her phone.
Caroline had checked the Daily Mail earlier this morning: there was, as usual, a piece about Lexy in the sidebar that ran down the right side of the page. Lexy’s management team was indefatigable, conjuring up stories about their most prominent client from practically nothing, but this one was a genuine triumph of the publicist’s art.
‘Sexy Lexy’s Near Miss!’ the headline shrieked.
It was a royal dilemma for Queen Elizabeth I when she found a puddle in her way – and Lexy O’Brien, reigning queen of reality TV, had exactly the same problem yesterday.
Sir Walter Raleigh famously laid down his cloak for the monarch to keep her feet dry but Frank Callis, Lexy’s heartthrob footballer hubby, was nowhere to be seen.
With her favourite high-heeled suede Gina stilettos costing £390 (see box for Get the Look for Less), Lexy couldn’t afford to ruin them.
Luckily she spotted the puddle in time and a short skip to the left was all she needed to avoid a watery disaster.
Carrying one of her many Birkin bags, the reality star and entrepreneur flaunted her famous curves in skintight jeans, those Gina heels, and a low-cut tee showcasing her latest boob job.
Caroline usually hated press descriptions of women ‘flaunting’ or ‘showcasing’ their bodies, but in Lexy’s case, she had to admit that the verb was perfectly justified.
The article continued breathlessly:
Lexy recently confessed to boosting her bust from a 34C to a 34DD cup, admitting that breastfeeding and previous surgeries had left her breasts ‘a bit shit’.
In her weekly column for Lovely! magazine, Lexy shared that her operation, costing £7,500, had ‘perked up her boobs’, restoring them to the size and shape of her glamour-modelling days.
‘They’re back to their prime,’ the star wrote. ‘I’m over the moon. I’ve got my volume back and there’s no more sagging. It’s a real confidence boost! ’
Fashion editor: We know Lexy loves her Ginas and this pair’s a particular fave! Remember her Instagram caption last year: ‘In my Ginas 4 my b’day gonna dance all night #killerheels #ginalove #becauseImworthit #soglam’! Get the look for cheap with these fab ASOS stilettos at just £24.99!
Caroline had read the story in reluctant admiration, which was blended with envy at how striking Lexy looked in the candid photos. Of course Lexy had seen the paparazzo’s camera: she was playing up to it, exaggerating her side-step round the puddle, first pulling a comic face of panic, and then flashing her best smile when she side-stepped the obstacle.
She was a relentless self-publicist. It was the secret of her success.
Many aspiring glamour models, all teeth, tits and hair, had tried to parlay their youthful, plump-cheeked prettiness into marriage to a high-earning sportsman, and quite a few had succeeded. However, Lexy had achieved the Holy Grail: although she had snagged a footballer, she had, uniquely, surpassed him in the fame stakes. Frank had a regular presenting gig giving sports commentary on Sky TV, as well as various guest slots on radio shows, but he was as modest and retiring as Lexy was outgoing and attention-seeking, and it was Lexy who dominated the tabloids, Lexy who kept rolling out new products, all relentlessly branded with multiple photos of her famous face and equally famous cleavage.
Sensibly, Lexy made no secret of the fact that both face and cleavage had had surgical interventions over the years. They had been well done, however – Lexy was too self-protective to overdo the injectable fillers, a particular danger – and her teenage prettiness had evolved into the striking good looks of a confident woman in her prime.
She was thirty-seven, and in considerably better shape than Caroline, who was ten years younger than her. It was an unpleasant observation for the latter, who was squashed uncomfortably into a seat on the South West Trains 9:35 a.m. service to Bournemouth. Caroline wasn’t fat, precisely, but she was no sylph, and it wasn’t easy for her to cross her legs under the table for any length of time, which would have reduced the space they took up. She felt that she was spilling over normal boundaries with not only her body but her laptop, which was taking up more than a quarter of the four-seater table and garnering annoyed glances from the man opposite her, who was compensating by shoving his knees aggressively into hers.
Caroline couldn’t even dream of being Lexy’s size, a slim 8–10. It was impossible, unattainable. She would be ecstatic if she could fit into a 12 – not a Marks and Spencer or Wallis 12, however, with such a generous cut they were effectively vanity sizing! No, she wanted to be a Topshop or River Island 12. If she were that enviably slim, she could kick off her shoes, curl up in her window seat, remove her knees entirely from contact with the man facing her. Lexy would be able to manage that without any effort at all . . .
Caroline couldn’t picture Lexy on this train service, however. Not even in the first-class section, which was near-identical to standard class apart from the fact that it was slightly less crowded. Lexy was surely whisked back and forth from London in a chauffeured limo, rather than waiting, shivering, on the wind-whipped, ugly platform at Waterloo in a throng of intent, narrow-eyed travellers who, knowing exactly where the train doors would open, were poised to dash on and claim their preferred seat. The term for this, Metro had said that morning, was ‘pre-boarding’.
Caroline hadn’t thought this journey would be so crowded, but the previous train had apparently been cancelled, and this one was a carriage short, so the result was a series of overstuffed sardine cans packed with a lot of extremely unhappy sardines.
The man opposite her pushed his knees further forward, pretending that he didn’t realize he was butting against her, his head buried pointedly in his copy of the Guardian. One of those types who was all sharing and caring in public – above the table, with his lefty newspaper – but was quite happy to shove her underneath where no one could see. Another observation for the blog! Doing her best to squash her thighs to one side, Caroline opened another document and noted it down before switching back to the Lexy draft, praying that, unlike her, the man wasn’t travelling all the way to Bournemouth . . .
Bubblier than a magnum of Cristal, bouncier than a tennis ball smashed by Rafael Nadal, Lexy flirted her way into the nation’s heart the moment she appeared on ITV’s Who’s My Date?. With her big blue eyes, tumbling dark ringlets and swift-witted banter with the suitors vying to take her out, Lexy was an instant sensation. Offers from men’s magazines to pose for them flooded in, and a producer from the show pitched a special to ITV: Love Me Lexy!, in which members of Lexy’s army of admirers would go through a series of challenges for the chance to spend a weekend away with her in Marbella.
The viewers watched agog – bookies even gave odds on who Lexy would choose. But though the public’s hearts were on fire, Lexy’s was not. No matter how many hoops they jumped through, Lexy was never going to settle down with a plumber from Portsmouth or a brickie from Bognor. She was on her way up, and she wouldn’t stop till she reached the heights.
As soon as Love Me Lexy! aired, Lexy dumped the winner of the show, selling a tell-all story to the Sun about that weekend in Marbella, spilling saucy gossip about his lack of endowment. But that was only Part One of her publicity coup. Outrageously, just days afterwards, she stepped out on the arm of Darrell Rose, the presenter of Love Me Lexy! himself – with Darrell’s long-term girlfriend nowhere to be seen.
It was a genius move, cementing Lexy’s position as a C-list celebrity. The scandal of Darrell dumping his girlfriend for her, plus the fact that he’d presented the very show on which Lexy was supposed to find love, meant that Lexy was no longer the nation’s sweetheart. She’d become something even better, even more attractive to the media: controversial. People could project what they wanted onto her. For some, Lexy was the sex bomb they fantasized about being, wild and fun and uninhibited. For others, she was a slut, a homewrecker, just like the younger woman who had run off with their husband, and they could conveniently offload all the hate for that man-stealer onto her.
Lexy and Darrell were splashed over the tabloids and gossip sites, Lexy dazzling in a series of very revealing outfits, Darrell apparently dazed by the entire turn of events. After Lexy left him for a more famous rugby player, Darrell described her bitterly as a tornado who had whirled him up in the air, spun him around and jettisoned him when she had no more use for him.
The rugby player was merely the second celebrity boyfriend in a long male beauty parade. Even when Lexy dated a ‘civilian’ – a sexy barman, a stripper she’d met at a friend’s hen night – she transformed him into a celebrity, polished him up and got the maximum value from him that she could.
In short, for almost twenty years, ever since she exploded into the spotlight, Lexy’s been a publicist’s dream client. Her life has been non-stop drama, keeping her fans on tenterhooks to see what’s coming next.
But now . . .
Caroline’s fingers, which had been flying over her laptop keys, finally paused. She wasn’t quite sure what she was writing: a pitch for Lexy to read? An attempt to prove to herself that she could pull off the sort of fun, breathless style that would work in a book? Or should she be trying to tell the story as Lexy would, capture Lexy’s distinctive voice?
Over the last two days, Caroline had spent all her spare time researching her potential subject, but had been too nervous to start writing anything. As soon as the train had pulled out of Waterloo, however, she had learned something that many established authors already knew: travel was very stimulating to the creative impulses. Typing busily away, she did not even notice when the Guardian reader opposite alighted from the train at Basingstoke, barely registering the fact that she could lean over the keyboard without getting knobbly-kneed pushbacks under the table.
Finally, the words were flowing! She would have something to show Lexy at today’s meeting, something to demonstrate that she was actually capable of the job for which she was pitching: ghostwriting a memoir for Lexy. Caroline had not realized initially why the agent had got in touch with her. The email had simply been one curt line, mentioning Caroline’s blog and asking her to get in touch. It hadn’t even come from the agent herself, who was far too important to contact Caroline directly, but her assistant, a very posh-sounding girl called, implausibly, Campaspe Norton-Brown.
Heart pounding, thinking that she was being offered an opportunity to discuss the novel she had always dreamed of writing, Caroline had completely failed to play it cool. She had rung the agency as soon as the email pinged onto her screen, and only when someone answered, his accent impeccably upper-class, had she realized that she had absolutely no idea how to pronounce the name of the person she was calling.
But she had stumbled through the syllables and been connected to the ineffably bored-sounding Campaspe. To Caroline’s great disappointment, however, the assistant did not even bother to begin by telling her how much she loved her blog, let alone ask if she’d ever thought about expanding some of her short stories and blog entries into a novel. Instead, she had asked Caroline if she knew who Lexy O’Brien was, and, having received a positive response, proceeded to sound her out as to whether she would ‘care’, as Campaspe put it, ‘to consider’ ghostwriting for Lexy.
‘It’s a fixed fee, no royalties,’ Campaspe had drawled. ‘Standard drill. Full confidentiality agreement, of course.’
‘Of course,’ Caroline had said, so taken aback that she could only parrot what Campaspe was saying.
‘Ideally, we want someone who can write a blend of autobiography and fiction,’ Campaspe said, her tone, Caroline thought, slightly quizzical. ‘That’s Lexy’s concept, anyway. She wants her story told as a novel. Don’t worry if you don’t have the faintest idea what that means – she’ll tell you exactly what she has in mind. We need someone who’ll get her voice, obviously, but also someone who’ll sort of embed herself in the family, to an extent. I don’t know how much you know about ghosting, but it’s standard practice to spend a good deal of time with the subject, at least at the start, so Lexy has to get on with whoever it is.’
Unable to repeat ‘whoever it is’, Caroline fell back on ‘Of course’ again.
‘Having said that, she’s seeing this collaboration as a source of future book ideas too,’ Campaspe continued. ‘I’ll let her explain what she means, but basically she’s suggesting that a fiction writer will be able to help her come up with real-life stories that’ll feed into projected books and be fodder for the tabloids at the same time . . .’
And that was the central issue. Even before embarking on her frantic two-day Lexy research binge, Caroline had read the Mail Online as much as the next woman. Caroline was aware of the way Lexy and her publicists contrived to get herself, Frank and her children into the press on a very regular basis. Look at that puddle story – in its way, it was a triumph of the genre, a much-ado-about-nothing that still kept Lexy’s face in the press.
Clearly, however, Lexy was wary of being reduced to that kind of wisp-thin newspaper filler. The familiar faces who regularly appeared in the tabloids generated constant lurid stories – broken engagements, torrid affairs, betrayal by close friends, lawsuits over libel, weight loss and gain, threesomes, drug use, even husbands who turned out to be transgender – that kept their fans perpetually enthralled by their real-life soap operas.
Lexy’s problem, Caroline assumed, was that she was now, by all accounts, happily settled down with Frank and the kids. The older one, Laylah, was from a previous marriage of Lexy’s; Frank had adopted her, and they were bringing her up together with London, the little boy fathered by Frank. Now that Lexy was in a long-term, solid marriage, the titillating stories would dry up. Was Campaspe hinting that Lexy wanted a writer to help her concoct fake news items so that she could stay in the news forever?
There had been no point asking Campaspe that question: she had made it clear that Lexy would be briefing Caroline.
‘But now . . .’
Caroline looked at the last words she had written as the train pulled into Bournemouth station.
Nothing follows a happy ever after, she thought. The prince and princess get married and have some babies and that’s it. End of the line. Just like the train announcement, we terminate here and start reading about a new princess instead. If Lexy wants to keep herself in the papers for the next ten years, she’ll have to come up with a whole new storyline, and how’s she going to manage that?
She packed away her laptop in her shoulder bag, unwedged herself from under the table and shuffled off the train with the rest of the passengers, hoping the bus stop would be easy to find. Campaspe had told her that Sandbanks, where Lexy lived, was equidistant to Bournemouth and Poole stations, but that the former was preferable as it had a taxi rank. Caroline had waited eagerly on hearing this piece of information, but no offer of compensation for train ticket or cab ride had followed, and she couldn’t possibly afford to pay for a cab herself.
Caroline was quite aware that if she had been an established writer, not just a nobody blogger, expenses would have been offered. Ironic, of course, because a proper writer would surely need the money much less than she did. Caroline had had to buy an open return, having no idea how long the interview would take. At least she’d been able to get an off-peak ticket, but it had cost over fifty pounds, and she had had to take the day off from her job. Her boss had sounded thoroughly pissed off when she rang in that morning, pleading flu: half the department had recently been sacked and the survivors were working double time to catch up.
It was too far to walk to Sandbanks; Google had told her that Bournemouth was also a better choice for the bus service. But the bus was running late, and then she got off at the wrong stop because she was so stressed about the delay. When she realized her error, she launched into an awkward half-run to get there faster. Caroline never ran, was totally unfit, and by the time she arrived at the big security gates of Lexy’s mansion she was not only clammy with sweat and out of breath, but her hair and coat were damp because a light rain was falling and she hadn’t thought to bring an umbrella.
Caroline felt disgusting. And as she gave her name to the tinny voice answering the intercom, the access door in the gate buzzing open, the sight of The Gables, Lexy’s multimillion pound mansion, was so intimidating that she almost turned on the scuffed plastic heels of her cheap boots and ran away.