Crystal (39 page)

Sadie’s assistant, Claude, called. ‘Hi Crystal, can you come by the studio later on today?’

‘Is there something wrong?’ she asked, suddenly worried that Sadie wasn’t happy with her work.

‘Not at all. It’s not to do with you; I think Sadie wants you to meet someone.’

After the call Crystal spent twenty minutes going through her wardrobe and wondering what on earth to wear. She couldn’t do her jeans up any more. She was going to have to get some maternity clothes and she was going to have to face the fact that she couldn’t hide this pregnancy from the world much longer. In the end she settled on an Empire line green summer dress, which disguised her growing bump.

Fortunately when she met up with Sadie she seemed too preoccupied with work to notice that Crystal looked different. She gave Crystal a hug and then said, ‘Honey, we have a problem. I’ve listened to the final version of the album and I’m just not happy. Oh, it’s not you, darling,’ she added, seeing how upset Crystal looked. ‘No, you’re fabulous. It’s the production; I really think it needs to be sharper. So I’ve arranged for Jim Savage to come in and produce it. You may have to rerecord some of the tracks, but that isn’t a problem, is it? I still want the album out in two months. He’s coming by in a minute.’

Sadie paused and looked questioningly at Crystal. ‘Is everything okay, honey? You don’t quite look yourself.’

‘Oh I’m fine,’ Crystal lied. ‘I’m just missing Jake.’

‘Of course, I forgot. Love’s young dream.’ Sadie smiled at her and Crystal forced herself to smile back. Crystal was just debating whether to come clean to Sadie about the pregnancy when Claude buzzed through to say that Jim had arrived.

As he walked into the room, Crystal felt unexpectedly shy. She was totally in awe of him because he’d worked with some of the biggest stars in the business and it seemed incredible that he was now going to be working with her. She soon relaxed though: Jim was, quite simply, lovely – unpretentious, straight-talking, totally bullshit free. He was in his early forties, casually dressed in baggy combats and a T-shirt, with long dark-brown hair that he wore tied back, a ruggedly handsome face and the warmest pair of brown eyes. Halfway through their conversation about what needed doing he suddenly gave an enormous yawn. Sadie arched an eyebrow at him and he exclaimed, ‘Sorry. My baby son Otis had us up all night. I’ve only had three hours’ sleep and I’m not firing on all cylinders.’

‘How old is he?’ Crystal found herself asking. Now that she was pregnant she had discovered a new obsession with babies – a complete turnaround for her. Until now she’d had zero interest – apart from Leticia – dismissing them as an alien species who made noise in restaurants, were bloody annoying on planes and, frankly, were mostly ugly. Sure, she thought she probably would have a baby one day, but she’d never imagined being pregnant at this time in her life.

‘He’s four months and he’s taken twenty years off my life expectancy already – no, just kidding, he’s fantastic.’

‘Your first?’ Crystal asked.

‘Third, actually. I’ve got an eight-year-old daughter, and a five-year-old son. You’ll have to come round for dinner. Mia, my daughter, is dying to meet you. She loved Lost Angels and she was ecstatic when I told her I was going to be working with you.’

‘Well, you can all meet up at my party,’ Sadie put in. ‘You haven’t forgotten, have you, Crystal?’

It had totally slipped Crystal’s mind. Every year Sadie hosted an extravagant fancy-dress ball for her favourite children’s charity.

‘Of course not,’ Crystal replied, thinking,
shit what the hell
am I going to wear?
The party was less than three weeks away.
Were there such things as maternity fancy dresses?

During the next couple of weeks Crystal felt happier than she had in a while. Working with Jim took her mind off missing Jake. He was so talented and enthusiastic – he seemed to care about the music as much as she did and she quickly felt at ease with him, as if she’d known him for years.

She told Jake all about him, not thinking anything of it, but Jake was unusually quiet during the conversation and she couldn’t understand why, until a sudden thought had her saying, ‘I don’t fancy him. He’s just a friend.’

‘Yeah,’ Jake replied, ‘I’m sure he is.’

But Crystal couldn’t help thinking as she put the phone down that he didn’t sound so sure.

‘Are you thinking of having a baby then?’ Jim asked one day when they’d taken a break from recording and had nipped out to a café. Tahlia had been right – after fourteen weeks she had started to feel slightly better; the nausea had stopped but she was still off caffeine, sticking to peppermint tea, and the thought of alcohol still made her want to be sick. It was an obvious thing to ask because whenever they weren’t talking about work, Crystal bombarded Jim with questions about babies – he and Tahlia were the only people she knew who had children.

Crystal was about to trot out a lie about one of her friends being pregnant when she thought,
Hang on, I don’t want to lie any more. I want to be able to talk about my baby.
She looked at Jim and considered it for a minute. She knew she could trust him.

‘Actually, I’m pregnant, but please don’t tell anyone. I still haven’t told Sadie.’
Wow!
She’d said it! And it felt really good.

‘Congratulations!’ Jim said warmly and, leaning over the table, gave her a kiss and a hug.

‘Do you think Sadie will be mad with me?’ Crystal asked anxiously.

‘Are you kidding? She loves babies! And you’ve done the hard work; we’ve nearly finished the album. You’ll be able to
promote it; you’re pregnant, not ill. My wife carried on working up until a week before she had Otis. How does your boyfriend feel about it?’

Crystal put her head in her hands and groaned. ‘I haven’t told him yet’, and went on to tell Jim exactly why. When she had finished, he said, ‘Crystal, you’ve got to tell him. He’s not going to freak out; he’s going to love it. It’s what we’re here for! There is nothing in my life more wonderful than being a father. And I’m sure Jake will feel the same.’

Crystal nodded, feeling too emotional to speak. She wasn’t going to put it off any longer – she was going to fly out as soon as she could. Jake was going to be a father. He needed to know and she wanted to tell him face to face.

As they left the café, Jim gave her a huge hug again and as he did so he said, ‘You’re going to be okay, Crystal, more than okay. I promise.’

Crystal hugged him back but was startled to hear the sound of a camera clicking away behind her. She turned round and stared straight into the lens pointed by a paparazzo just a few metres away.

‘What the hell?’ she said angrily. Ever since her mauling by the press over Max, she hated being photographed, even though her reign in the tabloids as the scarlet woman of England seemed to have come to an end. A member of a very successful boy band had taken her place in the tabloids when he had been exposed for shagging his fiancé’s twin sister just days before his wedding.

‘They must be interested in you,’ she told Jim as they walked back to the studio.

He shook his head. ‘I doubt it.’

‘Well,’ Crystal shrugged, ‘he’s not going to be able to sell that picture for very much, is he?’ But she was about to be proved wrong.

Belle had recently been interviewed for a glossy woman’s magazine, where she talked about Crystal, saying that while she couldn’t quite forgive her completely, she had moved on
and regretted slagging her off so much. She even said that she was grateful to Crystal, because she was a hundred times happier with Lee than she could ever have been with Max. As a result, Crystal’s name was back in the press and the following morning she opened several papers to find the picture of herself and Jim with an accompanying article speculating that she had a new man in her life. Fortunately Jim and his wife Helen were able to laugh about it, but deep down it left Crystal feeling slightly unsettled. She knew that once she was revealed as the voice behind Pearl she’d have to face the press full on but, until then, she wasn’t really ready to let them back into her life.

Later that day she told Jake about the story. ‘It’s so stupid, we’re just friends, like I told you. I don’t know why they have to print that shit.’ She’d expected Jake to shrug off the story as well but he sounded distant and, after she’d told him, he quickly ended the call saying he was too busy to talk more.

It’ll be okay, I’ll see him this weekend,
she told herself, lying on her sofa and gently stroking her belly. In spite of Jake sounding distant she was starting to think they’d be okay. Jim’s enthusiasm about the joys of fatherhood had won her over. She let herself think about the future. She hoped that once she’d given Jake the big news he might cut his work short to be with her in London. Then she could move into his flat and they could start behaving like a couple who were having a baby. He’d hopefully be back in time for the next scan – when they’d find out whether they were having a boy or a girl. Crystal didn’t mind either way; she just wanted the baby to be healthy. So far all the tests had shown that her baby was well, but that didn’t stop her wanting Jake there with her, to share the anxiety, to reassure her that everything would be all right. Tahlia was a fantastic support, but she wasn’t there at three in the morning when Crystal was worrying that the baby would have something wrong with it, or that it might die. She’d been reading too many pregnancy books and read some devastating stories of women whose babies had been stillborn. She’d gone from hardly knowing
whether she wanted the baby or not, to wanting nothing else in the world more.

‘I’ve got to get some maternity clothes,’ she told Tahlia when they met up in central London for some retailing. ‘I can’t do up my jeans any more. But I don’t want to look like some earth mother in a long flowery skirt and sensible shoes. When I see Jake again, I want him to fancy me and not see his whole life flash before him when he realises he’s stuck with a frump.’

‘Well, lucky for you Topshop do maternity clothes now so you won’t have to look as crap as I did when I was pregnant.’

‘I bet you didn’t even show,’ Crystal retorted.

‘No, you’re right, I didn’t really,’ Tahlia replied, ‘but I had some horrible clothes for the last couple of weeks – some baggy leggings and a vile mustard-coloured T-shirt.’ Tahlia shuddered and Crystal couldn’t help laughing at the vision of beautiful, fashionable Tahlia in such an outfit, though knowing Tahlia she probably still looked like a supermodel in it.

After an hour and a half of power shopping, where Tahlia kept having to steer Crystal away from the mini skirts and back to the maternity section, they emerged from the store laden with bags and headed along Oxford Street. Suddenly Crystal heard her name being called. She turned round to be confronted with someone she never thought she would have to see again – Stella. Stella looked sickeningly gorgeous and very, very slim in a pretty black and white strapless summer dress, white pumps and Dior shades.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ Crystal said flatly, wondering why the hell Stella had bothered to say hello to her.

‘I hear Jake’s getting on well in America,’ Stella drawled in her posh voice, which set Crystal’s teeth on edge.

This was bullshit. She didn’t want to make conversation with Stella; the last time they’d seen each other Stella had called her every name under the sun and physically assaulted her, not to mention the fact that she’d made a pass at Jake.
Did she seriously think Crystal would have forgotten? She made as if to carry on walking but Stella called out, ‘Have you got a message for Jake then? I’m flying out to New York next month. I’m going to be living there for a year and we’re bound to meet up.’

So that was why she had stopped Crystal – just to needle her about her trip.

‘I don’t need you to give him a message for me; I’m seeing him this weekend. Come on, Tahlia, let’s go.’

‘How’s Jim Savage, by the way?’ Stella wouldn’t let her walk off. ‘You looked very cosy together in the papers. Are you hoping that he’ll jump-start your singing career if you shag him?’

Crystal was about to tell Stella to fuck right off, but Tahlia gave her a warning look, and whispered, ‘That’s exactly what she wants, babe. Ignore her.’

Summoning all her self-control, Crystal picked up her bags and walked away from Stella.

‘God, I thought I’d never have to see that bitch again!’ she exclaimed. ‘Can we go to a café now? I’m knackered. I don’t think I can shop any more.’ Stella had ruined her afternoon. And she hadn’t even managed to get an outfit for Sadie’s party which was only three days away.

That night she couldn’t get hold of Jake. He’d been in America a month and she missed him so much – the phone calls, emails and texts weren’t enough – and she longed to feel his arms round her, to see his face . . .

After much discussion with Tahlia, Crystal decided to go to Sadie’s party as Scarlett O’Hara from
Gone with the Wind
and hired an amazing red silk Southern-belle-style dress with an enormous skirt and corset top, which gave her an impressive cleavage and managed to disguise her bump.

‘Are you sure I don’t look fat?’ she whispered to Tahlia while Danni was out of the room. She’d just finished Crystal’s make-up and Jez had done her hair and was on the phone to Rufus.

Tahlia sighed. ‘For the hundredth time, babe, you’re not fat, you’re pregnant. And, no, you look fantastic.’

Crystal studied herself in the mirror. Jez had pinned her hair up in an elaborate style with ringlets framing her face; Danni had given her a pale complexion with just the hint of a blush in her cheeks; her lips were the same deep red as her dress, and her naturally long lashes had been made even more striking with false ones.

‘It’s just that I don’t want anyone to know before I tell Jake and there’ll be loads of press there tonight.

Just then Jez walked back into the room.

‘What do you think?’ Crystal said, twirling round and causing the silk skirt to billow out around her.

Jez looked her up and down and declared in his best Rhett Butler voice (which sounded a little too camp to be convincing), ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn! You look as stunning as ever, but are you sure you haven’t had a little bit of work done recently?’ He stared meaningfully at her chest. ‘I don’t mean to be personal and as you know I never usually look at that area, but your boobs are looking – how can I put this delicately – fucking massive.’