Famous (14 page)

Maybe it’ll be over and done with by now? I thought to myself. Hopefully that newspaper woman was the only other person who knew, aside from Mands and Lizzie of course.

I walked over to the window and drew the blinds, glancing out to check the state of the day. But, I didn’t get that far because my eyes were somewhat distracted by the sea of bright flashing bulbs which greeted my sleepy gaze.

I lunged back onto the bed, temporarily blinded.

God help me! I thought in horror. There are twenty photographers standing outside my front gate. This cannot be happening!

I immediately dialled Lizzie.

‘Problem,’ I said. ‘Very
big
problem.’

‘Morning,’ said Lizzie. ‘Forgot to pick suit up from drycleaners?’

‘No. Twenty paparazzi currently standing outside gate waiting for me like pack of demented blood-hungry wolves.’

‘Jesus!’

‘Exactly. Although he won’t be helping me to get out of the house. What am I going to do?’

‘Let me think a minute,’ said Lizzie.

‘Right,’ she replied, after a mere couple of seconds. ‘You simply have to get dressed and go to work as per normal.’

‘You mean leave the house?’ I asked.

‘That’s right.’

‘Is that the best you can come up with?’

‘You have to act normal, sweets. And innocent. Otherwise they’ll keep you holed up in your apartment for days. They’re not going to leave. They’ve been known to survive for weeks without food or water.’

I had a shower, got dressed, and stood beside my front door, bracing myself for the impact on the other side.

You are innocent, I told myself. Innocent. You had no idea who he was. Or that he was married.

I opened the front door as normally as I could, with violently shaking hands and jelly-like legs, and stepped outside.

Just act normal, I told myself. Don’t run. Or panic. It’s just any other day and you’re off to the office. Oh for God’s sake, who are you kidding? There are twenty fucking paparazzi standing at your front gate. There is nothing remotely normal about this day. Whatsoever. At least don’t forget to smile. If they’re going to print your picture you don’t want to be left looking like someone’s mean old aunt who hides all the chocolate biscuits and just puts out the Vanilla Wines.

‘Samantha!’ they called out, as I approached the gate, which was thankfully nice and high and required a security code to pass through. ‘Over here!’

‘How’s Alistair?’ called another couple.

I forced a smile. I had no bloody idea how Alistair was.

Dead for all I hoped. Killed in some freak airborne vegetable incident. Cucumber-wedged-through-the-side-of-the-head type thing. I managed a real smile at the thought.

‘C’mon Samantha!’ called another couple, as I walked out of my front gate and through the bustling sea of cameras.

‘Tell us something!’

‘No comment,’ I replied, walking as briskly as I could across the footpath to my car and launching myself inside, cameras flashing incessantly at me.

My car was a lovely new black Mini Cooper. I loved My Car.

‘Wow!’ Izzy, the receptionist, had declared upon her first sighting. ‘It’s hot!’

‘You think so?’ I asked.

‘Hell yeah!’

Izzy knew a thing or two about cars. She was a twenty-three-year-old peroxide-headed Girl Racer. She herself drove a modified black Mazda hatchback, which sounded exactly like a Boeing 747 at lift off, and which sat approximately three inches from the ground. It was not difficult to tell when Izzy was running late for work, or if she was leaving early. It had a muffler the size of a small ship.

‘It’s definitely a fashion statement,’ my mother had said. ‘If that’s what you’re after of course.’

‘Maybe I want to drive an attractive car?’ I’d protested.

‘Vehicles are for getting from A to B Samantha. Nothing more. Nothing less. And it’s not very practical, is it?’ she said, eyeing up the miniscule backseat, as Dad had circled around the car, gingerly touching the paintwork.

‘It’s not supposed to be,’ I’d replied, staring back at her.

Just because my mother drove an old Volvo, she thought the sole purpose of cars was ugliness and practicality.

Just relax, I told myself, as my heart practically beat its way out of my Karen Walker suit. Start the car and drive off. Slowly.

I did as I was told, leaving a blinding sea of flashes in my wake. But I wasn’t the only one to hop into my car and drive off. I looked in my rearview mirror only to find two Land Rovers and three motorbikes hot on my heels.

Oh for fucksake! This is ridiculous!

Just stay calm, I said aloud. Don’t let them do a Di on you. Thankfully there were no tunnels on the way to work, I remembered, so I should be safe. I drove as fast as I could through the city streets, without crashing the car or running anyone over. My little Mini was finally getting the road test it deserved, although I was unable to shake my pursuers.

Finally I skidded to a halt outside the car-park entrance and swiped my card as quickly as I could. Just don’t drop the card, I prayed, as the harassment convoy pulled up behind me. Thankfully I didn’t and the grill gate opened up in front of me. With squealing tyres I drove into the basement car park as the Land Rovers and motorbikes were left on the other side.

No time for a latte this morning, I told myself, as I headed for the lift. Just get your carcass inside that office.

Sweating and out of breath, I ran into my office and slammed the door. Thankfully the only person I passed was Izzy, who took one look at me and decided it best to say nothing. I collapsed into my chair,
The
Morning Sun
waiting for me on my desk.

Oh dear God! I thought, as I unfolded the paper and stared at the front page. It just gets worse.

There, under the colossal banner CAUGHT IN THE ACT! were a series of close-up and over-sized pictures of Alistair leaving my apartment building the morning after our rendezvous. The entire front page was covered in them. There he was, post-extramarital-shag-fest, leaving the scene of the crime. Post-coital glow gleaming off his tanned face. The smug bastard!

And
there
, under the photographs, was a small story about him leaving my apartment. And
there
, written in the story in cold black ink was…my name. Samantha Steel. Bloody hell!

How? I wondered. How in God’s name?

‘Sam,’ said Gareth, poking his head inside my office a short while later, ‘do you know anything about the horde of photographers waiting outside the building? They seem to be asking for you.’

‘No,’ I lied.

Obviously Gareth hadn’t seen the newspaper yet, and there was no point in me hurrying along the carnage. I promptly set about cancelling the three external meetings I had that day. There was no way in hell I was leaving the building if those vultures were waiting outside for me.

What was I going to do? I wondered. My phone rang.

Unfortunately someone else had seen the paper. My father.

‘Love, it’s your father here,’ he said, when I answered.

For some reason he thought I didn’t recognise his voice after thirty-three years.

‘I’m just looking at the newspaper and I’ve seen your name on the front page.’

‘Aha.’

I could have lied and said it wasn’t me. It was just my name and not my picture on the page after all. I could have pinned it on another Samantha Steel out there somewhere.

But there was something about my father which made it very difficult to lie. Impossible even. How many times had I concocted the most brilliant lies as a teenager. Stories with fantastic imaginary characters, brilliant trails of believable events, and a completely blame-free ending for myself. How I’d stood in my bedroom and practised the stories over and over again in front of the mirror and then walked into the living room, only for Dad to ask, ‘Samantha, did you take my car and drive into town with your friends today?’ and me to answer, ‘Yes, we went to the mall. And then to McDonalds for lunch. And then we went to the movies.’

‘Is it you?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Unfortunately.’

‘Are you seeing this Alistair Ambrose?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘It was just a…’

I was about to say ‘one night stand’ and then thankfully thought the better of it. These were not three words I was in the habit of uttering to my father.

‘…a casual thing,’ I finished.

‘I see,’ he said.

‘Dad, would you believe me if I told you I didn’t know who he was?’

If there was one person in this world who grasped the fact I avoided watching sport like the plague, it was my father. How many times had he tried to get me to sit down on the couch with him and feign some interest in the cricket, only to have me profess a sudden love of homework and declare ‘I’d really better get cracking’?

‘Yes love, I would.’

‘And I didn’t know he was married?’

‘Yes.’

This was an extremely uncomfortable conversation to find yourself in the middle of with your father. I was sure that in some small gold-gilded and white-linen compartment of his brain he honestly thought my sisters and I were still virgins. Even Vicky, who was pregnant. Although it was uncomfortable for both of us, I filled him in on where I had met Alistair, who we were with, and that, yes, he had come back to my apartment. I decided it best not to fill him in on how we tore each other’s clothes off all about the place, how he chewed my nipples with his front teeth until I begged him to fuck me, how we had sex twice within the space of half an hour, and how I hadn’t had an orgasm like that since the time I had a threesome in a spa pool at the Hilton with two men whose names escape me. Dad filled me in on how Alistair was one of the most versatile and high-scoring football players this country had ever seen. How he was the glue which held the team together, and how he (Dad) was confident this was going to be our best season yet. I pretended to be interested. It was the least I could do considering he’d been so understanding about me shagging him and all.

‘He’s obviously a bloody rogue though,’ added Dad. ‘Cheating on his poor wife like that.’

‘Yes. Thanks.’

This was not something I really needed reminding about.

‘Sorry love,’ he added. ‘I didn’t mean…’

‘It’s okay Dad, I know. Has Elizabeth seen it?’ I asked, hoping like hell she hadn’t.

When I was fifteen years old my mother had asked the three of us if we would kindly stop calling her Mum. She wanted us to call her by her name, Elizabeth.

‘Why?’ I had asked, ‘It’s weird.’

‘Because the word Mum is synonymous with the stereotype of the homemaker and child-rearer. And I am not just these things. I am a whole person.’

From that day on there was a Mum jar placed on top of the fridge. Where other families had a swear jar, we placed ten cents in the Mum jar every time we called our mother Mum.

‘No,’ said Dad. ‘She left at the crack of dawn this morning. Something about standing on the Symonds Street overpass with a banner. I think it’s about the right to breastfeed in public again,’ he added.

‘I think I saw her on the way to work,’ I realised. ‘Huge banner with loads of breasts?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘She’d gathered quite a crowd,’ I added. ‘Was doing a great job of slowing down rush-hour traffic on the motorway too.’

‘It’ll be okay, love,’ comforted Dad, snapping me back to the present. ‘You made a mistake but I’m sure it’ll all blow over soon.’

I hoped he was right. But for someone who was annoyingly right a good portion of the time, this premonition was to be his downfall. The only saving grace was that my mother hadn’t seen my name in the newspaper, yet.

I gave Izzy some money and asked her to fetch me a latte and a blueberry muffin from the café across the road.

‘Holy cow!’ she exclaimed upon her return. ‘I didn’t think I was going to get back in alive! It’s the weirdest thing,’ she continued. ‘There’s a whole lot of paparazzi out there asking for you.’

‘I know,’ I replied.

‘Oh,’ said Izzy, looking rather perplexed. Clearly she hadn’t seen the paper either.

‘What did you tell them?’ I asked.

‘I told them to fuck off and let me back in the door or I was going to spill the coffee.’

‘Thanks Izzy,’ I replied, giving her a smile. ‘I think the best tactic is to just ignore them.’

‘Bit hard to ignore them when they’re rubbing up against your breasts,’ she replied, smiling back at me.

‘Don’t know anything about it, eh Sam?’ said Gareth, once again standing in my doorway an hour later, newspaper in his hands. He appeared to be smiling also.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘Nothing at all.’

Once he realised he wasn’t going to get another word out of me, he very wisely left me alone. I spent the rest of the day trapped inside my office, with Izzy kindly running the gauntlet and fetching me some lunch. This time one of the paparazzi actually squeezed her left breast.

‘If I didn’t have my hands full of muffins I would have punched him in the face,’ she declared. ‘But I could only use my elbow.’

My only solace were phone calls from Mands and Lizzie, both of whom had of course seen the paper.

‘He’s a bastard,’ they comforted. ‘A slimy arse-licking pig of a man. But,’ they added, ‘he’s also incredibly foxy and famous and you should be very proud of yourself.’

But I didn’t feel proud of myself, at all. I just felt as though I’d made a terrible mistake. I also felt increasingly irritated at being harassed, photographed and chased. Although I couldn’t see them I knew they were there, like crouching tigers, just waiting to pounce. I had a horrible feeling this was just the beginning, that the paparazzi were never going to leave me in peace, at least not for a long while yet. The other thing was I just
knew
Alistair must do this sort of thing all the time, of course he did, but I was the only one unlucky enough to be caught. Somehow this made me feel worse.