Swan

Copyright Katherine Hole
2013

All Rights Reserved

Preface

My name is Madeline Smith. I’m forty-one years old
and until six months ago, I was what celebrities call a civilian (an ordinary
person). I worked in a call centre, and home was a little flat near Blackwall DLR
station. I didn’t have much of a social life; I’d never been on a foreign
holiday; my sex life was non-existent and weekends were spent at home alone watching
DVDs. If someone had told me I would be making headlines around the world, I’d
have told them to pull the other one. Nothing special had ever happened to me
before. I’d never even won a fiver on a scratch card. Then Chet Vincent died, and
my world changed forever.

Chapter One

‘Chet Vincent is dead,’ Caroline said. She was
standing by the staffroom door clutching a Starbucks coffee.

‘What?’ I looked up from my magazine.

‘He fell off a yacht and drowned. Can you believe
it? He was so young.’

‘Is that the guy from
Bourne Identity
?’ Margery asked.

‘No that’s Tom Cruise. Chet Vincent was in
Thelma
and Louise
.’

‘No, that’s Brad Pitt,’ I snapped. ‘Chet Vincent’s
most famous for
American Boy
and
Johnny Come Lately
.’

Everyone stared at me. They weren’t used to me
giving an opinion, let alone with such passion. What they didn’t know was that
they had just broached one of my favourite topics – Chet Vincent’s
filmography. I knew every single film he’d starred in from 1982 to present.

Caroline sat down and proceeded to peel the lid off
her Caramel Macchiato.

‘Where did you hear this?’ Margery probed. ‘If you
read it on the Net, then it’s probably not true.’

‘Well,’ Caroline said, ‘I was in Primark, and
that’s what all the girls were talking about. Apparently it’s all over the
news. Chet Vincent was at a party on some billionaire’s yacht when he fell
overboard. Poor sod was probably off his face. You know what these celebrities
are like.’

I went numb. Every word she spoke was like a dagger
to my heart. Could this possibly be true? Could the man I had worshipped since
I was fourteen really be dead? I was just about to question Caroline further
when one of our office managers, William, entered the room.

‘Hello, this is Alice Graham,’ he said, gesturing
towards a petite blonde standing behind him. ‘She’ll be starting with us
today.’ He surveyed the room. ‘Ah, Maddy, would you mind if Alice shadows you
this afternoon?’

‘Not at all,’ I mumbled.

‘Good. You finish at five, right? Alice can sit with
you till then.’

I groaned inwardly. The last thing I needed was to
get stuck with the new girl. I’d hoped for a quiet afternoon surfing the Net to
check out the validity of the Chet Vincent story. Now that I was being
shadowed, I’d have to play everything by the book.

I smiled blandly as Alice seated herself at my
table. I studied her face. She was pretty: wide-set eyes and gorgeous freckles
like Kate Moss. I put her as being aged between eighteen and twenty - a baby by
our standards. The majority of staff in the call centre were long-serving
council employees who had either landed the job through cronyism or
redeployment. The managers were a cliquey bunch who didn’t make a habit of
recruiting school leavers or people from the private sector, so I greeted
Alice’s appointment with some bemusement.

I made an attempt to engage her. I asked her how far
had she travelled from and if she had she ever worked in a call centre before. She
told me that she was twenty-one, lived in Wimbledon and had previously worked
as a receptionist for a
pharmaceutical company
.

‘Wow, you come all the way from Wimbledon?’ Margery
sniffed. ‘Isn’t that really far for you to travel?’

‘It doesn’t bother me. I just go wherever the agency
sends me.’

Ah. So that was it. She was a temp. That explained
everything.

There was an awkward pause. Alice gave a lady-like cough
and pulled out a packet of oatcakes.

‘Oh my God, is that all you’re having for lunch?’
Margery gasped. ‘There’s no way that would ever fill me up. I mean, just look
at you. It’s not like you need to diet. If you lose any more weight you’ll
disappear.’

‘But I’m
not
on a diet,’ Alice bleated. ‘Honestly, this is just a snack.’

I rolled my eyes.
Here we go again
, I thought,
another
of Margery’s lectures on the evils of healthy eating.

After lunch, I took Alice on a tour of the office.
She glanced at the rows of uniform desks and remarked how fresh and modern
everything looked. Fresh wasn’t a word I would have used to describe it.

Finally, we reached my desk. I was proud that I’d
managed to bag us a nice secluded spot away from the watchful eye of the managers.

Alice pulled up a chair. She looked like a timid
little mouse sitting there. I felt so sorry for her. Poor girl. She really
didn’t know what she was letting herself in for. The bulk of queries we
received were about parking fines, and you had to have nerves of steel not to
let the abuse get to you.

‘Right,’ I said, clipping on my headset, ‘I’m going
to log into the system, then we’ll start taking calls. You can listen in.’

She nodded enthusiastically.

Poor girl
, I thought again.
I wondered how long she’d last.

I handed her the phone and opened up my lines.
Immediately, a call came through.

‘Good afternoon, Parking Services,’ I greeted in a
calm, controlled voice. Before I could even finish, the man cut me off with a
barrage of swearing.

‘Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for? You’ve
killed my phone bill before we’ve even started.’

Alice winced and held the receiver away from her
ear.

‘I do apologise for the wait, sir,’ I grinned, ‘I
will endeavour to resolve your query as swiftly as possible. How can I help?’

‘Well, you can start by telling me where the hell my
car’s gone. One of your bastard - excuse my French - one of your bastard
parking attendants towed it away. I’d only been gone five minutes. He said it
was okay to park there. Then, when I got back, my bloody car was gone. I’m
telling you, the council has got a lot to answer for. Do you think the public
is made of money? I won’t let this drop. I’m going to my MP about this!’

I shook my head. I’d heard it all before - the
pleas, the excuses. When you’re told the same thing thirty times a day, you get
pretty desensitized to it. Still my heart went out to the guy. You’d have to be
made of marble not to sympathise with somebody who’d just been told to part
with the equivalent of a week’s wages.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘tell me your vehicle registration
number, and I’ll see what I can do.’

As he gave me the details, I detected his tone had
softened a little.

‘I’m sorry,’ he cooed, ‘I didn’t mean to have a go
at you sweetheart, I know you’re just doing your job.’

‘No offence taken.’

‘What’s your name anyway?’

‘Maddy.’

‘Well Maddy, let me tell you; you’ve got a beautiful
voice. I bet you’re absolutely gorgeous.’

You
wouldn’t think that if you saw me
,
I thought darkly. Still, I was flattered. I brought up his ticket entry on the
screen and rambled through the customary procedures. I explained that he’d been
issued with a penalty for parking in a resident’s bay without displaying a
permit. His car was being held at the local vehicle pound and, crucially, he wouldn’t
be able to appeal until he had paid the release fee.

‘What? That can’t be right,’ he screamed, ‘I want to
speak to your manager now!’

I rolled my eyes and unclipped my headset, scanning
the room for the nearest senior. Eventually I settled for Jaiman, who was
buried under a pile of Excel spreadsheets a couple of desks away. As I
approached, he hunched up his shoulders defensively and pretended to be hard at
work.

Jaiman was one of those young managers who strove to
be your best friend, while trying to exert just the right degree of authority.
He had a roving eye, but, to my chagrin, that eye never roved to me. I was
invisible to him, as grey and commonplace as the furniture.

He gave a vacant smile. ‘Something the matter,
Maddy?’

‘This guy wants to speak to a manager.’

‘Can’t you just tell him to write in?’

‘I tried that but he’s having none of it.’

‘What’s his problem?’

‘We towed his car away.’

‘Can’t this wait? I’ve got shitloads to do.’

‘He says it can’t. He says he wants to speak to you
now
.’

Reluctantly, Jaiman followed me back to my desk. His
eyes lit up when he saw Alice. As the two of them exchanged flirtatious banter,
I wondered why that could never be me. Was I really so hideous?

‘I’m sorry you’re not happy with the service, sir ...
By all means I’ll post you out a complaints form. Sorry to have troubled you.’
Jaiman put down the phone and smiled broadly. ‘God, that man was a nightmare.’

Alice nodded. ‘I thought you handled it really
well.’

He stood up and straightened his tie conceitedly. ‘Oh,
that was nothing. You should see how I handle the
really
difficult customers. I don’t know what it is. I must just
have the gift of the gab. I know how to sweet talk them.’

I raised my eyes to heaven. Alice stifled a smirk.

After he’d gone, we took a couple more calls before
going to our afternoon tea break. On my way back to the office, I found Alice
sitting outside the staffroom, crying into her handbag.

‘What’s up?’ I asked, laying my hand on her
shoulder.

‘My purse has been stolen,’ she wailed. ‘My cards,
my keys, everything! I don’t know how I’m going to get home tonight. My parents
already loaned me money for a travel card, so I can’t ask them for more.’

Without missing a beat, I reached into my wallet and
handed her a twenty pound note.

‘Gosh, Maddy, I can’t take this.’

‘Course you can. And don’t worry about paying me
back.’

She hugged me. ‘Oh Maddy, you’re so lovely.’

The delight on her face helped to soothe the fact
that I’d given her all my lunch money for the week. Now I would have to make do
with ham sandwiches and tap water till we got paid.

* * *

Rain fell in bullet-like pelts as I made my way
through the darkness towards the tube station. A small crowd had gathered by
the ticket barriers, indicating that there was something wrong with the northern
Line -
again
. Typical. It was the
same thing every week: great service in the morning, crap service in the
evening.

As I took my place at the back of the long queue, I
spied a pile of free newspapers. Hastily, I snatched up a copy of the
Evening Standard
and scanned the front
page: ‘Chet Vincent Missing’ it screamed.

My heart skipped a beat. So there was some truth to
Caroline’s story after all. The only saving grace was that nothing was concrete
yet.

All the same, it made for grim reading.

The paper said that Chet Vincent had last been seen
alive at billionaire hotelier
Panikkos
Panteli’s fiftieth birthday party in Porto Cervo, Sardinia. Elton John, among
others, had been present for the celebrations, which had continued late into
the night. The beautiful actress, Maria Esposito, with whom Chet had enjoyed a
high-profile, tempestuous relationship, said that they had gone to bed about
midnight, but Chet had been unable to sleep so had returned above deck. It was
only in the morning, when he didn’t show for breakfast, that the alarm was
raised. So far, he had been missing for approximately twelve hours, and despite
a rescue team’s best effort, no trace of him could be found.