Swan (2 page)

For the record, Panikkos Pantelli had stated
that he would ‘spare no expense to find his very dear friend,’ and he had
‘every confidence Chet would be found alive.’ There was also an article written
by some safety experts speculating what Chet’s chances of survival were, had he
indeed gone overboard.

I felt sick, like someone had just punched
me in the stomach. It was like losing someone very close to me, like a piece of
my heart had been torn out. Chet had a very real presence in my life, realer,
in fact, than some members of my own family. He was the one who greeted me when
I got home from work, the one who made me laugh when I had nothing but
celluloid fantasies to comfort my loneliness.

‘The Northern Line’s up and running again.’

The ticket inspector’s deep voice brought me back to
Earth. Slowly, the procession of disgruntled commuters filed one by one through
the ticket barriers. As I went down the escalator, I opened the newspaper again
in search of more information. On page three I studied a photo of Chet and
Maria together at an awards ceremony. It was the same one that had appeared in
Now
and countless other women’s mags. I
had a real love/hate relationship with that photo. On the one hand, I adored it
because Chet had never looked more handsome - his skin glowed with health and
his chiselled features had an almost ethereal beauty. On the other hand, the
sight of his arm draped around Maria
Esposito,
one of the most gorgeous women on the planet, was enough to make anyone to call
for the sick bucket. They made the perfect celebrity couple, evenly matched in
both looks and status.

Maria’s face was like a porcelain doll: dark,
bountiful curls framing luminous Bambi eyes and a cute button nose. She was
almost too good to be true. How could anyone possibly be that perfect? The
press had often speculated that her looks owed more to the surgeon’s knife than
Mother Nature, but either way, she had managed to bag herself the most eligible
bachelor in Hollywood; so if she had had surgery, it was certainly money well
spent.

When I got home, I showered and made myself a cup
of tea. Then I sank onto my bed and plugged in my laptop to surf the Net for
updates on the story. I searched mostly American websites, knowing that they
would be the most up-to-date.

TMZ
and
US
Weekly
ran pretty much the same story as the
Evening Standard
- that Chet was still missing and no one had seen
him since last night. There was a photo of Maria looking beautifully
distressed, and an interview with one of the other party-goers (no one famous)
stating that around 11 p.m., she had seen Chet knocking back martinis
[E1]
 
on the top deck. There were, however, no sightings of him after midnight, when
he and Maria had allegedly retired to bed.

I stood up and looked around my room. Everything
seemed so barren and empty – a reflection of my chaotic inner state. I
rummaged through my drawers and fished out my earliest photo of Chet –
the one of him playing Jack Kozlowski in
My
Brother Daryl
. For long moments, I stared into those gorgeous brown eyes of
his and wondered what secrets might lay behind them.

Then, I kissed the picture and tucked it back in
the drawer.

‘Please don’t be dead,’ I whispered.

Chapter Two

The next day I called into work sick. I couldn’t
deal with being around people right then. I couldn’t deal with customers
bursting my eardrums with their vileness. My head was filled with thoughts of Chet,
and I knew I wouldn’t rest until the mystery of his disappearance had been
solved.

William didn’t sound too impressed when I told him I
had a throat infection and wouldn’t be coming in. He kept asking me questions:
Had I seen a doctor? When did I think I was likely to be back? William was very
militant when it came to staff pulling sickies. It wasn’t that he was hostile
exactly; it was more that he never accepted what you told him at face value. He
had to probe, investigate. Still, as I rarely had time off, he knew that I
wasn’t one of those who took the piss.

With that out of the way, I was now free to immerse
myself in the growing media circus surrounding Chet. His Mexican housekeeper
had sold a story to the
Sun
, saying
that her employer was a known sleepwalker, and she had often found him around
the house in a trance. This implied that he had somehow ‘sleepwalked’ off the
yacht to his death - a ludicrous theory if ever there was one.

Then there was an exclusive in the
Mirror
with Chet’s estranged brother
Mick, talking about his years as a drug addict and how his sibling was prone to
depression over a long-standing family feud. He insinuated that Chet may have
committed suicide. This article, more than the others, took a very gloomy
perspective on the whole thing; it was as if the journalists at the
Mirror
had accepted that Chet was dead
and it was now just a case of finding out the ‘why’ of it.

On a more upbeat note, the
Daily Mail
ran a two-page article chronicling the highs and lows of
his film career, focusing in particular, on the Best Actor Oscar that had
always eluded him. It said that Chet was one of the most hardworking men in
Hollywood, with one of the most wide and varied CVs, yet somehow, this had not
been recognised at the Oscars. There was, however, a buzz surrounding his most
recent work: a Woody Allen comedy that had debuted at Cannes to rave reviews.
In
Everybody Loves Sid,
Chet played a
neurotic screenwriter who, after two failed marriages, went on a tour of Europe
to ‘find himself.’
Through various
serendipitous encounters, sardonic one-liners and an unfortunate incident with
a transsexual prostitute, Sid learned not take himself too seriously and that
‘life was what you made it.’

One reviewer had described Chet’s performance as
‘perfect’, ‘heartbreakingly real’ and ‘the most serious contender for next
year’s Best Actor Oscar.’

I put down the paper, walked over to the kitchen
window and opened the blinds to let some more light in. The street outside
looked cold and grey. Beyond, I could just make out the silhouette of the O2. I
liked the view. It was one of the reasons I’d got the flat in the first place.

I glanced at the clock on the wall. To my surprise,
it was already three o’clock in the afternoon. Where had the day gone? I had
been so engrossed in Chet Vincent, the time had just flown by.

I went to the cabinet above the sink and brought out
a pair of scissors. I had decided to keep all the newspaper clippings –
my way of recording the events as they unfolded. If it turned out that Chet was
indeed dead, at least I would have some keepsakes. My laptop sat on the table.
Since morning, I had been placing bids on eBay for Chet memorabilia. So far, I
had winning bids on the following items:

1.
     
A Chet Vincent ball-point pen set

2.
     
A new and gift-boxed Chet Vincent collectable mug
cup and coaster set

3.
     
A Chet Vincent collector’s thimble

4.
     
A Chet Vincent 25mm button badge

5.
     
Two-disc special edition DVD of
Intergalactic

6.
     
Signed original 1984 poster for
My Brother Daryl

7.
     
A Chet Vincent key ring

8.
     
A Chet Vincent novelty credit card

9.
     
An A1 poster of
Everybody Loves Sid

10.
 
A Chet Vincent fridge magnet

11.
 
A rare, hard to find LP of Broadway musical covers
released by Chet in the mid ‘90s

12.
 
A Chet Vincent figurine

13.
 
Miscellaneous autographs

14.
 
A limited edition Chet Vincent jacket

15.
 
A set of Chet Vincent wine glasses

16.
 
Original soundtrack recording from
Johnny Come Lately
(in which Chet
actually played guitar)

17.
 
An A4 glossy poster of Chet Vincent topless

18.
 
A lock of Chet Vincent’s hair (allegedly)

I sat at the table and proceeded to cut and paste
extracts from the
Sun
into a fluffy
scrapbook. The sensual strains of Sade’s
Jezebel
filled the room. I had always loved her music. The sultry melancholy of her
songs always seemed to resonate with me, an expression of the pain of
unrequited love that had been the bane of my life.

Suddenly, my phone started ringing. A hollow,
unfriendly tone. I reached across the table and picked it up.

It was my sister Beth.

‘I was just thinking of you,’ I lied.

‘Where are you?’ she said breathlessly. ‘What are
you doing? Are you free to talk?’

‘Uh-huh.’ I pulled a face, dreading where the
conversation was heading.

‘Darling, I’m so upset. I just found out that Vicky
didn’t get a place at Broadwood. Can you believe it?’

‘Gosh, that’s terrible,’ I deadpanned.

‘I know! Isn’t it just? But what really irritates me
is that Jo Morris managed to get her kid a place last year. They’re not even in
the catchment area! You know, Phil and I would never have moved here if we’d
known that Vicky wasn’t going to get in. I’m telling you, Mads, we won’t go
down without a fight. I’ve already started drafting our appeal, and I want to
read it to you to get your opinion.’

I had lost the will to live. Vicky was all Beth
seemed to talk about these days. Following years of childlessness and expensive
IVF, Vicky was the Godsend that Beth and her husband Phil had been hoping for.
Unfortunately, they had spoilt the child rotten. But there was no telling my
sister that. Having a child at forty was a gift to be treasured, a lamb to be
nurtured, even if that lamb turned out to be a scheming, manipulative little
brat.

As Beth continued to ramble about the unfairness of
it all, my mind drifted elsewhere. Despite growing up in the same household,
our lives as sisters couldn’t have turned out more differently. Beth was four
years older than me, and marginally better looking. She was big but carried
herself with the haughty confidence of a catwalk model. She had been a
rebellious teenager, causing our parents no end of grief. At seventeen, she had
rebelled and moved to Dorking with a group of New Age squatters. We heard
nothing from her for two years. Then, when she was twenty, she returned home
briefly to make a fresh start. She found a job working for the Red Cross, where
she met her future husband. Since then, she’d led a pretty hedonistic
lifestyle, spending most of her time trying to reinvent herself. One day she
was the health conscious fitness fanatic, the next a Buddhist faith healer.
Everything in Beth’s life seemed to revolve around her, and she was completely
incapable of doing anything selfless.

Still, despite all her shortcomings, there were
still things about my sister that I envied. She had a beautiful house in
Highgate for example, a husband who doted on her and an aesthetically pleasing
daughter. What more could a woman ask for?

What really burned was that, despite all her
reckless and selfish behaviour, life appeared to have rewarded Beth with all
the things I lacked. I, who had stayed at home to nurse our mother when she was
diagnosed with MS, who had played the good and dutiful daughter and never given
our parents a moment’s worry, was now facing a childless, friendless, lonely
old-age. Where was the fairness in that?

‘So what do you think?’

‘Um, what?’

‘What do you think of my appeal letter? Do you think
it’s too harshly worded? You don’t think the school will think me too pushy?’

‘No,’ I stammered,’ of course they won’t. It’s
great.’

‘Oh good.’ Beth sounded pleased. ‘Okay, must dash.
By the way, are we still on for the twenty-sixth?’

‘The twenty-sixth?’

‘Next month. Phil’s birthday party.’

‘Oh yes, I’ll be there.’

‘Good, good. Love you.’

Then she hung up. Just like that. No questions about
how my week had been or how I was. But then, Beth was probably so used to my
life being uneventful, so used to my dullard’s existence, that she saw no point
in asking. Anyway, what would I update her on? A date? A boyfriend? Not likely.

I came off the phone feeling more disturbed than I
had before she’d called. Speaking to Beth always reminded me how bleak and
lonely my life was, how completely devoid of love. She at least had Phil to
keep her warm at nights and a daughter to shower with affection. What did I
have? A dead-end job and a hot water bottle to take to bed with me.