The Four of Us (36 page)

With a last look at Primmie's message, she exited the site. She couldn't afford to sink into a depression she couldn't claw her way out of. She had a show to do tomorrow night and rehearsals to get to grips with tonight, and – who knew? – the Grantley Rock Fiesta could well be a blast, with her the high spot of the programme.

Her brief surge of optimism was short lived. When the band backing her collected her in the their minibus they warned her to take a deep breath before reading any of the billboards for the concert.

She soon saw why.

Kiki Laine – ' 70s rock star was fourth down on the hoarding outside the club.

Rage roared through her veins. It was bad enough that she was fourth down and that her name was spelled wrongly, but why '70s rock star? Why not just Kiki Lane? Did her future lie only in exploiting her earlier successes? Was she ever again going to be booked for anything other than nostalgia concerts?

‘Are you the lighting girl we're expecting?' a harassed-looking young woman asked her as she strode angrily into the club ahead of the band.

Hardly able to contain herself, Kiki whipped off her dark glasses. ‘No, I'm bloody not! I'm Kiki Lane! Now which way are the bloody dressing rooms?'

It hadn't been an auspicious beginning. For the first time in her life, she felt exhausted. More than exhausted, she felt hammered. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. She was supposed to be a huge icon, a major player on the celebrity circus circuit. Instead, she was fast becoming a laughing-stock. There had definitely been sniggers from the band member hardest on her heels when the stupid bitch in the foyer had asked her if she was the lighting girl.

‘Hi, Kiki, I'm Shania Lee,' an emaciated girl with blue hair and a metal stud in her lower lip said to her as she walked into a large communal dressing room. ‘How ya doin'?'

Kiki didn't answer her. She was too busy digesting the fact that she was going to be sharing a dressing room.

‘I'm the drummer with Dog Days,' the girl said helpfully.

Dog Days were a punk nostalgia band, well known enough for the girl not to have needed to explain who she was. That she'd done so, so unpretentiously, deserved a response.

‘Hi,' she said, making an effort. ‘Nice to meet you. How many numbers are Dog Days pencilled in for?'

‘Four. We're doing The Ramones' “Don't Come Close” and “Howling at the Moon”. I don't know about the other two numbers. Probably The Sex Pistols “Pretty Vacant” with an Eddie Cochran number thrown in for good measure.'

‘Wicked.'

The girl grinned. ‘It's really great to be on the bill with you, Kiki. My mother's a great fan of yours. She says I used to gurgle along to “White Dress, Silver Slippers” when I was in my pram.'

Kiki didn't even try to smile. When Shania Lee had been in her pram, ‘White Dress, Silver Slippers' would have already been a nostalgia number.

‘I need a drink,' she said abruptly, having seen all she wanted to see of the dressing room situation. ‘There must be a bar open somewhere in this million pound dump.'

As she swung out of the dressing room to find it, Shania fell into step beside her. ‘It's an eyesore, isn't it?' she said as they were assailed by the smell of fresh paint and new wood.

Kiki grunted agreement, her mind still on the dressing room scenario. A newly built club this size would have star dressing rooms – and she hadn't been allocated one. It was a public humiliation and she didn't see any way out of it, because if she made a scene, demanding a star-status dressing room, and was refused, the humiliation would simply escalate.

‘Nick says the days of clubs like this are so long over it simply isn't true,' Shania was saying.

Kiki tried to rustle up some interest. ‘Who's Nick?'

‘My partner, but he also manages my career. It's a great arrangement, because it means he really does have my interests at heart.'

For the second time within hours Kiki was plummeted into her past. Shania's set-up with Nick was the same set-up she'd had with Francis. Francis, too, had had her interests at heart – or he had until he'd self-destructed on cocaine.

As she walked into a bar area crowded with musicians and lighting men, she wondered where Francis was now. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that he could have died twenty or even thirty years ago. People with drug habits like Francis's didn't make old bones.

The wall behind the bar was mirrored and she was staring at her reflection. In her mock snakeskin trousers and sequin-decorated black T-shirt, she was still as whippet-slender as Shania. Thanks to professional help, her spikily cut and gelled hair was still fox-red – and her cheekbones looked sharp enough to slice through metal. She still looked what she was – what she'd always been – a rock singer. But she was a rock singer on the skids. She was on a downhill curve that was never going to straighten out and climb to dizzy heights. Any dizzy heights there had been were all in her past. If she exited the scene now she would be remembered as a rock chick of the '70s and '80s who, in 2003, was a necessary adjunct to any rock nostalgia concert going.

If she continued, she would begin to be perceived as a pathetic has-been – and it would then be as a has-been that she would be remembered.

The time to bow out was now.

She was going to quit just as soon as this godawful week's gig was over. She was going to drive to the coast and find a high cliff – and then she was going to throw herself from the top of it.

Instead of it being the kind of wild, rash decision that was soon forgotten about, it was one that took deep root.

When she strutted on stage the following night wearing disco diva shoes with high Perspex heels studded with rhinestones, prepared to yet again give it all she'd got, the applause was embarrassingly thin.

Not for the first time in her life she hated an audience. Feeling as if she was on a treadmill she belted out all her old hits and near hits.

And then came the ultimate nightmare. Then came the moment she had never, in a million years, thought she would ever have to endure. Impatient for the headlining band to make an appearance, part of the audience began to slow handclap her – and within seconds the rest of the audience joined in with them.

Though her backing band continued playing, she stopped singing. Tears stung the backs of her eyes. This was it, then. This was what it felt like to die on stage. Well, she bloody well was never going to do it again. She was going to drive to the only part of the country she knew that had high cliffs. She was going to drive to Cornwall and put an end to the miserable charade that was now her life. She was going to drive to Cornwall, because in Cornwall there was someone to say goodbye to.

In Cornwall, there was Primmie.

Following a steward's directions, Artemis drove her Volvo over rough grass to the far corner of a huge field. As she parked between a Range Rover and a Mini Cooper, she was nervous. She'd never felt comfortable at polo matches, not even in the early days of her marriage when she'd been thrilled at incorporating such an upper-class, elitist activity into her life. The rules of the game had always been beyond her and when the wives and girlfriends of Rupert's fellow players realized she didn't have a clue as to what was going on – and worse, that she didn't even ride – they'd ceased treating her as a member of their privileged circle.

She slipped her feet out of her driving shoes, exchanging them for a pair of high-heeled, opentoed court shoes. She'd put on so much weight that if she didn't wear high heels she looked as broad as she was tall. It wasn't a figure fault that would be troubling many of the other female spectators. From bitter experience she knew they would all be slender and supple – and young.

Slamming the car door behind her, she began walking with difficulty over the uneven ground. Nearly every one of Rupert's friends had dispensed with the wife they'd been married to when she had first met them and opted for a newer, slimmer model with an age range of early twenties to late twenties. It didn't make for peace of mind when you were fifty-two and a size eighteen. Not that anyone knew she was a size eighteen, because she religiously cut all sizing labels from her clothes and sewed size fourteen labels in their place.

Rupert hated her being plump – though he didn't call her plump. He called her fat. The problem was that the unhappier he made her about her weight, the more she sought comfort in chocolates and cakes. It was all a hideous vicious circle and it wasn't as if she'd ever
naturally
been slim. She'd been plump as a child. The only time she hadn't been plump was when she was at Lucie Clayton and the short period afterwards, when she was modelling.

She reached the end of the field that had been set aside for surplus cars and saw, ahead of her, that a chukka was in progress. With increasing nervousness she smoothed the skirt of her white polka-dotted navy silk dress and checked that her pearls were lying at the right depth in the V of her neckline.

Rupert would most definitely not be expecting to see her – not after their row of the previous evening. She'd been right to object to his plans, though. A month away, playing polo in Brazil, was absolutely out of order when they hadn't, this year, spent any time at their holiday home in Corfu.

She was nearing the first of the jeeps and horseboxes parked round the edge of the ground and she pulled her tummy in as far as it would go, plastering a falsely bright smile on her face. Dozens of casually dressed girls were draped over the bonnets of the jeeps, their dark glasses making it difficult for her to know if she knew any of them or not. She couldn't see anyone dressed stylishly, as she was, and realized too late that she'd committed a fashion wobbly by dressing for a casual match as if for Hurlingham.

A couple of the girls turned at her approach and one or two of them gave her a laconic wave. She smiled brightly back at them, desperately wishing she'd worn something a little less garden-partyish. No one else was wearing high heels. Absolutely no one.

She scanned the players. Rupert's team was wearing pink shirts and his lean, still muscular figure was immediately identifiable.

‘Have you only just arrived?' a middle-aged woman standing a few feet away from her said, lowering her binoculars. ‘Because if you have you've missed a brilliant first couple of chukkas.'

‘Yes, and have I?' Artemis moved nearer to her, grateful at no longer standing so conspicuously alone.

‘And have you seen the rogue player?' the woman continued, amusement in her voice. ‘It's not often you see a woman playing, but Serena really is something special, isn't she?'

Artemis's carefully shaped eyebrows rose. There were women's polo teams, of course, but she'd never known Rupert play against one – or with a female team member.

She raised a hand to shield her eyes, squinting into the sun to where Rupert was playing with flamboyance, throwing himself out of the saddle in an impressive display of gung-ho horsemanship. As he bent low, thwacking the ball, she saw that he was passing it to a fellow player who was, most definitely, female.

‘Who is she?' she asked, as the girl galloped unmarked down the field.

‘Serena Campbell-Thynne – her father is a former chairman of the Guards Polo Club. Oh, golly! Look! She's going to score! Go for goal, Serena!
Go for goal!
‘

To Artemis it suddenly seemed that everyone was shrieking Serena's name. As Serena whacked the ball straight through the posts there were screams of near hysterical delight from the girls clustered round the jeeps.

Artemis wasn't looking at the girls, though – or at Serena Campbell-Thynne. She was looking at her husband. He was standing in the stirrups, his polo shirt soaking wet, whooping like a schoolboy. She tried to remember when she'd last seen him looking so vividly alive and couldn't. Was it because he was where he liked to be best – on a polo field? Or was it something else?

The chukka ended and the players began cantering off the field to change their lathered ponies for fresh ones. ‘Brilliant, Serry!' she heard Rupert shout as, both of them still mounted, he pulled her towards him, giving her a smacking kiss. ‘Absolutely top-hole!'

‘They make a wonderful pair, don't they?' the woman at her side said fondly.

Artemis didn't make any response. She couldn't. She was too busy fighting a hideously familiar, sickening sensation deep in the pit of her stomach. Serena Campbell-Thynne was laughing across at Rupert, tugging off her riding hat. A sheaf of pale blond hair, tied into a ponytail, tumbled free. She said something to him, but what it was she couldn't hear. Then, as Serena dismounted, Artemis heard her call across to Rupert: ‘Don't get too complacent, Ru. There are still three chukkas to go!‘

Ru?
Ru?
In all the years she'd known him, she had never known anyone to shorten Rupert's name. Nor had she ever known him to affectionately shorten her name. He'd never called her Tem or Temmie. He'd always called her Artemis. But he'd called Serena Campbell-Thynne Serry and he'd kissed her in full view of everyone.

‘I first saw them playing in the same team a couple of months ago and was struck then by how beautifully they pass the ball between each other,' the woman was saying informatively. ‘It's not surprising they've both been chosen for the team that's off to Brazil next month, is it? Perhaps they intend having a beach wedding out there. That would be nice, wouldn't it?'

‘No,' she said, through lips that felt frozen. ‘I don't think so. He's married. He's been married for thirty-two years.'

‘So long? He must have married very young. He only looks to be in his late forties.'

The two teams of four were cantering back on to the ground, Rupert and Serena's ponies shoulder to shoulder.