The Pearl Necklace

The Pearl Necklace

Geraldine O’Hara

This
is a work of fiction. Any similarities to actual
events, places, or persons, dead or alive, are purely coincidental.

The Pearl Necklace

Copyright
©
Geraldine
O’Hara

Cover Art Design: Emmy Ellis

Visit Geraldine online @
www.emmyellis.com

Chapter One

Stop primping my hair. Please, just stop
primping my bloody hair!

I sighed,
fiddling with the strings of pearls around my neck. I had to get out of here,
away from the madness my life had become. Charlene, the hairdresser for the
evening chat show called
You
Ain’t
Seen Nothing Yet
, was yakking away in my ear
about facial scrubs while trying to force my thick, wavy black mass to stay in
a French pleat. A French pleat that didn’t suit me and made me look like
someone I wasn’t.
A posh person.

Posh, I
was not.

“Would you
mind if I just…” I looked up at her reflection in the mirror.

She
paused, tilted her glossy blonde head, and gave me one of her insane,
red-lipped smiles. She had those ultra-white teeth I’d been advised to get. You
know the kind, where when you show them you blind whoever is looking at you.

“Need a
tinkle?” she
asked,
her voice all girly and sweet.

Yes, I
needed a tinkle if it meant I could get away for five minutes. I nodded.
“Sorry, you know how it is.”

“Nerves
getting to you?” she asked, lowering her hands from my hair then resting one on
the top of my back.

Bless her,
she meant well, but I had the urge to run, to have some space without someone
always being there. Not only was I due to appear on TV for a ten-minute slot
from hell, I had the daily task of being guarded every minute, worried about
stalkers following me, and having my photo taken every chance the press got.
Which was often.
And how had this happened? How the bugger
had my life changed so quickly? I’d let off steam in the comments section of a
newspaper, that’s how, and someone in the know had spotted it and decided I was
to be their guinea pig. A normal woman dragged from her normal life into the
insanity of stardom, all because the creator of a wonder drug to help people
lose weight had chosen me to be their proof of the pudding.

I’d
blabbed, in my diatribe, that I didn’t think any drug would make me lose weight
no matter how many pretty pink pills I scoffed. I’d tried every diet
imaginable, sweated my tits off at the gym, and watched my calorie intake like
an overzealous hawk. And still I hadn’t kept the weight off. Yes, I’d lost
some, but the dreaded numbers on the scale had crept up again pretty sodding
quick
.

So they’d
chosen me to make a point. And, damn it, their pills had worked. I’d been able
to eat whatever I’d wanted while slimming down, and not having to get on the
treadmill or the hellish elliptical—designed by the devil in disguise, I’d
bet—had been a huge bonus. But then the book deal had come—someone had written
it for me, making up eighty-thousand words of crap about my wonder-pill
journey—and the endless rounds of TV appearances and radio shows had begun.
Then came the billboard photo shoot request, which had also appeared on the
sides of double-decker buses, and it seemed that everywhere I went I saw myself
plastered.

I could
only wish I
was
plastered. Being off
my face from downing a few G & T’s would suit me down to the ground right
now. But any goings-on like that were not on the menu. I’d stupidly signed the
contract without reading the small print, which stated that I had to be a
well-behaved ambassador, a smiley girl-next-door glamour puss who was the
picture of health.

In short,
a new life had begun.

At first,
it had been fun. Of course it had. Who wouldn’t like a bit of attention when
previously they’d hardly registered on anyone’s radar? Who wouldn’t enjoy free
manicures, pedicures, facials and whatever else they desired? Clothes, shoes,
perfume, hair dyes, face creams? I can honestly say that after about a month it
got boring. I’d started to realise I was losing myself at that point, that I
was being moulded into someone I wasn’t, and I longed to be how I was before, a
woman with a generous muffin top hanging over my waistband and tits the size of
party balloons. All right, they hadn’t been perky like they’d just been blown
up—they’d been at the stage where they were a bit soft, the party having ended
three days ago—but they’d been mine. Now, I sported a pair fresh from surgery,
which didn’t seek my armpits to hide in when I was lying down.

Crap. I
really had made a bit of a mess of things, and all I could do about it was
grizzle to
myself
until the contract was up.

“Nerves,”
I said to the hairdresser. “Yes.” Except I wasn’t suffering with nerves, more
that this whole situation was getting on them.

I stood
and walked out into a corridor, registering the bodyguard standing beside the
door. It was the fella who floated my boat and made me go
squiffy
in places he shouldn’t. I didn’t surreptitiously ogle him like I usually did,
though. I had to find a toilet where no one but Joe Public could hear me
weeing. There was something refreshing about the prospect of doing that over
knowing, if I’d used the loo in the dressing
room, that
the hairdresser would have had to stand there while a concerto resembling
Niagra
Falls played out.

I strode
down the hallway on too-high black heels that rubbed the backs of my feet and
squashed my toes. Wincing, I tried to appear as though everything was fine so
that the bodyguard, who was undoubtedly following me, wouldn’t ask, as he
usually did, if I needed anything. Oh, he was a
very
nice man, and I fancied him something rotten, but an affair
with him, no matter how much I fantasised about it, wasn’t going to happen. He
was just doing his job. No way on this earth did he fancy me
too.

“Do you
need anything, Miss Hillary?” he called.

“No thank
you,” I said, swaying my arse a bit, hoping his view of it was enhanced by the
tight black jeans I’d painted on myself earlier this evening. “And I’ve told
you before,
please
call me Sasha.” I smiled
to myself at the way his voice had sent shivers down my now-knobbly spine and a
splash of God-I-want-sex to my clit.

“I can’t
do that,” he said, coming abreast of me.

“Well,
that just bloody stinks,” I said, tottering along, checking at all the doors in
the hope I’d see a sign on one of them of a bald woman in a skirt with her arms
sticking out to her sides and her legs akimbo. No feet, no hands, just
round-ended limbs.

No such
sign was in sight, so at the end of the corridor I turned right into another,
getting the feeling this TV centre was a maze designed to keep all the stars
inside.

“Just like
I’m
not allowed to call you by
your
first name,” I said, glancing
across at him and smiling with my non-whitened teeth. “And come to think of it,
I don’t even know what that is.”

He gave me
a closed-mouth smile in return and didn’t offer me his name, so I had a good
look at him to see if I could match it to who he appeared to be. Brawny—had to
be for his job—wide as a bloody barn with muscles stacked upon muscles beneath
his black suit and crisp white shirt. His dark hair, a short back and sides but
with a trendy longer piece at the front that he waxed upwards, wasn’t anything
I’d be able to run my fingers through while he fucked me against the wall. That
was just one of my daydreams about him, one of the many I entertained while
sitting bored out of my wits in between guest appearances. Those visions passed
the time nicely.

“You look
like a Henry,” I said.
“Or a Mark.
Maybe even a
Justin.”

“I’m not two
of those,” he said, grinning.

“So which
one are you? Won’t you tell me?” I stopped walking and stared at him, hands on
hips, and cocked my head. “Please? I won’t ever use it.” I smiled. “Not when
anyone else is around anyway.”

He shook
his head. “It’s not a name I’m fond of. Just choose whatever you think suits me
best.”

I studied
him.
Henry, Mark or Justin?
I didn’t go for any of
them. “Bob. I think I’ll call you Bob.” He wasn’t to know that would work well
when I was in bed using my
BOB, that
I could actually
cry out when coming.
Oh, Bob. Bob! You’re
so hard!

“Bob?” He
frowned then shook his head. “Where are you going, by the way? I was told to
wait outside for you then escort you to studio four.” He moved to take out the
walkie-talkie sitting in the top pocket of his jacket.

“Don’t,” I
said. “I just need to visit the ladies’ room.”

“Oh right.
Wasn’t there one in the dressing room, then?”

“Yes, but
I want to use a different one.”

“Ah.”

He smiled
sheepishly, a blush creeping into his cheeks—so damn cute—and I realised then
that he may well have thought that I didn’t just need a wee.

“Sometimes
I just like to pee where
I
want to
pee,” I said, making sure he understood.

“I see.”

“Yes,
well, it’s the little things that please me.” I sighed. “And choosing where I
go to the toilet is one of them. I have to have some form of control
somewhere.” I huffed out a laugh. “Not that I get much of that. This is my life
now, and I just need to deal with it.” I smiled brightly and walked on, my big
toe throbbing. I wondered what his cock would feel like throbbing in my hand
then shoved the thought away. I could think about him later when I was finally
alone. Imagine his hardness, his balls of meaty goodness, all ready for me to
kiss and lick and suck and…

I cleared
my throat, shook my head.

“Something
wrong?” he asked, striding beside me.

“No, no,
I’m absolutely fine.” I gave him another smile then turned left at the end of
the corridor.

At last,
an open space much like an airport waiting area, where people sat on chairs at
round white tables sipping coffee or tea and munching on snacks. I spotted the
woman who’d appeared on that jungle reality show. She’d eaten kangaroo bollocks
in order to earn her group a treat to go with their bland rice for dinner. She
was tanned, blonde, and her make-up hid all the blackheads I’d noticed while
she’d been in the jungle in the confession shack. The camera had zoomed in
close and showed her natural look in all its basic glory. Oh, the miracles of make-up.

I wondered,
as I walked towards a café hatch, if she felt the same as me, dressed up like a
Barbie by puppet masters, living a life where I had no privacy and everything I
ever did became front-page news the next day. Just last week there had been a
feature on her because she’d bought one of those dogs in a bag. You know the
kind, small animals that fitted snugly in your Yves Saint Laurent, carried
about as an accessory rather than a pet. I’d been urged by management to buy
one myself, although my little
Pippa
, a pug with
attitude, had become one of my best friends. She kept me company at night and
listened while I prattled on about not wanting to do this or that. I half
expected her to answer back and tell me to be bloody grateful for what I had.

At the
hatch, I watched the young woman behind the counter in sympathy—and with more
than a touch of envy. She appeared harassed, mousy hair spilling out from
beneath her white cap, and looked as though she’d like to wrench the coffee
machine off the wall as it spurted hot steam into her face. What I wouldn’t
give to be her at this moment,
a nobody
that no one
gave a shit about. Bob stood at my side, his arm against mine, his scent—
Joop
if I wasn’t mistaken—wafting all over me. My hole
leaked a bit, and I had to take a deep breath to get myself under control. Damn
thing was like a faucet whenever he was around.

She turned
and gave me a brilliant smile. “Oh! It’s you.
The Pink Pill
Diet Woman.”

Yes, it
was me, the bloody Pink Pill Diet Woman, a tag the newspapers had given me when
I’d first shot to stardom. Now, they called me Glamour Girl or other similar
names, which made
me
feel a bit daft because I was no
bugger’s dream girl.

“Yes,” I
said. “Would you mind telling me where the ladies’ room is?”

She moved
from the coffee machine to stand directly behind the counter, pressing her
hands to it and leaning forward as though to get a better look at me. “Does the
pill
really
work?”

If I had a
penny for every time I’d been asked that question, I’d be richer than the
blackhead-riddled jungle lover at the table behind me.

“Yes, it
does,” I said, something I was paid to say, but would have said anyway because
it was the truth. Before I had to go into detail about the drug, I went on, “The
ladies’ room?”

“Oh yes.
Just along there look.” She pointed to my left.

There it
was,
the sign on the door I’d been searching for.

“Ah, thank
you so much!”

I walked
away, Bob trailing me, and went inside the restroom knowing he’d be right there
when I came out. I glanced around and smiled at the thought of escaping, just strutting
out and going incognito for a few days, where no one knew where I was or what I
was doing.