The Queen of New Beginnings (33 page)

“A child? You have a daughter?”

Isabel’s face shone with happy pride. “Yes, what’s more, she looks very like you, Alice. She has your father’s blonde hair, mine too, but her eyes are dark just like yours and she has the very same smile. That’s why I keep staring at you.”

“I can’t believe it. My father had another child. All these years and I never knew. I’m…I’m stunned.”

“Would you like to meet her?”

Alice’s eyes widened. “You’re not going to say she’s been sitting in your car all this time while we’ve been chatting?”

Isabel laughed. “Of course not! She’s at school right now. Her best friend’s mother is picking her up—” Isabel looked at her watch, “—in about an hour. She’s staying the night with them so I don’t have to rush back.”

“Eleven years old,” murmured Alice. “I can’t take it in. Does she know about me?”

“Most definitely. She wanted to come here with me today but I thought it would be better to wait before the two of you met. You do want to meet her, don’t you?”

Alice nodded mutely. A sister. She had a sister. She had lost her father, but she had gained a sister. It was too much to take in. “Do you have a photograph?” she asked.

Again Isabel smiled as she reached for her bag and fished out a cream leather wallet about the size of a paperback. She gave it to Alice.

“She’s lovely,” was all Alice could say after she had studied the two photographs.

“And why wouldn’t she be when she looks so like you?”

Alice raised her head sharply. “I’m not lovely. I’m the least lovely person alive. I deliberately pushed my father away. I…I hated him for leaving me the way he did. I wanted to punish him so much. And he must have hated me for what I did to him.” She put a hand over her mouth but it did nothing to stop her from breaking down and crying.

Isabel put her arms round Alice. “Oh, Alice,” she said softly, “he never hated you, not for a single moment. He loved you. He loved you unconditionally. Nothing you did could have ever changed that.”

• • •

Clayton was wondering how things were going up in Derbyshire. Late last night, Isabel had telephoned to explain that Alice had been in touch with her and that a meeting had been arranged. She had promised to ring him to let him know how it had gone. He hoped that the meeting would have a positive outcome. The last thing he needed was yet more blame hurled in his direction. Although in all probability he had heard the last from Alice. Be it blame or otherwise.

After the way he had treated her yesterday at the hospital, he considered himself fortunate not to have ended up in the A and E department. During the train journey home he had regretted his cruelly detached manner towards her and had wanted repeatedly to call her on his mobile to repair the damage. But that would have only muddied the waters. He had to stand firm and believe that cutting the tie with Alice, and thereby giving her a lucky break, was the one decent thing he was going to get right in his life.

Oh, very sporting of you
, murmured Captain Sensible.
Very altruistic. A pity you didn’t listen to me in the first place!

Go to hell! Clayton fired back. He screwed up the piece of paper he’d been doodling on and chucked it at the wastepaper bin. As with all the other pieces of screwed up paper he’d thus far thrown, it fell wide of its target.

He was trying to write.

And he was failing miserably.

It was just like it used to be. No matter what he did, the words just wouldn’t come. Not the way he needed them to. He had tried cheating his brain. I’m not writing, he’d told himself, I’m merely making notes.

Notes.

That was all.

Nothing creative.

Nothing to get excited about.

Nothing that was of any importance.

Except it was. It bloody well was important! It meant everything to him. Without it he was like a marathon runner who’d had both his legs chopped off at the knee. Or how about a pianist who’d lost both his hands in a saw mill accident?

He grimaced. He could do without the gruesome images, thank you very much. If that was the best he could manage creatively, then he should end it all now.

He sighed heavily, lifted his feet up onto his desk, tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. There was a crack directly above him. He followed its trajectory towards the window. How long had that been there? Was it serious? Was it a sign of subsidence? Should he get someone in to take a look at it?

He sighed again and wondered what to do next by way of displacement activity. He could only sit here for so long pretending he was writing. He thought of the letters he had yet to reply to regarding
The Queen of New Beginnings
and tried to summon the enthusiasm to deal with them.

One letter in particular stuck in his mind. He snapped forward in his chair and rummaged through the overflowing in-tray. Eventually he found the letter he was looking for: the one from Bazza. He read through it and pondered his old friend’s postscript. Had he meant it? Or had it been one of those superficial, showbizzy, throw-away remarks made by the kind of people Bazza now hung out with? He forced his brain to remember Bazza from the old days; the Bazza who would no more have gone all luvvie on him than he would have…would have slept with a mate’s long-term girlfriend.

He rubbed his unshaven chin and let out a long, deep noise that could have been mistaken for the growl of a bear suffering from chronic toothache and being prodded with a stick. What a colossal cock-up his life had turned out to be. Could he get nothing right?

How ironic it was that so many people had written to him after watching
The Queen of New Beginnings
and described him as being extraordinarily insightful and perceptive. What a joke that was when it came to understanding himself. He was a mess. A total screwball of contradictions and self-interest. He couldn’t think of a single redeeming feature that he was in possession of.

Now that had to take some doing. That would go down well in his obituary.

And how long was it since he had thought about his obituary? He couldn’t remember the last time. Feeling unexpectedly nostalgic for his old hobby, he lowered his feet from his desk, sat up and pulled his laptop towards him. If nothing else, writing the announcement of his own death never used to let him down.

Clayton Miller, one of the country’s top comedy script writers—

No, delete that; after
The Queen of New Beginnings
he was no longer confined to comedy:

One of the country’s foremost comedy drama script writers has sadly died at his home in London. His decomposing body was found slumped over his desk in his squalor-filled study three weeks after his death. It is thought that the ceiling had fallen in on him. The police were called when neighbours complained of a foul smell emanating from his dilapidated house. “It was the filthy windows covered in bluebottles on the inside that caught my attention,” claimed one neighbour. “I didn’t like the look of that at all.”

Clayton stopped writing.

What in hell’s name was he doing? What new madness had he succumbed to? Was this how he now saw his demise? Alone and friendless; so marginalized from society that it would be weeks before anyone noticed his absence?

Was this colossal self-pity or a warning that he should get a grip?

The latter, he decided.

And that decided, he made another decision. He would ring Glen and suggest they have dinner. He would do it now.

But there was no answer from Glen. Kate, the latest in a long line of pretty assistants, who were becoming exponentially younger as Glen grew older, explained that he was tied up in meetings for the rest of the day. Picturing his decomposing body and all those bluebottles, Clayton was tempted to ask Kate out for dinner, but she rang off before he had the chance to prove what a desperate, gold-plated idiot he really was.

His gaze fell on Bazza’s letter.

Moments passed.

Why not?

Why not have a reconciliatory drink with Bazza? What harm could it do?

• • •

Bazza had suggested a bar in Covent Garden and Clayton strongly suspected that an alcoholic beverage or two may have already passed Bazza’s lips before Clayton arrived. He himself had considered knocking back a large quantity of Dutch courage before leaving the house and he regretted not having done so; being so wired he was in danger of doing or saying something very foolish.

Dressed in a hideous brown linen suit—the colour reminded Clayton of the lumps of clay he’d tried to turn into ashtrays and coil pots during pottery classes at school—Bazza rose unsteadily from his chair and stuck out his hand. “S’brilliant that you made it,” he slurred. His hair was dishevelled as if he’d encountered a force-ten gale on the way from Notting Hill and his shirt was unbuttoned one button too low; a mat of grizzled chest hairs spilled out.

Clayton shook hands with him. It felt a very peculiar thing to do. He couldn’t recall ever shaking hands with Bazza before. How could two people who had once been so close—they’d even shared a bed for a month in the first bed-sit they’d rented together—be reduced to acting so formally, like a couple of business associates?

More to the point, why was Bazza three sheets to the wind and looking such a mess?

“You look well, Clay,” Bazza said. “What do you fancy to drink? I’ve made a start on some wine.” He indicated the near-empty bottle of Sancerre on the table.

“I’ll get us another,” Clayton said, thinking that apart from Glen, Bazza was the only other person who had called him Clay. He attracted the attention of a waiter straight away, an almost unprecedented feat for him, and ordered a second bottle. Meanwhile, Bazza refilled his own glass and drank thirstily from it.

“S’how have you been?” he asked when he’d drained his glass.

“So, so,” Clayton replied. “How about you?”

“Oh, me, I’m fine. I’m doin’ just fine. Life is tippety-top. Never been better. Bloody fantastic. Got it all goin’ on.”

“Right,” said Clayton awkwardly. “I’m really pleased for you.”

Bazza looked over the top of Clayton’s head towards the bar. “That waiter is taking his time with the wine, isn’t he?”

This, thought Clayton, is going to be an interesting evening.

Their waiter materialized, opened bottle and glass in hand. He poured their wine and left them alone.

“To old friends,” Bazza said, his glass already against his mouth.

“To old friends,” Clayton echoed quietly, not a little bemused. “Thank you for your letter,” he said. “It was good of you to bother.”

Bazza swatted the air with his hand. “Meant every word of what I said. You wrote a bloody good script.” He leaned forward, placed his elbows on the table. “Bloody good script, in fact. Better than anything I’ve ever written.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. You’ve done some great work.”

“Crap! All crap. All meaningless crap. Yours had substance. It had a depth of integrity I can only ever dream of. Hats off to you, Clay. You did good. I’m proud of you.”

As much as Signor Ego could spend the entire evening and long into the night lapping up this kind of praise, Clayton had to put a stop to it. It was making him queasy. “What’s wrong, Bazza?”

Bazza leaned back heavily in his chair. “Wrong? What could possibly be wrong with me? I’ve got it all.”

“So why do you look and sound so damned pissed off?”

Bazza shook his head. “Don’t know what you mean.”

“Come on, Bazza, I know you better than anyone. Something’s up with you. You don’t get drunk. You’re like me, a lightweight when it comes to booze. A couple of Babychams and you’d be nodding off in the corner of the room. What’s going on?”

“You really want to know? You care? After what I did to you?”

“As strange as this may seem, I do care.”

Bazza put down his glass. “You promise you’ll keep this to yourself? I really can’t afford for this to get out.”

Clayton nodded. “I promise.”

“My life has turned to shit. I’ve got writer’s block and a bitch of a girlfriend who seems to think she can resolve the world’s financial crisis by patronizing every sodding shop in town with my money.
My
money, Clay.
My
hard-earned money.”

Clayton blinked.

And blinked again. He didn’t know how to react. Only a short while ago he would have been punching the air that Bazza had got his comeuppance.

But he’d never felt less like cheering. He felt nothing but pity for his old friend. He topped up their glasses. “Bazza,” he said, “welcome to my world.”

The wine flowed. As did Bazza’s confessions.

Clayton listened to his old friend describing how his life with Stacey had become a waking nightmare.

She’d sucked every last ounce of creativity out of him.

She was bleeding him dry.

She was obsessed with sex.

He was a pathetic husk of the man he’d once been.

“All she cares about,” Bazza said, leaning in so close to Clayton their heads were touching like lovers, “is fame and celebrity. She’s hired her very own PR firm, got some woman working for her who’s on a mission to make a name for herself. I don’t think I can take much more of it.”

“Then don’t,” Clayton said. “End it. If I recall, you’re rather good at ending partnerships.”

Bazza looked at him blearily. “Ouch, man. That hurts.”

“The truth always does.”

“You’re still cross with me?”

“Wouldn’t you still be cross if you were me?”

“I’m sorry, Clay. I got it wrong. Horribly wrong.”

“So why not just tell her it’s over?”

“Because I’m terrified how she’ll make it play in the press if I back out of the wedding now.”

“You make her sound like Lady Macbeth.”

“Oh, dear God, believe me, she’s far worse. How did you make things work with her for as long as you did?”

“I was too idle to do anything about it. I just let her get on with it. It seemed easier that way. Confrontation has never been my thing.”

“I’m beginning to realize I’m not much cop at it, either.”

“Better start learning if you want to keep your sanity.”

Bazza groaned. “I can just see her PR machine swinging into gear. It’ll be Heather and Macca all over again. I’ll be accused of God knows what. Wife beater. Paedophile. Cross dresser. Tory voter. My career will be over.”

“Just like mine was.”

Again Bazza stared at him with bleary, bloodshot eyes. “But you bounced back.”

“Yeah, that’s right, I bounced back. Just like that. It was a piece of cake.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What are you actually sorry for, Bazza? For breaking up our partnership? Or for sleeping with Stacey behind my back?”

“For more than you’ll ever know. C’mon, let’s have another bottle of wine. This one’s run dry on us.”

• • •

Clayton was a bottle of wine behind Bazza and was marginally the more capable of the two when they staggered outside to hail a cab. When they had one, Clayton helped Bazza into it. He was just giving the cab driver Bazza’s address when Bazza said, “Clay, you’re not leavin’ me, are you? Please come back home with me.”

The cab driver winked at Clayton. “Looks like it’s your lucky night, mate, you’ve pulled.”

“I get it all the time,” Clayton said, “it must be my sweet face.”

The cab driver laughed. Then he looked at Clayton more closely. “Hang on, don’t I know you?” He swivelled round to look at Bazza. “Him too.”

“I doubt it. We’re hardly likely to move in the same circles, are we? Now, are you going to drive my friend home or not?”

The cab driver’s expression hardened. “You people are all the same. You get yourself on the telly and you think you can treat the rest of us like dirt! Well, you can get your friend out of my cab. I ain’t driving him nowhere!”

Swearing loudly, Clayton manhandled Bazza out of the back of the cab and propped him against a lamppost while he waited for another taxi to show. Just as one drew up and lowered its window, Bazza groaned and vomited messily just inches away from the vehicle. The driver cursed and drove off.

“And for your next party trick?” Clayton said with a sigh. He found a small packet of tissues in his pocket and tried his best to wipe Bazza down.

“Sorry,” Bazza murmured, “I never could hold my drink.” He staggered and Clayton caught hold of him before he fell into the gutter. “You will come home with me, won’t you?”

“I’m not convinced that’s one of your finest ideas, Bazza. Not with Stacey around.”

“She’s away. C’mon, come back with me. We could pick up a curry on the way. It’ll be like old times.”

Clayton winced at the thought of the putrid mess he’d have to clean up if Bazza was sick after a curry. “OK,” he said, “I’ll come back with you, but let’s skip the curry.”

Bazza put his arm around him. “You’re a good friend. The best.”

“Yeah, you’ll be telling me next that you love me.”

Bazza patted Clayton’s cheek clumsily. “And I do. Really. That’s why I regret what we did.”

“All water under the bridge.”

“But it’s not. Not for me, anyway. Not until I tell—”

“Hey, we’re in luck,” Clayton interrupted him, “here’s a taxi. Try not to look so drunk. And whatever you do, no throwing up now.”

• • •

They made it to Notting Hill without mishap and after Clayton had paid the driver, he helped Bazza up the steps to his front door. “Is the alarm on?” he asked, taking the bunch of keys from Bazza’s unsteady hand and inserting the right one into the lock.

“Always is.”

“I’ll see to it.”

Bazza made no comment when they were inside and Clayton was tapping in the code; instead he stumbled in the direction of the kitchen. Clayton caught up with him and watched him select a bottle of wine from the rack. Clayton took it from him. “Maybe we should pass on that,” he said.

Bazza frowned. “When did you get to be so boringly sensible and grown up?”

“Only in the last few hours. In any case, it’s all relative; one man’s sensible behaviour is another’s wacky race. How about some coffee?”

“No. I don’t want coffee. It’ll sober me up and I don’t want to be sober. I want to stay drunk for ever.”

“A genius plan if ever I heard one.”

“Don’t mock me, Clayton. I’m on the edge here. One push and it’ll all be over.”

“And since when did you get to be so melodramatic?”

“Since I started dancing with the devil.” Bazza suddenly slumped heavily against the nearest wall. He covered her head with his hands and started to moan as if he was in pain.

Concerned, Clayton said, “Bazza, how about I get you upstairs to bed. You strike me as a man who’s had a long day.”

“I told you, I’m a man on the edge.” He lowered his hands and tried to focus on Clayton’s face. His eyes were wobbling all over the place. “I have to confess something to you,” he said. “If I don’t, I might just lose what little reason I still have.”

“Fine. You do that; I’ll be your father confessor. But first, let’s get you upstairs.”

“OK, but you have to promise to listen to me. And not judge me too harshly afterwards. OK? You promise?”

“Yeah, yeah, I promise.”

Like a dazed child being taken home after a particularly boisterous party, Bazza allowed Clayton to help him up the stairs. On the landing he seemed to have difficulty locating his bedroom and dithered between two closed doors. Clayton pushed one door open and Bazza recoiled from it as though the bogeyman himself was hiding inside the room. “No!” he cried. “Don’t make me sleep in there!”

Curious, Clayton peered round the white painted door. It looked very much like Bazza and Stacey’s bedroom, going by the clothes strewn over the back of a chaise longue and the ton of make-up covering the dressing table. Behind him on the other side of the landing, Bazza was struggling to work the handle on the opposite door. “I’ll sleep in here,” he said.

“Allow me.” Clayton turned the handle and pushed the door open for Bazza to go inside. It bore all the hallmarks of a very plush spare room. The bed, complete with a pale peach canopy of silk, was made up with the kind of bed linen, cushions and eiderdown Clayton would never have been trusted to come in contact with when Stacey had been in charge of running their house together. Magazines had been artfully placed on bedside tables, along with boxes of tissues and upside-down water glasses. With vases of silk flowers dotted about the room, it looked very much like a five-star hotel bedroom. Or worse, something artfully prepared for a photo shoot for
Hello!
A copy of which just happened to be on one of the bedside tables. It was a very alien environment to Clayton and he thanked his lucky stars he’d never been subjected to such a hellish place.

Bazza shrugged off his jacket, let it drop to the floor and went straight to the bed where he threw himself on it. Lying on his back, his legs hanging off the side of the bed, the heels of his shoes bounced on the carpet. Clayton bent down and eased off his shoes. He then swung Bazza’s legs up onto the bed. He spied an expensive-looking papier-mâché wastepaper bin next to a chest of drawers and placed it on the floor beside the bed. He drew Bazza’s attention to it. “Keep your aim true,” he said. “We don’t want Stacey ticking you off for puking on the carpet.”

Bazza groaned. “Don’t remind me of her!”

Anxious that Bazza might have got an important detail wrong, Clayton said, “When do you expect Stacey back?”

“Tomorrow.” And then Bazza did something Clayton would never have dreamed possible; Bazza started to cry. Not a discreet little I’m-all-choked-up kind of cry, but an explosive all-out wail. It’s the booze, thought Clayton.

Bazza turned onto his side. “Clay!” he howled. “Come closer.”

Clayton did.

“Closer,” Bazza implored him.

He reluctantly got down onto his knees so that his face was on the same level as Bazza’s; the smell of vomit had him leaning away.

“Clay,” Bazza said, “I’ve got to tell you something. It’s important.”

“Can it wait until you’re feeling more like yourself?”

“No! I have to tell you now.” He sniffed loudly and very snottily. “You weren’t responsible for Stacey’s miscarriage,” he said.

“What?”

“Losing the baby had nothing to do with you.”

“But you told me it was all my fault. You phoned me. You were furious. You told the press. You—”

“It wasn’t Stacey who got the electric shock. It was me. And it wasn’t that bad. Whatever caused Stacey to miscarry, it wasn’t anything to do with you. Maybe it was the flight coming back from L.A. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. But her losing the baby was nothing but a coincidence.”

Clayton was struggling to make sense of what he was hearing. “So why did you blame me?”

“It was Stacey’s idea. I went along with it because I was as mad as hell with you for getting into our house and putting those bloody awful things in our garden. Then, when later that evening Stacey realized she was losing the baby, I was so upset I wasn’t thinking straight. I really wanted that child and I needed someone to blame. When it was official that Stacey had miscarried, the first thing she said was that she blamed you. I just took it from there. Of course, once the story started to roll it gathered its own momentum and there was no going back.”

“You let the press hound me,” Clayton said quietly.

“It was Stacey. She made me swear that I would stick to the story.”

“You publicly humiliated me at every chance you got.” Clayton’s voice was low. “You as good as destroyed me. You could have stopped it. But you didn’t. The pair of you sat back and let me suffer. Every opportunity you got, you drove home another nail in my coffin.”

Bazza nodded. “It’s all true. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? Is that it?”

“What else can I do or say?”

Clayton got to his feet. He looked down at his old friend with disgust. “If you don’t know the answer to that, then I give up on you. And there was me thinking I was as low as it gets. Why, I’m a rank amateur compared to you.”