Tough Love (12 page)

‘I think you can guess, can't you?' Leanne said.

‘So Kia's Jay Leighton's, then? Fuck me.' Markie shook his head.

Leanne knew what he was thinking. His little niece, whom he loved to pieces, her dad just happened to be the best footballer to come out of Britain in the last twenty years and one half of the country's most famous couple. ‘I bet you're thinking I was a right star-struck silly cow, aren't you?'

‘Did you see that goal against Barcelona in the Cup Final in 1999? I'd have shagged him!' Markie chortled.

Leanne's stomach knotted. ‘Thanks.'

‘Lee, I'm sorry, I was only joking.' He went over to her and gave her a hug.

Leanne burst into tears. ‘You're the first person I've ever told and then you make a joke of it. I just wanted your advice and you're doing what I bet everyone else will do when they find out – laugh at me!'

‘Aw, come on, I didn't mean it,' Markie said, stroking her hair.

Leanne pulled back. ‘Kia and I don't need Jay. We never have. But I didn't go with him just because he was famous.' She leant back in the chair and began the story. Markie listened, intrigued.

When Leanne was eighteen she had been in a club in London with other models signed to Figurz Management when a guy she took to be a doorman had approached her. He asked if she would come upstairs to one of the private rooms. Immediately assuming she had done something wrong, she had followed him up three flights of stairs.

When she arrived at a door he had let her in and shut it behind her. Leanne had wondered what was going on until she heard a voice from the corner of the darkened room. ‘Hi.'

‘Hi,' she had replied nervously.

Suddenly a light had been flicked on and, to Leanne's surprise, Jay Leighton was standing in front of her. She knew all about Jay. Bradington wasn't far from Manchester and he was, at the time, Manchester Rovers' number-one player – her brother Scott idolised him. He was also very good-looking which was why Leanne and legions of other women knew who he was.

‘I'm sorry to bring you up here like this, but, well, I wanted to get you on your own.' He had
smiled shyly. Had someone suggested to Leanne that this unlikely situation might ever arise, she would have told them that she'd ask him where his wife was. But she didn't. She was captivated.

Jay poured Leanne a glass of champagne and she had stayed, talking to him, until the early hours. He told her she shouldn't believe all she read in the papers but he didn't mention Lisa. At the end of the night he had kissed her lips and asked his driver to drop her home. He had promised to call and he had. They always met in secret, private rooms in private members' bars, hotels where he booked in as Mr A. Bennett.

He had told her several times that it was only a matter of time before he and Lisa split up, but there was always another lucrative
Hello!
spread to do or another charity football gig that he and Lisa had agreed to. Leanne believed him when he said he loved her, when he said his marriage was stale, that he wanted to be with her, and only her.

The affair lasted less than four months, but that was long enough for Leanne to fall for him. It was intense, heady and she was swept along by it. When she found out she was pregnant she had panicked. But then, she reasoned, Jay would be OK about it. He was leaving Lisa soon – and they were living separate lives anyway. Lisa was always off filming, and he split his time between Manchester and London.

Jay had hit the roof and demanded that she have an abortion. It was the first time Leanne had seen this side of him and it scared her. He told her Lisa would kill him, that it would ruin everything for him. Leanne couldn't believe what she was hearing. She told him she wanted nothing more to do with him. And from that day until the rumours started to circulate that Jay might not be the devoted husband he appeared, she hadn't.

‘So you've not seen him since?'

‘Once. At a film première. He does this really intense stare, like he's trying to psych you out. I just stared back.'

‘Glad to hear it.'

‘And everything was all right – well, not great, but me and Kia ticked along, working out what to do, and then the other week …' Leanne began to sob again.

‘Go on.'

She told him about the man pretending to deliver something, then threatening her.

‘
What
?' His eyes sparked with fury.

‘I don't know if he sent him …'

‘I'll have that fucker killed.'

Leanne laughed at the absurdity of the notion. ‘Jay Leighton? Bloody hell, Markie, that's never going to happen.'

Markie stared at her. ‘If anything happens to you, we'll see how serious I am,' he said.

‘I've agreed to meet Lisa,' she said, hanging her head.

‘Why?' Markie was incredulous. ‘You don't owe that bitch anything.'

‘Maybe not. But I want to hear what she's got to say. After years of silence it might be about Jay and Kia.'

‘Yeah, and she might want to stick the fucking knife in.'

Leanne grabbed his hand. ‘Markie, will you come with me? Not to meet her, just stay in the car, see that nothing happens.'

Markie nodded. ‘OK, if you want me to. But if she lays a finger on you I'll be back inside – but this time for murder.'

*

Tracy gazed at Kent with contempt. He was feeding his parrots, Elvis and Presley, and singing ‘Love Me Tender' to them. Tracy had taught one to say ‘piss off', but at a time when it should have been most forthcoming, it was mute. It even seemed to be enjoying Kent's strangled rendition. He turned, dusting bird food off his hands, then pointed both index fingers at Tracy and sang, ‘For my darling, I love you, and …'

‘Kent.' Tracy arched an eyebrow. He went on singing. ‘Kent!' she shouted.

He looked at her blankly. ‘I thought you liked my Elvis.'

‘Me and you need to have a word,' she said, sparking up a cigarette. ‘Sit down.' She waved at the armchair opposite where she was standing.

Kent sat. ‘What's wrong, babe?' he asked.

His hang-dog expression made her want to slap his face. ‘Me and you. That's what's wrong.' Tracy exhaled a long plume of smoke.

‘But we're perfect, aren't we, doll?'

‘No, “doll”, we're not. You've been swanning around here like you own the place, and I've been fetching and carrying for you for too long.' Even Tracy couldn't quite believe she had said this. She didn't fetch and carry anything.

‘What you on about? I do all the housework!' Kent exclaimed.

‘There you go, shouting the odds,' Tracy said, with a sigh, as if this was just part and parcel of what she had to put up with.

‘Course I'm shouting. You're acting up, saying there's something wrong with me and you, when me and you are all I've got,' Kent said, as if he hadn't a clue what she was talking about.

Tracy was sick of feeling sorry for him. The hearts-and-flowers days had long gone and she wanted a real man – a man who could provide for her, not just play soppy songs on a community radio station, then sign on the sick for his weekly
crust. ‘“Me and you are all I've got”?' she echoed. ‘Me and you are all you've been arsed to get, you mean. You never see any of your old mates. I'm beginning to think you haven't got any. And you're stuck in this house day in, day out …'

‘You've always said you liked having me around,' Kent expostulated.

Tracy's jaw set. What Kent had said was true, but she wanted to swing things round to the way she saw them, and she could swear black was white if it meant getting her own way. ‘“Around” as in being near me, not under my feet.'

‘But I love you, Trace. I thought being under your feet was where you liked me,' he whined.

Tracy was losing her rag. Give me strength, she thought. What did she have to do to get a blazing row out of the man? Set fire to him?

‘Well, I don't love you, Kent, not any more,' she said, and meant it. He got on her nerves. He'd been good for a time, but now he had to go.

Kent steadied himself on the armchair. He was visibly crumbling. ‘You can't do this to me, not after all we've been through.'

‘What have we been through, Kent? Two trips to Magaluf and a tattoo apiece. It isn't exactly
Romeo and Juliet
.' He was making her scoff at him now, but Tracy couldn't help herself.

‘You said those tattoos meant we'd be together for ever,' Kent said desperately, grabbing at his
trouser belt, wanting to reveal the one on his bum cheek that read ‘T&K'.

‘Yeah, well, me, Blackpool and being pissed is not a good combination.' Tracy shuddered as he dropped his trousers. ‘Pull your pants up, I've seen it.' She sighed. She decided to take a different tack. ‘Look, the thing is, I don't want to hurt you, Kent, I just want you to understand that it's finished. I don't know any other way to do this other than be honest with you.'

‘We've got a home together, a life together.' He fell into a chair and began to cry.

‘I want you out of here. Tonight. It's the only way.'

‘And what if I say I'm not going?' The tears had gone. Now he was sulking, like a scolded child.

Tracy thought for a moment. ‘I'd say I'm calling our Markie.'

*

Much later that evening, Tracy was tucking into her wine box, feeling mournful about her and Kent. He had gathered some of his belongings and said he was going to stay with his brother on the other side of Bradington. He'd told Tracy she'd change her mind, and when she did it might be too late, but Tracy didn't think so. She put on the song he always played for her, ‘Ma Chérie Amour' by Stevie Wonder and cried into her drink. When the song
had finished she poured some more, hit play and cried all over again. After about an hour she felt she'd got something, she wasn't sure what, out of her system. She grabbed her phone, scrolled to Paul's number and pressed call.

‘Hello.'

‘Just wondering if you were doing anything tonight,' she said innocently.

‘I thought you might call this week.'

Tracy knew that that was a veiled dig, but she brushed it aside. She had a thick skin.

*

What is this place? Lisa thought, as she drove through Bradington to where she was meant to meet Leanne. No one was following her, she was sure. It wasn't as hard to lose the paparazzi as she often made out it was. All she did was ask her bodyguard to leave his wife's car at a service station on the outskirts of Manchester. There, she had pulled up in her Bentley GT, gone inside, changed in the toilets, walked out and jumped into the Avensis that was waiting for her. Bob's your uncle. Bodyguard's wife gets the GT for the afternoon, Lisa gets a car that won't be followed.

Lisa looked at the sat nav. It indicated that she was less than a mile away from the school where she had agreed to meet Leanne.

She was nervous, which was unusual now. In the early days stage fright had been a problem before she did a live performance. She had once presented
A Song for Europe
and fluffed her lines. Her heart had been pounding but she'd managed to pull things round. Yet now she was driving anonymously through a small northern town and feeling more anxious than she ever had in any of the major cities of the world she had visited in the public eye.

Lisa pulled the car over to the kerb. ‘St Blaise High School', the sign read. She fixed her makeup in the rear-view mirror and then, pulling her bag to her chest, she stepped out of the car. In the distance she could see a small figure with blonde hair sitting on a bench. ‘Leanne Crompton,' she said to herself, as she began to walk down the hill to the school playing-fields.

Contrary to popular belief, Lisa had been in the same room as Leanne just once. The press conjured up an image of the celebrity world, in which everyone knows everyone else and they all go to the same places like one big happy family, but the truth was, Lisa knew what Leanne looked like from the pictures she had seen of her in the papers. The one time they had nearly met had been excruciating for all concerned.

It had been at a film première, a big American blockbuster starring Tom Cruise. He had done his usual three-hour autograph-signing outside the
Odeon in London's Leicester Square and the attendant guests had had to wait inside, drinking warm wine and eating second-rate nibbles.

Lisa and Jay had arrived later than most people, because they were nearly as big a draw as Mr Cruise. Nobody had warned them that Leanne would be there.

The couple had walked in to a warm round of applause, started by the general public and taken up half-heartedly by the celebrities, and Lisa had caught her eye. Leanne Crompton was with the little girl whom Leanne knew, Lisa and Jay knew, and most of the British public suspected, was Jay's.

Jay had assured Lisa that he had looked through Leanne. Lisa had snapped that he might have thought to ‘look through' her when he'd first met her. After that, it had been painful to sit through a two-hour film and attend the drinks party afterwards. Thankfully Leanne had had the good grace to go home before the party.

Lisa neared the bench where Leanne was sitting. She looked smaller than Lisa remembered. She was wearing a simple white shirt, blue jeans and a pair of shades, with her hair tied back in a pony-tail.

‘Leanne,' Lisa said flatly. Leanne stood up to greet her. The women didn't shake hands, just looked at one another.

‘Lisa,' Leanne said, matching Lisa's tone.

‘Thank you for coming.'

‘I don't think we need to start off with pleasantries, do we? What do you want?' Leanne asked, sounding tired.

Lisa looked around furtively. ‘Are you wearing a wire?' she asked.

‘Am I what?' Leanne burst out laughing.

‘A wire. You know what I mean.'

‘You've got a high opinion of yourself. It's not
The
bloody
Sopranos
, you know.'