Tough Love (21 page)

‘Twenty pence for a pee. Cheek,' Jodie said.

Leanne walked to the mirror and checked her reflection. She prodded the non-existent bags under her eyes and applied some bronzer to her cheeks. She was pulling a brush through her ponytail when she heard retching from Jodie's cubicle. The flush went on a number of toilets at the same time, drowning the noise. ‘Jode, you all right?'

‘Fine,' Jodie said chirpily. ‘Why?' She opened the door and came out, smiling.

‘Thought I heard someone being sick,' Leanne whispered.

‘Well, it wasn't me.'

As Leanne was zipping up her makeup case, Jodie grabbed an eyeliner and a lip gloss. ‘What?'
Jodie said, in response to Leanne's mock-annoyance face. ‘I need to look my best, don't I?' She applied the eyeliner, replaced the lid and turned to the side. ‘Thank God smock tops are in. I look preggers.'

Leanne dragged her away from the mirror. ‘You look like a stick with boobs. Now, come on.'

*

Karina couldn't believe that those two had gone to London for a big glamorous day out and left her in Bradington. They hadn't even invited her. It was their loss, the silly cows, she thought. She'd have treated them if they had. She'd just come into a bit of cash and was up for a spending spree. She'd parcelled Izzy off to Gaz's mum's and was on the bus to Manchester, ready to hit the shops.

It was ages since Karina had had any money of her own. Gaz usually gave her house-keeping every week and she had what she claimed on the social, but a good whack of money, five grand to be precise – she'd never had so much that she'd acquired herself.

First stop was the Arndale Centre, where she'd buy herself some new clothes. Then she was going to Pizza Hut for a slap-up all-you-can-eat lunch, and then to Harvey Nicks for a couple of glasses of champagne to celebrate her windfall. Then, Karina
thought, she might have a look at a few tops for Gaz and some bits for Izzy.

She loved coming into Manchester. It made her feel important. She wasn't sure why, probably the coke she'd had this morning, but the city gave her a swagger she didn't have in Bradington. Manchester was as cool as Karina, or so, at least, she thought.

She wandered into Topshop and looked around, not knowing where to start. The cash was burning a hole in her pocket and she wanted to spend, spend, spend.

*

Leanne was sitting at the side of the studio watching Jodie take instruction from the photographer. Leanne hadn't liked Canary Wharf when she had started modelling. It had always seemed a soulless outpost with lots of people walking around at speed with briefcases, too busy to stop and talk to one another. But over the last five years buildings had sprung up thick and fast and it had taken on a life of its own. The sun was shining and as it reflected off the water and the surrounding buildings the area looked extremely impressive.

‘She's good,' Victoria Haim whispered to Leanne. The editor of a newspaper wouldn't usually hang
round a photo shoot for a potential page-three girl, but she had come to see Leanne. ‘Fancy a quick coffee?' As good as Jodie was, there was only so much time that they could spend watching her pout and preen.

There was a coffee shop at the foot of the building. Leanne and Victoria sat outside in the sunshine. ‘So, how's life treating you?' Victoria asked.

‘OK,' Leanne said. She really liked Victoria but she wasn't about to show a load of ankle and say, ‘I've been living in my mum's box room wishing I'd not frittered away every penny I've ever earned'. ‘Good, actually. I'm really enjoying helping Jodie do this, and it's nice to get back to my roots – at the risk of sounding like a div.' She laughed.

Victoria ran her fingers through her mane of curly black hair. ‘You don't sound like a div. I sometimes wish I could run for the hills.'

‘How's work for you?'

‘Oh, you know, meetings with the Prime Minister one day, Heather Mills the next.'

‘Really?' Leanne was surprised.

‘Yeah. This job involves a lot of high-level schmoozing.'

They used to have a real laugh together when Victoria was a gossip columnist, Leanne remembered, pulling apart the wannabes that clamoured for Victoria's attention. Yet now she had one of the
most powerful jobs in the country and Leanne couldn't even hack it doing the filing for her brother.

‘Victoria,' Leanne said, ‘can I be honest with you?'

‘Course you can.'

‘Well, I think there's a lot of girls, like our Jodie, who end up doing promotions in seedy nightclubs because they'd never think to get a manager to guide them through their career. Now, I'm not saying I know anything about contracts and that stuff, but I know what the pitfalls are, and I have all of the contacts …' Leanne trailed off. ‘God, I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I think I'd be good at looking after models, bringing them through the ranks, reining them in when they're acting up, advising them when they're blowing their money, pointing them in the right direction. All of the things that no one did for me. Not that I'm slagging off Jenny …' she added hastily.

‘You'd be well within your rights to do exactly that. From what I've heard she treats people like cattle.'

It was true. ‘Well, I just wanted to know if you think I'm barking up the wrong tree.'

Victoria put her hand on Leanne's knee. ‘If you can get someone to do the contracts for you, you'll fly. You've got a natural humility that goes a
long way in this business as there's so little of it about.'

‘You really think so?'

‘Of course! Let me have a think who I can put you in touch with for the contracts. As for the modelling, we need girls like Jodie. Give the white-van man something to look at in the morning.'

‘I've been trying to read up on contracts, but I don't think it's really me.'

‘Leanne, people train for years in contract law. You just worry about supplying good models.'

Leanne rummaged in her bag. ‘Talking of which, I was going to see Gavin about this.' Gavin was head of new model talent for the
Globe
. ‘But what do you think of her?'

‘She's good too. Very pretty.'

‘She's my brother's girlfriend.' Leanne thought she might need to cast her net a bit further than her immediate family in her hunt for clients.

‘Must be something in the water up there in Bradington.'

‘Yeah. Lead,' Leanne said.

Victoria laughed. ‘We get a lot of girls who haven't got a manager. Usually we send them a polite thanks-but-no-thanks letter. It's easier to deal with the ones who are represented. But I could get Gavin to send you details of girls we get through on the proviso that we'd always be your first port of call.'

‘Of course you would.' Leanne was excited.

‘So,' Victoria said, ‘Lisa Leighton. Any truth in the rumour that she came to visit you?'

Once a hack always a hack, Leanne thought. She couldn't blame Victoria for trying. After all, she was the editor of a tabloid. Not that Leanne was going to tell her anything, even off the record.

‘None.' She shook her head.

‘And do you think, purely from the perspective of someone who's met him a few times …'

‘I've seen him out and about, I haven't met him,' Leanne said, her tabloid radar on high alert.

‘As someone who's seen him out a few times, do you think there's any truth in the rumour that Jay Leighton is gay?' Victoria let the words hang in the air, studying Leanne's face.

Leanne was flummoxed. ‘Jay Leighton? I wouldn't have thought so. But,' she added, not wanting this to come back and haunt her as in the form of a ‘Mother of Gay Jay's Child Defends His Straight Honour' article, ‘you never can tell.'

‘No,' Victoria said. ‘That's what I thought.' She sipped her latte and stared out over the river.

Leanne wondered what on earth Jay had been up to now.

*

On the way back the train was packed but Leanne and Jodie didn't have the pleasure of a free upgrade.
Jodie didn't mind. ‘Have I told you how much they loved me?' she said, for what must have been the hundredth time.

‘Yes,' Leanne said wearily, trying to read her magazine.

‘Next Monday, watch out, world, Jodie Crompton's coming your way.'

‘Will you keep your voice down, Jode? It's like sitting with Foghorn Leghorn.'

‘Whatever. Anyway, I don't care, 'cause I'm going to be in the paper. Get your autographs here!'

Leanne shook her head and laughed.

There was no shutting Jodie up this afternoon. When Leanne and Victoria had returned to the studio, the photographer had raved about her, and Gavin had already booked her to be one of their promotional girls. That meant on days when the temperature went over twenty-five degrees Celsius, Jodie would be sent to a beach to pose in a
Globe
bikini, or if they were launching the paper in a new territory she and a gaggle of other models would be sent there as braless ambassadors.

Leanne knew that there was a lot more to managing a team of girls like Jodie than sending a few pictures to London and claiming her ten per cent. But she was ready to start looking for clients. It was something she could do in the evenings when she had finished work – if Markie wouldn't
have her back she'd have to find something else to pay the bills.

She got out her diary and made a note to call the contracts adviser – Maurice – whose number Victoria had given her. Then she thought about the brief conversation she and Victoria had had about Jay. She was glad now that he wasn't in her and Kia's lives. He had far too many issues of his own to know what to do with a daughter.

Tracy helped herself to a tumbler of Courvoisier. She'd developed a taste for brandy recently – it went particularly well with the new coke Karina had delivered the previous evening. It was really good stuff, Tracy thought, not like the usual brick dust Gaz sourced. She counted out the cash she had received in benefits this week, rolled it up and put it into the shoebox she kept under the floorboard nearest to the window in the lounge. She didn't want Paul seeing it. He'd only want to spend it.

Tracy kept meaning to ask Paul what had happened to their glamorous foreign holiday. He kept saying he was going to book it, then always had a reason why he hadn't got round to it. He also kept coming home with little trinkets for her. If she saw another Lladro figurine she'd swing for him. And she knew that little gifts were a sure-fire giveaway clue that he was up to something.

The door opened and he bustled in. ‘Morning,
Princess,' he said, as Tracy hoovered up her third line of the day.

‘You booked that holiday yet?'

‘Well, it's funny you should say that because I was just in town and I was about to book it and then I thought I'd come home and check where we're meant to be going because it'd slipped my mind. Has there been any post today?'

‘How can the fucking Dominican Republic slip your mind? It's not like we'd been tossing up between Filey and Cleethorpes, is it?'

There was a thud at the letterbox and Paul jumped.

‘You expecting a present?'

‘Just some bills,' he said, as he went into the hall.

‘Right. Let's get dressed, go into town and book this bleeding holiday before it slips your mind again and we end up in Morecambe.'

‘What you doing on the Courvoisier?' Paul asked, picking up the bottle.

‘Sun's past the yard arm, I can do what I want,' Tracy said indignantly.

‘I'm not on about the time, I'm on about the price. It's fucking expensive stuff, that.'

‘Oh, all right,' Tracy snapped. ‘Get your foot in the door and then deny me. That's lovely, isn't it?'

‘I'm not denying you anything, just wondering why you can't drink the cheap stuff. It's not like you know the difference.'

‘I'll pour it down the sink and drink strychnine,' Tracy said.

‘Don't be so bloody stupid. Call a taxi and we'll go into town.'

Tracy threw the brandy down her neck. That's more like it, she thought.

*

As Paul handed over his credit card to the travel agent, Tracy took a good look at it. It was different from the one that had been declined last time. It was even different from the one he'd used to pay for the meal in the restaurant where they'd bumped into Leanne. It was different, too, from the one he'd used at Booze Busters the previous evening. It was even different from the one Tracy had chopped up her lines of charlie with that morning.

‘I'm sorry, sir, it's been declined,' the woman said, embarrassed.

Tracy didn't want to have to sit there and be shown up again. She glared at Paul.

‘It can't be,' he bleated.

‘Bleeding Groundhog Day,' Tracy said.

‘There's money on that card,' Paul protested.

Tracy stood up. ‘Come on.' Paul followed her sheepishly out of the shop. Outside she prodded his chest. ‘You haven't got any money, have you?'

‘What d'you think I've been spending for the past few weeks? Scotch mist?'

‘All right, I'll put it another way, shall I? You haven't won any money, or got any money of your own.'

‘I have!' Paul shouted angrily.

‘Prove it!'

‘How?'

‘Take me to a bank and get some money out without using a credit card.'

‘I can't. It's all on one card.'

‘Don't talk bollocks to me about money, Paul. I know when someone's on the fiddle. So, I'll ask you one more time. You haven't got any money, have you?'

Paul's face screwed up. ‘I just wanted you back.'

‘So you haven't?' Tracy asked. ‘Bang goes our fucking holiday to the Dominican Republic. Is that it?'

Paul crumbled. ‘I applied for credit cards and they gave 'em to me. God knows why but they did.'