What She Wants (71 page)

Personally, she couldn’t give a damn. Her life was in tatters. What did it matter if Density won? Morgan would still be bedding that brunette child bride type. If only he’d had the balls to tell her the truth; that they were friends, nothing more. Why put her through all that pain of thinking he liked her when she was clearly wrong. He was gutless, that was why. A gutless, dishonourable coward and she hoped she’d never see him again in her life.

The Earl’s Court crowd, deeply blase and not inclined to clap anyone except perhaps U2, gave a smattering of desultory applause as a handsome male soap star who played a womanizer in the show arrived with a female pop show presenter to present the award.

After the requisite giggling and flirting, which was even more hilarious because everyone knew the pair disliked each other, they read out the nominees. The Titus table practically moved a foot forward thanks to all the people on it shifting in their seats and leaning hopefully towards the stage, urging Density to win.

‘… and the winners are …’

The Titus staff held their breath.

‘… El Pirador!’

A roar went up at a rival record company table at the news that their band, made up of second-generation Italian girls with fantastic voices and the looks of four Miss World contestants, had won. The Titus people sighed heavily.

Steve’s eyes went blank and he signalled a passing waiter,

on hand to cope with both the vagaries of the pop world and depressed record company bosses who needed solace. ‘Four bottles of Krug,’ Steve demanded. ‘No, make it five.’ Sam sat back in her seat with a sigh and engaged in some surface commiserations over the band. Thankfully, Density’s manager wasn’t around or it would have been a complete nightmare. She knew he’d blame her for the band’s failure to win and there was no point telling him that if his charges were more media-friendly they’d have a better chance of success. The fact that the band had called one interviewer ‘an ugly cretinous cow’ hadn’t helped their standing with the press for a start. The champagne arrived and Steve stood to toast Density, loudly proclaiming that they were stars and didn’t need any fucking awards anyway, and then proceeding to down most of the first bottle himself. By the time the Lifetime Achievement award was announced - going to a band of rockers so walnut-like and wrinkly that they looked like they’d just been plugged into the mains to revive them after being dug up - Steve was at that stage of depressed drunkenness which is the most dangerous. His hard little black eyes were like two holes in the snow and his mouth was a flat line of anger. As mechanically as if someone in the mother ship was beaming down instructions to a micro chip in his head, he shuffled out of his seat and plonked down beside Sam, clutching her arm with one hand, holding his second precious bottle of Krug with the other. It was only a quarter full. ‘D’ya know what I hate about this fucking award ceremony shit?’ he hissed. Sam swallowed. Steve sober she could just about manage. Steve plastered out of his mind was another thing entirely. ‘I hate the fact that they could tell us who was going to win but they don’t. Make us look like fucking idiots tonight.’ He scowled in the direction of El Pirador’s record company’s table where a celebration party was raging, and where three

waitresses were working at full speed to keep the drink flowing.

‘Well, we do have a bit of a clue about the Best Newcomer when they ask us to make certain bands available,’ Sam pointed out. The fact that Density were touring the Far East meant they’d had to say they couldn’t be at the awards after their nomination had been announced. If they’d been around and had been bluntly told not to come, even a lettuce leaf would have figured out that they weren’t going to win anything. As it was, they’d been told nothing, which was a sure sign, in Sam’s eyes.

Steve’s face screwed up. ‘That’s not f…’ He broke off as the New York VP, a handsome German guy named Helmut who didn’t drink, pulled up a chair beside both of them and patted Steve on the back.

‘Never mind about Density,’ Helmut said, his flawless English faintly accented with New York after ten years in Manhattan.

Steve put down his glass and took a sip of someone else’s water in an attempt to impress Helmut. There was a lot of untouched water on the table.

‘You win some, you lose some,’ Helmut continued. ‘We need to talk about the future of the band, I don’t know if they’re going to get a deal from us. I can’t see them working in the US.’

Ouch, Sam thought. If the American office weren’t interested in signing Density, that was a slap in the face for Steve. The muscles in his jaw worked a bit.

‘Helmut, you must tell me about your new signings. I’ve heard some great things about them and I want to get my hands on them. Anything to harden that bottom line,’ Sam said brightly.

After half an hour schmoozing Helmut, trying to distract him from Steve’s constant drinking, Sam was wrecked. The party was winding down and everyone was leaving, phoning limos on their mobile phones and arranging to go to the all-important after-show parties.

‘Are you coming to the party at Shiva?’ Sam asked Helmut hopefully. It would be nice to have someone sober and senior along to keep Steve in line. He shook his head ruefully. ‘I have to catch the morning flight to LA but some of my other colleagues from New York are going.’ Damn, thought Sam, still smiling. That meant there was no way she could escape from Steve. She didn’t know why she was bothering anyway. He was too plastered to appreciate her kindness in looking after him and wouldn’t know how to say thank you. Steve’s limo was a triple stretch which looked as if it should come complete with a pimp and a couple of hookers in hotpants, and Sam had no idea how it was ever going to go round corners. ‘Cool, huh?’ smirked Steve, settling himself into the leather back-seat. Four more execs, including the new Spanish MD, an Antonio Banderas lookalike called Jorge, and Karen Storin all piled into the limo. Despite her misery, Sam was able to appreciate Jorge’s sleek beauty and she smiled her first genuine smile of the evening as he wriggled his lean hips into the space between her and Karen. Only it wasn’t Sam he was interested in: instantly, he turned away from her and began chatting up Karen. Feeling about a hundred and utterly unlovable, Sam stared down at her strappy sandals where her shimmery pink toenails winked up at her. She remembered how happy she’d been the night before when she painted them, thinking all the time of the effect she’d have on Morgan when she nonchalantly visited him. Stupid cow. Shiva was packed with Titus staff and their top artists. Sam hated being squashed in clubs and wasn’t tall enough to appreciate standing all night while looking up at other people, clutching a glass and her handbag. Everybody seemed content to stand, but not Steve who clearly realized

that if he didn’t sit down soon, he’d fall down. Lurching into people left, right and centre, he dragged his group to the reserved area at the back of the club where endless squashy leather armchairs were grouped around a low table laid with olives and yet more champagne. When Sam sat down, she sank uncomfortably into her seat like a small child in an adult’s chair. Her heart also sank when Steve dragged his armchair close to hers so they could talk.

‘I really like you,’ he slurred. ‘I know you don’t think I do but I do. You don’t really know me but if you did, you’d like me too. You do, a little bit, don’t you?’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ said Sam absently. She wasn’t interested and knew that Steve was so drunk he wouldn’t remember a word of this in the morning.

‘But you do like me a weeny, weeny bit?’ he insisted drunkenly.

He was so close that she could smell the acid boozy reek of his breath.

‘Yes,’ Sam said, the same way she’d say yes to Millie or Toby.

‘You see, people think I’m gay,’ Steve revealed.

Sam breathed a sigh of relief. If he was gay, it meant two things: one, that he clearly didn’t fancy her and two, that he was hopefully hiding a much kinder personality because he’d assumed he needed to be tough to succeed in the macho music world. If Steve were gay, perhaps they could actually become friends, united in the job of presenting a tough front.

She put a kind hand on his knee in what she hoped was a supportive gesture.

‘I’m not, you know,’ hiccuped Steve. ‘I wish I was, it’d be bloody easier. I wouldn’t have to deal with bitches like my ex-wife. But I hate gays.’

Sam removed her hand, her hopes dashed.

‘And the bitch got the dogs,’ he said miserably.

Sam hadn’t thought Steve was a dog person. Perhaps there was hope for him.

‘Just as well, I hated that bloody schnauzer. She got the Cure albums as well, bitch! She said I was no good in bed, which is a damn lie. I hate her. Not all women are like that, are they?’ Every fresh confidence made Sam gulp. Drunken confidences were deadly things. Steve was interested in her but her opportunity of telling him she didn’t feel the same way diminished as he got drunker. Even worse, Steve was confiding in her like she was his dearest friend. He would, therefore, be gutted when she told him she wasn’t interested. Then again, in the morning he might have forgotten he’d told her all this stuff… Blearily, he smiled up at her from the depths of his squashy chair. Sam smiled weakly back at him. In the distance, she could see Jorge’s sleek otter head bent over Karen Storin’s. They were laughing at something, Karen’s full lipsticked mouth roaring with delight. Having fun, Sam realized. What was that?

Karen was on the phone first thing on Saturday morning, sounding anxious and with her voice resonating with that up-all-night hoarseness. ‘Sam, please tell me that nobody noticed me going off with Jorge last night, please tell me. Steve would disapprove so much.’ Sam laughed mirthlessly. ‘Karen, if you had danced the Dance of the Seven Veils with Jorge lying on the floor underneath you with his shirt off and his mouth open, Steve wouldn’t have noticed. He was off his head drunk. If I hadn’t half-carried him to his limo, he’d still be passed out at Shiva.’ ‘Thank you for that, I was so worried,’ Karen said. ‘It was great last night but this morning, I began to worry …’ ‘Stop worrying. You’re entitled to have a life, you know. Anyway, tell me about gorgeous Jorge. Why is he wasting his life in this business - he should be starring in the new Steven Spielberg movie.’

Karen giggled. ‘I know. He is gorgeous, isn’t he?’

‘Totally, you cow. I’m very jealous.’

‘Oh get outta here,’ Karen said, sounding pleased. ‘Anyway, what was Parris bending your ear about all night? I thought he was going to fall down your cleavage he was so close.’

Sam shuddered. ‘I suppose everybody noticed that?’ she

said drily.

‘No. Well, yeah. But everyone knows you’re not interested in him, Sam. He’s just a total asshole.’

Thinking of the total asshole’s declaration of lust the night before, Sam sighed. She really hoped he’d forgotten it all in the miasma of alcohol, otherwise her life was going to be a lot more complicated from now on.

Three o’clock in the morning is not a good time to go to bed, Sam reflected at lunchtime as she collected her purse to go grocery shopping. Despite having only had a couple of glasses of wine, she hadn’t slept well and had woken up feeling groggy and tired.

Her eyes were dull and lined and her face was pale but she didn’t bother with make-up. Who was going to be looking at her? Throwing a zip-up jacket on over her T-shirt and sweat pants, she left the apartment.

On the street she came face to face with Morgan. If it was any consolation, he looked just as hollow-eyed as she did, his unshaven face grey under his normal tan. ‘Sam,’ he said softly, ‘I need to talk to you.’ ‘About what?’ she hissed. ‘About your harem? I am such a fool, I really thought you were over the pre-schoolers but I must have been wrong.’

‘Sam,’ he insisted, ‘it wasn’t what you thought…’ The rage that had been percolating in her system since the previous evening, exploded like a volcano. ‘Not what I thought?’ she hissed, sounding like somebody possessed in a horror movie. ‘How do you know what I thought? You don’t know the first thing about me. I know all about you,

though. You can’t keep your hands off women, can you? You’re just disgusting.’ He moved closer, his narrowed eyes pleading with her. ‘Sam, don’t be upset. You’ve got it all wrong, I promise. I can explain She glared at him furiously, wanting to scream at him so that everyone within a fifty mile radius could hear, but also wanting to retain some shred of her dignity. ‘I don’t want to hear your pathetic explanation,’ she said, raising her chin regally. ‘Why don’t you just leave me alone.’ ‘Please, don’t be like that,’ Morgan begged. ‘I’ll be whatever I wish. You’re nothing to me, I don’t even want to talk to you ever again.’ ‘So you’re not going to give me a chance to explain because you’ve already got it all worked out in your mind, is that right?’ Morgan asked, his eyes strange, his voice cold. For a millisecond, Sam hesitated. Then rushed on. She knew what it had been all right and he wasn’t going to make a fool out of her a second time. ‘I asked you to leave me alone,’ she said fiercely, wanting him to go before she broke down. She’d never be able to keep up this dignified act if he didn’t leave soon and she didn’t want to break down in front of him. That would be too humiliating. ‘Pardon me,’ Morgan said flatly, again sounding very strange. ‘You’re saying our friendship means nothing to you? You don’t trust me?’ ‘You don’t have to explain to me. Never explain, never apologize,” Sam quoted bitterly. ‘That’s probably your mantra.’ ‘No,’ he said in a voice that would freeze Hell. ‘But I don’t explain when I’m not trusted.’ With that, he walked off. Sam would have loved to have walked after him but she couldn’t, could she?

The following Monday morning, Lydia was at her desk drinking a Starbucks latte, nibbling a muffin and chatting

on the phone to her best friend when Sam marched into the LGBK office, hideously late after the tube had decided to stop for half an hour in the tunnel. Clad in her sharpest black trouser suit, wearing boots with heels like dagger points and with her hair tied back severely, she looked like she’d looked six months before, Lydia thought idly: the tough career bitch.