Private Lives

‘I think it’s going to be a long day,’ she said, checking her phone for more messages. ‘It might even run into tomorrow, so if I decide to stay out there I’ll call you tonight.’

‘You go get ’em, darling,’ said Graham as she walked out.

One of us has to, she thought as she closed the door.

‘Jesus! Can’t you leave me alone for one second?’ shouted Sam. He pulled back behind the curtain as the helicopter hovered over the trees at the bottom of his garden. Could they see him? he wondered. Would Sky News viewers see him cowering next to his Smeg fridge and read the guilt on his face? What did they even want from him? It was like a dream he couldn’t wake up from.

Even in LA, Sam had never thought he needed to live in a fortress. At his Hollywood Hills home, he’d rejected Jessica’s calls for a twenty-four-hour armed guard and made do with a state-of-the-art alarm system and a gated drive. Here at Copley’s, his Wiltshire manor house, security was even more lax: just some electric gates and CCTV, which was currently showing him the dozens of reporters and photographers on stepladders crowded around the gate. He’d never needed anything before, even when Jessica had been visiting. The locals in the village had been respectful of his privacy and his attitude had always been, why turn yourself into a prisoner when you didn’t have to? Besides, he’d have f

elt a fraud with all that movie-star nonsense – it was only pretentious LA wankers who bought into that kind of ‘I’m so important’ bollocks, wasn’t it? But it was at times like these, times when you didn’t dare look out of your kitchen window, that you could see the wisdom of ‘better safe than sorry’.

‘I wish I’d put bloody landmines around the drive,’ he muttered as he watched the helicopter finally turn and spiral off into the clouds. The real shame of it was that Sam usually adored his time at Copley’s. He loved the glorious eighteenth-century house with its honey-coloured façade and its own trout lake and woodland. It was his very own Neverland, with a five-a-side pitch beyond the ha-ha and a rope swing in the woods instead of Jacko’s rollercoasters and carousels. Sam had felt safe at Copley’s, he’d felt at home, even if it did have a dozen bedrooms he never went into. But now . . . now would it ever feel safe again?

He frowned as he became aware of an insistent buzzing. He hadn’t heard it until the helicopter had gone, but now he could tell it was coming from the intercom.

‘Josh,’ he yelled. ‘Is that the bloody reporters again? And where’s Jim?’

His PA scurried in from the study, where he’d been fielding calls. ‘Sorry, Sam,’ he hissed, holding his hand over the receiver of his mobile. ‘I’m on the phone to New York. You wanted me to get Harvey for you? And I think Mr Parker’s in the media room monitoring the TV coverage.’

‘Bloody hell,’ muttered Sam, running over to the silver box on the wall. ‘What’s the point in having staff if you have to do everything yourself?’

He stabbed angrily at the button.

‘Who is it?’ he said, immediately jerking back as a roar filled the room: a hundred voices shouting, the chaotic whirr of camera shutters; it sounded like a riot going on out there.

‘Hel . . . Pier . . .’ said a crackly voice. Sam could barely make out the words over the racket.

‘Who?’ he shouted.

‘It’s Helen Pierce. Let me in.’

Jim Parker shouted down the stairs, ‘It’s the lawyer. Buzz her through already!’

As Sam pressed the switch that would open the gate, he could hear a plummy female voice coming through the intercom.

‘If any of you puts so much as one foot on this property,’ it said with schoolmistress authority, ‘I’ll have you in the nick faster than you can say “parasites”.’

I like this chick already, he smiled.

His new lawyer was surprisingly sexy. Older, more severe than the last one and dressed in a crisp shirt and very high patent pumps, she looked like a 1940s pin-up. Or maybe I just go for uptight chicks, thought Sam as he watched her walk into his dining room accompanied by Eli and Valerie Lovell, the PR powerhouse who had also flown over from the States for this council of war. They all shook hands as they sat down around his redwood dining table. This was Sam’s favourite room in the house, a modern addition to the three-hundred-year-old architecture designed to soften the antique edges of the house. A wall of glass overlooked a grey slate fishpond and the lawns beyond, although today the blinds were drawn to discourage any long-lens photography.

‘Busier than I thought out there,’ said Eli with his usual understated humour.

‘Busy like a war zone,’ sniffed Jim Parker.

‘Sam, I don’t think you’ve met Helen Pierce,’ said Valerie, peering over the top of her horn-rimmed Chanel glasses. ‘I’ve worked with her before and there’s no one better at crisis management from the legal end.’

Sam snorted. ‘If it wasn’t for Donovan Pierce, there might not even be a crisis.’ He knew he was being rude, but he was still angry at Anna Kennedy – and Donovan Pierce as a whole – for letting him down with the injunction. It would take more than sending their top attack dog – the lawyer he should have had in the first place – to placate him.

Josh came through with strong coffee and Sam slugged it back gratefully. The sleeping pill he’d taken at 3 a.m. to stop the endless questions running around his head was still making him feel groggy and detached.

‘Where have you been, Sam?’ asked Helen.

Sam lit another cigarette. It wasn’t even 10.30 a.m. and already he’d smoked a packet. Terrible habit, he knew, but he felt justified today. He needed something to quiet his nerves.

‘Eigan island,’ he said. ‘A tiny place near Mull. You won’t know it.’

‘Actually I do,’ said Helen. ‘It’s a little piece of paradise, isn’t it? I’m surprised you came back.’