Kiley was enough of a Londoner to know car owning for a mug’s game. Within three minutes, he’d picked up a cab travelling south down Haverstock Hill and they’d set off on the zigzag course that would shuttle them west, Kiley wondering how many billboards of Victoria Clarke they would pass on the way.
That damp June and July she had been a minor sensation at the Wimbledon Championships, the first British woman to reach the semi-finals since Boadicea, or so it seemed, and ranked currently twenty-three in the world. And she had sprung from nowhere, or somewhere near the Essex end of the Central line at best; a council flat she had shared growing up with her sister, stepdad and mum. And like the Williams sisters, Serena and Venus, in the States, she had learned to play on public courts, enjoying none of the privilege that usually attended the luckless Amandas and Betinas of the English tennis world. Nor did it end there. Her face, which freckled slightly in the sun, was beautiful in a Kate Moss kind of a way, her legs slender and long; the quality of the sports photographer’s long lens and of television video ensured that not one salted bead of sweat that languished on her neck then slowly disappeared into the decolletage of the thin cotton tops she liked to wear was spared from public view.
Before the tournament was over, Costain had the contracts signed, the company’s ad campaign agreed. Less than a fortnight later, the first of the advertisements appeared: Clarke crouching on the baseline, racket in hand, lips slightly parted, waiting to receive. In another she is watching the high toss of the ball, back arched, about to serve, white cotton top stretched tight across her breasts. For these and others, the strapline is the same: ‘A Little Honest Sweat!’ Just that and a discreet Union Jack, the deodorant pictured lower right, close by the product’s name.
Unreconstructed feminists protested and sprayed slogans late at night; students tore them down as trophies for their rooms; Kate devoted her column in the Independent to the insistent eroticising of the everyday. One giant billboard near an intersection on the Al north was removed after advice from the Department of Transport.
In the Observer Sport Monthly’s annual list of ‘Britain’s Top 20 Sportswomen’, Victoria Clarke was number seven with a bullet, the only tennis player to appear at all.
‘Forgot your racket,’ the cabbie joked, glancing at Kiley, empty-handed, waiting outside Queen’s Club for his change and his receipt.
Kiley half-grinned and shook his head. ‘Different game.’
Costain was in the bar: tousled hair, rimless glasses, Paul Smith suit and large gin. He bought Kiley a small Scotch and water and they moved to a pair of low leather chairs by the far wall. Good living, Kiley noticed, had brought Costain the beginnings of a belly the loose cut of his suit just failed to disguise.
‘So how is it really?’ Costain asked with a smile.
‘You know.’
‘Still with Kate?’
Kiley nodded.
‘How long’s that now?’ And then, quickly, ‘I know, I know, who’s counting?’
In a week’s time it would be two years since they’d started seeing one another; nine months, almost to the day, since he’d moved into Kate’s house in Highbury Fields. Kate, Kiley knew, had gone out with Costain a few times some few years back; kissing him, she said, was like being force-fed marinated eel.
‘Victoria Clarke,’ Kiley said, ‘what’s the problem? There is a problem, I suppose.’
Costain drank a little more gin. ‘She’s being blackmailed.’
‘Don’t tell me she was a Page Three Girl for the Sun.’
For an answer, Costain took an envelope from the inside pocket of his suit coat and passed it across. Inside, a black-and-white copy of a photograph had been pasted to a single sheet of paper: a young woman in a park, holding a small girl, a toddler, high above her head; in the background, another woman, beside an empty buggy, looks on. The first woman, and the girl, are smiling, more than smiling, laughing; the second woman is not. The quality of the copy was such, it took a keen eye to identify the former as Victoria Clarke. Even then, there was room for doubt.
‘Is this all there is?’ Kiley asked.
‘It arrived this morning, first post. A phone call some forty minutes later, man’s voice, disguised.’ He nodded towards the paper in Kiley’s hand. I imagine the original’s a lot clearer, wouldn’t you?’
‘And the child?’
‘Hers. Victoria’s.’
Kiley looked at the picture again; the relationship between the two women was there, but it wasn’t yet defined. ‘Whoever sent this, what do they want?’
‘A quarter of a million.’
‘For what?’
‘The negative, all originals, copies. We’ve got two days before they sell it to the highest bidder. The tabloids’d go ape shit.’
Kiley tasted his Scotch. ‘Why now?’ he asked.
‘We’re in the middle of renegotiating Victoria’s advertising contract. Very hush-hush. Big, big money involved. If nothing slips out of sync, everything should be finalised by the end of the week.’
‘Then, hush-hush or not, somebody knows.’
‘What?’ Costain said, mouth twisting in a wry grin. ‘You don’t believe in blind luck?’ And, because Victoria Clarke was now walking through the bar towards them, he rose to his feet and smiled a reassuring smile.
She was tall, taller even than Kiley, who knew the stats, had thought, and wore a dark blue warm-up suit, name monogrammed neatly along the sleeve with something close to style. Sports bag slung over one shoulder, hair still damp from the shower and tied back, the only signs of distress were in the hollows of her eyes, the suggestion of a tremor when she shook Kiley’s hand.
‘You want something?’ Costain asked. ‘Mineral water? Juice?’
She shook her head. Standing there devoid of make-up, she almost looked what she was: nineteen.
The envelope lay on the table between two unfinished drinks. ‘I don’t want to talk about this here,’ Victoria said.
‘I thought just-’ Costain began.
‘Not here.’ The voice wasn’t petulant, but firm.
Costain shrugged and, with a glance at Kiley, downed his gin and led the way towards the door.
Costain owned a flat in a mansion block close to the Thames — in fact, he owned several between there and the Cromwell Road — and for the past several months it had been Victoria’s home. Near enough to Queen’s for her to hit every day.
‘You’ll have to excuse the mess,’ she said.
Kiley moved an armful of discarded clothing and a paperback copy of Navratilova’s life story. The room resembled a cross between a Conran window and the left luggage department at Euston station.
Victoria left them to each other’s company and re-emerged some minutes later in a pale cotton top and faded jeans, hair brushed out and a little make-up around the eyes.
Sitting in an easy chair opposite Kiley, she tucked as much of her long legs beneath her as she could. ‘Can you help?’ She had a way of looking directly at you when she spoke.
‘It depends.’
‘On what?’
Kiley shook his head. ‘Timing. Luck. You. The truth.’
Only for an instant did she lower her eyes, fingers of one hand sliding between those of the other then out again. ‘Adrian,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Get me some water, would you? There’s some in the fridge in…’ But Costain had already gone to do her bidding.
‘I had Alicia — Alicia, that’s her name — when I was fifteen. Fifteen years and ten months. The year before I’d been runner-up in the National Under-Sixteens at Hove. I was on the fringes of the county team. I thought if I can get through to the last eight of the Junior Championships this next Wimbledon, I’m on my way. And then there was this lump that wouldn’t go away.’
She paused to judge the effect of what she’d just said.
Costain placed a tumbler of still mineral water in her hand and then retreated back across the room.
‘Why didn’t you have an abortion?’ Kiley asked.
She looked back at him evenly. ‘I’d already made one bad mistake.’
‘So you asked your sister — that is your sister, isn’t it? In the photo?’ Victoria bobbed her head. ‘You asked
