The Vanishing Point

‘Obviously. But do you have some sort of timescale in mind? Is there a master plan?’

She gave me a sharp look. ‘Are you taking the piss?’

‘No, no way. If I’ve learned one thing about you, it’s your capacity to wrong-foot me. The predictable thing here would be for you to be clueless about the endgame. But I’ve spent enough time with you now to know that you wouldn’t have set the ball rolling without having a pretty good idea where you want it to end up. I shouldn’t have said, “Is there a master plan?” I should have said, “What’s the master plan?”’

Scarlett ate another mouthful of pasta. Then another. ‘Sort of,’ she said eventually.

‘Do you want to share it? Or is it going to be another one of your bloody surprises?’

‘I want to get my TV show established. It’s time to show people the truth. That there’s more to me than they think. And when that begins to dawn on them, I’ll get Leanne to start tapering off the night life.’ She gave me the familiar piratical grin. ‘Then you can write a load of articles about how I’m a new woman, a reformed character. How motherhood transformed me. I’ll be so boring the paps might just decide to leave me alone.’

‘And what’s going to happen to Leanne?’

‘I’ve bought her a nice place in Spain, up in the mountains.

There’s a big expat community up there. The property’s got a pool house, she can set up a nail boutique there. Her own little business. Obviously, she’ll have to go back to being brunette, maybe cut her hair short.’ She shrugged.

There was a ruthlessness to Scarlett’s planning that I almost admired. But not quite. I pushed my plate away. ‘And you think she’ll settle for that?’

‘Why not? A haircut and a dye job? It’s not much of a price to pay for being well set up at her age.’

‘I meant, giving up the party life. From what I’ve seen of Leanne, it’s meat and drink to her. She’s found her calling, Scarlett. Being out on the tiles at somebody else’s expense is her vocation. Why would she cheerfully give up all that fun for the expats up in the mountains in Spain?’

Scarlett’s surly expression wouldn’t have been out of place on a teenager. ‘Because that’s the deal. She knew when she took it on that it was only temporary. And she’s OK with that.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ I said, not meaning it.

As it turned out, I was right about Leanne creating problems. Only they weren’t the problems I’d expected.

Three weeks later, I turned up at the hacienda without phoning ahead. I’d been up in Suffolk, being interviewed by a comedienne looking for someone to write her memoir of fifty years in the laughter game (her pitch, not mine . . .) and we’d wrapped up earlier than I’d anticipated. Mostly because I’d loathed the woman within five minutes of meeting her and I couldn’t be bothered to push for the job. Scarlett’s memoir was still selling well in the paperback charts and the rowing book was due out soon, so cashflow wasn’t an issue. And Maggie had tipped me the wink about a retail entrepreneur who wanted to write a book about leadership which sounded a lot more interesting.

So I’d escaped early from the suffocating knick-knack heaven inhabited by the comedienne. Rather than head straight home, I decided to call on Jimmy and his harem. I was out of luck, however. Marina had taken him to a toddler playgroup for the afternoon, and Scarlett was having a final wardrobe fitting for Real Life TV. Joshu was somewhere. Leanne had no idea where except that it wasn’t there. She was home alone and I was surprised by the effusiveness of her greeting. Don’t get me wrong, we’d always got on fine. But today she seemed both relieved and pleased that she had me to herself.

Leanne made coffee and raked in the cupboard for biscuits. ‘I’m glad you stopped in,’ she said. She produced a box of organic wholemeal biscuits in the shape of gingerbread men. ‘Do you want one of these? Jimmy loves them.’ She looked dubious.

‘I’m OK,’ I said. ‘How’s things?’

‘Well, that’s just it,’ she said, settling in with the air of a woman who has much to impart and generations of imparting behind her. ‘On the face of it, everything’s hunky-dory. I’m getting my face in the papers, Scarlett’s getting her beauty sleep and nobody suspects a thing.’

‘But . . . ? I’m hearing a “but” in there.’

Leanne fiddled with the handle of her mug. ‘Can we go outside? I’m gagging for a fag and Scarlett doesn’t like us smoking in the house. With Jimmy, you know?’

I followed her out into the garden. Weak sunlight made us both look anaemic and there was no heat in it. But it was better than being shut indoors with Leanne’s cigarette smoke. We hunkered down on a couple of curved wooden benches that looked across a pond where bored goldfish pottered around among the water lilies. I wondered whether it should be fenced off now Jimmy was mobile.

‘Not that Joshu pays any attention,’ Leanne continued. ‘He smokes whatever he likes, wherever he likes. And Scarlett lets him get away with it. She spoils Joshu more than she spoils Jimmy.’

‘Maybe that’s because Jimmy’s still young enough to learn.’

Leanne squinted through the smoke at me. ‘You’re not that keen on Joshu, are you?’

I shrugged. ‘He wouldn’t be my choice of a life partner. But Scarlett obviously sees something in him that I’m missing.’

Leanne sipped at her cigarette like she didn’t really mean it. ‘That’s kind of my problem,’ she said.

‘Has he been coming on to you?’ It wasn’t much of a reach.

‘No. He wouldn’t dare. I made that totally clear right from the off. When Scarlett first came up with the idea, we all sat down and thrashed it out. We have to, like, hold hands and have the odd kiss for the cameras. But I told him, any more than that, any tongues, any hands where they shouldn’t be and I’d cut his cock off. And Scarlett said she’d have his balls for earrings. When she does put her foot down, she can be well scary.’

‘So he’s been a good boy?’

‘With me, yeah.’ She dropped her half-smoked cigarette and ground it out. ‘Trouble is, I’m not the only woman out there, if you get my drift?’

I closed my eyes momentarily. I got her drift, in spades. What I wanted to know was how bad things were. ‘Tell me what you know. And then we’ll figure out what’s the best way to go,’ I said.

Leanne’s face crumpled in relief. She might look spookily like her cousin, but she had none of the iron in the soul that had lifted Scarlett out of the shit and into the glitz. What she wanted was to hand off responsibility for what she knew, and I was the lucky patsy. ‘When we’re out, we’re always in the VIP areas, yeah? You see a lot of the same faces. A lot of them are total slappers on the make. Once or twice, I noticed women starting to come over to Joshu then noticing me and backing off. I reckoned it was because they saw I was with him and realised he was spoken for. Then it dawned on me that they couldn’t not know he was spoken for, if you get my meaning?’

I nodded. Women like that read the red-tops and the slag mags as religiously as a nun reads her missal. It’s their guide to who’s in and who’s out, who’s single and who’s taken, who’s irredeemably fucked up and who’s still worth a go. They’d have read all about the wedding and the baby and the game of happy families being played out at the hacienda. They’d know Joshu was off limits.

Unless of course they had reason to know otherwise.

‘That must have made you wonder.’

‘You could say that. It made me start watching him a lot more closely. I cut back my drinking a bit, you know? Just to stay more alert, like. Tried to fade into the background. And I started to think that some of those slags were a bit too touchy-feely with him, if you catch my drift? Too much flirting. Too much touching. It’s hard to explain. Hard to pin down. But it’s the way you are with somebody you’ve slept with, as opposed to somebody you just fancy. Or somebody you’re pals with. Do you know what I mean?’

‘I think I do.’ I’ve seen it at publishers’ parties sometimes. People stand a bit too close to each other. They contrive to touch in apparently innocuous ways. Except they do it a lot more than friends or colleagues do. It’s hard to pinpoint anything you could confront them with, but it’s there if you’re looking. I even remember watching one series of Masterchef where I was convinced two of the contenders were having a fling based purely on the way they touched in passing. Maybe I’m living on fantasy island, but I don’t think so. I’m good at reading people. It’s part of the reason I’m successful at my job. ‘I don’t think you’re imagining things.’

Leanne pulled a scornful face. ‘I know I’m not. I thought I was, to begin with. But now I know I’m not. A couple of nights ago, I had a bit of an upset tummy. I was in the bathroom for about ten minutes. In this club, right, you come down the hall to the main VIP area and there’s like a lobby off to the side before the main area. And there