Rivals

The voice thickened and became oily as though it was asking for extended credit.

‘This is the Messenger here. Wondered what you feel about Rupert’s memoirs in the Scorpion.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Rupert’s really done it this time. Bloody bad timing on the day before your IBA meeting.’

Cameron had had a long day and was not connecting well but gradually it sank in that Beattie Johnson had finally got her revenge on Rupert by telling all to the Scorpion. Not only, according to the Messenger reporter, had she produced every kind of salacious detail about her two years with Rupert and the unbelievably kinky things they’d got up to, but, even worse, revealed intimate details of his sex life with other women, including Helen.

‘Oh my God!’ whispered Cameron. ‘Does he mention me?’

‘Not yet, sweetheart,’ said the reporter, who’d already seen and admired Cameron’s photograph, ‘but you may be in Saturday’s instalment. They’re trailing the spread that’s going out on Friday, the morning you go to the IBA. It’s all about Rupert’s affair with Amanda Hamilton, wife of the shadow Foreign Secretary. Very pretty lady, evidently she liked being spanked.’

Cameron groaned.

‘And there’s a particularly damaging bit tomorrow,’ said the reporter, who was beginning to enjoy himself. ‘I’ll read it. Beattie writes: “I always felt Rupert was unnaturally close to fellow show jumper Billy Lloyd- Foxe. Rupert admitted that when they were in Kenya, he, Helen and Billy and his journalist wife Janey (who left Billy for nine months soon after they were married) had a naughty foursome. Did Helen (who started an affair with Jake Lovell shortly after this incident) discover the true nature of Rupert’s sexual preference that night?”’

‘I don’t want to hear any more,’ screamed Cameron, slamming down the receiver. It rang again. It was the Sun.

‘Go away,’ she screamed.

Immediately she’d put down the receiver, she dialled out.

‘Fuck off, all of you,’ snarled a voice.

‘Declan, it’s Cameron. Have you heard about Rupert’s memoirs?’

‘Yes,’ said Declan, ‘and I don’t know where the fuck to get hold of him.’

‘Nor do I,’ sobbed Cameron.

The juggernauts rumbling along Cotchester High Street woke Rupert next morning to the worst hangover in recorded history. Moaning, he pulled the blankets over his head. There was a knock on the door.

‘Bugger off. I feel terrible.’

‘You’re not going to feel any better when you read this,’ said Bas, handing him a Fernet Branca and the Scorpion, which Rupert read in silence.

‘The dirty bitch,’ he said softly. ‘She said she’d get me in the end.’

It was as though some terrible monster from his past had put a hand up from a manhole and dragged him down into the mire and slime below. He went straight to the lavatory and threw up.

‘Lend me a toothbrush, and then a telephone,’ he said to Bas. He was put straight through to Freddie.

‘Look, I’ve only just seen the Scorpion. I’m ringing up to resign.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Freddie.

‘I’ve got to. There are two more days to go, and it’s bound to get worse. Unless I pull out, there’s no way you’ll get the franchise.’

‘Don’t be rash, mate. We won’t be much good at running a TV station if we can’t ride out somefink like this. Got to stick togevver. Come over ’ere and we’ll sort out the best plan of action, but you’re not resigning.’

‘Up to me really,’ said Rupert. ‘I must see Cameron, and then I’ll be over.’

Arriving at Penscombe, he found cars parked all the way up his drive, and the gravel in front of the house completely hidden by journalists, photographers and television crews. Corinium had even had the temerity to send a mobile canteen. Stony-faced, greyer than the trampled snow, Rupert got out of his car.

‘Fuck off, the lot of you,’ he snarled as they all surged forward. ‘I’ve got to talk to my lawyer.’

‘What about the franchise?’ asked the Mail on Sunday.

‘Come on, Rupe,’ said the Star. ‘Give us a quote. We’ve waited all fucking night.’

‘I’ve got nothing to say. I’ll put my dogs on you if you don’t beat it.’ Fighting his way into the house, he slammed the door behind him.

‘Well, well, well,’ said Cameron from halfway up the stairs.

She wore no make-up, and her hair was sleeked back from her face which was deathly white.

‘I’m sorry,’ began Rupert.

‘Fuck off,’ screamed Cameron, as a photographer appeared at a side window. Racing downstairs, she drew the curtains.

‘Come upstairs,’ said Rupert.

They went into his bedroom, the set for so much of the action in the first instalment of the memoirs. Almost as though the great four-poster would contaminate her, Cameron gave it a wide berth and went over to the fireplace.

‘How could you?’ she whispered. ‘Have you told people those sort of things about me?’

‘Never, never,’ said Rupert. Suddenly dizzy, he slumped on the flowered chintz-covered chair in front of Helen’s old dressing table. ‘Beattie was a special case. The thing that turned her on was stories of my screwing other women. She must have had a tape recorder running under the bed the whole time.’

‘Then you did say those things. They’re disgusting, insupportable.’ She shuddered. ‘You realize your career’s finished? You’ll be kicked out of the party. I hope you’ve already resigned from Venturer. And I suppose Saturday’s instalment will be all about your touching designs on Taggie O’Hara. How the great rake was reformed and approached his waiting bride with a tenderness which was all the more careful, the more considerate because he knew the depths of her apprehension — Ker-rist!’ Her voice rose to a screech.

Rupert looked at her incredulously. Expecting the exocet from the front, he was suddenly being torpedoed from underneath.

‘You’re in love with her, aren’t you?’ said Cameron.

Rupert looked across the valley at his white fields. He’d always seen them as arms protecting Taggie. Now they seemed like a great predatory polar bear, crushing The Priory to death.

He turned back to Cameron.

‘OK,’ he said flatly, ‘I do love her. If I’m honest, I’ve loved her ever since New Year’s Eve, probably long before that. I’m desperately sorry, I know I’ve dealt you a marked card. I’m much too fond of you to kid you along any longer, just for the sake of the franchise, that you and I are going to end up together.’

Cameron opened her mouth to yell at him, but Rupert raised his hand for a second’s more silence.

‘I didn’t know a thing about these memoirs coming out — not that you’d want me anyway after reading them — but I want you to know that I was intending to level with you today about Taggie.’

For a second Cameron seemed to sway with frenzy, like a viper about to strike, then she screamed: ‘You won’t get her. Declan knows about it too, and there’s no way he’ll let you ever get your filthy depraved hands on his darling daughter.’

‘I know there isn’t,’ said Rupert. ‘This —’ he picked up the Scorpion and wearily dropped it in the wastepaper basket — ‘has finally done for us.’

‘Serve you fucking right,’ yelled Cameron. ‘I’m getting out of here, and I never want to see you again.’

She rushed downstairs out of the front door, then kicked and punched her way through the waiting journalists, sending several of them leaping for safety as the Lotus stormed down the drive.

‘Nice quiet girl,’ said the Mail on Sunday, picking himself out of the snow.

Arriving at Green Lawns, Rupert found Freddie and Declan desperately trying to salvage the IBA meeting. As a result of Rupert’s memoirs, two of the major financial backers had pulled out and Professor Graystock had resigned. As Rupert went into Freddie’s study, the Bishop rang up:

‘I’m afraid in the light of Rupert Campbell-Black’s quite appalling revelations, I shall have to withdraw my