‘What do you mean, not tough enough? Bet I could kick your arse.’
‘Yeah, and don’t I know it? Look, here’s Groucho come to cheer you up.’
The big black cat leapt into Angel’s lap with a plaintive mawk of greeting. He must be the only cat in the world who mawked instead of mewed. Angel tickled him behind one ear and he purred happily, pawing her with his claws in a way that was not doing her now very much worse-for-wear dress any favours.
‘And I hereby declare this Saturday night to be girls’ night, with enough wine and chocolate to drown all woes,’ Emily said, brandishing her box of tissues like a snotty Statue of Liberty. ‘No boys allowed except for you, Groucho, and maybe a Hemsworth brother or two if they care to beat down our door.’
‘Don’t you have a date with Danny the tattooed love god?’
‘Oh, forget him, I’ll ring up and cancel. You know the rules: sisters before misters. Tell you what, I’ll even let you watch one of your soppy old films.’
‘The Apartment?’
‘Alright, alright, if the last 500 times weren’t enough for you to have learnt all the words off by heart. We’ll get the duvet from your room, get into our PJs and “chillax”, as I believe all the cool kids are saying nowadays. You go run yourself a bath. Give me a few hours to finish what I’m working on, then I’ll phone the pizza guy and we can crack open the booze.’
Thank God for Emily. Angel had no idea how she’d cope without her, but she knew it wouldn’t be pretty.
***
Groucho’s mournful wails the next morning created a throb of searing white light in Angel’s brain. She clutched her temples and groaned.
‘Alright, mawky, just give me a second.’ She reached blearily for the packet of cat biscuits on top of the fridge and spilled a load into and around his food bowl. ‘You have to be gentle with Mummy today. Nasty Aunty Emily’s given her the mother of all hangovers.’
The black cat showed what he thought of this state of affairs by fixing her with an intent stare for a second before turning around and starting to wash his crotch.
‘Disgusting moggy,’ she muttered, tickling his neck as she pushed past him into the sitting room and plonked herself down on the sofa.
Empty wine glasses and pizza boxes littered the pine coffee table in front of her. She groaned and pushed away the stray slice of half-eaten pepperoni offending her tender morning-after nostrils. Bleurghh. It felt like a woolly mammoth had crawled into her mouth a couple of millennia ago and gone extinct.
Emily had popped round the corner to the newsagents to get a couple of cans of Coke and some Alka-Seltzer, tripping off brightly into the sunshine while her friend flung four-letter curses at her and her sodding alcohol tolerance.
The buzz of Angel’s mobile sounded from somewhere and she flung away the detritus on the table until she found where it was hidden under an empty Maltesers packet. Emily. Probably ringing to tell her there was no Alka-Seltzer. That would be just about par for the course this weekend.
‘Ange, it’s in!’ She sounded panicked.
‘In? What do you mean, in?’ Then realisation dawned. ‘God, already? But the story wasn’t supposed to break until tomorrow! Steve must have rushed it through last night for the Sunday edition.’ She let out a heavy groan. ‘Break it to me gently, Em: how bad is it?’
‘Um, I think you’d better see for yourself. I’ll be back in five… my flame-haired temptress.’ Angel could almost hear her friend smirking down the phone. She frowned. Flame-haired temptress? What details exactly did this exclusive include?
Emily burst breathless through the door a few minutes later and chucked her over a copy of the Investigator. ‘Sorry, Ange, I know it’s probably the last thing you want to see in your delicate state. At least your face is hidden in the photos though. Not even your best friend would know it was you, present company excepted.’ She grinned wickedly. ‘Looks like you had one helluva night…’
Angel’s heart pumped in her throat as she scanned the front page.
Not one of Steve’s best headline efforts. He’d gone with ‘Unreal Titty’ – a pun on the name of Wilchester’s first film, Unreal City – emblazoned across a woman’s naked back. Hers. She winced deeply. A sub-head read ‘EXCLUSIVE: married director in steamy romp with mystery girl’.
You could see Seb’s face, contorted with passion, over her shoulder as she straddled him on the bed. She felt a zing through her body, remembering the thrill of sitting astride him and guiding him down into the crisp white sheets, panting and wet after their bath together –
Hang on.
‘Shit! Shit shit shit!’
‘Oh come on, it’s not as bad as all that –’ Emily began.
‘No, you don’t get it!’ Angel groaned. ‘That shot – how did he get that? I hung a towel over the mirror! It must have fallen – that perve!’
Emily’s eyes widened as she caught on.
‘Jesus, you don’t mean Steve watched it all!’
Angel bunched her fists into her eyes and moaned. As if anything was needed to make her humiliation more complete. Not only did she have one stonking bastard of a hangover. Not only was her bare backside splashed across the front page of a national newspaper for all to see. Not only had she, Angel Blackthorne, spent her Friday night having oral sex with a married stranger in a hotel room. But now it turned out her letchy old boss had watched the whole thing!
‘Oh God. I feel like I’m going to be sick.’
Emily patted her hair, putting on her best comforting tone. ‘Look, sweetie, it might seem like you want the earth to open right now, but give it a week and this’ll all be forgotten, I promise. Just tomorrow’s chip paper, right? And as for Steve, he’s sleazy, but he’s professionally sleazy. I’m sure it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, if that makes you feel any better.’
‘How the hell is that supposed to make me feel better?’ Angel gave another long, muffled groan, hiding her face in her hands. ‘Just leave me, Em, leave me to die…’
‘Oh come on. I didn’t spend my hard-earned wine drowning your sorrows just so you could have a relapse next day. Look, I’ll get some coffee on. That at least might help deal with the hangover part of your symptoms.’
Fighting the surge of nausea, Angel pulled the paper towards her and began to read with kamikaze resignation:
Film-making wunderkind Sebastian Wilchester – husband of top actress and former child star Carole Beaumont, best known for her role as little Caroline in ’90s sitcom Something About Sally – was last night caught on the other side of the cameras, romping with an unidentified redhead, possibly a vice girl, in a swanky London hotel suite.
The pair spent the evening glugging champagne and indulging in a marathon sex session in the hotel bath, while Beaumont was at home alone in the Wilchesters’ Kensington mansion.
Angel felt her cheeks blazing with anger and mortification. If she’d been in any doubt Steve had stayed for the whole show, it was now utterly squashed.
A red flash in the corner promised ‘MORE SAUCY PICS INSIDE! Continued on p26 and 27’.
She flicked in panic to the double-page spread and experienced a surge of relief when she saw that none of the photos showed her face or anything that could identify her. Steve may be a scumbag, but he had principles of sorts, and an absolute commitment to protecting his sources was foremost among them. Thank Christ she’d wimped out of getting that tattoo on her bum at uni, though.
Inset