Party Games
About the Book
I’m Vanessa Powell. People think they know me because I’m famous. They think I’ve got the whole world at my feet and the husband every woman wants to marry.
But fame can be a lonely place and the perfect marriage even lonelier. Now someone’s come into my life who makes me feel alive.
For the first time ever, I’m thinking about what I really want. No matter what the consequences . . .
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Jo Carnegie
Copyright
PARTY GAMES
Jo Carnegie
To my family
Chapter 1
The pain was starting to kick in. The sun was hot on Catherine’s back, the thin running vest sticking to her skin. Arms pumping, she started down the home straight. Beethoven blared out from a passing Land Rover, the clash of classical music disappearing off into the distance.
The pavement became more uneven and busy, forcing her to slow down. It wasn’t a hardship. Beeversham High Street wasn’t like any she’d known in London, with its wide grass verges and ancient oak trees. Whimsical signs advertised antique shops and galleries, while cafés seduced passers-by with the baking equivalent of an Amsterdam window show: plump cakes with cherries like nipples, silky fingers of sugared shortbread, jammy buns oozing cream. Freshly watered hanging baskets stood out like a mistress’s jewels against the yellow stone. The whole place brimmed with an alluring charm.
As she approached the middle of the High Street, Mr Patel was coming out of his shop.
‘Catherine!’ he cried. ‘Your favourite olives are back in!’
Gasping a thank you Catherine put her head down. She shot past the open windows of Bar 47 and the drinkers enjoying a convivial sundowner. At the market square she turned right and started up Lamb Lane.
The steep climb had defeated many a pedestrian and the blood started to roar in Catherine’s ears. The almshouses appeared on her left, before the welcome sight of the church came into view, looming down from the top of the hill. Arriving at St Cuthbert’s she collapsed over the gate, sucking in deep, restorative breaths.
Her watch showed a personal best. That earnt her a bloody big glass of wine later. As the feel-good endorphins started to surge through her body, she stood up and turned round.
Catherine would never get tired of this view. Valley rolling as far as the eye could see, as if someone had taken a luxurious green rug and shaken it out. The land dived down low and swept up to perilous heights. Nestled in the middle, like a puddle of melting gold, was the market town she now called home.
A periwinkle sky framed the idyllic scene. The month of May had been more like a July, with uninterrupted sunshine and soaring temperatures. Weather forecasters had excitedly predicted an Indian summer. Everyone hoped they were right, for once.
One thing jarred in the genteel landscape. Perched high in the hills, like a predatory eagle about to take flight, stood a gleaming white box of a house. Beau Rainford’s controversial modernist creation, ‘Ridings’. An appropriate name, considering how many women Beau was meant to have bedded. He’d caused local uproar when he’d ripped down an old farmhouse to build his abode of sharp angles and lines. There had been mutterings about dodgy planning permission and people being paid off but nothing had ever been proved. Now it looked down on the town, the mirrored windows matching the arrogant disdain of the owner. Beeversham’s notorious bad boy was doing nothing to build his bridges.
On the opposite side of the valley, facing Ridings like a reproving older brother, stood Beeversham’s most famous landmark. Blaize Castle, or rather the ruins of the castle, were surrounded by shimmering meadows of wild grasses. The place was a mecca for American tourists visiting the area. The remote location made it popular with local kids and amorous couples bent on misbehaving.
Catherine could have stayed where she was all evening, but John would start wondering where she’d got to. She started a leisurely jog back down Lamb Lane. By the time she got back to the High Street, she was so deep in thought about what to have for dinner that she didn’t see the black Bentley coming too fast in the opposite direction. It sounded its horn, shattering the peaceful evening and making her leap a foot in the air.
‘Jesus!’ she yelled, attracting a disapproving look from an old couple walking by with an obese Jack Russell.
As the car swept past she got a glimpse of a stunningly beautiful woman on the nearside of the back seat. The woman glared at Catherine with feline eyes before the car zoomed off, leaving her in the road like a piece of discarded litter.
Catherine watched the POW 1 number-plate disappear down the street, carrying its famous cargo. Vanessa Powell, one half of Beeversham’s celebrity couple. It was fair to say Catherine and Vanessa had history. In fact, Vanessa loathed Catherine. When she’d been editor of the renowned Soirée magazine Catherine had run an article on Vanessa that had nearly wrecked the celebrity’s reputation.
Seven years on, Catherine still cringed every time she thought about it. It had been the press week from hell when a story had come in about Vanessa Powell, the then model-cum-socialite being paid to appear at an African dictator’s birth
day party. What’s more, she’d apparently made her entrance rising topless out of a six-foot strawberry layer cake. Print deadline looming, Catherine had assumed a vacuous vamp like Vanessa Powell would be desperate for any publicity and had decided to run it.
It had turned out to be completely untrue. Vanessa had never even met the African dictator, let alone had any intimate dealings with layer cakes. Her lawyers had come out swinging, and Valour Publishing had ended up paying substantial damages. Catherine had nearly lost her job over it. The worst thing of all was the grovelling apology she’d been forced to write in her Editor’s Letter, describing Vanessa as ‘an icon for their generation’.
The women had run into each other at a high-profile fashion exhibition a few months later, where Vanessa had ‘accidentally’ emptied her glass of champagne down Catherine’s new Armani suit. Conveniently, a bank of photographers had been on hand to capture the whole thing. The gossip pages had dined out on it for weeks.
It was one of life’s bitter ironies that they’d ended up living in the same town. Thankfully Catherine was yet to have an encounter with her Ladyship at the mini market. The only time the residents of Beeversham saw the Powells was on TV or in OK! magazine, usually gushing about their wonderful marriage. Once the lights and cameras stopped it was like the celebrity couple ceased to exist.
Catherine had a sudden pang of yearning for her old life when she’d been a person of influence, lawsuits and all. Now I’m more of a desperate housewife. That thought was replaced by the one playing endlessly in her head at the moment that, despite all her and John’s enthusiastic efforts, she still wasn’t pregnant.
Crossing the road, she started for home.
Chapter 2
The Bentley continued the journey towards home. The suave man sitting beside Vanessa gave a dismissive sniff. ‘Was that Catherine Connor back there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Has she cut her hair?’
‘Why would I notice?’
‘Makes her look like a bloke. I always thought she was hiding a cock in there somewhere.’
Vanessa’s husband’s comment wasn’t made entirely out of loyalty. Conrad Powell had hated Catherine ever since a film reviewer in Soirée had described his acting as ‘more wooden than a Pinocchio convention’. He’d been positively gleeful when the subsequent revelations about Catherine had come out.
He went back to scrolling furiously down his BlackBerry. ‘She looked a mess. Little Miss Hotshot isn’t so hot now she hasn’t got her precious magazine to fall back on, is she?’
Vanessa turned to look at her husband. His matinée-idol looks showed no sign of fading, the smooth complexion helped out by discreet jabs of Botox. Conrad looked every inch the face of ‘Valiant Hair Colour For Men (Dark Coffee)’, his most successful campaign to date.
‘It went well today, didn’t it?’ she asked.
Conrad glanced up again, giving her a flash of deep chocolate eyes. ‘I suppose, if Vitamin Vite is about to take over the world as you say it is. The way the PRs were having orgasms over it, you’d think they’d discovered the cure for bloody cancer.’
She laid a manicured hand on his knee. ‘You were fabulous, Conrad.’
‘I just fucking hate these things, all those people mooning at you like brainless sheep.’
Vanessa studied her husband’s handsome profile. She knew these things were hard for him. When they’d first met Conrad had been the more famous one. A household name as the dashing Dr Debonair on BBC1’s hit show The Saviours, his big break had come when he’d been cast alongside Colin Firth in the Hollywood remake of Of Mice and Men. He had been convinced it was the start of Hollywood stardom. She could still remember the black moment when her husband had discovered his scenes had ended up on the cutting-room floor.
She had urged him to get straight back to work, but long hours on a TV drama didn’t cut the mustard with him any more. Conrad rejected 90 per cent of the scripts he was sent, and as the months and then years went past, Vanessa had started to wonder if his Hollywood dream would ever happen. In the meantime she’d devoted herself to transforming them into the biggest husband-and-wife team since the Beckhams. Vanessa was a huge fan of the former Spice Girl. What would Victoria do? was often her mantra.
Her hard work had certainly paid off: Brand Powell now reigned supreme. Advertising campaigns, clothing lines, his and her perfumes, (imaginatively called ‘Vanessa’ and ‘Conrad’). There was even talk of their own chat show, although things in the TV world took a frustratingly long time. In the meantime their profile had soared and the money was rolling in, even in these recession-hit times. Conrad might complain but his wife had turned him into a walking and talking aspiration.
He sighed heavily, as if someone had just sounded the death knell for his soul.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘Bloody wonderful.’ He didn’t look up.
She turned to gaze out her window at the fields flashing by. Conrad made no secret of the fact that he found the things they did for Brand Powell demeaning. Vanessa was often made to feel it was her fault. But what was the alternative? To sit back and watch their empire dry up around them? Just like your career? she thought disloyally. She had worked too damn hard. The thought of going back to nothing made her shiver.
The car purred along Pavilion Heights, the most exclusive road in Beeversham. Billy their chauffeur turned a smooth right into the private road leading to the gates of Tresco House. Moments later the car was pulling up outside the ten-bedroom mansion the Powells called home.
Conrad got out and went round to open his wife’s door. Helping her out, he dropped an extravagant kiss on her hand. ‘Back at last, ma chérie. Thank fuck for that.’
He flashed a wicked grin, looking heart-stoppingly like the old Conrad, before turning and taking off on long legs across the courtyard.
Smiling wryly, Vanessa followed in his wake. A bundle of white fluff shot out the open front door and threw itself at her Louboutins. It was Sukie, the Maltipoo cross; beloved by her and despised by Conrad after it had left a present in his Italian loafers.
‘Hello, my angel, did you miss your mummy?’ She picked the squirming ball up and pressed her face into soft fur. Mindful of hairs on her dress, she put Sukie back down carefully and went inside.
Vanessa had grown up in a small Ealing terrace with a garden the size of a cotton-wool pad and neighbours crowding in from every direction. She always got a thrill walking into her beautiful renovated manor house. White marble floors stretched the length of the ground floor, while a white staircase swept up into a circular balcony above. Tall, opulent vases of lilies stood on the heavy Moorish side tables she had specially imported in. The look was very LA; exactly what she’d asked the interior designer for.
‘Mrs Powell, where shall I put this?’ Billy was hovering on the doorstep, an exquisite cake box in his arms.
‘In the kitchen please, Billy.’ On closer inspection Vanessa could see that some of the flowers in the nearest vase were brown and wilting. Why hadn’t Renata put in fresh ones, as she’d requested?
Conrad had already disappeared to the gym to do his stretches; his hamstrings always played up after a long car journey.
‘Vanessa.’ A statuesque figure in a purple kaftan and Cartier diamonds stood at the top of the stairs. Slowly, dramatically, Dominique Salijan started her descent. Her heavy Samsara perfume engulfed Vanessa in place of a hug.
‘You’re late,’ she said in her heavy accent. ‘I was getting worried.’
‘The traffic was bad,’ Vanessa said apologetically.
‘You were the belle of the ball.’ It was a statement, not a question.
‘Of course.’
Even at fifty-five Dominique had an essence that could turn heads. When Vanessa had been little she’d thought her mother looked like Sophia Loren; certainly Dominique had always felt as remote and beautiful as the famous actress. It was to Dominique that Vanessa owed her high cheekbones and famous caramel-c
oloured eyes.
Her mother gave her daughter the usual once-over, missing nothing. Automatically Vanessa pulled in her stomach.
‘I got Billy to stop off at Patisserie Valley,’ she offered. ‘I got your favourite, framboise gateau with white chocolate.’
Her mother sighed, as if she’d been disappointed hugely. ‘Oh, darling, I wish you hadn’t. You know how I’m trying to keep my figure.’
‘I thought it would be a nice surprise.’
How stupid of me.
‘I would just prefer flowers. You always get me such beautiful flowers.’
The Victoria Beckham dress was starting to chafe at Vanessa’s curves. ‘Fine.’ She sighed. ‘I’m going upstairs to get changed.’
‘You look tired, put on some eye cream,’ her mother instructed. ‘I’ll be waiting with drinks on the terrace.’
Vanessa peeled off her dress and hung it on the wardrobe door, ready for dry-cleaning. The La Perla bra and knickers were next, dropped into the rose-scented laundry basket. She turned to look at the line of mirrored wardrobes that dominated the master suite. Anyone else would have seen an exotic beauty with a knockout body standing there, cappuccino mane cascading down her back. Vanessa, however, focused on the minutiae. Her mother was right. The slight tautness around her eyes was a sign that Vanessa hadn’t drunk enough water today.
She knew not to rise by now, but her mother’s comment still rankled. Why couldn’t she just approve for once? Vanessa made sure Dominique wanted for nothing. The more she gave, the more critical her mother seemed to become.
She surveyed her reflection in the glass: the sensuous hips and tiny waist, the impressive natural breasts with large, dark nipples. Vanessa had always been limited as a model: her womanly dimensions were more suited to the old-school glamour of a 1950s pin-up, but even so she had made a fortune.
Slipping into her silk dressing gown, Vanessa walked across to the French windows. As with everything in her life the gardens were groomed to perfection. Striped lawns were centred with a regal stone fountain and an elevated mosaic swimming pool looked down from the far end. Their gardener, Paul, was bending down in one of the flowerbeds, his T-shirt rising up to reveal an expanse of pink flesh.
Her mind wandered back to Catherine Connor. Not that Vanessa would ever say so, but she thought Catherine had looked great. She would never want Catherine’s figure – muscles were so unfeminine – but her arch-enemy had looked glowing. Retirement in the country clearly suited her. For a moment Vanessa was wantonly jealous of Catherine’s life, the freedom she had to do whatever she wanted. Can you imagine me jogging through town without a scrap of make-up? Her mother and Conrad would have a blue fit.