Page 23 of Private Lives

He felt his heart skip a beat. Had he heard her right?

‘You’re a . . . a prostitute?’ he whispered. He felt sure the room was spinning.

‘I prefer to call it escort work. How else am I supposed to live between auditions?’

‘Oh Jesus . . .’

He sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed his temples. He could see the headlines now. Hollywood Star In Seedy Vice Girl Scandal. Lying Love Rat Shows True Colours. Slimy Brit Breaks Jess’s Heart. And all because he wanted a nice night out, free from all this fairy-tale bollocks, where he could drop the mask and be himself. There is no ‘you’ any more, he thought grimly. You’re public property. A business. A machine to make money for other people.

‘It’s okay for you, isn’t it?’ said Katie. ‘You’ve forgotten what it’s like to have no idea where the next rent cheque is coming from. To have to walk five miles into the West End because you can’t afford the bus fare. Don’t tell me you haven’t pulled a few tricks to get on.’

‘You want a part, I can get you some auditions,’ he said desperately.

‘And I’m supposed to believe you?’

‘Trust me, Katie.’

He heard her suck her teeth dismissively.

‘I’ll tell you who I trust. Blake Stanhope. I spoke to him this afternoon.’

‘Stanhope?’ The name of London’s most notorious kiss-and-tell publicist sent Sam cold.

‘He says the escort angle helps our cause. He thinks it makes the story worth over a million worldwide; he can maybe even get me on those American chat shows. So I’m thinking maybe it’s actually a better move to spill the beans.’

‘Please, Katie, Eli’s getting you the money,’ said Sam. ‘Don’t do anything rash.’

‘You know what I want. I’m meeting Blake at nine o’clock tomorrow morning to take things further. I don’t want to do it that way. But I will if I have to.’

‘Katie, don’t. Please,’ he said, but the phone had gone dead.

Sam stared down at the handset for a moment, then with a curse, he threw it on the bed. He yanked the door open.

‘Josh!’ he shouted. ‘Get me another phone. And where’s that bloody lawyer?’

7

‘Ecco! Ecco! Taxi! Taxi!’

; Anna walked down the ramp as the hydrofoil clunked into dock in Capri’s Marina Grande and pulled her sunglasses down from the top of her head.

Wow, she thought, taking in the pastel sugar-cube houses clinging to the towering cliff, watching the streams of chic daytrippers chattering excitedly as they disembarked from the boat. Thirty minutes earlier she had left Naples, one of Italy’s poorest cities, with its crumbling tenements, and now she was here, the sparkling sea to her left and a branch of Roberto Cavalli to her right. She felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, swept up, whisked away and deposited in a fantasy land.

Where, though, she wondered, were Sam Charles’s people? She picked up her overnight bag and wandered away from the dock. Thankfully she was travelling super-light – there had only been time to grab her pyjamas and her passport when she had stopped at her house on the way to the airport. But arrangements had been worryingly loose about how she was supposed to find her client.

‘Don’t worry, Sam’s people will find you,’ his manager Eli had told her breezily. All right for you to say, thought Anna, feeling the heat in her frankly impractical lawyer’s suit. You’re in an air-conditioned office in LA.

‘Hey there!’

She turned to see a short, skinny guy running down the dock towards her. He was wearing shorts and one of those fancy Bluetooth headsets. He definitely looked like one of Sam’s people.

‘Anna, right?’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘I’m Josh, Sam’s PA. I’m gonna take you to him.’

‘Well, I hope we’re going in one of those things,’ she said, pointing to a line of open-topped taxis with bright striped awnings.

‘Uh-uh,’ said Josh. ‘Even better.’