The Devil You Know (40 page)

crashing in the CheW. All Travis was interested in was getting a deal.

Poppy wondered if Joel Stein had made some calls, tried to spike

her before she started. Yeah, she thought, as she headed into

Starbucks for a bagel and some caffeine, maybe he had.

She needed to think laterally. Take Travis where people could

understand his talent, not some place Joel Stein could stop him even

getting heard.

LA and New York were the places all the acts got signed, and

Nashville for country music acts. However, the A & 1< men who scouted new talent were bombarded in those cities. They were invited to a million showcases each night, and blew off99 per cent of them. Unless you were a big manager, like Joel Stein, it took months of pleading to get ten seconds of a junior scout’s time.

She did not want to go that route. Travis Jackson was Poppy’s first

act, and you only got one chance to make a first impression.

Poppy sipped her walnut mocha and pondered. It would come to

her. It always did.

‘Are you sure this is a good idea? I mean, Chicago?’

Jackson looked warily out of his window seat at the concrete

forest of Chicago glittering below him.

‘We’re almost there,’ Poppy said reassuringly.

He snorted. ‘Like I care.’

But Poppy could see he was nervous, fidgeting in his seat,

checking his watch, his strong hands gripping the armrests whenever

there was turbulence.

‘I guess you’re more comfortable on a horse?’

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Travis’s face softened. ‘God’s own mode of transportation, ma’am.’

‘You really are a country boy.’

‘And this is the city,’ Travis said with disdain. ‘It looks real grimy

and dirty. And nobody big is here, record company wise …’ ‘That’s the whole point,’ Poppy said.

He raised a brow. ‘It’s your dime, honey. I hope you ain’t throwing it away.’

Poppy thought about the cost of two round trips to Chicago with four nights in a hotel, separate rooms.

She hoped so too.

Poppy set up the showcase at Zadar’s. The club was downtown, and it was a rock fixture. Metal-heads loved it; every inch of wall was covered with graffiti. It specialised in punk rock and hardcore thrash metal.

Dispirited A & I< scouts were here every night, looking for something, anything, to justify their low-level salaries. They usually stayed for less than one song. That was all it took to establish that yeah, yet another act was up on stage and in the middle of a (al suck-lest. Chicago had even less talent than LA or New York..

Poppy wanted to do what Travis had done to her; shock them of

of their complacency. ‘ She called every scout in town.

‘Yeah, hi, this is Poppy Allen, calling from LA. I think I met you last year on the Monsters of Rock tour, when I was working with Silver Bullet? No? Maybe when I was on the Green Dragon tour? Well, anyway, I got something for you. Tonight, and tomorrow night, at Zadar’s. Limited crowd.’

And the hooked rep would always ask, ‘What is it?’

Poppy said mysteriously, ‘It’s something different. I got Warner’s

coming, CBS, RCA, Atlantic, shall I put you down?’

‘Sure,’ they’d answer.

It was a small white lie, the kind they told every day in this business. In New York or LA it might not have worked. In Chicago, tley had nothing better to do.

Travis performed on a chair, with his guitar plugged in. No lights, no Silver Bullet-style pyrotechnics. Poppy knew he didn’t need any of that crap.

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Before the end of the set, she was clutching a bunch of business cards.

The second night, the audience was bigger. There were the original scouts, and now their bosses, who had taken the shuttle from New York city. Poppy grinned. The old flies-on-shit principle; they all saw the other big boys there, and now they were fighting for a piece.

She signed Travis Jackson to a three-album deal with Musica Records at twelve midnight on the third night they were in Chicago. When they flew home, Poppy upgraded to first class.

Travis was going to be a star, she told him, and the star treatment started now.

Congressman Henry LeClerc sat at the dinner table and tried to concentrate. His spin doctors were giving him good news, after all;

his opponent’s numbers were crumbling …

‘Sixteen points since August, Henry.’

‘Nobody likes her stand on defence. She actually said our troops

were overpaid.’

‘Henry, I think we got her, I really do. Her campaign team’s in a

real scrabble for funding. They just took a big donation from

TexOil, so they must be deslSerate.’

‘Uh-huh,’ LeClerc said absently.

He was eating with the Three Stooges, as he liked to term them.

Keith Flynn, Jacob Harvey and Tim Greenwood. They ran the polls,

they interpreted the numbers, they formulated ‘media response’. Apparently, his campaign for Senate was off to a good start. But LeClerc wasn’t interested. He was thinking about Poppy

Allen. He’d been thinking about Poppy Allen for six months.

He didn’t understand it.

She had been a great piece of ass. Even sensational. But so what?

Lots of women were great in bed. Henry thought that there were no bad lays, only bad lovers. Any woman could be turned into a

scratching, moaning animal. It just took the right man to do it. He was confident, even arrogant - but he could back it up. LeClerc loved women. He didn’t even have a type. He liked short, curvy girls and lean, aristocratic beanpoles. If they were smart and passionate, that was for him. He had even been known to date plain women, because often they turned out to be the hottest between the sheets; sobbing and bucking and clutching.

Best of all was dating a woman that hated him. A political rival,

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say. Seducing her, then forcing her into wild and ecstatic submission after hours of careful lovemaking. LeClerc enjoyed teasing a woman. Most men could not be bothered with foreplay, then wondered why their girls lay there inert as tapioca pudding. He liked to stroke, and kiss, and lick, and pin down with one hand, until they were aching for him.

Poppy had been amazing, but weren’t they all amazing? Smart, but he only dated smart women. Beautiful … but …

He was crazy. Losing it for some tween. Wasn’t that what they called the twenty-somethings these days? Teens and tweens.

The most utterly ridiculous thing of all was that when he tried to compare her to his other women, he felt odd. Not right. Like one of his most enjoyable leisure-time pursuits was actually a little seedy.

He wasn’t so much thinking of fucking Poppy Allen again as of talking to her. Damn it, she had been interesting, when most everybody was boring. She had some kind of life in her little subculture. Henry LeClerc liked Mozart; Metallica to him might be from outer space. But he’d enjoyed her passion. Her fire. Her raw ambition.

‘You know what would really help, Henry? Port?’

:

‘Yes, thank you,’ he said.

“

They poured the Cockburn’s reserve into his small glass.

“

‘A lady. Somebody we can introduce as your wife.’

‘Even fiancSe would be good.’

‘But make sure she’s suitable. She has to be suitable, Henry. Nobody with a past.’

LeClerc paused and nodded.

‘I hear you.’

But it was no good. He had to meet her again. To talk to her, to see her. It was an obsession. Once he physically saw Poppy, she’d stop being this young goddess, and he could get on with his life again.

‘I have to go, gentlemen,’ he said.

He would find out a little more about Poppy Allen. Maybe go see her, have one more round.

Just to get her out of his system.

:z83

Six months had changed Daisy’s life. Her book was a success. Royalties were pouring in, and Artemis wanted to extend her contract. Ted Elliott renegotiated the advance. Daisy was now earning six figures instead of five.

She decided to do something special with her money.

‘I’ve got a present for you,’ Daisy said. ‘Get in.’

‘Darling,’ her mother said, ‘this is so silly, you don’t need to buy us any more presents.’

‘Just humour me,’ Daisy pleaded.

‘All right,’ her father said, ighing.

Daisy had made them both wear blindfolds. Her parents got awkwardly into the back of Daisy’s new car. It was a gleaming racing-green Bentley, drove as smooth as silk and handled like thistledown.

The Lemon Grove had been a runaway bestseller. Daisy was up to nearly a million sales in paperback. Suddenly, she had a fleet of advisers around her: a specialist accountant, a stockbroker, a money manager. She had bought a loft-style modern flat, the penthouse of a new development in Camden; she had a wardrobe full of Joseph and Prada and Armani; she had membership of all the hot clubs in London - the Groucho, Soho House, you name it.

And Daisy loved it. Her whirlwind of promotion, book-signings, and sales conferences had hardly stopped long enough for her to start work on the sequel. Money and success were transforming her life, and it was very sweet.

This morning, though, would be the sweetest moment of all. Daisy hit the accelerator and drove like Nigel Mansell through the leafy Sussex roads, the narrow, twisting lanes overhung with trees so that light made dappled shadows under the emerald leaves, glowing

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in the sun. She felt giddy with pleasure. If there was one thing she had wanted to do for her parents this was it.

‘How much longer, Daisy?’ her father demanded.

She turned the steering wheel and crunched on to the familiar gravel path to the left.

‘We’re here. Now no touching the blindfold until I get you out of the car.’

Daisy got out, opened the car door, and helped her parents out, standing them in the drive facing the house. Then she walked

behind them and pulled off the blindfolds.

‘Ta-da,’ Daisy announced.

They were standing in front of their old house. Two brand new Mercedes were neatly parked in the garage by the gnarled apple tree; red for her father, silver for her mother.

‘I don’t understand,’ Mrs Markham said unsteadily. But her father did. ‘Oh, Daisy,’ he murmured, and stumbled against the car.

‘I had to pay them an extra ten thou to get out,’ Daisy said, ‘and they painted the den orange so you’ll have to take care of that, but it’s all yours. Actually, it’s in a family trust, so you couldn’t Nve it

away to the bank even if you wanted to.’

Her mother burst into tears.

That, Daisy thought when she got home, had been one of te high points of her life. The toys, the fame, it was all very well, but it was also ephemeral. Doing something nice for her mother and father had meant something.

So why was she suddenly feeling so down?

Her flat was immaculate; the maid came on Wednesdays. Daisy had chosen a colour scheme in oyster-white. She kicked off her shoes and padded across the soft, springy carpet to the cream couch, curling up on it in front of one of her floorto-ceiling windows with a spectacular view of the London skyline. The last moments of sunset were fading from the sky; dying streaks of orange against a deep-blue background. The serenity of twilight was rather sad, Daisy thought. Her apartment had soundproofing; there was no drone of traffic to disturb heg, nothing but the neon street lights and the orange and yellow of the cars on the road below, a constant river of artificial light. A low silver bowl was crammed with the heads of ivory roses, and the air inside her apartment was fragrant with the blossoms.

Daisy’s usual routine was to open a bottle of chilled white wine, pour herselfa glass, and switch on the Macintosh to do some writing.

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She was almost done with her chapter plan for The Orange Blossom, her next book, but tonight, she wasn’t interested.

She wanted to cry. Why? Why was that? Everything in her life was perfect. This was ridiculous.

Daisy picked up her copy of Hellot. magazine and started to flick through it. Nothing like a series of mindless puff pieces to distract her.

And then there they were, on page two. Not featured, of course, Edward would never have allowed that; just pictured as guests at the wedding of some young earl and the lucky American model about to become his countess.

‘Mr and Mrs Edward Powers,’ said the caption. Edward, resplendent in a morning suit; had he even put on a little weight, Daisy wondered? But it was Edwina she couldn’t take her eyes off.

Daisy had, thank God, been in America when Edward had got married. She had sent him a gift and a card, a lovely set of Pratesi sheets. He’d written to thank her and to invite her up to his house in the country, but Daisy hadn’t seen Edward since the day she left Oxford.

More importantly, she still had never seen Edwina, until now. What do you know? Daisy t,hought dispassionately. The woman’s not horsey at all. She’s stunning.

Edwina Powers had long blonde hair, an aristocratic nose, blue eyes, and no curves to speak of. She was the epitome of cold, patrician beauty, miles away from Daisy’s hot peasant curves. She kind of looked like Gwyneth Paltrow. With the equally skinny Edward, they made an ideal couple.

Daisy breathed in. Her heart had sped up violently. She felt dizzy, almost like a panic attack. She dropped the magazine on to the carpet, and felt a hot tear trickle down her cheek.

Oh God, oh God. She was still in love with him.

She woke early after a sleepless night and stumbled into her bathroom. It was large, like the bathroom in a good hotel, with a snowy marble floor, heated towel rails, a jacuzzi, and plenty of Diptych scented candles ranged around the tub, but that wasn’t going to help her achieve serenity this morning.

Daisy needed to see him. Edward. With a wedding ring on. After all, if you were away from someone for a good length of time you started to idealise them. Edward Powers was just on some kind of mental pedestal.