I didn’t respond, just picked up the magazine that was discarded on the coffee table. A few pages in – I wasn’t really reading it as Jodie and Lena were still prattling on – and I saw my own image.
It was a picture taken when I wasn’t in a good way, a couple of years old. I had a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Next to it, was a picture of me and Sophie leaving Simone’s a couple of weeks ago. She looked like a celebrity; blonde hair curled, a designer coat, huge heels that were bright red and her smile was beaming. She was holding my hand and I looked like a different man, especially how I was looking at her.
I read the article; it went through who I was currently working with, there was speculation who else I might be writing for, and then they credited Sophie with the change in my appearance because in the newer picture I looked happy.
And I was happy.
Until I read the last paragraph when the writer quoted ‘celebrity reporter, Amber Morrison.’
* * *
I found Amber in a bar, because where else would she be? She was interviewing a boy band who’d had a couple of number ones even though they all looked about fourteen with tattoos and hair that really wasn’t meant to be that long.
I sat down and ordered a beer, because while I’d never been an alcoholic, although I gave the media that impression when I stepped back from performing, I didn’t believe in anything stronger than a beer before nine at night. Not when you needed to be clear about what you had to say.
“Liam!” Amber’s tone was falsely over-excited. “It’s so good to see you!”
Four just-past-having-acne faces stared at me. I lifted my bottle to say cheers.
“I’ll be over in a second. Just finishing up.”
I didn’t bother trying to listen to her interview. I’d heard the questions all before, and the answers too.
I checked my phone instead, finding a message from Sophie, a selfie she’d taken that morning when I’d been asleep and she’d woken up. The sheets stopped anything too revealing – not that I’d have minded – but it was obvious we were both naked and we both had what my sisters would term sex-hair. She was making bunny ears behind my sleeping head and looked completely ridiculous but the look of evil joy on her face made me smile.
“I’m so pleased to see you here! I was going to text you later about meeting for a drink, maybe hit up a club? It’s been ages since we got together.” Amber looked as put together as she always did. Today she had her hair straight and was wearing black leather trousers, the rock-chick-hack look that she’d perfected over the years.
“That would be a solid no.”
She put her hand on my shoulder.
I caught sight of the four boy band babies behind her, watching open-mouthed.
I shrugged her hand off.
“I don’t appreciate you going to see my fiancée at work and trying to warn her off me.”
She froze.
“I’m marrying Sophie, Amber. And not because I’m using her. You need to leave her alone and me.”
“Can we talk about this in private? I’ll… I’ll ask Deano if I can borrow his meeting room…” She looked around for the bar owner.
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
Again she reached for my arm. “Liam, we’ve been friends for years. More than friends. Don’t throw it away over a pretty face and a big pair of tits.”
That was part of it. Amber had always been paranoid about having small tits. She’d been interviewed countless times, seen as a celebrity because she knew other celebrities, and would point out her faults before anyone else. At first, she’d been genuine, someone who was a bit shell-shocked by the lifestyle, but then it became her life and I was her meal ticket, the permanent way she could stay famous.
“We stopped being friends a couple of years ago, back when I spent a week not knowing what my name was and came to on a Caribbean island with no idea how I got there, and you were still partying.”
She looked around the room. “They were good times…”
“They weren’t, Amber. I don’t think well of them. That was a low point. And when you found out who my father was – you used it to help your career.”
This time she had the decency to look away.
She’d been with me when I found out and had promised to keep it to herself. The night I’d announced my retirement from the band, she released an article, presenting me as some destroyed boy who had pined away without his father. She’d neglected to include that my dad hadn’t had a clue my mother had been pregnant. There’d been no way he would’ve known that I knew. But Amber had twisted it, all for a story.
