Killer Queens
Praise for Rebecca Chance:
Praise for Divas:
‘A classic tale of bitchy women fighting their way to the top’ Daily Mirror
‘Sizzles with glamour, romance and revenge. Unputdownable. A glittering page-turner, this debut had me hooked from the first page’ Louise Bagshawe
Praise for Bad Girls:
‘Glitzy, hedonistic and scandalous, this compelling read is a real page-turner’ Closer
‘A fun, frivolous read’ Sun
Praise for Bad Sisters:
‘A gripping and exciting novel’ Closer
‘An explosive read’ Star Magazine
Praise for Killer Heels:
‘The perfect sunlounger fodder in the form of power games, illicit romps and some menacing high-heeled shoes’ The People
‘Rude, racy and lots of fun’ New!
Praise for Bad Angels:
‘Brimming with murder, blackmail and scandalous revelation’ Sunday Mirror
‘The perfect bonkbuster for lazy holiday reading’ Star
Also by Rebecca Chance
Divas
Bad Girls
Bad Sisters
Killer Heels
Bad Angels
Rebecca Chance’s Naughty Bits
First published in Great Britain by Simon and Schuster, 2013
A CBS Company
Copyright © Rebecca Chance, 2013
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of Rebecca Chance to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Paperback ISBN 978-1-47110-169-4
Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-47110-168-7
eBook ISBN 978-1-47110-170-0
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group UK Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
For everyone at Thomson TUI, the Karisma hotel group and the staff of the El Dorado/Casitas Royale on the Mexican Riviera, for the amazing stay they organized for me while I was writing this book – it was the trip of a lifetime!
Acknowledgements
Huge thanks to:
At Simon and Schuster: Maxine Hitchcock, my always-superb editrix, plus Clare Hey and Carla Josephson, who’ve worked like Trojans alongside Maxine to get this book into print on a very tight deadline. Sara-Jade Virtue and the amazing marketing team – Alice Murphy, Dawn Burnett, Ally Grant – who work just as hard promoting the books. Dominic Brendon, James Horobin, Gill Richardson, Rumana Haider and Rhedd Lewis in sales are raising my sales with every book, and I’m incredibly grateful. Hannah Corbett in publicity has been brilliantly efficient and very generous with the bubbles!
At Simon and Schuster in Australia: a big thank you to Kate Cubitt, Carol Warwick and the whole team.
At David Higham: Anthony Goff, my ever-wonderful agent. Marigold Atkey has been helpful and efficient way beyond the call of duty, and Tine Nielsen, Chiara Natalucci and Stella Giatrakou in foreign rights do a fantastic job of selling Rebecca Chance overseas.
Emma Draude and Sophie Goodfellow at Emma Draude PR, who are getting reams of fabulous coverage for my books! Lucky me!
Garry Wilson, Fiona Jennings, Lisa Jones, Emma Lee, Katie Badger and everyone at Thomson TUI who helped to organize my trip to Mexico so that I could set part of the book in the most fabulous resort imaginable. Thanks so much for your superb skills in organizing the trip and the competition – it’s been a really fun and delightful collaboration, I hope the first of many! Special thanks to Sharon Johnstone in Cancun, killer heels and all, who put together so many great excursions for me to write about and let me pick her brains over a delicious lunch at the stunning El Dorado Maroma hotel.
Everyone at the Karisma hotel group for hosting me so generously when I visited the El Dorado Royale and the Casitas Royale (the resort featured in the book). Their hospitality to me as I simultaneously researched and wrote the Mexico sections of this book was simply outstanding, absolutely world-class. Jose Carlos Vasquez gave me a fascinating tour of the resort, and introduced me to Pancho and Maria, the resident alligators; Flor Rodriguez very sweetly let me ask her lots of questions about the hotel in the glamorous Martini Bar; Francisco Jorge oversaw everything with superb efficiency, and our butlers, Pablo, Liliana and Elizabeth not only seemed to know what I wanted before I did myself, but were utterly charming. I must have been a considerable nuisance with all my queries, but they kept smiling their lovely smiles and never let me know it! Jesus, Irving and Alejandro kept the strawberry Popsicles coming (not a euphemism). Thanks also to Andrew and Alan, who also got roped into question-answering, and to our waiter Innocencio at Jojo’s restaurant, who made me a grasshopper out of palm leaves and brought me dessert cocktails, just as he did for Lori. It really was the most amazing stay and I could cry right now thinking of how lovely the swim-up suite was, the gourmet food, the drink, the luxury – truly, if they gave six stars to resorts, the El Dorado and the Casitas would be first in line. Thanks also to Martina at the Maroma and to Lucero at the Azul Sensatori, who gave me tours round their stunning hotels, and to Jonatán Gómez-Luna and his team at Le Chique for a twenty-eight course dinner that was one of the best I’ve ever had in my life. Roll on the Michelin star!
Matt Bates, my beloved partner in the worship of Eleanor Burford and her many pseudonyms.
The Royal Navy Commander (who wishes to remain anonymous) who let me pick his/her brains about navy ties, destroyers etc for Hugo. And the person married to the Commander, who provided me with a lot of nicknames from their time at the University Royal Navy Unit.
The utterly charming Sujata Naik of GiGi London Medical Aesthetics, who’s also a dab hand with the salt microdermabrasion gun . . .
Sarika Patel of Clarity Colonics, who really is as nice and gentle as her description in the book!
Colin Butts, my man in Ibiza, who knew exactly where the young royals would go to party with off-duty ladies of the night . . .
My new intern, Lydia Laws-Wall, who does a killer Power Point presentation: really looking forward to working together!
As with BAD ANGELS, I honestly don’t think I could have written this book in a very short amount of time without the Rebecca Chance fanfriends on Facebook to cheer me up, distract me and express naked envy at my amazing photos of Mexico! Angela Collings, Dawn Hamblett, Tim Hughes, Jason Ellis, Tony Wood, Melanie Hearse, Jen Sheehan, Helen Smith, Ilana Bergsagel, Katherine Everett, Julian Corkle, Robin Greene, Diane Jolly, Adam Pietrowski, John Soper, Gary Jordan, Louise Bell, Travis Pagel, Lisa Respers France, Stella Duffy, Shelley Silas, Serena Mackesy, John Holt, Tim Daly, Lev Raphael, Joy T Chance, Lori Smith Jennaway, Alex Marwood, Sallie Dorsett, Alice Taylor, Marjorie Tucker, Teresa Wilson, Jason Ellis, Margery Flax, Clinton Reed, Valerie Laws, Simon-Peter Trimarco, and Bryan Quertermous, my lone straight male reader (bless). Plus Paul Burston, the Brandon Flowers of Polari, and his loyal crew – Alex Hopkins, Ange Chan, Sian Pepper, Enda Guinan, Belinda Davies,
John Southgate, Paul Brown, James Watts, Ian Sinclair Romanis and Jon Clarke. Plus the ineffable sisters Dolores Feletia von Flap, Phyliss du Boire and Ida May Stroke. If I’ve left anyone out, please, please, send me a furious message and I will correct it in the next book!
Modified thanks to Laura Lippman for introducing me to the torture that is Pure Barre – as with Belinda, it’s so much nicer when we sweat through the DVDs together!
The adorable McKenna Jordan and John Kwiatkowski, for bringing my smut to Texas.
And as always – thanks to the Board.
Contents
Oukaïmeden, the Atlas Mountains
London
Lori
Belinda
Chloe
Belinda
Lori
Chloe
Belinda
Lori
Belinda
Chloe
Lori
Chloe
Lori
Lori
Buckingham Palace
Lori
Chloe
Lori
Buckingham Palace
Lori
Chloe
Buckingham Palace
Epilogue
Oukaïmeden, the Atlas Mountains
Twenty years ago
The paparazzo’s cold fingers were slow to move on his Nikon. He had been waiting for nearly an hour in the freezing cold, pacing up and down, ducking behind the primitive hut that was the only possible place of concealment every time the cables of the chair lift started to whir, indicating that a skier was on their way up to the top of Jebel Attar. Twice he had been on standby, expecting to see Her step off the rickety, slow-moving lift with Her usual grace, and twice he had been disappointed. Both sets of arrivals had been locals, lean Moroccan-looking men who were clearly familiar with the pistes; they had wasted no time heading for the approach to Grande Combe, the bumpy descent known as a mogul field, for experienced skiers only.
Still, he would keep waiting. If there had been a Paparazzo’s Paparazzo award, a sculpture of a camera lens, whisky bottle and brimming ashtray, Nigel Slyme would have been consistently in the top three finalists. It was his life. He didn’t mind heat, cold, wading through waist-high water carrying his precious camera above his head, or spending fortunes on the latest telephoto lenses, as long as he snatched that precious shot of a British princess getting her toes sucked by her American lover as she reclined on a sun lounger, or an internationally famous pop star nipping out onto the private balcony of her five-star hotel suite for a furtive joint, topless and looking as rough as a badger’s brush after a hard night partying. The chase was everything. Once he’d captured the shot, sent it off to his agency, he felt nothing but a depressing comedown. He suspected his colleagues of sharing exactly the same sensations once they had filed; why else did they all smoke like chimneys and drink like fish?
The wife who had left Nigel years ago had been a shopping addict, silly mare. Went out and spent a fortune on things she didn’t need, then let the bags pile up around the flat, never even bothering to take out the contents and put them away. Once she’d gone on the hunt down Oxford Street and dropped the dosh, she couldn’t have cared less about her purchases. Looking back, though, Nigel understood his ex in a way he hadn’t when he’d been kicking those bags across the lounge and yelling at her about racking up the credit card bills. It was all in the anticipation. That was what made your blood run hotter, your heart beat faster, as you heard the cables singing overhead and wondered if this time, it would be Her arriving for Her early-morning ski.
Nigel’s ex-wife had said sourly, many times, that Nigel thought more about Her than he ever had about the then-Mrs Slyme, and she had been absolutely right: Nigel couldn’t deny it. His nerve-endings were tingling as he pulled off his gloves and blew on his hands to warm them up, slapping them together. He had to have bare fingers to operate the delicate focusing ring of the Nikon; minor frostbite would be nothing if he managed to get these photos.
He saw the long legs first, a second or two before the rest of Her body came into view, and his heart soared. It was the closest Nigel Slyme had ever been to falling in love. And if you had asked him if love, to him, meant hiding out to capture photographs of his obsession when She thought She was alone, take Her private moments and plaster them all over the tabloids, Nigel would honestly have been baffled at the question. She courted the press, didn’t She? Worked it like She was born to it. Posed like a pro. And he always made Her look gorgeous. Mind you, that wasn’t hard, was it, with that face and figure?
Besides, how would he have known that She was making a habit of sneaking up here to Jebel Attar to go skiing by herself at the crack of dawn, if he hadn’t been tipped off by someone in Her entourage? Oh, She was in it with him, every step of the way.
Nigel drew in his breath as he saw Her jump down lightly from the chair lift, the tight blue ski suit flattering Her lean body. On the crown of Her head were silver goggles, propped on top of the white cashmere pull-on hat which framed Her lightly tanned face. Her skin glowed, Her cheeks were flushed from the cold morning air thousands of feet above sea level, Her lips shiny with protective balm.
Nigel had been expecting Her to look exhilarated at the impending exercise, and the rare treat, for Her, of solitude in a public place. But Her expression, as She looked around the mountaintop, glancing at the faded old signs which barely did the job of indicating the pistes, was . . . thoughtful, he decided. Like She was making a big decision. And sad.
Like She knew what was coming, he would say afterwards to the myriad journalists who all wanted to talk to him, the last person to see Her on that fateful morning. It sounds mental, but that’s what it was like. She was beautiful and sad and sort of resigned. Like She really did know what was coming.
Of course, it wasn’t just Nigel’s words that conveyed how Princess Belinda had seemed at daybreak in the Atlas Mountains. Once Belinda had surveyed the small, snowy plateau, she didn’t glance again at the ramshackle hut. Nigel was able to inch up, place the lens of the Nikon on its roof, and start to shoot. The light, gusting wind covered any noise of the camera shutter as it clicked away, capturing every fleeting expression that passed across one of the best-known faces in the world. The long straight nose, the straight dark brows over the big hazel eyes, the Cupid’s bow lips which made her smile so entrancing; from the moment it had been clear that Prince Oliver, heir to the British throne, was seriously considering the young Lady Belinda Lindsey-Crofter as a potential bride, her Disney-princess smile had been flashed around the globe, creating such excitement that the world had held its breath waiting for the Prince to finally propose.
Her silky straight dark hair fanned out over her shoulders below the white pull-on hat, those strong athlete’s shoulders which, combined with her height and her lean hips, made her a perfect clotheshorse. Her small breasts rose and fell as she drew in a deep breath, staring over the stunning, snow-covered landscape below, the Piste des Mouflons, scattered with boulders and stone outcroppings that looked terrifying to Nigel. He found himself devoutly praying that Belinda wouldn’t choose that route, and sighed in relief as she turned towards where the earlier skiers had headed that morning, the Grande Combe.
It all happened so fast. She pulled down her goggles and pushed off, the swift, skilled strokes of her poles signifying her expertise at the sport; commentators had said that Belinda was gifted enough to have been picked for the British ski team, that Prince Oliver’s gain was a loss for the sport at an international level. She schussed off on a straight run down the start of the hill, flying along, her hair whipped by the wind, her posture perfect, barely using the poles at all. Nigel dashed out to the edge of the plateau, no longer needing to be concerned that she might become aware of his presence, switching for the telephoto shots to the Canon which also hung round his neck, capturing her as she sped down the piste, imagining with glee how much the agency would eat up this photo sequence of Belinda all alone in the expanse of wh
ite.
The ink was barely dry on her divorce from Prince Oliver. She was still Princess Belinda, but no longer Her Royal Highness, a small but crucial distinction. She shared custody of her son and daughter with Prince Oliver, and the children were with him at Sandringham now for the winter holidays as Belinda took her first getaway as a single woman, away from it all in one of the most obscure ski resorts in the world, high in the Atlas Mountains above Morocco. Only Nigel Slyme had tracked her down here, and the elation pumping through his veins was near-orgasmic as he frantically found an angle to snap the Princess as she shot away, heading for a stand of tall Spanish fir trees, covered in snow, disappearing from view for twenty seconds; he used the time to readjust the focus, preparing for her to emerge on the other side.
And there she came, flashing out from behind the last tree, her blue figure angled forward, poles tucked in, as she headed along the base of an overhanging ridge. It was the most stunning image: the slim blue shape bright against the white snow, dark firs behind her, the ridge rearing above her, piles of snow-covered boulders stacked dramatically along its slope.
It really did happen so fast.
From one second to the next, the world changed. Nigel didn’t know if he’d felt the shudder of the impact first, heard the dull roar, or saw the first boulders beginning to topple as the cliff exploded before his eyes. Only the instincts drilled into him by decades of his work kept his finger on the shutter; you kept shooting, no matter what happened, until someone hit you or put a gun to your head. So he captured everything, that split-second where the blue figure was still visible, still in its skier’s crouch, either unaware of the avalanche or trying desperately to outrun it; and then the moment where it disappeared forever, buried under the mass of boulders pouring down to cover the piste entirely, the entire ridge, shockingly, horrifyingly, disappearing in a single blast, as if blown up in a puff of smoke.
And there was smoke, in a way. A cloud of snow, obscuring the blue sky, hanging there for a long, suspended moment before drifting down to land on what had been a cliff and was now a flattened heap of rocks and stones, like a gigantic cairn that marked the final resting place of one of the most famous, beautiful, unhappy women in the world. The woman who had once been Her Royal Highness, Princess Belinda, before turning her back on the prospect of ever being Queen.