Bad Girls Read online

  Not an alarm clock. Petal didn’t even own one. It was her phone, she realized gradually, blaring through her dreams, forcing her to wake up. Ugh. Her mouth was as dry and rough as a wooden board, and her eyelids were stuck together with something thick and gluey. She reached out, scrabbling with her hand, to find her phone and make it stop, trying not to open her eyes, as she knew from bitter experience that any more light would just make her head hurt even worse.

  The rings were making some sort of pattern: five, stop, five, stop. Someone was calling her, hanging up whenever the phone went to voicemail, and promptly hitting Redial.

  Petal’s hand was sweeping in big circles, but not finding anything. No phone, no nothing. Her face was pressed into something soft and fluffy, which she slowly began to realize was the Flokati rug beside her bed. Painfully, cursing, she levered herself up to her hands and knees, discovering that she was fully dressed. She lifted her head, squinting at the bedside table, but couldn’t see her phone. And she would definitely have seen it, because it was customized with hundreds of Swarovski gems, the whole point being that it was so shiny you could spot it anywhere.

  ‘What the fuck is that fucking noise?’ Dan mumbled, his voice muffled.

  Turning her head, gulping in pain at the movement, Petal saw Dan, clad in his boxers and T-shirt from the night before, sprawled on her bed, the duvet kicked away at his feet, but every single one of her four pillows piled up on top of his head.

  ‘Make it stop,’ he moaned feebly as Petal clambered up on the bed to lie beside him, the sound of the phone seeming to follow her. She bumped one hip on the bedframe and screamed in agony, her protruding bone colliding with the wood so sharply that it felt like it was grating through her skin.

  No, wait. How could it be grating? She slid a hand down to the area and hissed in triumph as she felt her phone, shoved into her jeans pocket, its crystals digging into her fingers as she extracted it and turned off the call.

  ‘Yesss!’ she muttered as she managed it.

  ‘Who the fuck keeps ringing this early?’ Dan groaned, reaching out one arm to pull Petal close to him, his T-shirt reeking of sweat and smoke. ‘You got the debt collectors after you, or what?’

  ‘Oh,’ Petal said in a tiny voice as she checked the phone screen to see who’d been calling her.

  ‘Come to bed, pet,’ he mumbled, reaching for the duvet.

  ‘I can’t,’ Petal said, her voice still infinitesimal. ‘It’s my dad.’

  ‘Your dad?’ Dan shot up to a sitting position as if he’d been galvanized, pillows flying off to all sides.

  ‘Yes,’ Petal said, still staring at the phone, which was ringing again, but silently now. ‘And he never rings me. But now, he is. At nine thirty in the morning. That’s not good.’

  Dan opened his mouth, saw the expression on her face, and shut it again. They looked at each other like two scared children caught out doing something very naughty indeed.

  ‘You’d better answer it, pet,’ he said finally, nodding at the phone, swallowing nervously at the mere thought of Gold. ‘He’s been ringing for ages. It’ll just get worse the longer you wait.’

  Petal silently thumbed the Answer button, nicking on the speakerphone too so that Dan could hear; at least she didn’t have to face this alone.

  ‘Hello?’ she said faintly.

  ‘Petal! At last!’ a woman responded sharply: Jinhee, Gold’s girlfriend. ‘Hold on. Your father wants to talk to you.’

  Dan’s hand wrapped around Petal’s, squeezing it hard, his eyes widening as he heard one of the world’s most famous voices, the husky tenor drawl of Gold. Many journalists had tried to describe it; Petal knew the ones her father liked the most were warm honey over river rocks (Rolling Stone) and brown sugar and Jack Daniel’s (the New York Times). Gold’s voice could seduce and enchant, break and mend hearts, croon a lullaby, bring tears to your eyes, raise the hairs on the back of your neck; his song ‘Now Is the Time’ had been played at more weddings in the last decade than any other.

  ‘Petal,’ her father said softly, and every muscle in his daughter’s body tensed. ‘I’ve seen the papers this morning. Get over here right now.’

  The line clicked off.

  ‘Fuck,’ Dan whispered. ‘I never knew he could sound that scary.’

  But Petal was already jumping off the bed and racing to the bathroom for the Solpadeine.

  *

  Gold had bought Petal the canal-side flat in Camden Town not just because it was a fashionable area, perfect for a young trendy girl about town, and therefore a good investment: Gold’s canniness about finances was one of the reasons he had become a megastar. No, the clinching reason for choosing Petal’s location was that it shared the same postcode as his own.

  Gold had scarcely been what even the most generous person would call a hands-on parent. After Linda, Petal’s mother, left for LA in an attempt to become an actress, Petal was brought up by a series of nannies in the basement flat below the house where Gold lived with a series of girlfriends; she’d seen her father only by appointment when she was younger. From about fourteen onwards, she slipped into the house whenever a party was going on, which was pretty much all the time; what she experienced there was a much more comprehensive education than she received at any of the smart schools that, one by one, had asked her to leave.

  But, despite his lack of oversight of his daughter’s formative years, Gold still liked to be able to summon her swiftly if he needed to. One phone call, a sharp tug on the strings, and Petal was frantically brushing dry shampoo through her hair, pulling on a fresh T-shirt, spraying herself with deodorant and half a bottle of Boss Orange, running down filthy, bustling Camden Road. Across the five-pronged intersection at the tube station, where bikes and mopeds darted across illegal turns, and aged drunks – already, at ten in the morning – propped on the metal safety railings, drinking Tennent’s Super and swearing at passers-by.

  Past Camden High Street’s boot shops and mobile phone shacks, and into Parkway, signs of gentrification immediately obvious, like a trail that led to the richer and richer areas beyond, a golden fountain of money that had welled up from the centre of Primrose Hill, and washed down as far as here, where pubs that had once been scrappy local boozers with stained red carpets and tatty upholstery had now gone gastro, painted charcoal-black, with stripped floorboards and rocket salads. Past the organic delicatessen and the shiny new estate agents, past the marble tile shop with its chic subtle palette of beiges and chocolates and greys and creams.

  Onto Regent’s Park Road, her heart pounding now, palms of her hands clammy. Into a part of NW1 that was a whole world away from the grime and chaos of Camden: Primrose Hill, where a house cost in the millions, where heads of advertising agencies, film stars and celebrity chefs bumped into each other buying lattes at the pavement cafés, and where Gold, years ago, not content with his own house overlooking the park, had bought the one next door and knocked the two together into a mansion that was referred to by local estate agents as reverently as priests talking about the Sistine Chapel.

  Up the main steps, lined with pewter pots of exquisitely cultivated topiary. The door swinging open, a tiny dark-skinned woman in white shirt and black trousers bobbing her head in acknowledgement of Petal’s identity and gesturing with swift, imperative flicks of her hand across the light-flooded atrium, paved in Siberian rose malachite, to the living room beyond.

  Sri Lankan, Petal thought as she went past the maid. I remember Jinhee saying she was staffing all their houses with Sri Lankans because they’re cheap and work hard and don’t take up much room.

  Walking across the wide hall, past the huge painting of Gold’s villa in Tuscany, its vineyards and olive groves stretching away in perfect pale green lines to either side of the sprawling stone building. Into the white, white living room: white leather-tiled floor, white velvet wraparound sofas, white lilies in five-foot-high glass vases, a six-fold Japanese screen depicting a snowscape hung on the wall overlooking the ga
rden beyond.

  The sliding glass doors of the living room were wide open, and Petal could see her father in the garden beyond. As always at this time of day, he was ducked over, a small rake in hand, wearing a short natural linen robe and loose trousers, sculpting the gravel of his Zen garden into perfect waves to represent the ocean swirling around the rocks and moss that symbolized islands and forests. After meeting Jinhee and deciding to give up his hard-partying life, Gold had studied with the monks at a Kyoto temple for over a month to learn the art of Karesansui – raking sand and gravel into even and balanced ridges.

  Of course, Gold had summoned her imperiously, and she’d had to rush over straight away. And of course, Petal had to wait another twenty minutes until he had set down his rake, taken up his shears and clipped near-invisible adjustments to the bonsai trees, and turned to survey the rest of the garden – the covered swimming pool surrounded by climbing roses (white, naturally, on black trellises), the dark granite water features blending beautifully into the ivy-covered walls – before coming back inside.

  One of the many reasons Jinhee had survived this long as Gold’s official girlfriend was her ability to anticipate his needs. Almost at the moment Gold stepped over the threshold of the living room, Jinhee appeared from the atrium. Small, her hips square, her chest flat, wearing black crepe trousers and a long-sleeved black T-shirt, Jinhee was carrying a black-lacquered tray laden with a stone teapot and three handleless cups. She crossed the room, soundless in her soft black suede slippers, and set the tray down on a table that was a solid cube of glass, motioning Petal to sit down on another cube – white suede – while she and Gold took the sofa opposite.

  Typical, Petal thought sourly, as she obeyed. I hate these pouffe things. Now I’ll be wriggling around the whole time and Gold’ll be cross with me. Jinhee always manages to put me in the wrong.

  Petal had never got on that well with any of Gold’s previous girls. But they’d been like her mother Linda: fluffy glamourpusses with more boobs than brains. Jinhee was their polar opposite, smart and manipulative, and it seemed to Petal that she took pleasure in outmanoeuvring Petal and making her look silly.

  ‘So, Petal,’ Gold said quietly. ‘We have things to talk about.’

  He reached down with his left hand into the chrome magazine rack next to the sofa, and pulled out a stack of newspapers, which he fanned out on the glass coffee table. It was one smooth gesture, theatrical and completely unnecessary, done with the showmanship that had made Gold the star he was. But what was incredibly effective when staging a six-month-long world tour was vastly annoying when done by your own father.

  Petal met Gold’s eyes for the first time that morning. It was like an electrical shock, even for her. Gold’s charisma was a finely honed rapier, a weapon that after nearly fifty years he knew exactly how to wield. His face, though not handsome, was very striking, his intensely blue eyes bright and clear against his lightly tanned skin. Decades of performing, first as the lead singer of his band, then as a solo artist, had given him the ability to draw all the attention towards him, and his daily yoga sessions reinforced his physical confidence.

  He held Petal’s gaze for a few seconds, long enough to establish control. Then he nodded downwards, leading her eyes towards the covers of the tabloid newspapers.

  A faint gasp emerged from Petal’s lips. She’d thought it would be just the usual: that she’d been drunk last night, tumbling out of a black cab with Dan, her skirt riding up to her crotch – no. She glanced down for a split second. I’m still in the jeans I put on yesterday evening.

  And the photos in front of her hadn’t been taken last night, but ten days ago, more or less. Petal recognized them straight away: the black walls, the bottle of Absolut Pear on the chipped sink, JC reflected in the mirror, laughing, as Petal, in the foreground, bent over the lines chopped out on the edge of the sink, holding a rolled-up note to her nostrils. A white smudge blurred part of the frame: the camera flash, bounced back off the mirror, concealing the person who was holding it.

  Rudy. Rudy was taking pictures on his phone.

  JC dumped Rudy last night. And Rudy turned right round and sold the photos of me and JC taking coke to the tabloids.

  Bastard.

  And then she thought frantically: Oh, no . . . Dan was there that night . . .

  She grabbed at the papers, fanning them out further. As she feared, the next one had her and Dan together, Dan with the bottle of vodka upended to his mouth, Petal reaching for it, a small white lump clearly visible in her nose as she looked up at him, laughing.

  ‘I was set up,’ Petal said quickly. ‘The guy who took the photos, he was a boyfriend of a friend of mine, he must have planned this all out—’

  But her father was already raising one silver-ringed hand to stop her. His linen shirt fell back, revealing the Sanskrit tattoo around his wrist.

  ‘There’s no way you can explain this away, Petal,’ Gold said, ‘so please don’t insult my intelligence.’

  ‘Do you know how bad this makes your father look?’ Jinhee asked, reaching forward to pour out the tea. ‘His latest album is a reworking of Gregorian chants! We have a Channel 4 documentary coming out next month where he visits monasteries and leads guided meditation sessions. This is not a good time for you to be acting out some childish rebellion with deliberately provocative behaviour.’

  Gold nodded sombrely as Jinhee handed him the cup. Petal narrowed her eyes in anger at Jinhee; ever since Jinhee had come into his life, Petal had realized that the model/actress wannabes he’d dated previously were infinitely preferable to this one. The other girlfriends might have been so petrifyingly beautiful that they took your breath away, but at least they hadn’t lectured Petal while her father nodded in agreement.

  I was such an idiot, Petal thought. I thought that she wouldn’t last two seconds with Gold, because she wasn’t pretty enough for him.

  It was the mistake that Gold’s Russian supermodel girlfriend, Ekaterina, had made a few years ago, when she booked them a series of tantric sex lessons, thinking it would bring them closer than Gold had ever been to another woman. Instead, Jinhee, the tantric sex guru, had cut Ekaterina out of Gold’s life in a mere couple of months, effortlessly moving in on her target. In that time, she had managed to install herself in the Primrose Hill mansion, making it clear to Gold’s party animal friends that they were no longer welcome, while cleverly establishing herself with Gold’s manager and publicists as exactly what he needed to revamp his image; no longer was he dating a stream of girls half his age, but settling down with a woman whose austere appearance and stabilizing influence was the perfect way to consolidate him as the serious musician he aspired to be.

  She’s cleverer than all the others; Jinhee doesn’t want to be his queen. She’s worked out that the real power is behind the throne, Petal thought sourly.

  Jinhee continued: ‘If you had done this deliberately, to mess up your father’s latest project, you couldn’t have managed better! Luckily for you, however, we have discussed this and decided that we see this as a subconscious acting out of your aggressive urges rather than a direct attack on your father.’

  Petal knew she should bite her tongue and take her medicine. But every time she saw Gold – always, now, with Jinhee – it got worse and worse. More lectures, more pop-psychology nonsense from a woman who barely knew her. It was unbearable.

  ‘You’re having a laugh, right? All I did was what I learned in this house!’ Petal snapped back at Jinhee, irritated beyond endurance. ‘I know I shouldn’t have let anyone take photos, OK? But when I was growing up, there were bowls of coke lying round the place! Much more partying than I’ve ever done! Like, orgies, all sorts of things!’ She looked passionately at her father. ‘Gold, you know it’s true! It’s totally not fair to sit here and have her lecture me, like a shrink! I’m not doing anything I haven’t seen you do!’

  Gold nodded gravely, his left hand coming up to trace a symbolic gesture over his chest which Petal didn
’t recognize.

  ‘It’s certainly true that I lived a rock-star life for years,’ he agreed. ‘But remember, Petal, all that time, I was producing art. Making albums. Doing tours.’

  ‘Award-winning albums,’ Jinhee chimed in. ‘Sell-out tours.’

  Petal tensed, sensing what was coming. To fend it off, she said quickly, ‘Well, I have a whole range of stuff I’m designing coming out with Accessorize! And there’s my column, and Rimmel are going to name a lipstick after me . . .’

  Right . . . she thought sadly. Even if that was all true, Accessorize and Rimmel won’t want anything to do with me as soon as their PRs see these photos. No big company’s going to want to be associated with a druggie. I just messed up every single pathetic little career prospect I have.

  ‘I don’t see any moral seriousness in that,’ Jinhee observed, looking at Gold. ‘Do you?’

  It was clearly a rhetorical question. He shook his head.

  ‘Not like your work, Gold. Which, as I’ve pointed out many times, always had a fundamental core of moral seriousness,’ she informed him.

  Gold lit up with pleasure, his eyes sparkling aquamarine, his shoulders drawing back to sit up even straighter.

  Wow, Petal thought. She knows exactly the right thing to say to him. All the right buttons to press.

  ‘You’re clearly on the wrong track, Petal,’ Gold said piously. ‘I feel it’s my obligation to step in at this point and redirect you to a better course. Tough love, it’s called. I’ve neglected you over the years. I admit that. But with the course of meditation Jinhee and I have been doing, I’ve realized I need to work on that. We’ve talked it over –’ he glanced at Jinhee – ‘and we’ve decided that it’s time I put my foot down.’