Authors: Alison Kervin
'Thanks, Henry.'
'No problem,' he says. 'Let me give you a hand with your bags.'
He climbs slowly out of his seat, walks round to the boot and lifts out my luggage. I've left half of my stuff at Rufus's house. Henry says he'll bring it over later.
'Can I say something?' Henry says, looking at me nervously.
'Of course.'
'I feel bad about what happened to you. I feel bad that the police told me to recall everything you said in the car. I told them that you said you could kill Elody. I regret that. I shouldn't have said it. Everyone knows you couldn't have killed Elody. I just answered their questions. I wanted you to know, none of us thought for one second that you killed Elody.'
'I think Rufus may have had his doubts.'
'No,' says Henry. 'No, that's not true.'
'Why didn't he come to the police station to see me then? Why did he hide away and pretend none of this was anything to do with him?'
'He tried to come to the police station but the police said he couldn't. They said you had no right to visits as the prime suspect in a murder investigation. They wouldn't let him phone or visit. Christ, he was trying everything. His legal team all told him to keep away or he'd be arrested. At one point I thought he might go and get himself arrested just to be there with you and support you through it all.'
I'm looking down at the road.
'Kelly, are you OK?' he asks.
'Yes.'
'Have you thought this through? Do you really want to go?' As he speaks, he lays the second of my three bags down onto the freezing cold pavement.
'Yes,' I say. 'I have no choice.'
'You do,' he counters, but I shake my head. I really don't think I have any choice but to stay away from Rufus and all his life represents, until I can work out what I, Kelly Monsoon, want out of life. I have so much to think about. I can't go back there. Not now, probably not ever.
It's 4 am. I had no desire to alert the world's press to my decision to leave the house, so asked Henry if he'd mind driving me. He'd taken Mum and Dad back to Hastings at midnight, so I knew he'd be around once the world had gone to bed. When I called Sophie and Mandy they couldn't have been more supportive.
'Of course you can come back here,' they say. 'We'd love to have you back. Any time.' They even cancelled the new flatmate, due to move in on Monday.
It's odd to think that when I moved to Richmond, I thought it was the beginning of a vastly different life. Ha! Well, that was true. But it wasn't a life that I wanted.
I can't believe now that I caught the bus because I didn't have any money and was too scared to ask Rufus. What a wimp. I remember dragging those bags along, thinking my fingers were about to break under the pressure of all those handles. Christ. Well, if I've learnt one thing from Elody, and particularly from my experiences with the police, it's to have more confidence, speak my mind and really think about myself a bit more rather than everyone else. I was so obsessed with not letting Rufus down, and not letting Elody down, that I told half-truths and almost got myself bloody locked away. Never again!
'Henry, thank you; that's so kind of you.'
'No problem,' he says, climbing back into his car. 'We're gonna miss you, you know.'
'I'll miss you too,' I tell him and we look at each other for a brief second through the open window, a look full of sadness and understanding. It's like he acknowledges that so much has happened this week that the only way I can cope with it all is to get away.
'Come back soon,' he says and I just smile because I can't imagine how I can possibly go back after all that's happened. I can't imagine anything in the future at all, to be honest. All I know is that it's 4 am on Sunday 6 December and I'm standing outside the flat where I once lived, hoping that I don't make things too awful for Mandy and Sophie by being here. The press are bound to track me down eventually, of course, but if I can just stay here for a while until I've sorted myself out, got my head straight and worked out what to do with my life, that would be the greatest treat of all.
I might go abroad, or just get another job here. I don't think I could go back to the old one. My days in Richmond Theatre are definitely over. But how will I get another job? Who'd want want to employ me? Perhaps I should 'sell my story' as I'm being urged to by so many tabloid editors and publishers. 'You'll make a million,' they insist. 'Get yourself an agent.' Christ, I can't think of anything worse. Having experienced first-hand what it's like to have people talking about you all the time, I'd never do that.
There's much to think about but I'll do that tomorrow. I knock on the door gently. The best sound I've heard in ages is of footsteps thundering down the stairs. Mandy hurls herself through the door and hugs me tightly. Sophie's there too, pulling me close to her and letting me cry my eyes out on her big, soft, towelling dressing gown.
We all walk into the small entrance hall leading to the stairs up to our little pad. I feel so safe here. I know that's ridiculous because I was a million times 'safer', whatever that word means, in the big house in Richmond surrounded by guards and state-of-the-art security systems, but this place is safe because it's full of people like me. It's got Mandy and Sophie in it and they understand me. There are no fabulous Parisienne stylists and no women walking round with clipboards and shouting instructions as if they were trying to take over the moon. There's no Christine to consult before I can work out whether my boyfriend wants coffee and no elderly butler always just a second away from us, awaiting instructions. I guess you get used to that way of living; Rufus certainly doesn't seem to think it's odd, but then he grew up with it. It's part of his heritage; part of who he is. No one asked him to make any changes. I'm not criticising because it would have been daft for him to come and live in my flat, but I suppose I mean that Rufus made a mistake by expecting me to slot in and quietly get on with my new life while he travelled off to the other side of the world. I lost my job, my friends and my independence and every value I've ever known went out of the window. Nope, I love Rufus more than I've ever loved anyone in my life before, and I can't imagine life without him, but I can't do what he needs me to do. It turns out that I have more sense of myself, and sense of individuality, than I ever realised and that's got to be a good thing. Hasn't it? Has it?
We drag the bags up the stairs and I take in the dreadful peeling paint and scuff marks traced across the walls. Never noticed them before. I can get them fixed now. One of the advantages of having some money – in the short term at least – will be the ability to make this flat nice.
'Let's leave them here for now,' says Soph, letting go of the heavier of the bags that she had gallantly offered to bring up for me. I think she regretted it the minute she attempted to lift it but, kindly, she didn't say anything, just grimaced as she bobbed it up the stairs.
'The guys'll bring them in for us.'
'What g—?'
We walk into the sitting room and I see straight away what guys she's referring to. There, sitting on our madly dilapidated sofa, are Jimmy Lapdance and three of his biggest bouncers, all of them done up to the nines in their gold jewellery, impossibly shiny black shoes and, in one case, a matching impossibly shiny black head. Jimmy jumps up and swaggers over to me.
''Ello, doll-face,' he says. 'This is Morgan, Mather and Prentice.'
I smile at the three bouncers while Jimmy surveys them proudly. His little hairy hands rest on his fleshy hips while he taps his foot in time to an imaginary drumbeat. 'You got yourself into a bit of a trouble, didn't you?'
'Er . . . yep,' I say. 'A leetle bit of trouble.'
'Jimmy's come to help us,' says Sophie. Now this is odd, because there's nothing about Jimmy that would move you to think he could help. He certainly doesn't look like an angel of mercy, with his tub-shaped torso and ungainly swagger. He has more product in his hair than the Twickenham branch of Boots sells on the average Saturday afternoon. He drips in jewellery, clanking and banging like a badly oiled machine with every move. But still, he's a real heart-of-gold sort of guy, and I can see why the girls brought him round in this time of great need.
'Right, this is the thing,' he says, his little eyes twinkling in a way that is more pretty than menacing. 'You're gonna need protecting from the paps, ain't ya?'
I love the way he calls them 'paps' like he's used to dealing with the world's media every day.
'Yes, I guess I will,' I reply, touched by the way in which these guys have come to our assistance, the most unlikely of knights in shining armour, but very welcome ones!
'We're gonna have a shift system outside the flat. There'll always be a bouncer there so the paps can't get too close.'
'OK. Thanks. That would be great,' I say, but I have to confess that I'm not filled with confidence. Surely it'll take more than Jimmy and his mates to hold back the media enough to make my life worth living.
'I know what you're thinking,' says Jimmy. 'You're thinking, how can that dodgy old bloke and his mates keep me safe? Well, I'll tell you, doll-face, we can and we will. No one will get past my guys.'
'It's very kind of you,' I say, but grateful as I am, I'm wondering what Jimmy is getting out of this; he's making quite a commitment to me.
'We might be handing out leaflets and trying to get some of me Suga Daddys girls into the picture from time to time . . . that OK?' he says.
I say yes because it is. I don't care what Jimmy does with the photographers if it's legal and it results in them being kept away from me.
'They won't get near you when you're in the flat,' says Jimmy.
'So now we just need to work out what places you're going to want to go to out of the flat, and how we make sure you're safe there,' says Mandy.
'The Rose Garden,' I reply, before I've even thought about the question. 'I'd really love to be able to go to the Rose Garden.'
The bouncers look from one to the other. Jimmy looks like a man who's never heard anything quite so ridiculous in his entire life. 'What d'ya wanna go there for?' he asks.
'It's beautiful and tranquil and I'm just kind of in love with it,' I say. This is all above and beyond the remit of the bouncers who shuffle in their seats. I can almost read their minds: We came 'ere to make sure no geezer got no pictures of her, we never expected to be hearing all about the bleeding Rose Garden.
'There's a guy there called Frank who Rufus knows well. I'll get him to look out for me,' I say.
'OK, why don't the three of us go down there tomorrow and take two bouncers and case the joint,' says Mandy, opting to take a rare and quite alarming foray into the language of the all-American cop movie.
'Yes,' says Sophie with a smile. 'Tomorrow will be case-the-joint day.'
Oh good.
EXCLUSIVE
By Katie Joseph
Daily Post
Showbiz Editor
As the story of Elody Elloissie and the mystery over who murdered her once again dominates the headlines, Katie Joseph takes a look behind the stylish woman and reveals what life was really like for the one-time golden girl of fashion.
Elody Elloissie was a lonely woman with few friends. She never knew her own parents, never knew the love and devotion of a family around her. He story is desperately sad. The woman who would go on to become the queen of the red carpet dressing had humble beginnings when she was found left outside a hospital like a waif and stray from a Dickens novel. The hospital named her Elody after the nurse who looked after her and the young girl began a life of moving from foster home to foster home until a permanent carer could be found.
Elody's childhood was miserable, fractious and painful. She was eventually adopted when she was six years old but still she couldn't settle down to a normal life because her new adoptive parents brought her to England where young Elody had a terrible time adjusting to the new language, new friends and new surroundings. She was isolated and alone and struggled to make any meaningful friendships.
By the time she was seventeen, she was a rebel without a cause. She had left home and moved in with a succession of disreputable men until she came across Jon Boycott, the fashion designer who died two years ago, from a drugs overdose. Elody never recovered from the death of her great love.
It was through this boyfriend that she met and fell in love with the world of fashion. She was a natural when she went along with her boyfriend to fashion shoots and helped to style the models. She went to work on a magazine and became an instant hit. Verda Petron, former editor of French
Vogue
recalls, 'She was a quiet girl who just got on with the job. She was always first in the office, always last to leave. When Jon died, though, she changed. She became brittle and determined. I never saw her cry over Jon's death but she was a changed person as a result of it. She worked harder and became determined to be successful at any cost. It was almost as if she blamed herself for his death.'
Elody was at her most successful in the 1990s when she and Jon became the golden couple of fashion. Celebrities and stars wanted her to work with them and magazine designers wanted to feature her. She was a star. The trouble with being a star in the fickle world of fashion is that it is bound to come to a sudden end. Elody was always seen as being part of the Jon and Elody brand, known as 'Jelody'. When Jon died and it all ended, it stung her badly.
'It was as if all the anger from the rejection she'd faced as a child re-emerged with Jon's death,' said leading psychologist Dr Matthew Stevenson. 'Elody became a liability; lashing out at models she'd once worked with and turning up drunk at catwalk shows. She was desperate to win her place back in society and for people to look up to her again, but she was
persona non grata
which sent her more deeply into the cycle of depression.'
By the time she sought help, and managed to get control over her drinking, the world of fashion had left her behind. She was never again the star she once had been, and that haunted her to her dying moments, at the hands of an unknown murderer in the exclusive Royal Institute of Fashion. The most haunting thing of all is that the murder happened on the second anniversary of the death of Jon Boycott.
'I see that Katie woman has been made editor now,' I say to Mandy and Sophie who just look at me blankly. I guess they haven't become quite as obsessed with the machinations of the national press as I have.
'It's just this woman who's been writing about me in the
Daily Post
since she first got wind of the fact that I was seeing Rufus. It was she who "broke the story" as they say in the media. Now I've become such a huge story she's got herself a promotion on the back of it all. Well done, love: showbiz editor. Wow, won't Mum and Dad be happy! She's written today about Elody's background. It's awful. I never knew what a tough life she had.'
I lay down the paper, trying to fold it beneath the blanket thrown across my head. The girls are silent. They hate it when the subject of Elody comes up because they really don't know what to say. We're in the car on the way to Hampton Court and it's a complete bloody farce. It's ridiculous. I need an entourage of six just to get to the Rose Garden and sit on a bench with no name. They bundled me out of the house with more aggression than the police ever used, and hurled me into the back of Jimmy's terribly discreet (not) pink Mercedes and we went off, hurtling through the streets of Twickenham pursued by half the world's media with Jimmy shouting 'Awright, darling,' to every woman he passed. Oh God.
'You're like Princess Diana,' says Mandy when she sees how many photographers there are alongside us. There's a silence in the car and I peek out at her from beneath my woollen roof. It's not a helpful comparison to make since the Princess died in circumstances not unlike this . . . except she wasn't in the back of Jimmy's candyfloss-pink stripper mobile with its garish leopard-skin interior.
We phoned ahead to the palace where I spoke to Frank who has closed off the Rose Garden for an hour for 'essential pruning'. Quite why such basic garden maintenance should involve the closure of an entire garden is something I won't worry myself about. I'm sure there are few people in the world who'll question lovely Frank's gardening strategies so we might just about get away with this.
He's waiting for us when we arrive. I'm about as flustered as it's possible for a woman to be and he's sitting there, entirely at ease, saying he enjoys the quietness when the garden's closed and thinks he might work this pruning rouse more often.
'Tea?' he offers, handing me a little plastic cup that he's removed from the top of his flask. He gives it to me with hands that seem so much larger than they ought for such a slight and wiry man. They're wrinkly and mud-covered. I wonder why he doesn't wear gloves.
I take a gentle sip and feel my teeth retreating from the sugar attack. He must have about eight spoons in there. Jeez. It's nice though.
'My grandson Lawrence made the tea today,' he says proudly, and I feel myself smile. Lawrence is such a lovely guy. He works in the gardens too and is sweet and desperately shy. He's also huge; a great big lumbering hulk of a man. Every time I see him I think of Mandy – he's just her type.
'Is it OK for me to come here?' I ask. 'Or is it going to make things difficult for you?'
'It's fine,' he says. 'In fact, if you don't continue to come here you'll make an old man very sad. Just call up beforehand and speak to me, or Lawrence, and we'll shut it for an hour. No one will mind. Call Lawrence's mobile telephone; you've got the number, haven't you? He'll pass the message on to me.'
'Are you sure?'
'Of course I'm sure, love. And what'll they do if they do mind? Sack me? I'm nearly eighty and haven't been on the payroll for fifteen years so there's not a lot they can do.'
'Thanks,' I say, taking another sip of the tea.
'Kelly. Someone to see you,' Mandy shouts through the flat before running into my bedroom where I'm lying on my bed wearing nothing but my underwear.
'Shit. You look really thin. You have to start eating,' she says. There's a look of pure horror on her face. I know she's right; I haven't really eaten since I got back here ten days ago and I realise that's silly, but I can't bring myself to think about putting anything in my mouth.
I'm surviving on a diet of sweet tea and HobNobs from Frank in the Rose Garden every day. 'The thought of food makes me feel queasy,' I say.
'I know, but if you don't eat you're going to get ill. You know that
Heat
magazine had a picture of you this week. You were in the "too skinny by far" section.'
I smile when she says that. It puts things in perspective really. When I was deliriously happy I was in the 'too fat by far' section of the magazine.
I can't believe what's happened. I can't believe anything. I can't believe how much I miss Rufus. Every minute of every day crawls past; every one of them tortured by the thought of him. I feel all twisted up and ruined inside. I miss him so much it's insane. I'd give anything to go back in time. Anything.
'I don't want to see anyone,' I say to Mandy, as I've been saying to both the girls since I got here. I don't want to see anyone, talk to anyone or think about anyone. All I want to do is make my daily visit to the Rose Garden to drink tea with Frank and listen to him talking about the roses. I've spoken to him about Rufus, of course, and he's told me how wonderful Rufus is.
'You're not helping, Frank,' I say, but he just smiles and looks out towards the palace.
'Give him a chance,' he's always saying. 'Just let him talk to you.'
I can't do that though. I can't have him anywhere near me. I won't be able to cope. I'm barely coping at the moment. Just existing and hoping this nightmare comes to an end while knowing all the time that it can't. It's a nightmare without an ending.
'Come on. Clothes on,' Mandy insists. She's really cheered up over the past week . . . ever since Frank's grandson Lawrence took a shine to her. They've been out once or twice and I think they really like each other. I'm pleased; Lawrence is a lovely guy.
'Get dressed quickly; it's important,' she says again.
'It's not Rufus is it?' I ask, a wave of terror running through me at the thought of him sitting out there in the flat, drinking tea from chipped mugs with Sophie.
'Of course it's not Rufus,' she says.
The bouncers won't let him anywhere near the flat. He comes round several times a day, and calls constantly, but the girls know that if they let him in, or hand the phone to me just once, I'll leave the flat for ever. Since they're terrified about what I'll do, I know they want to keep me here where they can keep an eye on me and make sure I'm as safe as possible, so they continue to send Rufus packing without giving him any explanation whatsoever.
'It's the police,' she says. 'That guy Detective Inspector Barnes – the good-looking one. He wants to talk to you.'
Oh joy.
'Hi,' I say, walking into the sitting room, and I see his eyebrows rise.
'Have you not been well?' he asks and he sounds genuinely concerned. 'You look so pale and thin. You must eat.'
'Yeah, thanks. I've had that lecture once today,' I say, flopping onto the sofa next to him. 'What information do you need now?'
The police have been back a couple of times since I was released without charge; they've been nice actually. Popping in to check I'm OK and moving the photographers away from outside. They've been keeping me briefed on things as they search the land for the killer, but have got no closer to finding the guy who did it. It's always Barnes who comes round, and at first I thought he was just being diligent. Then I noticed the way he looked at Sophie. I think he fancies her.
'We've had some interesting information come to light,' he says in his police-officery way.
'Oh,' I say, sitting up and immediately paying closer attention because, despite my fragile physical and mental state, I'm as keen as anyone for them to find the person who callously murdered Elody and bring him or her to justice. I notice that the girls are sitting right forward too, looking at the detective with rather too much attention. Sophie is dressed up in the tightest of jeans, a rather lowcut top and the highest shoes she owns. She has an astonishing amount of make-up on: bright red lips and so much blusher that it looks like she's been slapped. She is smiling at him like an affectionate drunk. I think she needs to work on her approach a little; I don't know whether Detective Barnes is likely to fall for an alcoholic clown. I look over at him. I suppose he's attractive, really. If you go for the big and hairy look. Mandy and Sophie clearly do.
'We've cleaned up the CCTV footage,' he says which is a rather baffling introduction to any sort of conversation, so we all just stare at him. 'You know, the CCTV footage from the door at the back of the building. I think we might have mentioned last time we were here that the only logical point of entry for the assailant was that rear door, but the footage from it was very patchy. Well, it was sent off to be cleaned up and it's come back. Clean.'
'And . . .'
'And,' he goes on, 'that means no one entered through the back door.'
'Oh. So what does that mean?'
'It means the assailant must have entered through the front door.'
Gosh, these policemen are bright.
'But,' he continues, 'everyone who entered through the front door had a watertight alibi for the time of the murder.'
He's got us now. We're all looking from one to the other in total confusion, wondering whether an 'assailant' was beamed down from the ceiling, or climbed out of a desk drawer.
'So where did this "assailant" come from?'
'We're not ruling out suicide at this stage.'
'Suicide?'
'Suicide,' he repeats gravely. 'I say we're not ruling it out because we haven't established it yet, but we have established that it is possible for her to have stabbed herself. Scientists have looked at the angle at which the dagger entered the victim's body and the way in which it had been pushed. It's clear that she could have done it. A pathologist called Michael James is looking at the body again; he's the best in the business. He has biomechanics and doctors with him. We'll know more when they finish. One thing that is odd is that there's no suicide note. It's unusual to say the least for a suicide victim not to leave a note of some kind so we're going back through her possessions and final movements in the hope of finding one.'
'Oh.'
The detective looks across at us, lingering a little longer than is strictly necessary when he comes to Sophie's cleavage, then stands up to leave.
'Well, I won't keep you ladies any longer. Just wanted to keep you fully briefed. I'll call back if there are any more developments,' he says.
'Oh please do,' says Sophie. 'Let me show you out.'