Obsession (52 page)

For now though, he must wait until this untimely business with the police cooled down. But all the time he would be watching Corrie, his Corrie, because she would be his in the end, of that he was in no doubt at all.

It was while Luke was on his way back from the police station that the telephone call Corrie had been dreading came through to the edit suite where she was viewing rushes with Annalise.

‘Mummy! Mummy!’ Annalise cried after only a few moments. ‘You’re not making any sense. No, no, listen! I’ll go to a private office and call you back. Just hang on there.’ She put the phone down and turned immediately to Corrie. ‘Mummy sounds terribly upset about something,’ she said. ‘Do you mind carrying on without me for a while?’

Not knowing what else she could say, Corrie simply shook her head and turned back to the monitors. It was pointless even to pray that Octavia wouldn’t tell Annalise anything about what had happened at the Ritz, it was quite obviously why she had called. And exactly what Octavia was going to tell Annalise was anyone’s guess, though all that concerned Corrie right now was what excuse she was going to give for being there with Phillip in the first place.

It was some time before Annalise returned to the edit suite, and the minute the door opened Corrie started to brace herself. She turned round, and seeing Annalise’s face her insides seemed to collapse. It was more than obvious that Octavia had done her very worst. Not that Corrie had thought for one minute that she wouldn’t, nor that this was going to be easy, but without her father’s permission to tell Annalise who she really was, she knew now that this was going to be impossible.

‘Annalise,’ she started, but Annalise immediately interrupted.

‘Colin,’ she said to the editor, ‘would you mind leaving us alone for a while?’

Colin shrugged, hit a couple of buttons then got up to leave the room. Already the atmosphere was so tense he had no desire to stay.

Annalise waited only until the door had closed behind
him
before rounding on Corrie. ‘You two-faced, conniving, little bitch!’ she spat. ‘I know …’

‘Annalise, please, just listen …’

‘I don’t want to hear anything you’ve got to say. Not one fucking word! I got you this job, Corrie Browne, without me you’d still be out there in the gutter grubbing around like the little scrubber you are! And how do you repay me? What do …’

‘For God’s sake, Annalise …’

‘Shut up! Just shut the fuck up! I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been all this time. I thought you were my friend, I trusted you, you bitch, and all the time you’ve been scheming behind my back. Not only have you tried to steal my job, you’ve tried everything you could to come between me and Luke, and now you’re using my father to help you! What won’t you stop at? Just what lengths …’

‘Annalise, you’ve got it all wrong …’

‘I don’t know how you’ve got the fucking audacity to come in here and face me every morning when you’re not only sleeping with my boyfriend, you’re sleeping with my father too. Is there nothing you’ll stop at to get what you want?’

‘I’m not sleeping with your father, don’t be so damned ridiculous. And neither am I sleeping with Luke!’

‘You surely don’t expect me to believe that,’ Annalise yelled, ‘when my own mother saw you parading yourself about the Ritz like the little …’

‘It wasn’t like that! I was there because …’

‘I know why you were there, you whore! Holding his hands, canoodling with him …’

‘For Christ’s sake!’ Corrie screamed. ‘Is there no getting through to you? I was not canoodling with him, I was merely talking to …’

‘About me! About how you want this company! Oh, I know all about your ideas to dramatize our documentaries, how you’re trying to win everyone over to your side so that
you
can get rid of me and take over. Well it won’t work, do you hear me? It just won’t work!’ And before Corrie could utter another word she turned and slammed out of the room.

As she stormed back up the corridor Luke was coming in through the door. Without saying a word Annalise walked straight into his office, waited for him to follow, then slammed the door.

‘If you’re in cahoots with Corrie Browne to get rid of me,’ she hissed, ‘then I want to know now.’

‘What? What the hell are you talking about?’ Luke laughed in amazement.

‘I’m talking about her affair with you,
and
with my father. I’m talking about the way she’s always …’

‘Hang on! Hang on!’ Luke said holding up a hand to stop her. ‘Did you say her affair with your father?’

‘Yes, with my father! And I notice you don’t deny she’s having one with you! So just what the hell is going on, Luke?’

‘She’s not having an affair with me,’ Luke said. ‘Hand on my heart, she’s not. But your father …’

‘Mummy caught them last night at the Ritz.’

‘What
in flagrante delicto
! I don’t believe it!’

‘Then ask Mummy! She’ll tell you. That bitch is trying to get my father to give her this company. She’s using him to get to the top and get me out. We’ve got to stop her, Luke!’

Luke was still dazed. He was trying to think! To sort out what all this could mean. ‘Yes,’ he murmured, absently, ‘yes, we’ve got to stop her. Shit! She’s sleeping with your father?’

‘I told you!’ Annalise yelled. ‘Mummy caught them!’

Luke shook his head in amazement. So the bastard was doing it again! But Corrie, he’d never have dreamt it of Corrie.

‘I want you to fire her!’ Annalise demanded.

Luke simply looked at her.

‘I said, fire her!’ Annalise screamed.

Luke shrugged. ‘All right, Annalise,’ he said, ‘if that’s what you want, then leave it with me.’

‘All right, Jeannie, you guessed it,’ Cristos said, throwing down his pencil and getting up from the drawing board where he’d been studying the designer’s plans of Hyde Park.

Jeannie was barely able to disguise her grin. She’d been badgering him for ten minutes now and still he hadn’t got mad. This was a good sign.

‘Yeah, you’re right, she got to me,’ Cristos almost shouted when he saw the way Jeannie was looking at him, ‘and, yeah, you’re right again, I don’t like it. But I’m not calling her … No! Save it, Jeannie I’m not doing it! I got a movie to shoot here, I got a star breathing down my neck, and we both know I don’t mean Easton. The last thing I want right now is to upset Paige Spencer.’

‘But it’s OK to upset yourself?’

‘That doesn’t even come into it. All right, I know I’ve been kind of ticked lately, but …’

‘Kind of!’ Jeannie cried. ‘You’ve been a regular pain in the butt, is what you’ve been. But we’re here in England now, so why not just give her a call. She’ll probably tell you where to get off anyway, but if she matters that much, and I reckon she does, you’ll handle it.’

‘And how is Paige gonna handle that? Jesus Christ, Jeannie, you know what she’s like, she’s more insecure than a man hanging from a cliff with one finger. She needs everything I can give her right now, and she’s gonna get it.’

‘You take those actors too damned serious,’ Jeannie told him frankly. ‘They’re adults, not kids, let them take some responsibility for themselves.’

‘The responsibility is mine!’ Cristos snapped.

‘Not twenty-four hours a day!’

‘Yes, twenty-four hours a day.’

‘Why, you gonna marry her or something?’

‘I’m not gonna marry anyone, and you know it. After that business with Angelique … Jesus Christ, I don’t believe we’re having this conversation! I knew the girl for one night …’

‘But she got to you?’

‘Yeah, I said, she got to me. But there are other things more important right now.’

‘But she got to you?’

‘Will you just let up on that, Jeannie! I told you what you wanted to hear, now let’s forget it! I’m seeing Paige in half an hour and I just don’t need this.’

‘OK,’ Jeannie said. ‘You go right ahead and screw up your life for the sake of your art. I won’t stop you.’

Cristos eyed her threateningly and suddenly Jeannie fell backwards clutching her hands to her heart.

‘Don’t do that,’ she gasped, ‘I’m a married woman.’

Despite himself Cristos laughed, but as he left the room he said, ‘Would it help if I promised to lay off the guys?’

‘Sure, it would help them,’ Jeannie told him. ‘But will it help you?’

Her answer was the door closing behind him.

She waited a few minutes, wanting to make certain he’d gone, then digging into her pocket for her mobile phone and the scrap of paper with TW’s number on it, she started to dial. She was half through when the door suddenly opened.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said as Richard walked in, and pulling the phone out from behind her back she dialled again.

‘These the plans of the park?’ Richard asked, leaning over the drawing board.

‘Mmm, yeah,’ Jeannie answered. ‘Oh, hi there, can I speak to Corrie Browne please?’

As Richard spun round Jeannie glared back at him, but as he made to wrest the phone from her she pushed him
out
of the way saying, ‘Sorry. Could you repeat that please?’ As she listened to the voice at the other end Richard watched her eyes grow wider by the second. ‘Oh, she has,’ Jeannie said in the end. ‘When did this happen?’ She nodded. ‘Sure, I got you. OK, thanks for your help,’ and she rang off.

‘Jeannie, will you give the guy a break,’ Richard barked. ‘He’s got enough on his mind right now without you stirring up his private life.’

‘Mmm, yeah,’ Jeannie said engrossed in thought.

Richard looked at her, then rolling his eyes, he said, ‘OK, what you planning now?’

‘Nothing,’ Jeannie said. ‘Nothing at all. You know, I could swear that was Luke Fitzpatrick I just spoke to, but he didn’t say it was him. Now why do you reckon that was?’

‘Don’t ask me. But just leave it now, Jeannie. If Cristos wants to get in touch with her he’ll do it himself.’

Jeannie shook her head. ‘He can’t. Or not so’s I can see, unless he knows where she lives.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘She’s not working there any more. She’s been fired.’

As Luke replaced the phone after speaking to Jeannie he picked up a London directory and started to search for a number. Not finding it, he checked his watch, then after slotting several programme files into his briefcase, walked out into the main office. It was past seven o’clock and only three people were left working: Perkin, Cindy Thompson – and Corrie. He watched her for a minute or two, a smile hovering around his lips, then saying a general good-night he left the office.

Lucky, he was thinking as he rode down in the lift, that he’d taken that call from Jeannie himself. She wouldn’t ring back now, not after what he’d told her, and he knew
for
a fact that Corrie’s number was unlisted – he’d just checked for himself.

Annalise was still after him to fire her, but the hell he would. He wanted Corrie Browne right where he could see her, at all times, and Annalise was just going to have to suffer it. But it had come in useful as an excuse to get rid of Jeannie – or more precisely, Bennati – and he felt strangely indebted to Annalise for planting the idea.

But Annalise would have to wait, he had more pressing matters to attend to right now, like the bastard screwing his own daughter! Old habits die hard he thought, bitterly savouring the cliché, and leaping into his Porsche he roared off across Battersea Bridge.

– 21 –

‘GET OUT OF
here, man,’ Cristos laughed, pushing David Easton away. ‘Go rehearse it on someone else.’

Easton’s face fell in mock devastation, and all those standing around the coffee urns set up in Hyde Park started to laugh. ‘But I gotta know my gyrating hips are having the desired effect,’ Easton complained, fluffing out the frilly cuffs of his Georgian costume. He knew without lifting his eyes that they were all waiting to see what he’d do next, and so’s not to disappoint his audience he looked at Cristos through narrowed eyes, then pouting his lips sultrily as he let his hands go limp at the wrists, he squeaked, ‘And I just fancy the pants off you, Cristos Bennati.’

‘Get this jerk out of here,’ Cristos told Easton’s dresser. ‘He’s driving me crazy.’

As Cristos made to walk off through the snow, which had been brought in that morning, Easton minced along behind him, making a grab for Cristos’s rear end. ‘And you’re just driving me crazy, honey love,’ he trilled
ecstatically
, and to everyone’s evident delight he started to chase Cristos through the trees.

‘All right! That’s enough!’ Cristos said, eventually allowing Easton to catch him up. ‘They gotta be about ready now, so back to work.’

Laughing, and panting for breath Easton threw an arm round Cristos’s shoulders – which wasn’t too comfortable given the discrepancy in height – and walked back towards the set with him.

‘You joining us for dinner, tonight?’ he asked. ‘We’re eating in. The kids’d love to see you.’

‘Can I take a rain check?’ Cristos said.

‘Got another date with Paige? Bring her along too.’

Cristos shook his head. ‘Can’t. She wants to talk about her big scene on Friday.’

‘That woman always wants to talk about something,’ Easton grumbled. ‘Can’t she let you go, even for five minutes?’

‘Come on,’ Cristos chided, ‘give her a break. You were there once yourself.’

Easton was thoughtful for a while, then said. ‘You getting serious about her, man?’

Cristos threw up his hands. ‘Shit! There sure is a lot of interest in my personal life going on round this place.’

‘Cristos! Ready to roll!’ the first assistant yelled, from the centre of the set.

‘We OK with the snow?’ Cristos called back, quickening his pace now as he weaved through the lamps the electricians were checking.

‘We’re set!’ the man on the snow machine answered.

‘OK, then let’s see if we can get this baby in the can,’ Cristos said, rubbing his hands together as he sat down on his chair. He looked at the small black and white monitor in front of him, waiting for the camera operator to line up for the first frame. When he was there Cristos raised a walkie-talkie and spoke into it, ‘Don’t forget, Kevin, we
want
to see the grass without snow over there and those buildings out on Park Lane before you come right off the Serpentine.’