The Footballer's Wife (33 page)

*

Charly's new flat was tiny compared to the luxury she had been used to. She was standing beside one of the many tea chests that Scott had brought in the van from Bradington for her. ‘Look at you, eh?' Scott said. She could tell he was trying to sound upbeat, but his voice was tinged with sadness. ‘All grown up in London.'

Charly walked over to him and hugged him. He held onto her, both standing in silence for several minutes.

She had chosen a flat in an unassuming area near Islington. It wasn't the best flat she'd ever seen in her life, but it was near central London and that's where she wanted to be. There was private security and the car park was gated. Charly knew that wherever she went, if the press wanted a story on her then they'd follow her. Living in a gated mansion hadn't stopped them so she chose to look on the bright side and think that it meant she could live where she wanted.

‘Will you tell Markie that I'll come and see him the next time I'm up?' Charly asked. Scott nodded. Yesterday she had tried to visit Markie; he had been remanded in custody after his arrest. Len had asked if he could accompany Charly and she had told him in no uncertain terms that if he wanted to do some
bridge-building with his new-found son then he could do it on his own. But Markie hadn't wanted to see Charly, let alone Len. She was worried about him. What the police had on him didn't look good. Charly couldn't believe that after everything Mac had sold Markie out.

‘Is there anything you need me to do before I go? Shopping or anything?'

‘No. I want to go out and about and find my bearings when you're gone.'

‘You'll call if you need anything, won't you?'

‘Course I will, Scott.' Charly smiled tenderly at her ex. He walked to the door and turned around to look at her.

‘You look after yourself.'

She smiled. ‘I will.'

Scott closed the door behind him, leaving Charly alone. She walked through to the small living room. When she had lived in the large house in Hale and the flat in town she had always felt as if she was just being allowed to play there, that they weren't really hers. But standing here now, looking at this manageable flat, one that she could afford to furnish and pay for herself, for the first time since she'd left home at the age of seventeen she felt like somewhere was hers. She might
have some ghosts that needed laying to rest but she was free to live her life how she wanted to live it. And although a strange feeling for Charly, it was a great feeling and one that she wasn't going to throw away again lightly.

If you enjoyed
The Footballer's Wife
, you'll love Kerry's first novel
Tough Love
. Here's the first chapter . . .

 

LEANNE OPENED THE
paper and looked at the young blue-eyed, blonde-haired vision of tabloid beauty staring back at her, the pert breasts and happy-to-be-there smile. She threw it aside. She wasn't particularly interested in what Mel, 18, of Colchester had to say about the war in Iraq. She knew that the girl's problems extended only as far as whether the spray tan she'd had before the shoot was too orange and if her false eyelashes were alluring or, horror of horrors, made her look like Jackie Stallone. The Knowledge and Knickers speech bubble that the papers insisted on printing above the new breed of page-three girls' heads was always made up in two seconds flat by some hack in Canary Wharf – it had nothing to do with the models. ‘That's not Mummy,' Kia, Leanne's seven-year-old daughter, said, climbing on to her mother's knee.

Leanne looked at her and shook her head. ‘No, darling, that's a pretty lady.'

‘Mummy's pretty too,' Kia said.

Leanne smiled at her daughter, grateful for the compliment. Leanne was pretty. She was five foot five with an hour-glass figure and her blonde hair and green eyes ensured that heads turned when she walked into any room. They had also ensured that until recently her career had been long and lucrative.

She had agonised over telling Kia exactly what she did. She didn't think it appropriate that her young daughter should know that Mummy made her money as a glamour model, but at the same time she was proud of her work, so why should she hide it from her? In the end the choice had been taken out of her hands by her less than thoughtful mother, Tracy: she had given Kia a locket with a picture of a topless Leanne in it. Mother of the Year Tracy wasn't.

In fact, Leanne had recognised Mel. She had been sitting in the waiting room at Figurz Management when Leanne was given what she could only describe as the Right Royal Boot. Jenny, her manager for the past nine years, had summoned her into her spacious office and sat her down. Leanne had known something was wrong as soon as she got the call to go to the office. Jenny didn't usually do the office. She liked to sink a couple of bottles of Pinot Grigio and go over the proofs for whatever men's magazine Leanne had been starring in that week. The office meant bad news.

‘I suppose you know why I've asked you here . . .' Jenny, with her vicious bob and her black-rimmed glasses, had lit a cigarette and leant back in her chair, inhaling hard, then letting a plume of smoke out of her nostrils. Leanne's throat had dried. She had an idea of why she was sitting there, but she wasn't sure she liked it.

‘You and me, Lee, we go back a long way.' Leanne hated it when Jenny called her Lee. ‘And I've always said I'd be straight up and down with you, haven't I, girl?' Leanne winced. She wanted Jenny to get this over and done with, whatever she was going to say. ‘And I've always said, “Tits is tits,” haven't I?'

And I've always wondered what the fuck that's supposed to mean, Leanne thought but didn't say. She wouldn't. She was terrified of Jenny, if she was honest.

‘Well, tits is tits, but there's younger tits coming through that door, if you know what I'm saying.'

‘Look, Jenny,' Leanne's voice wavered, ‘I offered to get a boob job and you said no, natural's what everyone wants.' She didn't really want one. Her boobs were big enough as it was. She didn't need ginormous plastic orbs bobbing around so she couldn't see her feet.

‘That's true, sweetheart. Natural is what everyone wants, but so's young. And you might be young to some bloke in his fifties, but twenty-five's over the hill to an eighteen-year-old brickie who wants a quick lump in his trousers while he's eating his corned-beef sandwiches. You get where I'm coming from?'

Leanne got where Jenny was coming from – loud and clear. She was telling her that her lucrative career as a glamour model was coming to an end. Leanne would have liked to think that in this situation she would stand up and tell Jenny exactly where she could shove her Eric Morecambe glasses, but she didn't. When it came down to it, she avoided conflict at all costs. With a mother like hers you didn't need to look for a fight – they came to you.

‘What about my fan base?' Leanne had asked meekly.

‘They're a fickle bunch. They move on quickly, and that's what I'm here to spot.' Jenny looked at Leanne, who was fighting back tears now. She could have kicked herself: she didn't want to break down in front of the hard-faced witch. ‘I'm not saying you won't work again, sweetheart, just that you might have to do it with your top on.'

Leanne had stumbled out on to the street near Battersea Bridge. She got well away from the office before she fell in a heap and started crying. She'd had such a nice life for the last six years – parties, premières, free holidays if she put her name to the travel company – and now Jenny, the number-one glamour agent in the country, was telling her it was over. What was she going to do?

She stood up, tears streaming down her face, and looked around for a taxi. Typical! There wasn't one in sight. Leanne walked on with her thumb out like a hitch-hiker, until a cab pulled up beside her, splashing mud up her leg. Brilliant! Could today get any worse? she wondered aloud.

As she climbed in, the driver stared at her. ‘You're that Jodie Marsh, ain'tcha?' he asked.

Yes, she decided. It could.

*

‘Get out here and fucking talk to me!' a man's voice screamed.

Tracy turned up the volume on
Jeremy Kyle
. She'd rather listen to someone else's problems than confront her own. Suddenly there was a loud banging on the back door, something she was well used to.

‘I said, “Fucking talk to me!”'

Tracy raised an eyebrow and stuck a spoon into the tub of Dairylea she had grabbed from the fridge for breakfast; she had nothing else in and she was damned if she was going outside the house to get an ear-twisting from her ex-husband. Just as she was about to find out the result of the paternity test on TV an almighty whack put paid to her morning of loafing around. She turned to see a foot sticking through her boarded-up back door.

‘For the love of God, Paul!' she shouted, jumping up from the settee and heading over to the door. The foot was waggling around. Its owner was obviously trying to free it.

‘Let me in, and we'll have this out once and for all.'

‘I'm calling the police. You're not allowed anywhere near here,' Tracy reminded him.

‘This is my fucking house!'

‘It's the council's fucking house. Get your facts right, dickhead.' Tracy stood back and kicked the foot as hard as she could.

‘Ow!' the disembodied voice wailed. ‘You bitch!' The foot disappeared.

‘Now, fuck off, or I'm calling the police and you'll end up back in the nick!' Tracy returned to the settee. This wasn't the scene of domestic violence she liked to paint but it was how she and Paul were with each other since they had split so acrimoniously. She was used to the frequent ructions and bored with them.

Paul and Tracy had been together since they were teenagers. He had always fancied himself as a bit of a hard man around the estate, but his hard-man credentials didn't stretch much further than thumping people when he'd laid into the Stella Artois a bit harder than he should have. When they'd first met, Tracy had believed the hype. He'd been the tough lad at school, the one everyone fancied, but a few years with him had soon put paid to any romantic notions she'd had about him. He was a lazy waster who prided himself on not having had to get out of bed before ten o'clock since he'd left school. Something of a feat in itself, Tracy had often thought, seeing as they had five kids together.

Tracy loved her kids, she really did, but she often thought they didn't understand what she'd gone through, what she'd given up, to raise them. She'd been a looker when she was younger, could have been a model like Leanne, but instead she'd ended up sitting out her life in Bolingbroke Estate, Bradington's number-one problem area, so they were always being informed. Leanne didn't know she was born, Tracy thought. Granted, she'd had to go out and work when she was fourteen, but there was nothing wrong with that, Tracy told herself. Bit of grafting to pay some board had done none of her kids any harm.

The rot had set in between her and Paul years ago. He'd thought that having children meant giving up. He'd soon stopped looking at Tracy as anything other than the mother to his kids, and she'd wanted more. She'd wanted some romance in her life, but there was a slim chance of that when she had five kids in tow and the only place for a night out was the Beacon, a dump of a pub where the men were men and the women looked like men.

Three years ago, on Tracy's forty-fifth birthday, Paul had produced the straw that finally broke the camel's back. He'd been promising to take Tracy out all year. They'd go into town and have a proper knees-up – they'd even go to a club. Tracy had bought a new outfit, courtesy of some cash that Leanne had put her way, and then Paul hadn't come home. She'd waited all night for him and in the end had gone into town on her own and got blind drunk. She couldn't remember what had happened, but her youngest daughter, Jodie, had informed her that when she and her mates found Tracy she was draped round some thirty-year-old and had been sick down her top. Eventually Paul came home all apologies but Tracy had known things had to change.

Along with
Jeremy Kyle
, one of Tracy's pleasures in life was
The Late Nite Love-In
on Bradington Community Radio. The voice of the DJ, Kent Graham, was enough to make her go weak at the knees. After Paul's no-show and the subsequent arguments, in which he had defended going on a three-day bender, Tracy had decided to do something for herself for once. Never mind sorting her rabble out. She was going to look after number one. She had picked up the phone and rung the radio station, then asked to be put through to Kent, saying she was an old school friend. When she finally had him on the phone, she put on her best, most seductive voice and asked him out. And Kent, to her utter amazement, said yes.

What followed was a whirlwind romance. At first, Tracy thought he might only be interested in her because she was Leanne's mum. Her daughter was the local celebrity and everyone, as far as Tracy could see, wanted a piece of her, and if that meant going through her mother, then so be it. But it soon became apparent to Tracy that Kent wanted her for herself.