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Dobbin actually dared to try and mop at her with a napkin held in his huge hands, then caught his cufflink on one of the crystals sewn on to Becky’s borrowed dress, which tore. Not enough to do much damage, to the dress at least, but enough that he apologised again, profusely, and Jos subsided back on his chair with a hopeless look, and the moment was ruined. Completely ruined.
‘Bad luck!’ said a silky voice and Becky looked up to see George Wylie standing over her, with a smug expression that made her curl her hands into fists, her nails digging into her palms so hard that she’d still have little half-moon marks the next day.
It was a lost cause after that. Jos drowned his sorrows not just with champagne but with whisky chasers, even though Dobbin warned him that he shouldn’t mix grape with grain.
‘I’ll drink what I bloody well like,’ he bellowed belligerently, swaying back from the bar with yet another round. Becky felt her heart sink, knowing only too well that how a man behaved when he was hammered revealed his true nature.
‘I’m going to find Emmy.’ She extricated herself from Jos’s clutches: he had also become very handsy, trying to touch what he wouldn’t dare go near when he was sober.
By the time Becky returned with a predictably agitated Amelia in tow, a large crowd had gathered around Jos who’d attempted to run after Becky but had slipped in the spilt champagne and toppled over on to his back.
He pitched one way then another like an upended turtle while the crowd of braying posh types roared their approval and held up their next-gen iPhones to record the moment for posterity.
‘Up you get, fatso!’ cried one young wag.
‘I’m not fat, I’m big boned and heavily muscled,’ Jos panted to even more hoots and jeers.
‘We have to help him,’ Amelia cried but Becky held her back. That was a sure way to end up in a video that could well go viral by the next morning.
‘We can’t manage him on our own,’ she pointed out reasonably. ‘Where’s your George?’
George Wylie, of course, had slunk off at the first sign of trouble, as he didn’t want to end up in a viral clip any more than Becky did, so it was left to Dobbin to valiantly step in and hoist Jos to his feet, to a helpful commentary from the peanut gallery.
‘Heave! Heave! Heave ho!’ they shouted as Jos was finally levered upright so that he could then lurch unsteadily against their table and send all the glassware flying.
‘More champagne!’ Jos shouted, trying to click his fingers to summon a waiter and almost blinding poor Dobbin. ‘Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends!’
‘Jos, I am cutting you off!’ Dobbin said very sternly, clamping his arm round Jos’s shoulders and steering him out of the club, with Amelia and Becky bringing up the rear.
Becky would much rather have stayed. She was sure she’d spotted a couple of young royals at the bar, but Amelia was crying. Much as the missed opportunity stung, she had no option but to leave with their sad, humiliated little party.
Once they were in the club foyer, George joined them. ‘There you are!’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
‘You couldn’t have been looking very hard, then, as you were at our table until poor Jos fell over and then you disappeared,’ Becky pointed out.
Amelia stopped crying for long enough to gaze damply and disappointedly at George. ‘You didn’t do that, did you?’
‘Of course I didn’t. Your little friend must be confused,’ he said firmly as if nothing could be further from the truth. ‘Fell over, did he? But no bones broken? Well, let’s get him and you girls home.’
Then he took Jos’s other side and the three men lumbered out of the club like some mythical three-headed beast, only to run into a pack of paparazzi who sprang into action in the hope that one of them might be a rat-arsed young royal.
The popping flashbulbs had a disastrous effect on Jos’s centre of gravity. Or it might have been because George took one look at the cameras and abruptly let Jos go so he could slither back into the shadows. He was a prospective Member of Parliament, after all.
It was left to Amelia to take up the slack and help Dobbin to support the considerable weight of her brother, to the delight of the smudges. Two posh boys weren’t worth the effort but a Big Brother winner might do for a page-seven lead.
Then the drunk young Hooray lurched around towards the pretty redhead who’d come second in Big Brother, trailing a few steps behind as if she had nothing to do with the unfortunate trio in front of her, and he broke free of his captors so he could take her in a very enthusiastic embrace. This could be a front-page story after all.
NEW BALLS PLEASE!
Big Brother Becky Caught In Clinch With Protein-Ball Millionaire!
Friends say he wants to put a ring on it!
She might have only come second in this year’s Big Brother, but beautiful Becky Sharp, 20, looked like a winner last night as she was caught canoodling with Jos Sedley, 33, brother of Amelia Sedley, who snatched the title from her best friend.
Jos, the brains behind a health-and-fitness lifestyle brand which makes a successful range of protein balls, divides his time between London and LA. But judging by the way he locked lips with Becky, to the delight of the crowd, he’s thinking of making London his permanent base.
‘It’s been a whirlwind romance,’ a close friend of the couple reports. ‘They might only have known each other a few weeks but they’re already talking about marriage.’
Three people who would be delighted to hear wedding bells are Big Brother winner Amelia, 22, who regards Becky as a sister, and her parents Charles and Caroline Sedley, who invited Becky to live with them in their Chelsea townhouse worth £15 million, and have apparently given the young couple their blessing.
‘They adore Becky as if she was their own daughter,’ said a source close to the Sedleys. ‘Caroline is already planning the engagement party.’
It will be quite the rags-to-riches story for Becky. She entered the Big Brother house a penniless orphan who’d been working as a care assistant and may now be walking down the aisle with Jos, who is a millionaire in his own right and also inherited millions from his maternal grandfather.
Who said fairy tales never come true?
Chapter 8 (#ulink_a0c8b386-f467-5dbd-8679-0c5765d9196f)
‘This is bad. This is very, very bad.’ Jos Sedley groaned the next morning from his horizontal position on the sofa in Dobbin’s Ladbroke Grove flat. ‘It’s the worst.’
Dobbin and George didn’t know if he was talking about his hangover (he’d spent most of the night throwing up and now his face was the colour and texture of elephant hide) or the front page of the Sun. Though the front pages of the Daily Mirror, the DailyStar, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express had all gone with similar stories.
‘It’s not so bad, Jos,’ Dobbin said stoutly, because while his patience was infinite he couldn’t stand malingerers. Especially when the malingering was self-inflicted. ‘You’ll feel much better with a pot of tea and some toast inside you.’
‘No caffeine. No carbs!’
‘It’s a pity you didn’t stick to no alcohol last night,’ George said cheerfully. He threw a copy of the Daily Mirror at Jos’s head. ‘What a gigantic idiot you are! I have absolutely no sympathy for you.’
‘Steady on,’ Dobbin murmured, but George was not to be swayed.
‘I saw you last night,’ he reminded Jos, tapping the other man’s pounding head with the now rolled-up newspaper. ‘Even caught some of the tender things you were murmuring at each other. No wonder she went to the papers and told them that your intentions were honourable!’
‘Rebecca would never go to the papers,’ Dobbin said because surely no friend of dear, sweet Emmy would act in such an underhand way. It simply wasn’t how things were done.
‘I’d bet money on it,’ George insisted. ‘Girls like that, you don’t need to promise them marriage to get their knickers off, Sedley. You just buy them a bottle of something bubbly, shag them, then put them in an Uber and send them on their way.’
Later, as George and Dobbin strolled through Holland Park on their way to Kensington, Dobbin wondered aloud if George hadn’t been too harsh on their friend.
‘Not harsh enough,’ George said without a shred of pity. ‘I did him a huge favour. He spends far too much time pumping iron and guzzling protein shakes, not that it’s made him any more attractive to the opposite sex. If it had, then he might have a bit more experience, might know when he’s being taken for a ride by some jumped-up little tart with ideas far above her station.’
Dobbin didn’t reply at first and they walked through the sun-dappled paths of the park in silence. It was a glorious September morning, the sky impossibly blue, the leaves fluttering in a slight breeze as dogs chased each other round and round in circles, barking joyfully. Mothers, but mostly nannies, clutched hold of toddlers intent on feeding the ducks and not waiting their turn for the swings. On the lush, green grass couples lounged and a group of taut young men and women contorted themselves on yoga mats.
Surely, if Becky Sharp had gone to the papers in order to force a shy young millionaire’s hand, she’d have asked them to photograph she and Jos as they exercised together? When they’d both looked their best in flattering black workout clothes, the photos playful and flirty. Not when they were falling out of a nightclub, Becky in a torn dress, Jos lumbering and drunk.
It was almost as if the photos of last night were the work of someone who’d disappeared at a crucial point during the night. Someone well versed in the art of spin, working, as they did, in politics. But why would someone be so invested in tearing apart two young souls who each believed they’d found their match?
Captain Dobbin certainly wouldn’t have ever imagined that George Wylie, his friend since they were tiny boys starting prep school together in knee-length shorts, red blazers and adorable little caps, might act in such an underhand, cavalier fashion.
True, George had been a member of the infamous Rakehell drinking club at Oxford, which Dobbin had never been invited to join, but George had always kept his hands and nose clean. He was more likely to be trouble-adjacent than in the thick of it.
‘But why should you care?’ Dobbin asked, then cursed under his breath as two small dogs came barrelling through his legs and almost upended him. ‘If she makes Jos happy, then that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’
‘You know why I care, you fool. I’m going to marry Amelia,’ George stated calmly. The shock was so great that Dobbin stumbled over his own size-fourteen feet and had to grab hold of a lamppost to stop himself falling to his knees.
‘I didn’t actually,’ Dobbin managed to say, gasping out the words though his throat had closed up, his heart had stopped beating, his world suddenly turned ashen and grey. ‘I thought you were seeing that little blonde researcher, Polly Somebody.’
‘Well, obviously, I’m not going to marry Amelia any time soon,’ George said with an impatient edge. ‘At the moment, she bursts into tears if you even look at her funny. And she’s twenty-two – no one gets married that young, it’s unspeakably common.’
‘I hadn’t thought about it like that,’ Dobbin choked out, because all he had thought about was how Amelia Sedley – beautiful, sweet, kind little Emmy – was perfect in every way. Far too perfect for the likes of him and, for as long as Dobbin had known Amelia, she’d fancied herself in love with George … ‘So, you’re not seeing that Polly Somebody, then?’
‘I haven’t taken a vow of chastity until Amelia acquires some backbone and a little sophistication,’ George snapped.
Being friends with George wasn’t always easy and at this particular moment, it was especially hard because Dobbin wished that he was in uniform and fully kitted out so he could Taser the living daylights out of his dear friend.
‘These girls,’ continued George, ‘the junior researchers and the likes, the Pollies and Bellas, they’re all gagging for it but they’re fabulously discreet so as not to jeopardise their own careers, so it’s win/win really.’
Dobbin glanced over at George. The dark curls framing that exquisitely patrician face, the beautifully cut grey suit, which clung to his lean frame. On this sunny day, there was something of the night about him.
‘I still don’t see what any of this has to do with Jos Sedley and Amelia’s friend,’ he said and George came to a halt, all the better to roll his eyes.
‘Must I spell it out? I’m going to marry Amelia, I’m really quite fond of her and she should shape up quite nicely, but the family’s not exactly top drawer.’
‘Then again, they’re not exactly bottom of the ladder,’ Dobbin pointed out, because he liked to think that he was egalitarian in his outlook. Though he himself came from a distinguished military family, his father was only the third son of an earl, so he’d pretty much had to make his own way in life.
‘Dobbin, I’m the heir to a baronetcy,’ George said, even though everyone knew that the Wylies had bought the baronetcy. ‘The Sedleys might be rich but they come from very humble stock and there is absolutely no way that I can have a sister-in-law who’s a nothing. A nobody. The sooner she scuttles back to whatever hole she crawled out of, the better. Like I said to Sedley, it’s just as well she was holding out for marriage because otherwise, she’s the sort to either make an incriminating sex tape or get knocked up – either way, she’d have had his balls in a vice and his millions in her bank account.’
‘I suppose you know best,’ Dobbin said dubiously. ‘Though do you always have to see the worst in people?’
George grinned, though Dobbin hadn’t meant it as a compliment. ‘I’m sure Miss Sharp will need some consoling. She might even let you go where Jos didn’t manage to break ground. Why don’t you come with me as I give her the bad news?’
Dobbin declined: the bad news that George was about to deliver so gleefully was sure to make Amelia cry, and to see Amelia cry would break his heart. Though it wasn’t true that she cried all the time. Whenever he saw Amelia, she always looked delighted; a smile on her face that had to be the reason that the sun came up and flowers grew and birds tweeted.
Chapter 9 (#ulink_f22b8344-02dd-5345-9482-157062e0e4eb)
The Sedley house was in an uproar that morning. Mrs Sedley had cast one look at the Daily Mail and her heart had started to beat so furiously that she thought she might be having a stroke. She wasn’t but she’d had to take to her bed with one of her heads, hissing to Amelia as she went, ‘I want that girl out of the house by the end of the day, Emmy.’
Becky was already packing or, rather, she’d told Amelia that she was packing. ‘I can’t stay here,’ she said to Amelia after Mrs Sedley had been tucked up with two Valium and a hot-water bottle. ‘What must your poor parents think of me? What must Jos think of me? You do know that it wasn’t me who went to the papers?’
‘Of course I do,’ Amelia gasped, because her sweet young mind wasn’t capable of such a calculated thought. ‘I’m sure it’s not that bad. You’ll feel much better after you’ve had some breakfast.’
‘I can’t eat. Food would choke me,’ Becky declared, a trembling hand to her throat as if she was already finding it hard to breathe. She stood at her bedroom door, her body barring Amelia from the room, not just for full dramatic effect but because there were a few items that had found their way into Becky’s possession that she hadn’t had a chance to squirrel away yet. ‘I’m going to pack. I’ll be gone in a few hours.’
But Becky wasn’t packing at all. She was leaning out of the window of the second-floor guest room as she waited for the first sight of Jos lumbering into the square. He’d have a terrible hangover, which was his own fault, as nobody had forced him to drink all that champagne, and he’d be sweating profusely. Becky would let him stammer and stutter his way through a series of abject apologies for humiliating her.
After a tense two minutes – no, make it three – she’d forgive Jos, which would make him feel even worse, even more ashamed. Then with some gentle nudging, and that thing she did with her eyes, he’d admit that he’d wanted to kiss her ever since he first saw her. He’d then go on to confess that the kiss in front of the paparazzi, despite its sordid circumstances, had been the happiest moment of his life.
‘We could have more happy moments like that, Jos,’ she’d say, her voice catching, then she’d look away. Though sometimes, actually all the time, it was hard work trying to tunnel through Jos’s thick skull, so perhaps she’d have to be a lot less subtle. ‘Our whole life would be a series of happy moments. Of kisses …’
Of course, Jos would ask her to come back to LA with him. Once they were in LA, away from the annoying presence of his mother and father, and the bad influence of George Wylie, then Becky wouldn’t let Jos do anything more than kiss her and paw her over her clothes, and a proposal would be inevitable.
So, all was not lost. Far from it. Though Becky hadn’t gone to the papers (and no one could prove it either way), there was no reason why this had to end in tragedy.
Becky leaned out a little further, just in time to see George Wylie come striding around the corner. She beat a frantic retreat, banging her head so hard on the sash window that it brought tears to her eyes, especially as it had all been in vain because that smug little fucker waved cheerfully up at her.
‘Ha! Caught you!’ he cried.
Still, Becky’s tears were no match for the flood of eye-water and snot that Amelia had been producing ever since Becky had shut the bedroom door in her face. She cried even harder as George described, with particular relish, what a sorry state he’d left Jos in.
‘Been chundering for six hours straight. I left him prostrate on Dobbin’s sofa. And it’s just as well we did take him to Dobbin’s last night, as he’s the only man in London whose dressing gown would fit round your brother. Pity that he puked down it,’ George finished with an appreciative chuckle. The whole episode reminded him of similar japes at Oxford.
Also, the fact that they’d taken Sedley to Dobbin’s and not to George’s own flat in Victoria, had made him quite light-headed with relief.
‘I never thought you could be so mean,’ Amelia sobbed.
‘Then you haven’t been paying attention,’ Becky said from the doorway, because staying upstairs and sulking would achieve absolutely nothing. Not when there was no sign of a suitably contrite Jos and in his place was George Wylie, who might just explode from sheer malicious delight. Here’s hoping. ‘Where’s Jos?’
George turned around, eyes gleaming, his delight magnified now that Becky had joined them. ‘I’m afraid Jos sends his regrets but he’s otherwise engaged. Oh! Sorry! Bad choice of words. Otherwise detained, shall we say?’
Becky’s innate distrust and dislike of George Wylie, in that moment, crystallised and hardened into anger; a stinging, corrosive fury that this arrogant, odious prick had the nerve to mock her, laugh at her. It was only through a sheer accident of birth that the whole world was his for the taking and that she had nothing – not even the clothes she stood up in, because they were borrowed from Amelia.
There was an edge to George Wylie this morning, a febrile glitter in his eyes, high on his own triumph. He must have said something to Jos about her which had frightened Jos off, and Becky knew then that Jos wasn’t going to turn up and beg for her forgiveness. It wasn’t all going to come good in the end.
Oh, but she would make George Wylie pay. She would ruin him, destroy everything that he’d worked so hard for.
Not that she was going to tell him that, like some second-rate Scarlett O’Hara.
‘You’re always joking,’ she noted with a quiet dignity that made George falter. ‘It’s not nice to be the punchline of a joke, especially when there’s no one here to defend me.’
Then she walked away and George was left with Amelia, who had stopped crying and was now looking at him with a furrowed brow and jutting bottom lip. It was almost as if … as if she, silly little Amelia Sedley, was disappointed in him. ‘That wasn’t very kind of you,’ she said quietly and George immediately felt the need to squirm, even though kindness wasn’t a quality that he thought much of.
‘Amelia, you are too good for me.’ It was the most sincere thing he’d ever said. ‘Look, I know you’ve hugged orphans in the Third World and spent a few weeks with a bunch of chavs, but you don’t understand the world the way that I do. That Sharp girl overplayed her hand and Jos has had a lucky escape.’
Amelia’s heart gave a sad little flutter. ‘So, he’s really not coming, then?’
‘He’s not,’ George confirmed. ‘Believe me, it’s for the best. I volunteered to fetch his things because, actually, I can be kind, Emmy. This whole business with that Sharp girl – I was only looking out for Jos because he’s your brother and well, I do rather care about you, you know.’
The sad little flutter transformed into a rapturous symphony when George took Amelia in his arms.
He smelt delicious – a heady mix of citrus and spices from the cologne that he favoured. But though Amelia raised her face to his, her lips slightly pursed, he kissed her forehead.
‘I’m … well, I rather care about you too, George,’ she dared to say and the smile he gave her then was kindness personified.
‘I know.’
After George left, it took quite a bit of time and some dawdling, before Amelia felt brave enough to face her friend.
Becky was perched on the window seat on the first-floor landing, her gaze fixed morosely on the square outside, the Daily Mail a crumpled, torn heap of paper at her feet.
