The Vanishing Point

1

London. Five years and five months earlier

Sometimes random play of the music streaming on my computer seems to conspire against me. So far that morning, I’d had Janis Ian being miserable, Elvis Costello being miserable and The Blue Nile being miserable. Now Mathilde Santing was singing ‘Blue Monday’, which just about summed up my mood. My last project had been exhausting but it had been three weeks since I’d finished it. I’d been looking forward to spending more time with Pete – that’s Pete Matthews, the man I’d been going out with for the past seven months. But the end of my undertaking had marked the start of a new assignment for him, and he’d been working crazy hours in the studio. I’d discovered some time earlier that there was nothing glamorous about being a sound engineer. Just unpredictable hours, late nights and the sour aftertaste of prima donnas with less talent than they believed or their fans knew.

I’ll be honest. A little light romance would have suited me perfectly right then. I always become antsy when I’m between jobs. As soon as I’ve recovered from the exhaustion of meeting my deadline, I start to obsess over where the next contract’s going to come from. What if that was it? What if I crashed and burned and didn’t get any more work? How would I pay the mortgage? Would I have to sell up, abandon London and go back, God help me, to my parents in their poky little terraced house in Lincoln? I could handle a few days of reading and shopping, a couple of lunches with the girls, a movie matinee or two. But then I started chafing at the bit for a new challenge.

Pete always laughed at me when I talked about my fears. ‘Listen to yourself,’ he would tease. ‘You go from nought to disaster in ten seconds. Look at your track record, girl. They know when they hire you, they get total commitment. You’re their bitch from the minute the ink’s dry till you’ve delivered the goods.’

It’s not really how I see myself, but I took his point. I’ve never taken my projects lightly and in this business, people talk to each other about that kind of thing. I try to believe I have a good reputation. But sometimes it’s hard to cling to that self-belief. Pete could point to his name on CDs. He had tangible validation. But the whole point of what I do is that I remain invisible. Sometimes I show up on the title page or in the acknowledgements, but mostly my clients want to maintain the illusion that they can string sentences together on the page. So when Pete and I were out with friends, there was almost nothing I could say about my work. It was like being a member of the mafia. Except they have the family around them for support. Me, I was just the insignificant one in the shadows.

I cut Mathilde Santing off mid-bar and retreated to the kitchen. I’d barely set the kettle on to boil when the phone rang. Before I could say anything, the voice on the other end had launched into conversation. ‘Stephie, darling, I have such a fabulous assignment for you, wait till I tell you. But how are you, dearheart?’ My agent, Maggie Silver. Irrepressible, irresistible and irreplaceable. And always italicised. Nobody does the business like Maggie. Well, nobody does it louder, at least. My spirits lifted at the very sound of her voice.

‘Ready for a fabulous assignment,’ I said. Even I could hear amusement in my tone.

‘Perfect. Because I have just the thing. They asked for you. No messing about with beauty parades. The publisher is convinced you’ll be the perfect fit.’

‘Who is it?’ Pop star? Actor? Politician? Sportsman? I’ve done them all. When people do find out what I do for a living they always ask who I’ve done and what category I like best. The truth is I have no favourites. There isn’t much to choose between those who have been kissed by fame. Scrape away the superficial differences and the gilded pretensions are much the same. But revealing that to the public isn’t my job. My only role in my subjects’ lives is to make them interesting, loveable and desirable. They call me a ghost, but I think of myself as the good fairy, waving a magic wand over their lives to make a narrative that glows with achievement.

‘You know Goldfish Bowl?’

I couldn’t help myself. I groaned. Reality TV. Was this what it had come to? I’d just transformed a former Tory cabinet minister into a dashing, intellectually respectable hero. And my reward was some here-today-gone-tomorrow nobody from a boring market town who would be famous for fifteen minutes. A bestseller for a month, then straight to the remainder table. ‘Christ, Maggie,’ was all I could manage.

‘No, listen, darling, it’s not what you think. Truly, there’s a story to tell. It’s Scarlett Higgins. You must have heard of her.’

Of course I’d heard of Scarlett Higgins. High Court judges and homeless people had heard of Scarlett Higgins. And even if I say so myself, I’ve got a knack for keeping my finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist. It’s one of the reasons for my success. I totally get popular culture and how to plug into what people want from their celebrities. So yes, I knew the public face of Scarlett Higgins. The Scarlett Harlot, she’d been dubbed by the tabloids. Not because she was particularly promiscuous by tabloid standards. Mostly because it rhymes and they’re lazy.

‘What’s to tell? Hasn’t she already spilled everything to the tabloids and the slag mags?’

‘She’s having a baby, darling.’

‘That’s not news either, Maggie. The pregnancy is what saved her from a public lynching after the debacle of the second series.’

‘Her agent has come up with the idea of doing an autobiography in the form of a letter to the baby. Where Scarlett reveals the tragedy of her own upbringing and the mistakes she’s made. She went to Stellar Books, and they love the idea. And of course, they want you. Biba loved the Maya Gorecka book you did for them, and she’s absolutely convinced Scarlett will love you.’

Sometimes listening to Maggie is like drowning in italics. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I can’t get excited about someone who’s already spilled so much about so little.’

‘Sweetie, the money’s lovely. And frankly, there’s not a lot else around at the moment. The bottom’s dropped out of footballers and WAGs, most of those ghastly rappers and Mercury Prize nominees have no crossover value for the mainstream readers, and nobody’s interested in Tony Blair’s sacked cabinet ministers. I’ve been beating the bushes for you, but at the moment Scarlett Higgins is the only show in town. If you want to hang fire, I’m sure something will trundle along in a few months, but I don’t like to think of you sitting there twiddling your thumbs. You know how twitchy you get, darling.’

Annoyingly, she was right. Inactivity wasn’t an option. If Pete had been free, we could have gone away, taken a holiday. But he wouldn’t have liked it if I’d gone off without him. And to be honest, neither would I. It had taken me a long time to find a man I wanted to make a commitment to, and now I was with Pete, I didn’t relish the solitary trips I’d always enjoyed in the past. These days, I wondered how much of that solo travelling had been me kidding myself. ‘All the same,’ I said weakly, not wanting to give in too easily.

‘It can’t hurt to talk to the girl,’ Maggie said firmly. Wheedling is beneath her. She always prefers assertiveness to supplication. ‘Who knows? You may find you like her. Stranger things have happened, Stephie. Stranger things have happened.’