Page 58 of Private Lives

Helen recognised Jim Parker’s West Coast drawl immediately.

‘Sam?’ she said.

‘Who else?’

‘Well it’s about bloody time.’

‘You don’t have to tell me, sweetheart.’

Sam’s LA agent had been furious when his headline-grabbing client had gone missing three days before. Well, not missing exactly. Eli Cohen, Sam’s manager, knew where he was hiding, but was refusing to tell anyone, even Helen or Jim, for fear his location might leak out. Helen could understand Jim’s anger – after all, they desperately needed to get to work on Sam’s damage-limitation plan as soon as possible, as the column inches weren’t getting any less.

‘So where is he? And where are you?’ she demanded, towel-drying her hair.

‘Sam is back at his country place,’ said Jim. ‘And I’m on my way. I got into Heathrow an hour ago.’

‘Fine, I’ll meet you there in an hour,’ she said and hung up without waiting for an answer. Jim Parker was smart enough to know that Helen Pierce would move heaven and earth to fix this situation: she had to. In truth, Helen didn’t give two hoots about Sam Charles’s career – that was the risk you ran when you were famous and unfaithful – but what she did care about was the reputation of the firm, which was why she had to be on top of her game not just to firefight the situation but to turn it around. And that was why Jim had kept her on the team despite Sam’s sacking of Anna.

She walked into her dressing room and ran her hand along the line of clothes, loving the way the hangers knocked gently together. In the calm orderliness of her dressing room, she took a minute to take stock of the situation. It had actually been fortuitous that she had assigned the Sam Charles case to Anna. She had been sorely tempted to take it herself, for the glory, the spoils. The way things had turned out, it had been Anna’s reputation that had been damaged. Over the next few weeks, Helen would assess how bad that damage had been; she didn’t want to get rid of the smart, ambitious girl – she still thought Anna had potential – but if she had to sack her, then she would do it without a thought.

Finally Helen selected a starched white shirt and a tight navy pencil skirt. Usually she’d only wear such formal, highly tailored clothes on court days; the stiffness of her shirt collars and the structure of her skirt were like a suit of armour. For years the legal community had been debating the pros and cons of getting rid of the barrister’s horsehair wigs, winged collars and gowns. The naysayers thought they were too haughty and ceremonious, relics of a Dickensian era, but Helen could understand why so many lawyers were fond of their regalia – it was protective clothing, a shield and helmet for when you went into battle. Today was going to be one of those days, except instead of the courtroom the battleground was Sam Charles’s country manor. And Helen was an expert in military strategy; she knew she couldn’t afford to lose this one.

‘What time is it?’

Graham stirred, rolling over on the pillow to look at her, his face lined with creases from the linen.

‘Almost eight.’

He grunted and snuggled back under the duvet. ‘Another five minutes then I’ll get up and make you coffee.’

‘Don’t bother,’ said Helen, striding past, picking up her leather briefcase from the desk as she went.

‘Whatever you say, darling,’ he mumbled, and turned over.

Helen looked at him with a mixture of irritation and pity. So strange to think that just a decade earlier, Graham had been the perfect catch. She’d been thirty-eight when they’d met at a cocktail party in Mayfair. Helen had never felt any strong desire to be a wife, and certainly no ticking biological clock, but as she climbed higher up both the professional and social ladder, she’d observed that a husband was a desirable accessory. Singles were viewed with suspicion on her high-flying society circuit. It was fine for men, of course; single men were playboys, dashing roguishly around town, playing the field. Single women, on the other hand, were seen as either predatory or dysfunctional.

Graham was well bred, connected and handsome in that ruddy-cheeked public-schoolboy way. His grandfather had been a leading light in the sixties Conservative government, an old-school-style politician with money, power and an aristocratic lineage, and there were whispers that Graham’s political career could have a similar trajectory. When they had married after a nine-month courtship, Helen had genuinely held high hopes that one day their marital home might be 10 Downing Street. But humiliatingly, Graham had turned out to be a one-term MP. In the new political climate, his style was seen as old fashioned and fuddy-duddy, and he lost his seat to an articulate Lib Dem fifteen years his junior. And that had been it. Graham had spent his life having everything laid out in front of him; he didn’t know how to cope when something didn’t fit the script.

She could have divorced him, of course. Should have divorced him, in fact. If Helen had had any close female friends, this might have been the sort of thing they discussed over long, commiseratory lunches in San Lorenzo. But she had no time for lunch – and no time for divorce. Not yet, anyway.

‘Well, see you later,’ grunted Graham. ‘What time you back?’

Why? she thought. Are you thinking of whisking me off to Rome?

‘Oh, late probably,’ she sighed instead. ‘I’m at a client’s in Wiltshire. I’m not sure how long it will take.’

He pulled the duvet down, his interest evidently piqued.

‘This the Sam Charles thing?’

Everyone was talking about the scandal; the fact that it had penetrated into Graham’s clubby upper-class world was an indication of what big news it was. Helen nodded.

‘Crisis-management talks at his house.’

‘Well, it’s nothing you can’t sort out,’ he said encouragingly. ‘You got that chap Svurak off, didn’t you?’

Just a month earlier, Helen had extracted the Premiership footballer from an even tighter spot. The bad boy of the pitch had been caught with a sixteen-year-old girl in a seedy hotel room. Not only had he gleefully filmed the whole event, he had thought it hilarious to send the footage to all his friends – one of whom had thought it even more funny to send it to a red-top in exchange for a large stack of cash. Helen had only avoided the complete destruction of Svurak’s career by going straight to the top. She had struck a series of deals first with his club, who had agreed to trade the hotel footage for an exclusive – and uncharacteristically candid – interview with the team’s captain for the tabloid. On top of that, the paper was given the scoop on Svurak’s surprise marriage to the ambitious singer of a struggling girl band. The wedding would be held at the luxurious Carlos Blanco hotel in Marbella, whose owner, another client of Donovan Pierce, was only too happy to lap up the publicity.

They should call us cleaners, not lawyers, thought Helen. That’s all we do: clean up the shit before anyone even knows it’s there.