Strictly Love, page 28
It being the autumn half-term, the class wasn't too well-attended, so Isabella, tonight looking almost like a fairy princess in her floaty pink dress and gold sandals, spent a lot more time with each couple than she did normally. When she got to Rob and Katie she beamed broadly.
‘So nice to see you two dancing together again,’ she said. ‘You were made to dance together.’
Katie blushed, which made Rob grateful that he had kept his mouth shut. He wanted her very badly, but she was still too vulnerable and he knew he should stay away.
‘There is a competition coming soon,’ continued Isabella. ‘I think it is time you entered, no?’
Rob looked at Katie. ‘How about it?’ he said. ‘I'm game if you are.’
‘What do we have to do?’ Katie asked, looking a little dubious. ‘I'm sure we'd be flattened by proper dancers.’
Isabella explained that there were different categories and that she and Mark could enter the beginners’ section.
‘You have a good chance of success,’ Isabella predicted. ‘Your bodies, they move together naturally. Like I said, you two are made for each other.’
Now it was Rob's turn to blush.
‘Katie, it's okay,’ he said. ‘We don't have to if you don't want to.’
‘No,’ she replied suddenly. ‘I'll do it, if only for the chance of seeing you in ruffles and tight trousers.’
‘I am not wearing ruffles,’ said Rob.
‘Go on, you know you want to,’ teased Katie. ‘A blue open-topped ruffled shirt showing off your chest hair would really suit you. I shall have to call you Gethin from now on.’
‘Okay, I'll wear that if you wear one of those dresses with tassles that show off your cleavage and leave nothing to the imagination,’ Rob shot back.
Katie grinned at him. ‘Okay,’ she said devilishly. ‘It's a deal.’
‘Great,’ said Rob, and led her into a waltz with a sudden lightening of heart. Katie might well be a long way off being his, but dancing with her every week was better than nothing. Much, much better.
‘So you're going to enter a dancing competition?’ Mark roared with laughter as he sat in the Hookers with Rob. ‘Does that mean you get to wear a silly costume?’
Rob looked a bit huffy.
‘That's just what Katie said,’ he complained.
‘Well, do you?’
‘I said I would if she wore a skimpy number,’ said Rob.
‘Thanks, mate,’ said Mark, practically crying into his pint. ‘you've given me the best laugh I've had in months. I needed that.’
‘Stress levels no better then?’ said Rob.
Mark had been wound up for weeks now. Although Fleet Street's finest had found other fish to fry, the court case was still preying on his mind.
‘No,’ sighed Mark. ‘I don't think I'll be able to relax till it's all over, and that could take months, apparently. My lawyer reckons we won't get a court date till after Christmas. I just want it all to go away.’
‘What about that other thing?’
‘The preliminary hearing at the General Dental Council?’ Mark asked. ‘That's booked for a couple of weeks before Christmas. I can't believe that Jasmine's so bloody malicious that she put in a complaint about professional misconduct. Well, I can, actually. If she hadn't, all that stuff in the papers would have blown over. As it is, the best-case scenario is I get my knuckles rapped; the worst case, according to James, is I get struck off.’
‘Do you think that's likely?’ Rob asked.
‘I have no idea,’ said Mark gloomily. ‘Given how crap the rest of my life seems like now, I'm inclined to think it's inevitable. Maybe I should retrain as a plumber.’
‘And you still haven't heard from Emily?’
‘Not a dickie bird,’ said Mark. He had half-hoped their meeting in the summer would have led to her renouncing her career and throwing herself into his welcome arms. He felt he could face all of this with her at his side. ‘But if she contacts me, she loses her job. While if she's successful at her job, I may lose mine.’
‘You never know,’ said Rob, ‘things might work out somehow.’
‘I can't see how,’ said Mark glumly.
‘Remember what I always say: expect the unexpected,’ said Rob. ‘Sometimes miracles do happen.’
‘Is Daddy gay?’
Katie nearly choked into her cornflakes. George was sitting looking at her inquisitively from the other side of the breakfast table.
‘What makes you say that?’ Jeez. How did he even know what being gay meant? The things they learned in the playground these days.
‘Jordan Allwick told me,’ said George. ‘When we went to the park last week. He said that's why Daddy left. He said everyone knows.’
George's face was inscrutable as he said this. Katie wondered what was going on in his head. It was so hard to tell.
‘What did you say?’ she asked, probing, thinking, Someone give me a bloody hand here, how do I deal with this?
‘I told him that he was lying.’
‘Oh,’ said Katie.
‘But he said he wasn't, he'd overheard his mum talking about it.’
I bet he has, thought Katie grimly. However hard you tried to keep something secret in Thurfield, you didn't have a hope once Mandy sodding Allwick found out. Though quite how she'd found this out was beyond even Katie.
George continued, ‘So I hit him.’
‘Oh,’ said Katie again, not knowing whether to hug him for standing up for his dad, tell him off for unsuitably violent behaviour (even if she totally agreed with it), or cry because any minute now she was going to have to break his ten-year-old heart.
‘Did you think that was the right thing to do?’ Katie stalled, scrabbling through her brain to remember what exactly it was that How to Tell Your Children Their Dad is Gay had said about situations like this. She had an uncomfortable feeling they were rather keen on parents being open about the situation. A naturally private person, Katie would much rather clam up and fudge the issue. But she thought briefly to how her mother had behaved about her father's infidelities, and realised it was no good doing that. Look what a mess Katie was in now as a result of her mother's well-intentioned secrecy.
‘No,’ said George. ‘But Daddy isn't gay. Is he?’
The hopeful look on his face smote Katie's heart. She wished beyond all measure that Charlie was with her so they could do this together, as they had sat down and broached the separation together. But he wasn't. As usual, she was here to face the tough stuff on her own.
‘George, do you actually know what being gay means?’ Katie asked.
‘Of course I do,’ said George in scornful tones. ‘It's man love man, isn't it?’
‘Well, that's sort of it,’ said Katie. ‘But there's a little bit more to it than that.’
George's face fell. A penny had clearly just dropped very heavily.
‘Daddy is gay, isn't he?’ he said. He looked shell-shocked and tears glistened in his bright blue eyes. Mummy's little soldier. What a bloody thing to have to tell him.
‘Yes, he is,’ said Katie. ‘But it doesn't have to change anything. Daddy still loves you and always will. And Aidan and Molly. Whatever happens, he's your dad, and that matters more than anything else.’
‘My dad's gay?’ George repeated again in tones of horror. ‘Jordan's going to kill me.’
He slammed his bowl of Coco Pops down on the table and ran off upstairs.
Katie put her head in her hands.
Emily felt furtive. She was quite entitled to be in Andrew's office looking through all the material for the Symonds case, which was starting next week, but the fact that she was actively looking for something, anything, to help Mark meant she felt like a character in Spooks. Any minute now, MI5 was going to stroll in, in the shape of Maniac Mel, and demand what the hell she was up to.
It was late and the office was slowly emptying – this being Friday night, most of her colleagues had better things to do. Normally, she would have too, but this was too important.
In the weeks since she'd last seen Mark, Emily had come to an important decision. Money wasn't everything. And for too long her guilt about letting down her dad and abandoning her family had made her far too accommodating about the financial mess her mum kept getting herself in. She was going to have to ring her up and explain the situation and see if she could defer a couple of months of payments on the loan. And maybe it was about time she got her mum to face up to the fact that spending loads of money on scratch cards wasn't going to bring Dad back either.
Then she was going to do what she should have done years ago. Namely, get out of the world she had found herself trapped in and go to work for a company with integrity, and do what she'd always planned before she'd got so sidetracked and bedazzled. Emily had been looking online and had found a couple of companies which dealt specifically with litigation cases involving victims who, like her dad, had suffered as a result of malpractice.
Reading some of the cases, Emily had felt more enthused and invigorated than she'd ever done in the seven years she'd been working here. It seemed she could make a difference after all.
But first things first. She had to help Mark. Maybe then they could start afresh. Some things, she realised, were worth losing your job for. She'd been stupid and blind to think otherwise.
After an hour of frantically riffling through every document she could find, Emily was on the verge of giving up. There was nothing that would help. If there was some way of proving Mark's innocence, she wouldn't find it here.
‘What are you doing?’
Emily nearly jumped out of her skin. Mel was standing in the doorway.
‘Just mugging up on the Symonds case,’ Emily said. ‘Want to make sure there are no nasty surprises.’
Mel looked suspicious.
‘And are there?’
‘No, nothing at all. Nada. Zilch,’ said Emily. ‘Andrew has done a great job. So I'll just put this file away …’
‘Good,’ said Mel. She made as if to leave and then said, ‘I hope we can rely on you.’
‘Yes, of course,’ gushed Emily, resisting the urge to throw a stapler at her boss. ‘Little Miss Reliable, that's me.’
‘See you on Monday then,’ said Mel.
Emily packed her things up and made her way slowly to the door. She'd found nothing. Achieved nothing. She had been no help to Mark at all.
‘Psst!’ John grabbed her arm as she left the building.
‘Not now, John,’ she said. ‘I'm not in the mood for games.’
‘This isn't a game,’ he said. ‘If you want to help your dentist friend, I'd be inclined to pay a visit to Graham Harker. And I haven't said that, and you haven't seen me.’
John touched the tip of his nose, winked at her and was gone.
Graham Harker? The name was familiar.
Now where had she heard it before?
Chapter Thirty-three
‘How are you feeling?’ Rob asked Katie as they stood waiting one Saturday night for their turn in the ballroom of a hotel a few miles from Thurfield. It was the first round of the competition Isabella had suggested they enter, and Katie was already wishing she'd said no. Her hands felt clammy, her knees were knocking together, and she felt ridiculously overexposed in the skimpy dress she had somehow ended up wearing.
‘Sick,’ said Katie. She'd watched the other competitors in awe. Even though they had entered the beginners’ section, everyone else looked so much more accomplished than them. She pulled at her skirt. Why had she gone for tassles? Seduced by watching the new series of Strictly Come Dancing, now in its fifth week, and persuaded by Rob that they really, really did need to dance in the Latin section, she'd made the mistake of ordering her outfit online: a gold sparkly dress with a halter-neck top and a fringe skirt. The skirt had looked considerably longer in the picture than it was in reality. However much she fiddled with it, it wasn't going to cover more of her legs. The top part of the dress was cut extremely low, and her back felt exposed. What on earth had she been thinking? Although it had to be better than Rob's top. He had gone for exposing his hairy chest in a ridiculously over-the-top blouson-type purple shirt complete with ruffles. His trousers were more subdued, being straight and black, but –
‘I don't believe it, you're wearing Cuban heels.’ Katie had only just realised. She burst out laughing.
‘Of course,’ said Rob, giving her a mock bow.
‘The next dance is Rob and Katie dancing the salsa, beginner level, first heat,’ the compere was saying.
The small crowd clapped and whistled, and Katie and Rob stepped out into the spotlight. They took their positions at opposite sides of the room. Katie swallowed hard.
She vaguely heard a voice say ‘Music please’, and then she started counting. Rob smiled at her, and, doing the basic step, they swung towards each other as they'd practised.
‘Don't forget to smile,’ said Rob as he took her in an open hold. ‘Three and four, and back and forward, and step and turn …’
Within seconds, Katie had forgetten that all eyes were on her and was losing herself in the rhythm of the dance.
‘And open and turn,’ Rob was reminding her, as for a moment she stumbled and nearly forgot the step. ‘And back, and forward, and cha cha.’
Rob stood still as Katie cha chaed around him. This was great. Better than great. All too soon, they had reached the last turn, and Rob executed a dramatic spin they'd spent weeks practising, and she ended up in his arms.
The floor erupted as Rob and Katie took their bows. After hearing their marks – three 9s and an 8 (Katie groaned – that must have been for her mistake) – they were ushered off to wait to hear if they had progressed to the next round.
‘That was so much fun,’ said Katie. ‘I think I could get to enjoy this.’
Rob squeezed her hand. ‘Me too,’ he said.
Mark sat nervously in the GDC committee room, wondering how on earth he'd ended up here. It was nearly Christmas already, and for the best part of a year he had been fretting about his career. Was he about to find out that it was all over?
James had tried to reassure him that he had nothing to worry about, but Mark couldn't feel as confident as his rep did. It was, after all, their job to present a positive spin on events. They hadn't lain awake all night fretting anxiously about the outcome, or had to fight their way through a media scrum to get to the GDC offices on Wimpole Street, where the hearing was to be held passing a radiant Jasmine giving a fevered account of all of his misdemeanours to Sky News. The tight knot he'd had in the pit of his stomach for weeks now had twisted itself into a new spasm of pain. He didn't think he could take much more of this.
At the front of the room was a long desk, flanked with computer screens, behind which sat three dentists who were going to be his judges, jury and executioners. To either side were the rest of the panel, made up of a combination of his peers and lay people. To his right, sat Jasmine and her medico-legal representative. Mark's fate was in their hands. So far nothing much had happened. Mark had told the hearing who he was and listened while Jasmine's representative outlined his many misdeeds, making him sound like a monster little short of Jack the Ripper. The rest of it had been incredibly boring and, even despite his anxieties, Mark had been on the verge of dozing off.
‘Can we hear from Tony Cavendish please?’ the chair of the panel said.
With a start, Mark realised that Twinkletoes Tone was taking the stand. He'd almost forgotten the footballer's real name.
‘Mr Cavendish,’ intoned the chair, who had the most ponderous manner that Mark had ever witnessed in someone who was still awake, ‘tell us what happened on the night of February twelfth this year?’
‘I'd arranged to meet Kerry,’ began Tony.
‘And Kerry is –’
‘Oh, yeah, right. Kerry's sort of – like – she was my bird for a bit when I split up with Jasmine.’ Tony shot an anxious look at his girlfriend when he said this, but she smiled sweetly at him and blew him a kiss.
‘I see,’ said the chair. ‘Carry on.’
‘So she says to me, “You seen the papers?” And I says, “No, why?” Then she says, “Your ex-girlfriend. Someone's sold them the story about her tooth, and I know who it is.”’
‘And who was it?’
‘He's sitting right over there,’ said Tony, and pointed at Mark.
Mark was fuming. He couldn't believe the barefaced cheek of Tony's lie. But, much as he wanted to leap up and deck Tony one, he could feel James warning him to control his anger.
Mark sat back and listened with increasing horror as witness after witness took the stand to completely and utterly defame his character. Kerry was called, to Mark's dismay. He wondered again, if she had had something to do with all of this. But the incoherence of her evidence, which consisted mainly of Vicky Pollard type utterances like ‘yeah, no, but that was what happened, innit?’, suggested she knew nothing of import, and were so ridiculous, they elicited the only smile Mark had managed all day.
Someone had found two witnesses from the stag weekend who had seen Mark dancing to White Snake with his trousers round his ankles. And, finally, the scrote of a reporter who had taken pictures got up to report that he had sat at a bar with Mark for several hours, during which Mark had downed whiskies, vodkas, Bacardi Breezers – you name it, Mark seemed to have drunk it
– galore. The picture they painted was of a family man whose life started going down the pan after his divorce. Mark sat in silent despair as he watched his career slip away from him.
Emily, who had come along to witness proceedings, and was sitting a little way behind Mark, was horrified as she watched Mark's reputation being destroyed. It was worse than she could have imagined, and made it all the more urgent that she do something about finding out the truth. She'd spent the weekend trying to track down Graham Harker. It was easy to find him by Googling his name. Famous for dozens of exposés of the nefarious doings of the zedlebrity set, he was often used as a talking head in shows about 'stars’ who'd fallen from grace. No wonder his name was familiar. It was not so easy to get access to him though – she hadn't managed to find an email address or a phone number for him, but he was, coincidentally, represented by A-Listers.
