Vengeance Read online

  He was horrified. She watched him backing away from her, swearing he’d deny ever touching her if she so much as mentioned his name. All the hurt, the anguish and fear she had bottled up inside suddenly erupted in a storm of such unmitigated anger as she threw herself at him that all she knew was that she wanted to kill him.

  ‘For God’s sake, Kirsten, calm down!’ Christopher shouted, grabbing her arms to stop her hitting him. ‘How can you tell anybody that Danny’s the father when you’ve let half the bloody sixth form into your knickers?’

  ‘No! No!’ she cried, throwing herself at him again. ‘I only did it for him. You know that, you all knew that. And now you’re all going to leave me . . .’

  ‘But what the hell else can we do?’ Christopher protested. ‘That kid could be anyone’s . . .’

  ‘No! Not anyone’s! It’s mine! Do you hear me! This baby is mine and I’m going to keep it. No one is going to take this baby away from me . . .’

  ‘Kirsten!’ he yelled. ‘No one’s saying they’re going to take it away. Now for fuck’s sake calm down . . .’

  But Kirsten wasn’t listening. The pain was unleashed, out of control and was going to make itself heard. And all the bitterness and betrayal she felt seemed to have no end.

  It was only when Christopher yelled at her that she was going to harm the baby if she didn’t stop that her temper finally started to abate. Her baby! The one human being in the world she could love and who would love her. Soon there would be something in her life that no one could take away – it would be hers, all hers, and she would protect it with her life. So what if Danny was seeing Catherine Watts, would go out in public with her, something he had never done with Kirsten? She had her baby now, her very own baby. She had someone to love.

  Smiling sadly to herself Kirsten put down the book she was holding and got up to go and make herself some tea. It was all such a long time ago now, such a very long time, and it was where it should have ended, but it hadn’t. How many years had she punished herself for going through with the abortion? How many men had she allowed to abuse her body in order to carry out that punishment? She’d lost count now. The analyst had said that she’d done it in order to get pregnant again, but she wasn’t sure that was true. Perhaps it was in part, but she had always used contraception, just as, when she had finally come to understand the power of her body, she had gone on sleeping with men, but now to get what she wanted. For years, right up until she’d met Paul, she had been nothing better than a whore. And very soon now Dermott Campbell was going to find out about that, and make public the whole grisly business.

  But she would survive it, she would have to. Please God, just don’t let Campbell ever find out about Laurence; don’t let him get hold of what they had shared and twist and soil it with his lies, the way he was doing with what she had known with Paul. For what she had had with Laurence McAllister, the man who Paul himself had so proudly introduced her to, the man who she had loved so much that no amount of words could express it, was the man who in the end had broken her completely. And that was something she would never want to be made public, and something that even now she didn’t know if she could ever truly put behind her . . .

  3

  ‘Kirstie! Kirstie, is that you?’

  Kirsten looked at the receiver then put it back to her ear. ‘Hello?’ she said cautiously.

  ‘Kirstie! It’s me! Helena! Shit, I’ve had one hell of a time trying to get hold of you. Why haven’t you called me?’

  ‘I thought you were in Hollywood,’ Kirsten answered, wondering whether or not she should believe her ears.

  ‘I was, it didn’t work out, so I’m back. Looks like we’re both back.’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ Kirsten suddenly started to laugh. ‘I was just thinking about you. God, Helena, tell me I’m not imagining this call.’

  ‘I’m right here, honey. Now, you gonna give me your address so I can come over and see you? We got one hell of a lot of catching up to do so we’d best get started. You are free I take it?’

  ‘You bet your sweet Louisiana bum I’m free. Just get here as soon as you can, I can hardly wait to see you.’

  Half an hour later Helena was sitting the other side of the kitchen table sipping the champagne Kirsten had cracked open to celebrate. Her wild, frizzy black hair, coffee coloured skin, startlingly large brown eyes and generous mouth were so familiar and such a welcome sight that Kirsten could almost have wept with joy. Instead she laughed at the way Helena was so openly assessing her with all the frankness Kirsten remembered so well.

  ‘Sheeit, Kirstie!’ Helena exclaimed, grinning widely. ‘You just get more gorgeous by the year. Can’t you do the decent thing and start to age, like the rest of us?’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ Kirsten laughed. ‘But you’re looking pretty terrific yourself. Something in Hollywood must have agreed with you.’

  ‘A plastic surgeon. He agreed I needed lifts and tucks and all that rubbish, so I went for it. Didn’t get me any work though. In fact I’ve been resting, as they say, ever since the soap folded.’

  ‘No!’ Kirsten gasped. ‘But that’s over four years now. Surely you’ve done something in all that time.’

  ‘Nothing worth mentioning. So I’m here hoping that my favourite producer might have a l’il ol’ role for her li’l ol’ friend. Anything doing?’

  ‘Give me a chance,’ Kirsten laughed. ‘I’ve only been back in the country a month, and it can’t have escaped your notice that I’m not exactly the flavour of the month.’

  ‘No, you sure aren’t,’ Helena agreed. ‘Would I be right in thinking that Dyllis Fisher is behind Campbell’s campaign?’

  ‘You would.’

  ‘God, that man’s such a prick! Words escape me for her at the moment, but never fear I’ll think of some. Still, I’ll have a word with Campbell if you like, see if I can persuade him to back off.’

  ‘You mean you know him?’

  ‘Unfortunately. He had the hots for me once, well, he has the hots for anything in a skirt. But I’m telling you, honey, I’m not that desperate – not yet anyway. To tell the truth I feel insulted that he could actually believe I’d be interested in a creep like him. Still, it’s the story of my life, as you well know. Why can’t I ever pull the gorgeous ones like Laurence McAllister, is what I want to know? Incidentally, I just got to ask, what the hell happened between you two in the end, you never did tell me. You just skipped off to France with Paul Fisher and we never heard from you again. So, come on, dish the dirt. What did the bastard do?’

  ‘Nothing really,’ Kirsten smiled, looking down at her glass. ‘It was me. I kind of went into self-destruct.’

  ‘And good old Paul was there to help put you back together. Well, let’s thank God for him anyway. Did you two ever get it together in the end?’

  Kirsten nodded. ‘We did. Eventually.’

  ‘I knew it!’ Helena cried, clapping her hands with glee. ‘Paul Fisher was in love with you from the day he met you, though why the hell he didn’t do anything about it then beats me. Still, if anyone ever deserved his roll in the hay it was him.’

  ‘I’m glad he’s not here to hear you put it like that,’ Kirsten grimaced. ‘He spent a long time getting me over the way I always used myself to, amongst other things, reward people.’

  Helena looked suitably chastened. ‘I guess you really did have your problems back then, didn’t you? There you were, just about the most successful woman in television, at least certainly the youngest to be so successful, churning out one hit show after another after another, looking for all the world like you’d really got it together and all the time you were so badly screwed up. Tell me you’re all right now. Tell me you got yourself sorted.’

  ‘I’m sorted,’ Kirsten smiled.

  ‘With Paul’s help, I’ll bet. That man is a candidate for sainthood. I guess you really miss him, don’t you?’ she added softly.

  ‘Yes. But he’d be the first to tell me that life has to go on, which
it does. I don’t think it’s going to be easy though. Getting Dermott Campbell off my back could be a start. Will you speak to him?’

  ‘Sure I will. But I’ve got to tell you, Kirstie, I don’t really hold out much hope. Not when Dyllis Fisher is pulling the strings. She is one powerful lady.’ She looked thoughtful for a moment, then lifting her eyes back to Kirsten’s she said, ‘Look, I’ve been reading all that stuff, and well, did it ever occur to you that someone is giving Campbell his information? I mean a lot of what he’s writing is based on the truth. For sure there are a hell of a lot of lies, but . . .’

  ‘Yes, it had occurred to me,’ Kirsten answered, ‘but I just can’t think who it would be. Can you?’

  Helena shook her head. ‘I mean, I guess you made plenty of enemies back when you came in to revive the soap, with all the people you fired’n’all, but that was years ago now. I can’t believe anyone would hold a grudge for that long, I mean things like that happen in this business, everyone knows that. Still, we can’t rule it out. Has anyone from back then been in touch with you at all?’

  Kirsten shook her head. ‘You’re the only one.’

  Helena looked surprised. ‘Not even Anita Browne? You were pretty friendly with her for a while.’

  ‘Never so friendly as I was with you, and no, I haven’t heard from her in years. Whatever happened to her, do you know?’

  Helena shrugged. ‘Haven’t got the faintest. Or, hang on, didn’t she meet some Australian cowboy or something and emigrate?’

  ‘No idea. The last I heard of her she was doing rep in Manchester. But that has to be at least seven years ago.’

  ‘Mmm, well I’d be careful about who does try to get in touch over the next few weeks, if I were you.’

  ‘Have you ever met anyone more careful about people than me?’ Kirsten grinned.

  Helena laughed. ‘No, I don’t guess I have,’ she said, over-emphasising her Louisiana drawl. ‘But you have been known to make mistakes.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve made plenty of them,’ Kirsten chuckled, ‘and one of them was not keeping in touch with you. So come on, let’s have it, what have you really been up to all these years?’

  Like most actresses Helena didn’t need much encouragement to talk about herself, which she did, quite happily, for the next hour, by which time Kirsten was aching from laughing so hard.

  ‘But I have to tell you,’ Helena said, ‘none of it was so much fun as we had back in the old days. Shit, the things we got up to. Do you remember the time when old what’s-his-name, the head of drama, ordered you to fire me? Me! The star!’

  ‘Yes, I remember it only too well,’ Kirsten said dryly. ‘And I should never have told you, going into his office the way you did and throwing his coffee over his head. You really were lucky not to be fired then.’

  ‘But you saved me,’ Helena grinned.

  ‘Only just. I really had to stick my neck out . . .’

  ‘Your neck!’ Helena cried.

  ‘Well, all right, a bit more than that,’ Kirsten conceded, ‘but I’d only just taken over at the time, I didn’t have anything else to bargain with.’

  ‘So you really did screw him just to keep me on the series?’

  ‘You know I did. And stop reminding me of the way I was then . . . We all know I screwed my way to the top . . .’

  ‘Yeah, but no one ever denied that you were a damned good producer. Even so, you sure were hot to trot. Yeah, I know, I know, it was because of all the problems you had in your past, but Paul sure sorted that out when he came along, didn’t he? Do you remember the day you met him, at the garden party? You hogged him all afternoon when the whole world was dying to speak to the great man . . .’

  Kirsten smiled nostalgically. ‘God, yes, I remember that,’ she said. ‘I’d never felt so important in my life. There I was, twenty-five years old, the producer of a dying soap opera . . .’

  ‘Which you very successfully revived . . .’

  ‘. . . which I revived. And there I was chatting away with the great Paul Fisher as though I’d known him all my life. God, that seems such a long time ago now.’

  ‘Do you ever wonder what might have happened to you if he hadn’t come along?’

  ‘I shudder to think. I mean, I might have continued to produce, but I don’t think I’d ever have been able to have a relationship with anyone. Not the way I was. God, I was such a mess. But even Paul didn’t stop me hankering for a baby. I asked him once if I could have his.’

  ‘I remember. It was why you and I went off on that hilarious skiing trip and I ended up breaking a leg. He’d thrown you out of his flat for trying to seduce him after he’d told you no a thousand times.’

  Kirsten winced and laughed. ‘He told me I was embarrassing us both, then threw my clothes at me . . . God that was awful. I hadn’t slept with a man in three years by that time, I had no confidence at all, at least none to speak of, if anything I was terrified of any kind of involvement with anyone, and then to have Paul react like that . . .’

  ‘But he was right. He was too old, he was married to someone else and you were just starting out on your career. About, if I remember rightly, to go off and produce that Hamish Fullerton drama. Real big time.’

  Kirsten nodded. ‘Paul was always right. Do you know, he cried when I went back to apologize. He was so upset by the way he had treated me. He just wanted me to meet the right man, was what he said . . .’

  ‘Which you did. Eventually.’

  ‘Well, I thought I did. In fact I was so sure of it I even wrote to my mother to tell her. It was the first time I’d contacted her in years.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Nothing. She didn’t even bother to write back. Still, that’s not surprising, we never did get on, and after she forced me to go through with that abortion I swore I’d never speak to her again. Which I haven’t really, from that day to this. How’s your mother, by the way?’

  ‘The same.’

  Kirsten nodded. ‘And your love life?’

  ‘About as barren as barren can get. It’s not easy meeting anyone when you’re my age . . . I’ll be forty-two next week, you know, and that’s not a good age when you want a husband and baby and have a penchant for seventeen year olds. The two don’t go hand in hand somehow.’

  ‘I didn’t know you wanted children,’ Kirsten laughed.

  ‘I don’t. Well, I do. Oh, what the hell do I know. I wish though, that just for once in my life I could fall in love and have someone fall in love with me . . . I’ve never really had any relationships to speak of, at least nothing like you had with Laurence.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ Kirsten said, her smile fading slightly, ‘that didn’t exactly work out, did it?’

  ‘But why?’ Helena said, shaking her head incredulously. ‘I just don’t get it. Come on, what happened back then?’

  Kirsten gave a wry smile as her head tilted to one side. ‘He met Pippa,’ she answered simply.

  Helena shook her head. ‘No. I’m not buying it,’ she said. ‘That guy was so crazy for you he’d never have looked at another woman.’

  ‘But he did. He met Pippa, fell in love and they got married. End of story.’

  Helena was about to protest again, but stopped herself. There was no point in trying to get anything out of Kirsten until she was ready to tell. ‘And how do you feel now?’ she said softly. ‘Do you still care for him?’

  Kirsten looked down at the champagne glass she had cupped between her hands. ‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘It’s hard to say when I haven’t seen him for so long.’

  Again Helena was shaking her head as though she still couldn’t believe, even after all this time, that Kirsten and Laurence had parted. ‘I remember the night you met him,’ she said. ‘I was there for that too.’

  ‘We were always there for each other in those days,’ Kirsten smiled.

  ‘It was the night you won the BAFTA award, wasn’t it? For that Hamish Fullerton series. And Laurence won one too, if I remember rig
htly. God, what a night that was for you two. A BAFTA each and love at first sight. I’ll never forget the look on Paul’s face when he introduced the two of you. God, talk about the proud father. Come to that I’ll never forget the look on Laurence’s face. He could hardly believe his eyes. You sure did look gorgeous that night, but then you always do. Did you sleep together that night, by the way, I can’t remember now.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Kirsten smiled. ‘We slept together all right. It was the first time in my life a man had ever actually made love to me. It was also the night he told me he loved me.’ She laughed. ‘He couldn’t believe he’d said it. Neither could I, come to that. It was so absurd it really made us laugh, but he swore it was true. He said he thought that things like that only ever happened in the movies.’

  ‘For most of us it does,’ Helena remarked. ‘How long were you together in the end? A year, was it?’

  ‘Just about,’ Kirsten answered, her voice taking on a soft, dreamy quality as her eyes moved to the middle distance. ‘God, we had some crazy times. I’d never been that happy, I could hardly believe it was happening, but at the same time nothing in my life had ever seemed so real. He used to call me up in the middle of the day just to remind me he loved me. I’ve still got most of the little presents he gave me . . . Do you know, he taught me things about myself I didn’t even know, well my body actually.’

  Helena, her chin resting on her hand, smiled wistfully. ‘Mmm, I remember you telling me at the time. God, I was so jealous. I mean, happy for you, but he was so damned gorgeous everyone had the hots for him. And when you used to tell me what he was like in the sack, it just about blew my mind. Well, I guess it did yours too.’

  ‘It certainly did. I’ll always remember the day we were flying back from a weekend in Rome. We were sitting on the plane and suddenly I wanted him so much I just couldn’t wait. We did it right there in our seats. Fortunately we were the only ones in the first-class cabin and the stewardess, who must have known what was going on, turned a blind eye. But, it was like that with us, the whole time we were together, we just couldn’t seem to get enough of each other.’