Tease Page 5

  ‘No way!’

  ‘Yes way. Oooh, saved by the bell!’ exclaimed Blue, making a grab for his mobile which was now ringing loudly from inside his locker. Dave rolled his eyes at the interruption, feeling cheated of more salacious gossip.

  ‘Lewis!’ shrilled Blue. ‘Yes … no I’ve no idea, I haven’t seen her this morning. Isn’t she rehearsing with Pepper? No … no … well I didn’t go home with her, you see, she … er … I stayed out with a friend I think … no. Well I don’t remember much, er – no. What? Vegas? No way! When? Oh my god, wait ‘til she hears! Why? But I want to give her the news … oh okay then … no I won’t, don’t worry. Yesss boss. Speak later!

  ‘Aaaaagh!’ squealed Blue to the entire changing room, dropping his towel and waving his mobile over his head. ‘She got the Vegas deal! Oh my god, oh my god, ohmygod! Oh! Liberace, I’m coming home!’

  Chapter 4

  This morning it was the weathergirl’s turn to rattle Sienna Starr’s cage.

  ‘Thick cloud cover over the city and a low wind chill means mild temperatures of around seventeen degrees. Don’t get too excited though, we’re in for a grey day in the city, with patchy rain through to the evening. So take your umbrellas to work with you today …’

  ‘Bitch! Sort the weather out!’ Sienna hurled the words at the portable tv, flicking irritably through the channels and wondering what the hell she was going to wear for work now. Her carefully planned fake Pucci dress would never look good against miserable rain clouds. Hearing the loud hiss of a pan boiling over in the kitchen she made a dash for the hob. As she stirred the steaming milk into her porridge oats, Sienna hurriedly rethought her dress strategy, deciding to wear her vintage Burberry trench coat – yet another Tiger hand-me-down – teamed with her trusty Topshop beret. Very resistance, trés mysterieuse, she thought, imagining her wafting past Rex Hunter in the office all leggy, lissom and chic. Phew, style on a serious budget certainly took some preparation, she thought, gulping her porridge, especially when thrown a curveball by some dumb dolly weathergirl.

  Sienna hummed as she dressed, feeling unusually clear headed and refreshed from a good night’s sleep. There was no way she was going to stay out getting drunk last night when she needed to make a good impression on Rex Hunter. It was bloody typical that she hadn’t got her new job herself; as usual her sister Tiger had pulled strings on her behalf. Hell, she hadn’t even wanted to work in public relations, but then as far as Sienna was concerned, anything that got her closer to the kind of glamour and celebrity that her older sister had been enjoying for years was well worth giving a go. It was high time Sienna had her own taste of the good life. Of course, the moment Sienna was introduced to the chiselled manliness of Rex Hunter, she resolved that PR had in fact been her true calling all along.

  Standing at the mirror now, she checked out her lean svelte figure in her simple black polo-necked dress. A minimiser bra was doing its best to ensure her bosom wouldn’t ruin the streamlined silhouette. She arranged her beret at a jaunty angle over her tawny cropped hair. She wondered if she shared the same natural hair colour as her sister, and realised she couldn’t actually remember a time when Tiger didn’t have her immaculately dyed powder-pink curls. In fact their dearly departed mum and dad hadn’t kept pictures of Tiger past her baby years. They had always claimed Tiger didn’t like to be photographed because she wore an eyepatch for a squint for years. A pirate for a sister? Seemed unlikely to Sienna.

  Sadly she didn’t remember her Grandma Coco – she had only been four when she passed away – so Sienna had been too young for the experience of family stories anyway. Besides, dad had always enigmatically claimed that Grandma was unsuitable to be around children. It had been Tiger who had told Sienna about Coco having been a burlesque star. How typical, Sienna had thought spitefully when she found out; typical that Tiger wasn’t even being original with her precious job; she was just copying their Grandma! As Sienna now carefully arranged her short hair under her beret, she wondered if Tiger had matching collar and cuffs, having a good snigger to herself at the thought of a pink muff, before concluding that if she knew anything about Tiger’s attention to detail, it was a given that everything matched.

  ‘… Tiger Starr brought the West End to a standstill last night with the opening of her new show My Bare Lady. Celebrity pals arrived in droves to cheer on the stunning Miss Starr …’ The strains of the breakfast television news permeated the bedroom.

  Oh bugger off, thought Sienna, suddenly annoyed that her sister was managing to invade her morning without even trying.

  ‘… roadblock outside the Savoy as Miss Starr eventually left in her limousine having stayed after the show to sign autographs for her legions of fans. We leave you with a clip of last night’s scene. I’m Emma Woods, and you’re watching EMTV Entertainment News.’

  Oh go on then, let’s see her prancing on telly, thought Sienna, suddenly compelled to watch. There before her eyes was her sister, beaming from the screen, her face lit up with a thousand flashbulbs as she exited the theatre in exquisitely body-hugging vintage Mugler, flanked by the latest hot-young-thing actors. Immediately Sienna turned sour, soaking up the scene unfolding on the small screen. Dammit, if only she’d hung out at the Savoy and walked out on her sister’s arm, instead of being made to escort the boring bloody critics out the tradesman’s entrance, she thought. That should be Sienna Starr up there on that screen. ‘Aaaand thank you, Emma, wish I’d been there myself!’ The anchorman rudely interrupted Sienna’s trance.

  ‘And now for the sporting news. Wayne Rooney was the man of the hour when—’

  Sienna flicked off the telly and sank to the floor in a sulk. Suddenly she didn’t feel like such a femme fatale in her outfit. Who was she trying to kid anyway? She would always be known as ‘Tiger’s-Little-Sister’. Ironic, considering she was two inches taller than Tiger. Her gawkiness had always been a sore point for Sienna. All the girls in sixth form had literally clamoured to meet her glamour-puss sister whenever she visited Sienna, and afterwards the girls would taunt Sienna for being the clumsy, gangly top-heavy sidekick. Sidekick indeed! Tiger had to spend quite a bit of time encouraging Sienna to see all the good points of her physique, to embrace her blossoming bosom. But as far as Sienna was concerned, the taunts were all Tiger’s fault in the first place; if she wasn’t so much more beautiful, and so nice, people would prefer Sienna instead.

  She took in her surroundings; the Marylebone flat that her darling sister had found so that Sienna could live in a nice area, the flat that her darling sister paid the rent on to get Sienna started in London, the flat that her darling sister had chosen for its restored fireplaces, high ceilings and antique floorboards; the flat with filthy grey dust sheets pinned up at the sash windows because Sienna simply couldn’t bear to have any more Tiger hand-me-downs. Besides, her sister’s raw silk curtains were so darn boring. Sienna wanted something cool and animal print. Giraffe maybe. Or even ocelot. She just couldn’t afford anything on her meagre junior’s budget right now. That would simply have to change, resolved Sienna as she tapped her talons on the floorboards, deep in thought.

  Sienna certainly had no qualms about using her sister’s generosity to get her on the next step of the ladder. She’d cultivated her mercenary streak from an early age. Tiger’s sporadic visits to see her at boarding school certainly had their perks, as she used to bring all the goodie bags from the latest flash parties she had been to. Sienna regarded them as guilt offerings for not stopping her parents from sticking Sienna in some stone turret masquerading as a school in Hitchin. Tiger was busy in London on her own glamorous path to stardom. Didn’t she have any idea just what going to boarding school in a town that sounded like a venereal disease could do to an ambitious young lady?

  Sienna would always put Tiger’s gifts to good use, shrewdly buying friends at school with promises of perfumes, scented candles, expensive face creams, trinkets, designer chocolates, champagne manicures – whatever the goodie bags proffered. She wa
s especially in demand as a friend at Hitchin College for Young Ladies during London Fashion Week, when the gifts took on new levels of luxury. Sienna was never under any illusions that she was popular for any other reason. This of course never bothered her – Sienna had decided at a very early age that life was all about getting a result. Whatever it took. Looking at her watch, Sienna realised she needed to get a wriggle on if she was going to make it into the office early and get Rex’s desk all organised and tidy ahead of his arrival.

  Tiger drew the enormous duvet from over her pink curls and squinted at her mobile flashing merrily on the dressing table next to her. She gingerly checked her inbox. Seven missed calls from Blue, eight from Lewis. 10.05 a.m. Shit. Shit. Shit! She never missed a rehearsal. Pepper must be going crazy. Tiger dialled for Blue and braced herself.

  ‘Youuuuu dirrrty girl!’ roared Blue down the line. ‘Oooh if walls could talk this morning!’

  Tiger flopped back onto Rex’s bed. Looking at her mussed-up reflection in the mirror on the ceiling she sighed dreamily.

  ‘You’re all over the papers by the way,’ continued Blue casually, sensing her fragile state, ‘and Lewis is going nuts that he can’t get hold of you. Erm, he’s got some news you might want to hear.’

  ‘Oh god. I need your help then,’ pleaded Tiger, rolling on to her front, ‘I’ve let everyone down, I’m so late for Pepper in the studio. Could you come over, like now with the driver, bring me my pointe shoes, some false lashes and a catsuit? In fact, sling a headscarf and spare stillies in the bag too. Tell Lewis my phone died and I’ll call at lunch.’

  ‘Check, check and check. So where am I coming to?’

  ‘What d’you mean where?’

  ‘Where are you? I’d take an educated guess you’re not in Elton’s bed at any rate.’

  ‘Oh right, oh I see. Yes, of course. Er, come to 555 Cheyne Walk.’

  ‘Hmm. Whose house is that?’

  ‘Don’t do this, Blue.’

  ‘I wanna hear you say it.’

  ‘You still want your job tomorrow?’

  ‘Gotcha. Need some shades?’

  ‘You bet. Bags like an entire set of Louis Vuitton luggage.’

  ‘Ha. I’ll get you in showroom condition in a matter of minutes, my darling. I’m out the door. Be with you in thirty.’

  ‘Oh and Blue?’

  ‘Yes, darling?’

  ‘Flowers – stop at Liberty and get the biggest bunch of flowers for Pepper. I’m never late for her. Jesus, what was I thinking?’ Tiger snapped her phone shut and rubbed her temples.

  She sank back into the duvet and inhaled the delicious aroma of sex, sweat and aftershave on the sheets. Turning to Rex, snoring softly by her side, her heart took a little somersault and she kissed him tenderly. ‘Wake up, sleeping beauty,’ she whispered, fluffing up her hair before reaching under the Egyptian cotton sheets to give him a wake up call he wouldn’t forget.

  Sienna slumped into her chair at Hunter Gatherers’ headquarters on Charlotte Street, exhausted already. The office was like St Pancras in rush hour and the morning hadn’t even passed yet.

  ‘Run off twenty copies of the Diamond Suisse account presentation will you, I just emailed you the PDFs, and then I need you to get Lou from World PR on the phone, she hasn’t returned my calls and I need to speak to her. Just keep holding ’til you get her.’

  ‘Sure,’ Sienna replied wearily to Rex’s second-in-command, Steve, a towering, charmless figure with porcine features – the exact opposite of the delectable Rex Hunter.

  ‘Oi, Gareth mate, did you get the Tiger Starr press releases over to The Times? They need to get the feature wrapped up for the supplement. Oh and Kat, you’re gonna have to put your foot down for copy approval if we’re gonna let Tiger do the …’ Steve broke off from his directives. ‘Shit, Sienna! Where’s – didn’t you get my bacon butty?’ he demanded from behind his desk, staring open mouthed like a guppy at the space where his elevenses would normally be.

  ‘Um, I was running tight on time,’ Sienna lied effortlessly over the desk divide.

  ‘How come you managed to get Rex a pastry?’ snapped Steve, patting his generous gut.

  Sienna blushed red and marched to Rex’s desk. Grabbing the croissant she thrust it under Steve’s nose.

  ‘Good job he’s not in this morning then. Here, you have it,’ offered Sienna tartly.

  ‘Nah, I’ve lost my appetite now. Why don’t you eat it, you could do with a bit of meat on your bones anyway.’ Steve chuckled and winked over at Kat who appeared to be fixated on Sienna’s thigh-skimming hemline.

  Sienna turned on her heel in silence and simply hitched her dress up even higher, cursing inwardly whilst blushing. The heating in the busy office was making her head itch under her cheap beret. Fuck manmade fibres, she thought angrily, trying to reach her itch with a pencil. Where the bloody hell was Rex this morning anyway? She didn’t remember seeing any morning engagements in his diary for today.

  Sitting back at her desk she set about Steve’s tasks and stabbed the World PR switchboard number into her telephone.

  ‘Lou Klein please … Hunter Gatherers … Yes … No … I’ll hold thanks.’

  Britney’s ‘Oops I did it again …’ played through down the line as Sienna was put on hold, which wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been the extended pan pipe remix. She rolled her eyes and settled into her chair for the duration.

  Chewing on her pen Sienna swivelled on her chair idly amidst the hubbub and stared over at Rex’s vacant desk with a beady eye. Now where could he be? she mused, annoyed that he wasn’t there to see her leggy display.

  Behind his desk the wall was a shrine to Tiger Starr. Framed magazine covers, a photograph of Tiger in James Brown’s show, funny newspaper headlines, a suspended scale model of the Boeing 747 infamously painted with her pin-up image. A small corner was devoted to Rex’s highly treasured framed photograph of himself with his idol Ricky Hatton, taken in Las Vegas after another victorious fight. Sienna wondered what it would be like to be in Vegas with Rex. I bet he’d be fun, she thought, imagining herself there, all diamonds, fur and glamour at the craps tables. All eyes on would be on her, dressed in Gucci and with tanned skin sparkling under thousands of pounds of Bulgari – she would be on Rex Hunter’s arm with Britney playing pan pipes in the backgrou—

  ‘Morning all!’

  ‘Rex!’ squealed Sienna, cutting off her phone call as her boss strode through the office. Her outburst was noted with raised eyebrows from Kat and a smirk from Steve.

  ‘Heyyyyy! Mate, what happened to you last night!’ teased Steve.

  ‘Ah you know, went home, fed the cat, watched Question Time on telly,’ laughed Rex with a wink. ‘So what’s in the dailies, how did we do?’

  As Rex swept past Sienna without so much as a glance her way, she caught the unmistakable smug look of a man who’d seen some action the night before. It was a look she was beginning to know too well. Rex was a womaniser, pure and simple, and every notch he clocked up on his bedpost was another cut to Sienna’s heart. She felt so stupid. That bloody Libertina Belle, cursed Sienna – he’d been all over her in the theatre last night. A heavy pile of newspapers crashed onto Sienna’s desk, sending her desk tidy with its content of Bic biros and paperclips flying across the floor. Rex stood in front of her.

  ‘Scan these clippings and add them to Tiger’s press book, there’s a girl. File the actual paper articles in the “live events” cabinet. Your sister did us all proud last night, she’ll keep us in Bolli for a while,’ he said, before turning back to Steve. ‘Mate, you up for a Bloody Mary at the Ritz? Call it elevenses, we can go through the Diamond Suisse strategy while we’re there.’

  Sienna flicked huffily through the papers, sure that she did her own special bit to keep the journos happy at the show last night. The Times, the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Sun, the Mail, the Express, the Independent, all proffering Tiger’s magnificent hourglass figure mid performance. ‘Tiger Tiger burning b
right’, ‘Tiger’s Starry night’, ‘Night of a thousand Starrs’, read the pun-soaked headlines.

  ‘Oh and Sienna,’ called Rex.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Fetch me an Alka-Seltzer before I go to the Ritz, will you. Cheers, mate.’

  As Rex strutted off towards Steve and Kat, Sienna looked back crestfallen at the pictures of her sister, with scissors at the ready to cut out the articles. She stared at Tiger’s beaming smile. Was she mistaken or could she just make out the distinct hint of a sneer?

  Chapter 5

  Tiger Starr’s radiant face looks up from the newspaper page which is beginning to curl under the heat from the anglepoise lamp. A leather-gloved hand lightly traces the line of her pillowy lips, one finger now extending out to follow the line of her cheekbone with a barely detectable tenderness. The hand slowly takes up the scalpel knife lying in an orderly fashion next to the newspaper. Delicately, carefully, precisely, the picture is cut out, and its reverse caressed with a thin film of glue. The image is placed onto a welcoming scrapbook page and patted down gently.

  The gloved hand reaches once more for the blade before hovering hesitantly over the newly arranged page. Leather-clad fingers begin to gently trace the line of her bouncy curls, pausing over her beautiful face. An intangible shudder of anticipation spreads through the room in waves, a room almost entirely covered in glittering images of Tiger Starr.

  Chapter 6

  ‘Ten Benson! Woooh!’ squealed Poppy, waving the little gold packet over her head.

  ‘Cool!’

  ‘Where d’ya get ’em?’

  ‘Dish ’em out then!’ responded Emma, Claire and Marina excitedly.

  ‘Listen, I had to go all the way across town in case I bumped into someone I knew. You owe me big time,’ warned Poppy sternly.

  ‘Aw, c’mon, you know you’re the only one who’d pass for sixteen,’ retorted Claire.