Page 32 of The Only Way Is Up

Her phone began to ring. Katie. Daisy swiped the screen to answer it, putting Katie on speakerphone.

‘I spoke to Benny and confirmed everything,’ Katie mumbled, her mouth full of something, reminding Daisy it was lunchtime. She ambled across to the kitchen and opened the fridge.

‘How was it?’ she asked, perusing its meagre contents.

‘I feel like I need a shower. He’s gross.’

‘You’ve met him before, though.’

‘Yeah,’ said Katie. ‘He’s great at what he does, but he’d sell his children if it meant bagging one of his clients a slot on Dancing on Ice.’

‘Does he even have any children?’

‘No idea. Hard to imagine anyone in their right mind agreeing to have sex with him. Hang on.’

Daisy heard a drawer being opened, then closed. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Hand sanitizer. Talking about Benny gives me the ick.’

Daisy burst out laughing. ‘So what did he say?’ She put the phone on the counter as she fished a tub of yoghurt out of the fridge and grabbed a spoon from the drawer. There was only an inch left in the bottom – she sniffed it, then dug in. It tasted fine.

‘—He was surprised, obviously. Don’t think he expected us to agree not to announce you and Christian had split up—’

‘I bet.’

‘—agreed on a statement, basically saying that you’re both busy working on separate projects right now but are still very much a couple, blah-blah-blah.’

‘Great. Thank you.’ Daisy could feel the tension easing from her shoulders.

‘I also made it very clear that you haven’t changed your mind about Christian, but you didn’t want or need the press attention right now. Then I reminded him that you wouldn’t hesitate to drop Christian in the shit, if he messed up again and brought the press on you.’

‘You are fierce, and I love you. Anything else?’

‘Benny asked if we could change the wording to “Christian and Daisy”, and I told him to go fuck himself.’ Daisy could hear the glee in Katie’s voice.

‘Ha.’ She rinsed the yoghurt pot under the tap and dropped it in the recycling bin. ‘Anything in the press today?’

‘Only one thing I wanted to flag up. Hang on,’ said Katie.

Daisy could hear her tapping around on her laptop.

‘Here it is. It’s from the showbiz page of the Sun, with the headline “Daisy’s dodgy country chums – TV star gets cosy with tax cheat chef and sex scandal MP”.’

‘Christ, they are desperate.’

‘It’s nothing, just raking over the Gerald Forbes-Glover sex scandal and Justin Drummond’s tax avoidance. Basically, it implies you have sex pests and criminals for neighbours.’

Daisy shrugged. ‘Doesn’t everyone?’

‘Quite. I wouldn’t have bothered mentioning it, but it got me thinking. No tabloid hack is wasting time doing a deep-dive into the C-list residents of whatever rural shithole you’re living in. It wouldn’t be worth the effort. It’s much more likely that the tip-offs are coming from inside the village, presumably so somebody can make a few quid.’

‘You think?’ said Daisy doubtfully.

‘Yeah, I do. First the headmaster, now these two. Right now, it’s all fairly innocuous stuff, but these things can snowball. Have a think about who it might be. Would be good to nip it in the bud by the time you get back from skiing, if it carries on.’

‘OK,’ said Daisy. ‘Although you should probably know that Gerald Forbes-Glover’s wife and son are coming with us.’

‘What the fuck?’ Katie gasped. Daisy could just imagine her smacking her forehead in disbelief.