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I flicked through an album of photos on some shitty entertainment website. April smiled at Jason like he was the only man in the universe. Every photo showed the same adoration, the same perfect smile. My heart dropped. Jason Redfern was as beautiful as his wife. Not in a model way, like the bronzed Adonis you’d find on an underwear advert. Jason was rugged, more human somehow. His eyes were dark and serious, his mouth often pitted in an expression just short of a scowl. He seemed like a guy with the weight of the world on his shoulders, not the Jason I knew, with the dirty, careless laugh at the end of the line.
I sighed aloud, maybe that’s what I wanted to see. Maybe I wanted to see the unhappiness, the validation of hiswe hate each otherstory. Jason and April Redfern sure didn’t look like they hated each other.
I clicked on a news story from weeks earlier. Burlesque night. Jason held tight onto April’s hand as they made their way through waiting journalists for theirrestaurant date night. He’d taken her to dinner, then left to stalk me outside Explicit. Make sense of that one, Sherlock.
I jumped as my phone buzzed, heart pounding.
Jason: Last night was perfect, dirty girl. You were perfect. Tomorrow night, no blindfold. I hope you’re ready. x
A kiss. He typed me a fuckingkiss. My heart nearly stopped. No fucking blindfold? I typed a reply at least three times before I opted for ignorance.
As ready as I’ll ever be. What time? xx
I stared at his picture as I waited for a response, one of him mid-action on the football field, hair wild as he came in hard for a tackle. How on earth could he be that man?
Jason: 7 p.m. Just like the first time, dirty girl. Door unlocked, only this time you’ll be waiting with your eyes open. I mean it, Gemma. I want you to know me. x
My thumb hovered over the call button. One simple call.Are you really Jason Redfern, Jason? Are you?I wimped out enough to type an ok.
An online football encyclopaedia was my next stop.
Full name: Jason Robert Redfern
Age: 33
Place of Birth: Barking, London, England
Height 1.87m
Playing position: Defender
Current team: Kensington Rangers. 2005-current. 423 appearances.
National team: England. 2006–current. 78 Appearances.
I read all about my dirty bad stranger, and it was quite a read. The article didn’t skim any details of his rise to the top of the ladder. Signed for Tottenham United as a youth player at thirteen, he’d looked all set to break the Premier League as an early star. But Tottenham had dropped him from the squad at eighteen, after only two appearances in the first team. Change of manager, apparently. I clicked through to some early references, telling the sad story of Jason’s dad’s death the following summer, and then a slow tale of triumph against the odds as Jason made his career in the lower divisions, clawing his way up the ranks until he was signed by Kensington at twenty-two.
Older pictures of Jason showed the same serious eyes, the same heavy brows of someone determined to prove their worth. He was unstoppable,a demon on studded wings, so they called him. He looked like it, too.
Then came the personal history. His marriage to Cherry Electric singer, April, to the backdrop of champagne and glossy magazine deals. Their perfect celebrity pairing, all smiles and celebrity endorsements and personal appearances.
And then scandal.
My breath hitched.
Another kiss and tell, years earlier. A woman called Serena, professing how Jason’s interest in perverted sex led her to dogging sites and seedy hotel rooms, where he paid her to have sex with other men.
His PR team had come out fighting hard, and there was no real evidence. She seemed to disappear from the media without trace, bar an appearance in some z-list cookery programme a few years later, but there were whispers. Whispers of drink and gambling and perversion. Whispers of expensive call girls and bad investments. Whispers of affairs.
Yet still the Redferns smiled pretty for the cameras, and still the country loved them for it.
Maybe this was his modus operandi. Maybe there were a hundred chatline girls out there, just like me.
The thought made me run cold.
Finally, I checked out the response to Chelsea’s tall tales. It wasn’t pretty. Cherry Electric die-hards were baying for blood, calling Chelsea every name under the sun and then some. They’d picked out photos of her looking less than her best, and lined them up against April Redfern looking far, far from her worst. The result was a bitchfest. A spiteful, hate-filled outpouring of venom, slating everything from Chelsea’s hair, to her willowy body, to her teeth and even her shade of foundation. Crazy. She could be an idiot, for sure, but she was a pretty idiot. For a moment I felt sorry enough for her to go back outside and make amends, but it passed quickly. She’d done more than enough bitching in my direction for one evening.
I tried to brush the social media tirades aside, but my stomach didn’t rest easy. That could be me. It could easily be me, except the hate would be ten times worse. I couldn’t even imagine my worst picture up alongside April Redfern’s best. The keyboard warriors wouldn’t even be hating, they’d be laughing too hard. And then they’d dig, trowelling up my personal history, my chatline job, my poor family back in Hatfield. His, too. They’d drag Jason through the mud all over again, maybe evenSerenawould seize another reality TV job on the back of it.
