'Anna! Wait,' called Nigel.

But Anna wasn't listening. She stopped in front of Blake, glaring at him.

He gave her a thin, weaselly smile and pointed to the phone clamped to his ear.

'Darling, I'm on a call.'

'Does contempt of court mean nothing to you, Blake?' she snapped. 'Are you that determined to ruin people's lives you'll do anything?'

With a sour look, Blake flipped his mobile shut.

'What are you suggesting, Miss Kennedy? That I leaked leaked the story? That's a pretty serious allegation.' the story? That's a pretty serious allegation.'

'Then why are two hacks from the tabloids here? Are they psychic?'

She pointed at a couple of blondes who were talking intently to Martin Bond.

'Darling, I simply told a friend that I was coming to court. Being strong-armed under the terms of the gagging order, I obviously gave n.o.body any details beyond that. I do this for a living, remember? I know the rules of the game, thank you very much.'

'Then why are they here?'

'Because temporary injunctions do get lifted. This isn't the first, you know.'

She shook her head slowly.

'I hope your lawyer is on a retainer, Blake,' she said. 'You'll be needing him.'

'No one likes a sore loser, Anna.'

She jabbed her finger at him.

'This isn't about losing "the game", as you so eloquently put it. This is about breaking the law, which you did when you leaked the story to the press.'

'No, Anna, I did not. Contrary to what you might think of me, I do have respect for the law. It's my sixtieth birthday next week. I don't want to spend it in jail for contempt of court.'

'Bulls.h.i.t,' she said, turning on her heel. 'Total bulls.h.i.t.'

She ran out on to the street, her heart thudding as she turned on her phone. If the story had broken online twenty minutes ago, then the media would already be closing in on Sam. Oh G.o.d, I wonder if Jessica's already seen it, she thought. What a mess.

Her throat was dry as she scrolled to Sam's mobile and pressed Call.

'Hey, Anna,' he said. His voice was cheery, expectant. 'All done?'

She closed her eyes. There was no other way to tell him, except bluntly.

'They've overturned the injunction, Sam.'

'What?' he croaked. 'What do you mean? They've turned it down? How? Why?' The confusion in his voice turned to fear, then anger.

She forced air into her lungs. 'The judge has changed his mind on the grounds that the story is not private any more.'

'Not private? What the h.e.l.l do you mean, not private?'

'It's just been posted on the News News online. On Scandalhound too.' online. On Scandalhound too.'

There was an ominous silence at the other end of the line.

'Sam?'

In the background, she could hear him tapping at a keyboard. There was another pause and then a loud clatter. 'f.u.c.k,' he hissed finally. 'I don't believe it. I don't b.l.o.o.d.y believe it.'

'I don't know how they got hold of the story.'

'You don't know know?' he cried. 'Isn't that what I've just paid you fifty thousand quid to know? Aren't you supposed to know everything? Your job was to keep this out of the news well, great job, Anna.'

'Look, obviously Katie or Blake have talked to them. Of course they'd be in contempt of court and that's a criminal offence. We could try and pursue damages.'

'And how's that going to help me?' he shouted. 'The b.l.o.o.d.y horse has bolted, hasn't it? What the h.e.l.l am I going to do about Jessica?'

Anna tried to remain calm, but her voice was trembling.

'Look, I heard she was filming in Boston. That means it's only five thirty in the morning so she's probably still asleep. At least you can tell her about this yourself before she finds out from the press.'

'Oh great. Just great,' he snapped.

'We can manage this, Sam,' she said, although she was honestly beginning to doubt that. He was right about the horse having bolted. She looked up to see Nigel standing on the court steps, talking urgently into his own phone. 'Our barrister's right here. I'll talk to him and see what can be done, then I'll go straight back to the office, talk to Helen Pierce.'

'Who should have handled this in the first place ...'

Her cheeks stung with shame. 'This isn't ideal, but we can deal with it.'

'Yeah? Well, deal with this,' he said. 'You're fired.'

And then the phone went dead.

'Anna?' said a voice softly. Nigel Keyes was standing next to her.

'He just fired me,' she said, still staring at the handset in disbelief. It was only then that she realised Nigel was holding his own mobile out towards her.

'Helen Pierce,' he whispered.

Oh h.e.l.l.

'Anna? Have you see the News News online?' There was a sense of urgency in Helen's usually icy-calm voice. online?' There was a sense of urgency in Helen's usually icy-calm voice.

'We've just left court,' stuttered Anna. 'We-'

'Look, this can stop right here,' said Helen, ignoring her. 'With the injunction in place, Katie won't be able to talk, and without her, no one will be able to prove that Sam had s.e.x with her. We can sue for damages. I'm sure I can get a front-page retraction in tomorrow's-'

'Helen. The injunction was lifted,' said Anna finally.

'What?' The cold steeliness in her voice made Anna want to run and hide.

'Another few minutes and it would have been finalised, but Stanhope's QC got hold of the story as it was breaking. The judge overturned.'

There was no sound from the other end of the line. The roar of the traffic on the Strand seemed to engulf her. She felt as if she was walking on quicksand that was giving way under her feet, sucking her into a loud, claustrophobic hole she'd never be able to climb out of.

'Does Sam know?' said Helen, her tone cold.

'I've just told him. He was angry. He said I was fired.'

'Oh Anna,' said Helen. 'You stupid, stupid girl.'

But I did nothing wrong! Anna wanted to cry. How can I help it if someone decides to break the rules? Instead she just stood there, feeling as if she was being given the worst dressing-down by her headmistress.

Helen paused. 'I told you, Anna: no mistakes.'

'It wasn't a mistake,' she replied, fighting to keep her voice even. 'Stanhope and Katie must have talked despite the gagging order.'

'You should have served everyone with the injunction and shut the media down.'

'We had a strategy. We all all agreed on it.' agreed on it.'

She knew that her suggestion that even Helen Pierce was fallible was pointless. Although Helen, as Anna's supervising partner, had signed off the decision to gag only Blake and Katie, she knew that fact would be conveniently forgotten and that the failure would be hers alone. So much for partner by Christmas, she grimaced.

'Donovan Pierce is a boutique firm, Anna,' added Helen. 'We don't have a big rota of lawyers, but the ones we have are the best. We don't make mistakes. Our reputation is everything. Without that reputation, we are nothing.'

'I'll try talking to Sam again,' said Anna. 'I guess the Standard Standard will run with the story this afternoon, but if we can get him to do a sympathetic interview with the will run with the story this afternoon, but if we can get him to do a sympathetic interview with the Sun Sun tomorrow, it will soften the impact.' tomorrow, it will soften the impact.'

'I think you've done enough already,' said Helen. 'I will talk to Sam and do the firefighting myself. I'll see you when you get back to the office.'

Anna felt sick as she handed the phone back to Nigel. He looked sympathetically at her. 'Worse things happen at sea,' he said.

'Do they?' she said. She felt numb, as if she'd had all the air knocked out of her. 'Sorry, Nigel, I've got to go.' She saw a black cab approaching and stuck out her arm.

'Don't take it so hard. There will be other cases,' said Nigel kindly as he opened the door for her.

Don't be so sure, thought Anna as she sat back in the seat, dreading the inevitable face-to-face with Helen.

The cabby looked at her in the mirror.

'Where you going, love?'

'To face the music,' she said grimly.

11

Sam gripped the arms of his seat and tried to swallow. The pilot was banking the private jet to the right in preparation for landing, and Sam could now see Cape Cod peeking between thin, low clouds, a finger of land criss-crossed by roads and houses, surrounded by the flat grey Atlantic Ocean, completely oblivious to the tiny gnat flying overhead. If only he could just stay up here, permanently circling the earth, hermetically sealed from the rest of the world, he'd be happy with that.

Sam had always loved air travel; he'd been brought up in a bland working-cla.s.s part of London, not far from Heathrow, where the planes roared so low over his house he could make out the name of the airlines: Air China, Thai Air, Air New Zealand, reminding him how easy it was to be transported, for the price of a ticket, away from your humdrum existence. And since he had become really famous, aeroplanes had become his sanctuary. A reclining seat thirty-five thousand feet above sea level was one of the few places he could truly relax, switch off and not be bothered by the millions of people who wanted a piece of him.

But tonight, despite the champagne and the tasty finger food the pretty stewardess had kept bringing over, he could not relax. Today he wished for storms and delays and the outbreak of bird flu, anything to keep them from landing, anything to keep him from the inevitable confrontation with Jessica.

He'd called her, of course. There was no getting around that. After Anna had given him the bad news no, the disastrous news about the injunction, he had been forced to wake Jessica up from the comfort of her luxury Boston hotel suite, where she was staying while filming the thriller movie Slayer Slayer in the city. in the city.

Their conversation had been excruciating. At first she had been tired and groggy, irritated that he was disturbing her. No, she hadn't heard the early-morning news. No, she hadn't been called by her agent.

So he'd been forced to tell her everything. At first there had been stunned silence, but when her emotional dam had finally burst, Sam had felt the full force of her confusion, disbelief and, finally, fury. No, she had said or rather screamed no, she would not like to meet up to discuss it in person. She never wanted to see him again. The conversation had terminated when Jessica's publicist had arrived at her hotel suite to take her out of the city.

He squirmed in his seat thinking about it. En route to Northolt airfield, where he had boarded the jet, he had seen images on Sky News of Jess's hotel besieged by paparazzi. He managed to avoid his own lynching by the press by a matter of minutes, packing a bag and leaving his Chelsea apartment before the media could make him a prisoner in his own home. His London agent had secreted him away in a house in West London until the earliest flight time had been secured. Helen Pierce had called him to a.s.sure him that everything was being done to crisis-manage the situation. Somehow he didn't believe her. The press coverage seemed wall-to-wall. There wasn't a news station, Internet site or newspaper in the Western world that wasn't gleefully reporting the story in lurid headlines. And this was only the first wave. The weekend papers would be dominated by the story. Ex-girlfriends, jealous colleagues and various conveniently unnamed 'friends' would come crawling out of the woodwork to add sensational details on Hollywood's hottest scandal. The celebrity magazines would come next the story could run for weeks. Soon everyone everywhere would know what he had done, or rather the salacious version of it: Sam Charles Uses Hookers, Sam Charles The Cheat, and worst of all, Sam Charles Makes Jessica Cry. There would be nowhere to hide.

The jet's wheels jerked on to the tarmac at Cape Cod's Hyannis airport, almost eight p.m. London time, three p.m. EST, sending a blast of oven-hot air at him as he stepped down. A limousine with blacked-out windows was waiting for him. He had no idea whose car it was for all he knew it could be a hit man hired by Jessica but there was no such luck. The window buzzed down and his manager Eli Cohen poked his screwed-up face out.

'Get in, you schmuck,' he growled.

Sam threw his overnight bag in the back and climbed in.

'Why did you bring me here?' he asked, looking around the flat, unfamiliar environment of the Cape. 'I need to speak to Jessica.'

'Yeah, I know that, Einstein,' said Eli. 'I brought you here because she's left the city. And lemme tell you, I had to call in fifty years' worth of favours to find out where she's gone.'

'So you've spoken to her?'

'Not in person, no. But you know Harry Monk and me go way back.'

Harriet Monk was Jessica's agent. She was an LA hotshot at the ITG talent agency, and had a reputation as one of the industry's most notorious ball-breakers.

'So where are we going?'

'Some compound on the Inner Cape. Belongs to a fancy-pants New York family. The daughter is one of Jessica's friends. So do you want to tell me what happened ... ?'

As Sam recapped the events of the past week, his manager said very little, just nodding and grunting here and there. Sam was unsettled by his silence; Eli wasn't a man to keep quiet about anything.

'What do you think?' said Sam anxiously when he had finished.

Eli eyed him for a moment.

'All I want to know is one question. Why?'

'Why? I was p.i.s.sed. You've seen the pictures, she's a good-looking girl.'

Eli snorted.

'I'm not asking why you did it did it,' he said, fixing Sam with a shrewd eye. 'I'm asking why you got caught caught.'