‘It’s Jade,’ muttered Jade under her breath as she donned oven gloves and removed the tray of food. It was the first time in her whole life she had opened an oven door, and she only knew to use the oven gloves because she’d seen the chef do it earlier.

Once the dragon had swept out again, Kai scurried over to try to give Jade a quick snog, but she brushed him off impatiently. ‘Don’t, Kai, I just put on more lip gloss. Got to hand round this beefy shit – hey, maybe this is my chance! The dragon said I can’t serve drinks to Shawn and the boys, but she didn’t say nothing about beef on sticks!’

She was gone, leaving Kai hot and frustrated. He picked up an empty plastic basket and followed her back into the party. Gainful employment was not something that either of them had very much experience of, and it was turning out to be surprisingly hard work. He was not enjoying the dirty looks all the B-list celebs were giving him as he noisily stacked glasses into the basket. Not enjoying that creep Hammond and his meathead bodyguard staring at Jade’s tits. Not enjoying seeing Jade practically soak her pants every time she caught a glimpse of one of the OnT twats among the crush of bodies in Hammond’s massive living room.

Kai was becoming increasingly worried that Jade was going to leave him for someone more glamorous – probably not Shawn Barrett, though. Kai wasn’t so deluded that he thought Jade stood a chance with any of OnTarget. But that bodyguard . . . Jade wouldn’t be able to resist an offer of going out with him, Kai knew. It would give her a chance to hobnob with OnT and Hammond, and other people like that record company twat talking to Hammond now – the one with the hairy waistcoat and tweed baggy trousers even though the guy was, like, twenty-five.

His bad mood increasing, Kai picked up the full basket of glasses and pushed his way back towards the kitchen, accidentally on purpose barging a sharp corner of it into the tweedy guy’s arse.

‘Oi, watch it, idiot,’ the guy said, glaring at him.

‘Sorry, sir,’ Kai said, baring his teeth in a smile. Not sorry, arsehole. Why had he let Jade talk him into this? They were only earning six quid an hour, and most of that would go on a taxi home – no public transport out here in the Surrey countryside.

He craned his neck to look for Jade and his heart sank. She was talking to Hammond’s bodyguard, giggling and jiggling her boobs, leaning close to him and flirting for England. Every part of him wanted to stride over there and wipe the smile off the minder’s ugly face. But Kai knew he should never pick on anyone bigger than him, so he turned away, clenching his fists, reminding himself that Jade loved him. After everything he’d done for her, she owed him a lifetime of love, not to mention eternal access to those amazing boobs.

He went back into the kitchen and made himself feel better by picking his nose and wiping it on an hors d’oeuvre.

Things did not improve over the next hour. The chef came back in and shouted at him for not washing up the dirty platters fast enough. The dragon shouted at him when she caught him doing a bit of minesweeping – swigging the dregs from a couple of the glasses as he loaded them into the dishwasher. Jade shouted at him when he accused her of fancying the bodyguard: ‘Oh for fuck’s sake, Kai, give it a rest! I can’t help it if blokes stare at me, can I?’ Her mood seemed to have plummeted too, since some of the party guests, including OnTarget, had gone over to the leisure area of the house for a swim.

They were allowed a fifteen-minute break at 10 p.m. and Jade dragged him outside to see if they could see anything through the steamed-up glass of the pool room – ‘Let’s try and take some photos on our phones, omigod, maybe they’re skinny-dipping, can you imagine how much The Sun would pay for a photo of OnT naked? We’d never have to work again!’

Kai had already decided that after tonight he was never going to work again, but he didn’t tell Jade that. He followed Jade over to the pool house.

They had signed confidentiality agreements as part of their contracts for the night, but neither of them understood what that meant. Kai was relieved that there was no chance of seeing anything through the window – he’d started obsessing about the size of his willy. OnT were all bound to have massive great pop star wangers, and he didn’t want Jade to start making comparisons . . .

‘We’d better get back to the house, or the dragon will sack us,’ he said, as Jade was putting away her phone. It beeped with a message and when she looked at it, she gasped and jumped as though the phone had given her an electric shock.

‘What, bae?’

Her shoulders were rigid. She shook her head and stared at the screen again. Then, out of the blue, she vomited neatly into a lavender bush by the pool.

‘Jade! Are you sick?’ He rushed over to her. Puking always made her cry – she was practically phobic about anything to do with sick. But to his amazement, when she straightened up she had the biggest smile on her face that he had ever seen, even bigger than when she got them the jobs tonight at this party. Then she started to laugh hysterically, cackling as though she’d lost it.

‘What?’

But she wouldn’t tell him. She tucked her phone back into her bra, still laughing and doing a little dance and basically looking as though she was about to explode with glee.

‘Did one of them footballers give you some drugs, or what?’ he demanded. She looked totally high. He felt even more pissed off. Suddenly, he was sure he knew: she’d had a text from that bodyguard twat!

‘You gave him your number, didn’t you!’ he yelled at her.

‘Who?’ she said innocently, not even bothering to conceal her happiness.

‘Oh, screw you, Jade,’ he said, and stalked back inside to carry on with the dishwashing. He’d have gone home right then, but until he got his cash at the end of the night, he had no way to do so.

Part of him felt a sick little thrill at telling Jade to screw herself; he’d never dared do anything like that before, but suddenly he felt that he, Kai Topper, had a limit, and she had just pushed him right over it. He’d done stuff before that he shouldn’t have, but usually only because other people – often Jade herself – wanted him to do it. This time he was going to do something that he wanted to do. Screw the lot of them, the posh record company twats, the snooty celebs who thought they were better than everyone else – and as for that bodyguard! He was going to fuck them up tonight, good and proper. What he was going to do would get someone into so much trouble . . .

The next time the chef went outside for a fag, Kai slipped into the cloakroom and retrieved his backpack from under a bench. He unzipped it, reached down to the bottom and felt his fingers close around what he wanted. Pulling it out, he smiled to himself.

Nobody was going to walk over Kai Topper, not anymore.

Chapter 42

Day 14 – Winkler

Winkler pulled up in the lane outside Mervyn Hammond’s Surrey home, got out of the car and immediately stepped in a puddle up to his ankle. He cursed aloud, the calming effects of his rainforest CD blown away in an instant. Goddamn fucking countryside; if he could pave over this shithole . . . He took a deep breath.

Cold, stinging rain lashed down on him, soaking his hair. As he walked towards the gate, his sock squelching inside his shoe, he ran a hand across his scalp, icy fingers searching out skin. Last night, he’d had his head between Francesca’s thighs, wondering if she’d ever come, when she’d said, ‘You’ve got a little bald spot.’