The Vanity Game (14 page)

"Go to her," Serge whispers so I move forward, shaking, my arms slowly opening too. We hug, the scent of Chanel No. 5 choking me. I feel her fragile body against me – so she's not a ghost then. Then we pull away from each other and I look into her ocean-blue eyes, they give nothing away.

"You … came … back?" I stutter.

She smiles at me, a really creepy smile. "Yes, Beaumont, I came back."

"But you…" I trail off. It's too weird. I see the body, stiff and cold, lying face down on the roll of carpet before we wrapped it up. The sound it made as it hit the water. Serge was there too. This must be a dream. I'll wake up in the police cell, Dante breathing down my neck.

I'm aware of other people in the room, members of
The Toby Silver Show
crew standing near the doorway watching us, like we're rare animals in a zoo just about to mate. The thuggish guy on the sofa just stares at me. I don't like him. Where's Michael, the nice Jewish boy? She's sacked him, of course...

The studio lights are dazzling, the crowd invisible behind the glare, but their whoops and cheers suggest there is a lot of them. As we make our way to the sofa, Toby Silver stands up grinning at us. He shakes my hand and kisses her, Krystal. There are beads of sweat on his leathery, orange face. She's smiling into the nothingness beyond the lights and nodding slowly, lost in the moment. Under the strong glare her whole face is illuminated and I can see every feature clearly. Something is different, I can't place it. Is it an extra millimetre on the fullness of her lips, or the shape of her eyes or the profile of her chin? Or am I just imagining it? I'm sweating but inside the tablets have created an icy numbness. I think they've flooded my nervous system and I can't tell any more if I'm feeling nervous or excited.

Finally the crowd quietens and Toby Silver starts to speak. As I watch him he divides, and then there's two of him, floating in front of me then merging back into one. I can't hear what he's saying. It's hot but it's cold. I'm going to throw up, I've got to get out of here, quickly, quickly…

"Beaumont…" Toby is saying, the look on his face…

"Beaumont…" she says, the voice from the grave….

"Beaumont…."

There's something cold on my forehead. I open my eyes and find myself staring back into some huge brown eyes. Short brown hair, kind of tomboyish, wearing what looks like a pair of earphones…she's cute, but what is she? An angel? A doctor? I'm lying down and I'm aware of a number of other people standing around me and something large and red to my right hand side. The sofa of
The Toby Silver Show
… I'm still in the TV studio, but the lights are dim now. I try to sit up, and then her face appears above me, the blonde hair hanging down and brushing my cheek.

"Beaumont, darling, are you okay? You fainted."

She takes my hand, and kneels down beside me. The smell of Chanel No. 5. Our eyes meet, which makes me shiver. No sign of a grudge. No indication she holds it against me.

I can hear Serge's voice, he's talking to someone beyond the sofa, telling them: "Fucking hell, can't you see the boy's in no fit state to carry on the interview."

We're delighted to bring you an exclusive interview with Beaumont Alexander and Krystal McQueen on the tropical island paradise of St Lucia.

The couple are spending a few weeks relaxing in their luxurious new villa – a well deserved break after an exhausting summer which has seen Krystal make a courageous recovery from her well-publicised nervous breakdown.

The world was shocked to learn of Krystal's disappearance back in July. In an exclusive interview in this magazine she said: "I just needed time out to clear my head", and talked about how she had been driven to despair by the relentless attention from the tabloid press.

Now she's a picture of health and is concentrating on re-establishing herself as a musician. Her latest single, the moving and autobiographical 'Back in Your Arms' topped the charts for a week back in August.

We asked the couple if their relationship had changed after their emotional re-union?

"Yes – now we're stronger than ever." Beaumont says. "When Krystal went missing my world fell apart and it made me realise how much I loved her. Our re-union on
The Toby Silver Show
was one of the happiest moments of my life – as everyone saw, I was overcome with emotion."

The pictures make me want to vomit. The fake smiles, the forced poses. That week in the Caribbean was a total nightmare. Stuck with
her
and her entourage on that boring little island. All the long silences, the heat, that late-night incident with the drug dealers, paparazzi everywhere. It was definitely in the top ten worst weeks of my life, but saying that, these days there are a lot of contenders. It's been three months now I've had to put up with her and
him
and I'm just about through with it.

After my totally shameful fainting episode on
The Toby Silver Show
we were taken back to the house and left alone. I was in a bad state, so exhausted after the whole arrest thing and pretty wired on all the pills I'd taken. She led me upstairs to the bedroom and before I knew what was happening we were making out.

I knew all along that something was different but I was so knackered I wanted to believe that maybe she really was back and all that bad, crazy stuff – the blood on the kitchen floor, the body wrapped in carpet, the knife – was all just a dream.

I just couldn't bring myself to ask her what the hell was going on and she was a good actress, no lie, but as the days went on, it was the little things that let her down – like the messiness and the cluelessness about the alignment of good and productive forces. I've got to admit I've started to miss the real Krystal's obsessions with all that hippy mumbo-jumbo shit. In fact, I miss her a lot. She was so innocent in a lot of ways – like the way she'd do anything for fame and a bit of respect.

Of course now the fame and respect are no longer issues. Brand Beaumont and Krystal has blown up, big style. After she 'came back' the offers came flooding in: TV appearances, magazine interviews, product endorsements, modelling contracts, you name it. Now not only am I the face of Franco Visconti Jeans, but also fronting two sports clothing labels, an energy sports drink, a chain of boutique gyms, a designer watch company, and a hair gel product. There's the Beaumont and Krystal his'n'hers fragrance range and we've even got our own internet dating site, which is fucking ironic because there is zero romance in this relationship.

Her pop career has finally taken off, she's launched her own range of knickers and modelled for numerous brands. It made me sad and angry to see 'her' on the cover of
Vogue,
the all-time biggest dream of the real Krystal.

So, yeah, now we're more famous and richer than we were before. In the public eye, the 'blip' of Krystal's disappearance has been accepted as some kind of nervous breakdown which came and went, and is now forgotten. In the paparazzi shots and fashion adverts and the pop videos she looks just the same as ever – maybe just a little less blonde and a tiny bit more curvy.

As for me, I've made a 'triumphant' return to the team, and have even regained my past form. Everyone's talking about how I'm the best I've been for years. I can't stop scoring and that old feeling of pure ecstasy that I used to get when I saw the ball floating into the net has returned. The guys run up and hug me, pile on top of me, treat me like one of the lads again. For the first time in years I'm giving it everything, because it's all I have. It's become an escape. It's like I'm a kid again and when I'm playing football I can shut out everything else, so I play football and hang out with the team as much as I can. Of course when I was a kid it was Dad walking out and the school bullies and all that shit that I was trying to shut out, now it's a different kind of demon.

I dread going home after training. Not because of her, 'The Fake'. To be fair we don't see that much of each other because of our schedules, and when we do, when she's on my arm at a celebrity party, or eating salads in front of the TV whilst watching the soap operas she hated before she was murdered, we don't say much. It's really because of
him
. Dean, the guy I saw in the green room of
The Toby Silver Show
. My number one enemy of all time, guaranteed.

He calls himself The Fake's manager and fixes stuff up for her, saying things like: 'I've fixed you up an interview with
Elle
, doll,' in his thick Mancunian accent. But really he's just a thug. He's made my life a total misery. He's virtually moved in. They have one wing of the house, I have the other, but we share the kitchen and lounge. So I get in and he's sitting there, sprawling his lanky legs over my fucking sofa, calling me a 'twat', or a 'fucking poof', which I mostly just ignore. It's all I can do. I call him the Lanky Wanker to myself, and Serge, but I don't dare say this to his face. It's not like I'm a fucking chicken, it's just because I don't know what would happen if I did.

Sometimes other thugs come round who all seem to work with or for the Lanky Wanker. There's a pasty, fat guy with a squeaky voice (The Slob), a guy with a pointy nose and bad teeth (The Rat), a couple of other huge men who look like club bouncers. Sometimes they stay late into the night, drinking and smoking in my fucking lounge. Sometimes I've got up to find The Slob or The Rat crashed out on the sofa or helping themselves to breakfast. The grossest thing they do is use the pool. I can't bear the thought of swimming in that water after their ugly bodies have been in there, so I don't. One time they had a party in there with some blatant smack-head hookers so now I'm convinced the water has got AIDS in it, but I haven't got round to getting it cleaned. Let them swim in it. I hope they all catch it and die. At least she, The Fake, never joins in these parties. To be fair to her, she seems to avoid Dean and his gang whenever she can as well.

They make Serge look like a harmless granddad, and sure enough the bastard gets nervous around them too.

"They ain't kosher," he'll say or "gangsters ain't what they used to be," which is fuck all help because I need to get these gangsters out of my house, not just hear about how they ain't 'old school'.

Most nights when I get in I lock myself in the games room – a fucking prisoner on my own home. Occasionally there's a low key night out with the boys, but the all-nighters with the drugs and the girls have well lost their appeal, even though my brain is begging to be destroyed every night to stop me thinking so much about this brutal situation.

The worst thing is I don't even know who they are. It's crazy; this bitch, The Fake, has taken on Krystal's identity. She's learnt to sound like her and copy her movements, so most of the world is conned into thinking she really is Krystal McQueen. She even had the front to go and visit Krystal's poor grandma in the nursing home, though to be fair I could've turned up in drag and the dotty old bat would have been fooled.

I've seen The Fake's mask slip though. She's actually as Mancunian as Dean, and the shape of her nose and the angle of her cheekbones are wrong. In fact I don't think she looks anything like Krystal really, it's mad that people think she does.

And then there was the incident with Michael.

He turns up at a PA she was doing, used his contacts to get backstage and approach her. Of course, The Fake had no idea who he was, so he's trying to beg her to marry him, or whatever, and she's thinking he's just some random stalker. This was all told to me by Serge, who Michael contacted after it happened. The poor bastard thought there was still something wrong with Krystal, like she'd suffered amnesia or something. I've got to say, I actually felt sorry for the slimy little jerk.

What me and Serge can't figure out though, is where she's come from, who it is that's behind it, and whether they know, or had evidence to prove, that the real Krystal is dead. Serge says they must know, because why else would anyone risk being an impostor of someone who could actually one day turn up and reclaim their identity? Which is why we can't do anything. But we can't work out how they know, or how much they know. All we know is that something very, very weird is going on.

Being a true Mancunian scum-bag, Dean supports Manchester City. I suppose it's only logical that he should do, but by the time we come to play them the Premiership title-race is tighter than a duck's arse and we have to get three points from the game. He knows this, and in the week leading up to the game he won't leave me alone.

"Does Pretty Boy reckon he's going to get a starting place then?" he sneers at me while I'm trying to make my dinner: a simple dish of brown rice, chicken and peas. It's two days before the game and it's looking like Di Cotto will start me ahead of Nico, who's too soft to handle City's thugs at the back.

"I don't count on anything," I tell him.

"I hope you do. I hope Craigy Slaughter breaks your fucking legs."

Craig –
Craigy
– Slaughter, the dirtiest player in the Prem and chief City thug. I'm not looking forward to being marked by him, I have to say. But it's well known that off the pitch Slaughter is as meek as a kitten, a proper family man with three kids all, unbelievably, by the same bird – some frumpy munter no other footballer would ever consider banging. If I can get into the mindset of being a murderous bastard I reckon I can handle him no problem.