FROM COMA TO CORNERED – Lord Richard Sears Caught in Drug-Crazed Sex Romp with Prostitute
Lord Richard Sears, 54, was discovered yesterday morning in a coma at one of London’s most exclusive hotels, The Lanesborough in Knightsbridge. The Old Etonian hired a luxury suite for a night of drug-fuelled sex with 23-year-old call girl, Mia Anderson. In the early hours, Anderson reported his death to the emergency services, however, on arrival, paramedics found Lord Sears in a coma with respiratory depression and a low pulse believed to have been caused by Gammahydroxybutrate (GHB). The disgraced peer was taken by ambulance to St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington from where he was later discharged in good health. The police have confirmed that crack cocaine was seized at the scene and an investigation is underway.
Shelley sat on the cushioned bench, opposite Angel and Nicole, tucked away in their quiet corner in the back of The Magdala. Laid out on the shabby table in front of her was the photocopy of the Daily Mirror article from Saturday 19 April 1997, which she’d found at the library. She stared at the picture. That was him. Her greying-blonde john. And he wasn’t the dead john she’d thought he was ever since she’d left him that night at The Lanesborough in March.
“You look like the cat that got the cream. Did you have a vendetta with that Mia or what?” Angel asked.
“No, I don’t—” Shelley began.
“She’s someone we know from a few years back,” Nicole finished.
***
For over half the day, Shelley had been holding out for her next hit. She couldn’t leave it until she got home. She was desperate, so she slipped off to the ladies’ room. She sat on a toilet with the lid down and with her jeans on, as she usually did, and heated the underside of the spoon bearing her medicine.
Although she felt a lightness from the burden that had been removed, she was still weighed down by her fears about the canal and the parcel tape. They didn’t have time to investigate those issues at the library because it had closed minutes after their extensive trawl through the newspapers ended in success.
When Shelley returned to the saloon, she hoped her eyes wouldn’t give her away. To avoid looking at Angel and Nicole who were sat opposite, she stared blankly into her pint glass. After a while, she picked up the drink and drained what was left of the snakebite and blackcurrant. Empty-handed, she was left studying the scratches on the wooden table in front of her. She took out her cigarettes and lit one. As she replaced the packet in her handbag, Angel grabbed her arm and pushed back the sleeve of her jean jacket.
“What are you doing?” Shelley said, pulling her arm free.
“You’re arm’s a mess! You’re fucking high! So much for quitting.” Angel shook her head.
“I said I’d try, not that I was doing it now, but I will... There’s the whole summer.”
“You won’t cope at university on that poison, believe,” Angel said. “You can do it but you have to want to.”
“I do want to... Part of me wants to, just not all of me.”
“You have to stop, please, Shell. You’re gonna kill yourself.” Nicole leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. Shelley sensed both her fury and her sympathy.
Angel lifted Shelley’s chin, which – like her eyelids – was falling south. She tilted Shelley’s face towards hers. “A friend of mine says some people don’t stop ’til the pain of their using gets worse than the pain they’re running from.”
With a cigarette resting between her lips, Shelley contemplated what Angel had said. Was her drug taking causing her more pain than her past? No it wasn’t – not yet. But how much worse did it need to get before it was?
***
“When’s your flight to New York?” Nicole asked Angel.
“Monday.” Angel took a sip of her vodka and coke.
“So this is the last time I’ll see you?” Shelley asked. I’ll miss you, she thought.
“You can come and stay anytime, both of you.”
“I will. If that punter still wants me in Miami, I’ll be out next summer.” Shelley tried to conceal her shame by averting her gaze. She looked at the veins in her hands. The only way she’d make it to America is if she could get off the junk.
“You promise to look after Tara when I’m gone?” Angel asked.
“I can’t. You do know she’s blanking me?” Nicole picked up her bottle of wine and poured the last of it into her glass.
“She’s in a bad way, babe. It’s not your fault Max is gone. She’ll come round.”
“She’s never gonna see him. It’s the bloody Middle East. If I were her I wouldn’t talk to me either.” Nicole downed her glass of wine and as she looked up, Shelley saw the sadness in her glazed eyes.
“You did what you thought was best, Nic.” Shelley smiled weakly.
“But it wasn’t best, was it? Not for Tara. Not for her boy. Who was it best for?”
“You did the right thing. You didn’t know that was gonna happen.” Shelley walked round to the other side of the table. She perched on the end of the bench and took Nicole in her arms. “It probably would have happened anyway, even if you hadn’t called her parents.” Shelley gently rocked Nicole.
Shelley hadn’t seen Nicole drunk in a while, and she didn’t like it. For a moment, she imagined Nicole’s perspective: how she felt about Shelley’s heroin habit. And for the briefest moment, she considered rethinking her options – not giving up junk, but possibly counselling and a methadone prescription. Then the thought left her.
***
At closing time, outside The Magdala, the air was cool. “See you in Manhattan,” Angel said, hugging Shelley.
After saying goodbye to Nicole, Angel took a few steps up the road, then turned round and called out, “I’m Lucy. Don’t be a stranger.”
Shelley set off walking towards her flat with Nicole. She looked up to see the stars, but the night sky bore the effects of a hangover from the overcast day; the stars were invisible, hidden behind the dark clouds.
With her arm linked in Nicole’s, they hobbled along as a pair down Pilgrim’s Lane. Shelley slowed down each time they passed a house lit up from the inside, extending her glimpse at life through the naked window of a stranger.
As she stole a final peek at a hybrid townhouse-castle, she noticed a figure watching them from an open window upstairs. Her heart rate quickened and she tightened her link on Nicole’s arm.
“Slow down. You’re gonna pull me over,” Nicole said, as Shelley dragged her along, causing her to totter.
“Sorry, it’s just creepy round here.” Shelley glanced back over her shoulder to check if they were still being spied on from the castle of a townhouse, but it was too distant now and she couldn’t tell.
They walked on a little farther before stopping by a Victorian street lantern. Under the dim light, Shelley searched in her handbag for her cigarette packet. “Will you call Marianne tomorrow?” she asked Nicole.
“She won’t turn up at Len’s house. What would she say?”
“That’s not what I’m worried about. He can handle her – he’s a Resident Master Bullshitter – but we still need to stay close.” Shelley pulled two cigarettes from her gold twenty-pack and passed one to Nicole. “You keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
“Now who’s the master of bullshit?” Nicole puffed on her cigarette to catch the flame that Shelley was keeping alight for her. “I’m not calling. I won’t be speaking to that sick bitch again.”
“You have to. How are we gonna—”
“Find another way. I’m finished with her, with all of them.” Nicole hurled her mobile phone, sending it smashing into the road.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Cutting ties,” Nicole said, throwing her arms in the air. “I’m not working any more. I’m done.”
“What are you gonna do?” Shelley stared at her friend’s shadowy face in the dusky light.
“I don’t know, it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s not this. I’m repeating the pattern of what those perverts did to me for years. What I let them do.”
“You didn’t let them. You were a child.” Shelley’s heroin-smudged vision of Nicole blurred further with tears. “You were selfless, protecting your little sisters. I know it’s fucked up, but you did it out of love for them.”
“They took a chunk of my soul and I let them.” Nicole stamped her foot on the pavement.
“You didn’t. They just took it.”
“On every job I’ve done, I’ve lost a bit more, given away a bit more.” A sad anger contorted Nicole’s mouth. “We might not sell our bodies but we’re selling our souls.”
“We’re not.”
“We are, Shell, and I’m trying to hold on to the little bit of me that’s left before there’s nothing... I’m sick of it, being used like a sex object. In this life, everyone wants to fuck you. They don’t wanna know you. They’ll never love you. They just wanna fuck you.”