The Prank

  To my family, who always believed I could do it.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  In the sixteenth century, the word prank referred to a ‘wicked deed’, though its modern definition is much lighter: a practical joke or an act of mischief.

  We watch pranks on TV and online and we laugh at these innocent people being tricked. We enjoy their embarrassment and confusion and then we switch off and forget about them. We think of these pranks as harmless because that’s how they’ve been sold to us, and most of them are, but human nature is progressive and we are always going to want to push the boundaries. Over the years, crueller set-ups are written and the line between what we call comedy and what we might call out as vicious has become blurry. We see people getting hurt: their physical discomfort is plain on the outside and perhaps on the inside it burns just as brightly. Perhaps the word prank has never strayed too far from its original roots as something cruel and humiliating.

  Be kind, we all remind each other, but who is capable of being kind all of the time? There’s a darker side to being a human and if we can’t create ways to satisfy this part of ourselves, we will let others do it for us. But how far do we go in upsetting one person so that another is entertained? And who decides what is fair when it comes to comedy? Do we keep pushing further and further until a prank misses its mark entirely?

  What if a prank that skirted dangerously close to merciless was played on you? How far would you have to be pushed to take revenge for the prank that had been called “harmless”?

  ONE

  There was a study that reported a 4 per cent tip increase when a waitress touches a male customer, so now Wendy touches all of hers – a finger on an arm, a hand to a shoulder.

  ‘And if that touch is going to make a difference anywhere, it’s here, right?’ she says as she sails past me with oysters on a silver dish of ice.

  She’s right. The Cello restaurant is situated in Bloomsbury and rivals Claridge’s, Le Gavroche, The Ledbury, and it attracts the wealthy. Tonight the dining room is fully booked and there’s a background hum of conversation, the shrill of cutlery on porcelain. We have some of our regulars in tonight: the colonel who plays solitaire in the back corner, the media couple who are married but not to each other and the Turkish poet with an elegant scroll of a birthmark on his neck. The new customers marvel at the restaurant’s decor; an elderly woman wants to know where we got the huge red china fox who glowers out over the bar at all the hunting portraits that gallop across the walls. I have a serious businessman on a corner table who spills brandy over a document and, as I dry it under the service-desk hot lights, we all bend our heads to read it and see at the bottom of the page that there’s a sum of over one billion dollars.

  ‘Holy cow!’ Wendy says. ‘Forget touching, you’ve got to straddle that guy!’

  But she knows I won’t, because I don’t touch people. I read them instead: all the raised eyebrows, all the different smiles a face can own and nonchalant shrugs between spouses and lovers, friends and families. I see them laugh, see them argue and I see them cry – though, in those moments, I turn away because I don’t like witnessing something breaking apart when I can’t catch the pieces.

  This is a good night for me for clients. Later, not that they’ll ever know it, I’ll sit at my kitchen table and draw them. I’ll put them in my portfolio along with all the others, too many to count now because I’ve been at the restaurant for years, and wonder about them for a few days. It’s easy to think about someone else’s exciting or glamorous life when my life is far from either. I am the blank canvas in my own portfolio.

  David sidles up to me. He’s the restaurant manager, French, like the restaurant cuisine, mid-thirties with a hawkish nose. Tonight he’s impeccably dressed in a pale blue suit and tan brogues. I draw him regularly, enjoy the angles of his body and the cut of his jaw.

  ‘The tree,’ he says. ‘Does it lean?’

  David worries about our tree constantly. It’s a ten-foot-tall Norwegian pine covered in thousands of lights and silver bells and hand-blown glass baubles, and if it came down it would most likely set fire to the entire dining room.

  It’s Friday 11th December and there are trees up throughout the city. Shopping centres have had their Christmas displays up for months, the supermarkets have been stocked with food for longer and the roads are all lit with Christmas cheer. There’s a house down my street with a tree in the window that reminds me of the ones we had when I was little. Tall with sprawling spindly branches decorated with multicoloured lights and school craft angels. It’s a real family tree and I like to look at it as I go by because I owe it to the ghosts of Christmas past.

  ‘I think it’s OK,’ I say.

  He twists his mouth. He’s worried about a tiny dog in one of the women’s handbags which is looking up mischievously at the tree.

  ‘That dog won’t pull it down, David,’ I note.

  ‘You think not?’ he says. ‘Our family had a cat that brought down the tallest tree I had ever seen.’

  ‘Did you own a leopard?’ I ask.

  He smiles and then looks to the door. ‘Ah, table twelve has come in,’ he says. ‘Can you tell Wendy? Twelve is hers tonight.’

  I look over and see a couple enter the dining room. She looks to be in her mid-forties, sun-kissed by winter sun, with bronzed, high cheekbones and wearing a copper fur hat over champagne-blonde hair. He is perhaps a decade older and is tall and broad, with thick, dark, clipped hair, wearing a tailored overcoat. He has a dimple in his cheek as he smiles out at the room. The staff all smile back at him and the diners who notice them avert their eyes but are smiling too. I wonder what is it about some people that makes them so magnetic that they can bewitch an entire restaurant of people. They must be famous – I never recognise anyone who comes in.

  ‘Who are they?’ I ask.

  But David has crossed the restaurant to greet them. I walk to the kitchen because that will be where I find Wendy, with her rear end perched on the polished steel and twirling a finger around her hair as she talks to the commis chef, who is married with two kids. As soon as I open the doors, the noise of the kitchen hits my ears, but in the middle of the commotion there is Wendy, who skits from the worktop but then grins when she sees it’s me.

  ‘All right, babe?’ she says.

  ‘Table twelve is in,’ I reply.

  ‘Oh my God! Jim and Lucinda!’ she exclaims. ‘Yes? Is it them?’

  ‘Who are they?’ I ask.

  But she’s not listening; she’s checking her hair in the small mirror by the wall and then she’s off out of the kitchen. I follow and watch with her as David leads the couple to our golden table: the front and centre of the dining room, where they can be seen by as many people in the restaurant as possible.

  ‘Are they famous?’ I ask.

  David takes their coats and they sit at the same time – Lucinda in a silky olive-green dress, throat and hands bejewelled with diamonds, and Jim in a black jacket, smart grey shirt and navy jeans.

  Wendy tuts. ‘Lucinda Kit used to be a model but she’s more famous now because she married Jim Valente.’

  Jim Valente. The name electrocutes my body, stomach – punches me and then ricochets off me.

  ‘Jim – Jim . . . ?’ I whisper. I look above my head, as if the name is some winged creature. ‘What did you say?’ I ask.

  ‘Jim Valente,’ she says. ‘If you’re a screenwriter or an actor, then he’s the person to know. Oh wow, he’s hot for an old guy. You think he’s hot?’

  My mouth is dry and I stumble. ‘I . . . I don’t know.’

  Wendy looks at me. ‘You OK?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say.

  But I’m not fine. I recognise that name somehow, feel worried by that name, but I don’t know why.

  The night is busy and I find no time to quiz Wendy further on Lucinda Kit and Jim Valente or get to my phone to look them up. Instead I watch them. He sits straight-backed, his movements deft like brushstrokes as he smooths his hair, picks up his wine glass. Lucinda’s movements are the opposite: considered and almost sensual. Her stockinged legs slip this way and that like butter, crossing and uncrossing under the table. They rarely break eye contact with one another and smile with all their pe
rfect white teeth.

  ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it,’ Wendy says as we pass each other across the dining room.

  They eat red mullet with cuttlefish ink sauce, beef with shallot and tarragon, cheeses for dessert, and throughout service, Wendy wears a face reserved especially for the rich, all eyelashes and dimples. Pavel the sommelier, who never smiles, looks bashful whenever he’s called to their table, and even no-nonsense David flicks his eyes over at them more than he would with other diners. The people on other tables sneak glances across the room and throw out smiles in the hope of having them returned, and all the while Jim and Lucinda play to the gallery.

  On the dot of ten-thirty, Jim Valente raises his hand.

  ‘They’ve probably got some sort of event,’ Wendy says as she rings up their bill. ‘A party to go to. Drinks on a rooftop terrace. Some amazing actor coming round to their house.’

  ‘How do I know his name?’ I ask her, but she whizzes away again.

  I watch as she puts the embossed Cello black folder on the corner of the table and Jim takes a tan leather wallet from the inside of his jacket and puts his card on top of it, doesn’t even open the folder to check the amount. I go to clear a table which is a few over from theirs so that I can keep looking at him to jog my memory, which fizzes with his name but spits out no answers, and then they stand together, their coats are brought and they sweep out of the restaurant.

  The moment the doors have closed behind them, the remaining diners and all the staff erupt into conversation, but I leave to go to the kitchen, walk to the back freezer doors and put my head against the cold metal because I feel sick.

  ‘David, who is Jim Valente?’ I say.

  It’s nearing midnight and everyone except us, the kitchen porter and the cleaners, has gone home. We sit at one of the tables and I polish cutlery and David goes through the rota. I usually like this time alone with him because he never asks me questions about myself and we can be companionably silent, but tonight I’m on edge. I haven’t stopped thinking about Jim Valente and I want to go home and find out how I might know his name.

  ‘He is top tier,’ David replies.

  Top tier are the elite, the exclusive.

  ‘He owns a production company called Cyclops,’ he says. ‘They make huge series.’

  Cyclops. This doesn’t jog my memory any further.

  ‘My favourite, Aircraft, is one of theirs. You know it, oui? It is about the double agent who is a pilot and nobody knows he is carrying information between America and Russia?’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  He smiles. ‘You know All the Long Days? About a 1980s rock band on the road?’

  ‘I lived in France for seven years,’ I explain. ‘I don’t think I know those shows.’

  He laughs. ‘I am French also, Eleanor! A native! But I have seen them. OK, but you know Pranksters, oui? That is why people are talking tonight in the restaurant—’

  David is interrupted by the restaurant phone ringing and we look at each other in surprise because it never rings at this time. He gets up to answer it at the bar and I continue with the silverware, rubbing the cloth up and down the stem of the last spoon so I can see myself reflected back in it: red hair, freckles all over my face and a scar on my forehead from when I fell on the glass of a fish tank when I was two.

  ‘I need to run an errand,’ David says, returning to me after a couple of minutes.

  I look up at him.

  ‘That was Jim Valente on the phone,’ he explains. ‘He has left his credit card here and I have found it behind the bar. Pavel must have forgotten to tell me.’

  I stand up abruptly and bump the tabletop. The tray of silverware rattles. ‘I’ll go,’ I say.

  ‘You will do this for me?’

  ‘Yes,’ I reply quickly. ‘I mean, if you want me to? You probably need to finish things and I’m done here.’

  ‘That would be most kind, merci,’ he says.

  He holds out a thick cream envelope with ‘The Cello’ embossed on the front and I step to meet him and take it, tilt my head to read ‘Mr J. Valente’ written delicately across it.

  ‘Get your things and I will flag a taxi for you,’ he says.

  I nod. ‘Where is it that I’m going?’

  ‘Wilton Crescent, Belgravia,’ he says. ‘The door number is on the back of the envelope, you see?’

  I turn the letter and nod. ‘OK.’

  ‘Put it through the letter box, d’accord? And not a word to Wendy about where they live,’ he says. ‘That girl has pound signs in her eyes. She would camp out there with a banner, would she not? She would be perfect for it, actually.’

  I frown. ‘Perfect for what?’

  ‘There has been a press announcement that Jim is looking for a new host for his programme, Pranksters,’ he explains. ‘It is why everyone was talking about it in the restaurant. The programme was their biggest asset, and they are making a new series after taking a year’s break. It is silly humour. It is dark humour. Addictive, horrible, brilliant.’

  ‘Does that mean you like it or you don’t?’ I ask.

  He thinks awhile and then shrugs. ‘I am shades of black and white, like everyone,’ he says. ‘I think that is why the show does so well. It taps into something, oui? The inner bad part of you that likes to laugh at another’s misfortune.’

  In the taxi, I use the first opportunity I’ve had all night to get out my phone. I open a web browser, enter Jim’s name and am immediately flooded with hits. I click on a link to a professional profile.

  Jim Anthony Valente – born 12 June 1962 – is an English-born media CEO. He started his career in the banking industry before becoming a senior editor for Our Times publishing company in 1989. He went on to become CFO at Our Times in 1995, where he held the position for eight years, simultaneously buying three small publishing magazines abroad, and then took the position as CEO. In 2001, he bought up fledgling production company Cyclops, originally RSM Media, where he has been CEO for twenty years and seen profits solidly and continuously rise.

  Jim Valente married wife Lucinda Kit, fifteen years his junior, in 2006. Lucinda Kit was previously a catwalk model, starting her career in native Norway, and is now fashion column writer for the Sunday Times magazine and guest editor for Vogue. Jim and Lucinda have one son, Benjamin Valente, born 2011, who attends Bradbury’s Boarding School.

  Jim Valente fronts four charities: an orphanage project in Vietnam, Water Aid in Senegal, the UK Independent Young Screenwriters Association and Save the Bears.

  There’s nothing here that taps into the anxious feeling I have around his name and yet this innocuous information doesn’t soothe me, either. I’m hoping that in seeing him again, I might figure out our connection.

  ‘Here, mate,’ says the cab driver.

  I look up from the phone’s blue screen. ‘Thanks, I’ll only be a minute.’

  Belgravia is one of the richest areas in London. I get out of the taxi and look up at the colossal houses in the crescent – pretty Georgian sandstone, towering up five floors with a basement underneath. Their house has white-framed windows with wooden shutters and a heavy black door on which hangs a huge Christmas wreath in silver and gold with red berries and holly. It’s the most extravagant I’ve ever seen.

  I notice the car outside the front door – a racing-green Aston Martin DB5 with the licence plate 5 JV – and think that it must be Jim’s. I remember Dad telling me that the fewer letters there were on a registration, the more costly the plate. I wonder if the 5 means they have five cars. I reach out to lightly touch it and the sleek, shark-like body is so cold that I snatch my hand back.

  I walk across black and white chequerboard porch tiles to the door, which is framed with white pillars. Neatly trimmed tall shrubs in pots stand on either side. I pause before posting the envelope to glimpse through a huge window to the right of the door and see straight into a vast kitchen, which stretches from the front to the back of the house. Copper pans hang down above an oak-topped, white-cabinet island. There’s a pristine chrome double oven, an elaborate-looking coffee machine and a cake mixer. At the far end of the room is a ten-seat farmhouse-style table with a bowl of fruit on it, all red apples, red grapes and pomegranates, and a vase of seasonal red poinsettias.

  I put the envelope through the gold letter box and am turning to walk back to the cab when the door opens. I look back in surprise to see Jim Valente standing there with the envelope in his hand. His grey shirt is unbuttoned to his chest and, at close proximity, I can smell his cologne – sandalwood. He smiles at me before sweeping his gaze over my body, and I feel immediately self-conscious under the intensity of his eyes, which are so, so blue, like cold gemstones.