Free The Cinderella Killer by Simon Brett Page B

take long for Charles’s suspicion to be confirmed. On the table in front of Kenny was a row of empty tonic-water splits, a bucket of ice and a full glass. Charles could smell the vodka from the other side of the table. Kenny had very definitely fallen off the wagon. Charles remembered Lilith expressing pity for whoever was around when that happened. And he realized that he might have got the part. Kenny had marked him out as designated drinking partner.
    â€˜I’d offer to get you something from the bar,’ said Charles, ‘but it looks like you’re sorted.’
    â€˜I am very definitely sorted.’ Kenny took a long swallow from his glass. ‘God, you forget how wonderful booze is … Just the taste of the stuff is a kind of heaven.’
    Charles got himself a large Bell’s and returned to the table. He was determined not to ask what had caused Kenny’s backsliding. The last thing he wanted to do – or had any right to do – was to come across sounding censorious. If Kenny wanted to confide in him about the reasons for his broken resolution … well, that was a different matter entirely.
    So Charles confined his opening conversational gambit to a raised glass and the word ‘Cheers.’
    The vodka glass was lifted and clinked against his. ‘Your first drink of the day?’ asked Kenny.
    â€˜Hardly.’ Charles was grateful for the way his first sip of Bell’s had started to melt away the headache he’d woken up with.
    â€˜Why,’ said Kenny Polizzi in a way that was both bemused and wistful, ‘why is it that women have such good memories?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ Charles replied safely, letting his drinking companion direct the conversation in his own way.
    â€˜Every darned thing they seem to remember, every darned thing. They got some kind of compartment in their brains men don’t have. Something rash you said to them, something thoughtless you did fifteen years ago, they remember every detail. They store that stuff up and bring it out when you’re at your most vulnerable.’
    Charles wondered what rash words or thoughtless deeds Lilith had brought up at her meeting with Kenny. It must have affected him pretty badly to get him back on the booze with such speed.
    â€˜Whereas men,’ Kenny went on, ‘we have a great capacity to forget stuff. We don’t brood about the past, we move on. If something’s broke, like a marriage or a relationship, we recognize that it’s gone and just move on …’
    â€˜To the next marriage or relationship?’
    â€˜Sure. Why not? You gotta keep hoping there’s something better round the next corner. Otherwise you might just as well curl up your toes and die.’
    This talk of marriages brought on another cold pang of anxiety about Frances. But Kenny was in no mood to notice what Charles might be feeling. He was off on his monologue. He only needed an audience.
    â€˜I guess I kinda knew the stakes when I got into this business. You get famous, that brings a lot of shit along with it. Certainly you have to work damn hard to retain any privacy. Otherwise every single member of the public reckons they’re due a bit of you. And now every single member of the public has got a camera on their cellphone … and they can send their photos off on Facebook or Twitter or … Jeez, there is no such thing as privacy any more.
    â€˜Then if you’ve got money – or if you’ve had money – everyone thinks they have rights to some of that too. They see in some newspaper gossip column how much I was paid for each episode of
The Dwight House
, and they think I must be rolling in the stuff. They don’t take into account the kind of expenses someone in my position has, the number of people I have to employ just to keep the Kenny Polizzi brand going. They don’t think about the pay-offs that come with three divorces. It never occurs to