In Love with a Superstar Ch. 03

"Do you know," said Frank, "They insisted that we said Prayers for you on Friday and yesterday morning?"

Sarah couldn't speak, "And do you know who the person responsible for that was?"

She shook her head, "Jason! He said that if anyone didn't pray for you he would want to know why."

Sarah chuckled.

"I don't know when they'll let me out Frank."

"Don't even think about it love," he said with a reassuring smile.

"But the review at the end of term, it's weeks behind schedule and I'm confined to bed for a fortnight..."

"All taken care of," said Frank tapping his nose.

"Who? Colleen? Not Tom surely."

"Better than that even."

The words stuck in her mouth,

"Not... not Bruce?"

"None other," he said with a smile.

"But he..." she struggled to remember his timescale, he only had two weeks left at the school then in was off to America for Shakespeare on Broadway.

"Cancelled it," said Frank, "Cancelled everything, including his manager, did you know that Bruce never actually did all those things in the papers, It was all his manager's doing, can you believe it?"

Sarah rubbed at the bandages on her side.

"Yes, Frank," she said, "Quite easily."

"No one knows what he's doing," He mused, "He's sworn all of the kids to secrecy, they don't even talk about it amongst themselves, the sevens' are all buzzing like six year olds, the eights' get cross with them, the nines' don't talk to anyone and the tens' and eleven's are all Prima Donnas, It's amazing."

"You don't even know the theme?"

"No, other than your original idea of West End Shows, that's all we know. He has a different rehearsal booked each night, sevens on Monday, eights on Tuesday, and so forth. And they go around the whole school checking for spies."

Sarah grinned, "You should speak to Charlie!" she said, "He knows everything."

"Not this time," Frank laughed, "Sworn to secrecy like the rest, and you know what he's like, he does all that gruff old bear stuff but he loves them all like his own - well most of them anyway," He sat back in the chair. "Every lunchtime Bruce's been out with Colleen on the field with them doing PT to get them all fit and they're all there, even the ones with never ending sick notes."

"Amazing," smiled Sarah, "What is he up to?"

"I'm sure we'll all find out, anyway, don't expect to see him much before half past nine, he doesn't finish in the hall much before quarter past most nights."

"Oh, well I didn't know he'd been in..."

"Sarah, he was in here all day Friday and every night since." He picked up on her silence, "look, I'm sure he'll be in tonight and all will be revealed, Look I'll go and let you rest my love," he said a stood and pecked her on the cheek, "Colleen wants to come and see you tomorrow,"

"Thanks Frank, thank the kids for the cards and give them all my love."

He nodded and mouthed 'of course' choked by emotion and backed from the ward waving.

As it happened, Bruce did come in that night. The nurse said that Sarah had fallen back to sleep again, and told him it was best she rested.

The nurse had looked hard at the actor too, whose eyes had seemed to sink deeper into dark rings with every time she saw and said that he could do with a nights rest too, so he went home. He had told them to tell her that he was REALLY busy and Sarah would understand. No message, no clue as to when or if she would see him again.

Colleen came in the following day just after her parents and Caroline had left for a coffee, and hugged her and cried until Sarah asked her to stop because her bandages were getting wet. Colleen, her curly, auburn locks hanging around her pretty face had also spent a very long Friday night hoping that her friend would come round after getting the strange angry phone call from her best mate and Bruce telling her she was on her way hospital in an ambulance.

"You looked like death itself darlin'" she had said, "You had more tubes in yah than the London Underground, and I promised meself that I would hug you 'til it hurt if only you would wake up,"

"You silly sod," she smiled, slightly choked again with the emotion her ordeal was bringing out in others.

"Not a bit of it, I said about a dozen prayers to all the saints I could think of and swore off of bad an' easy livin' three or four times."

"Oh come on Coll, this is Sarah you're talking to."

"Sure I did," she screeched, "Perhaps not all the easy livin' but bits of it."

"Colleen, about the message I left on your mobile..."

"Aw Jesus Hun, Sure I know all about that, Bruce told me that night." Colleen brushed a tear from her friend's face, "I've thrown that bloody brush away and put the new one in me locker for a start. And Frank has done a review of all security at the school."

"Thanks Coll," Sarah dabbed her face with a tissue.

"I will confess to being ever so slightly pleased though, at least two people thought I was in his class." Colleen giggled, "Even though one of dem was away 'wid the little people."

"Colleen, you are in a class all of your own," Sarah said.

"Well now, someone else said just the same thing to me last night after school, he's the cutest ginger-haired saxophone player you have ever clapped eyes on, taking me to London this weekend, got me tickets for the show he's playing in."

"What? A saxophone player? Where did you meet a saxophone player?"

"Oh around and about, you know how it is."

"Hmm, OK Coll, how's life at St Johns?"

"You've no need to worry about a 'ting, why the movie star has it all set up so he has. We all seem to be working evenings or weekends t'anks to him."

"Oh," she replied, "How is he, I haven't seen him for a while."

"Ah sure love, but he's horrendous busy getting this Review set up, after all the person supposed to be arranging it went sick. Still, I'll tell him tomorrow you asked after him."

"No," she said, "you're right, he'll come and see me when he's ready."

He didn't come and see her, not once, during her remaining three days in hospital or the ten days she spent with her parents at the cottage being spoiled and waited on hand and foot by her worried mother.

Her Father had the Observer, as he always had, and she eventually asked if she could read some of it, seeing as she was the main focus of several pages of it.

The paper had a large photograph of Bruce and the 'staff notice board' picture of her supplied by the school, and finally a picture of Elisabeth being led into Court in handcuffs from a prison truck with two black eyes peeking out from under bandages across the centre of her face.

The sight of Elisabeth, even looking sedated and subdued in a blurred newspaper picture, was enough to make her shiver and cause her healing wounds to tingle.

Elisabeth, it said, had pleaded guilty to sending the poison pen letters, criminal damage of the neighbour's car, arson with intent to endanger life and attempted murder bargained down to grievous bodily harm - all due to diminished responsibility.

The Judge had withheld sentence until he had received Psychiatrists reports. It also mentioned that Detectives were hoping to interview a Mr Martin Lonsdale, the former manager of Bruce Young, who is alleged to have had some complicity in the events of that night but was believed to be 'out of the country'.

Inspector Grant came to see her with someone from Victim Support to help her through the grieving process and to better understand her attacker and she asked lots of questions about what had happened and why Elisabeth had done those things.

It was down to Martin Lonsdale, and while the Inspector couldn't hide some lingering dislike for the rich film star and his gullibility, it was down to his slimy unpleasant, manipulative monster manager.

His part in the process was backed up by Elisabeth's rather copious, meticulous and extremely disturbing notes that she kept in a diary charting from when Martin had, unknown to her, started to 'warm her up' for his next publicity stunt having met the serious, self-centred and self-indulgent sister-in-law and her parents at a charity event that Bruce spoke at.

It was here that he said that he wanted to take his daughter to the premier of a Pinewood animation that he had provided a voice for. Martin insisted that little Cathy could damage 'the brand' and he would lose tens of thousands of female fans if they knew he had a child and they should continue to follow 'their' plan and keep the tiny blonde bombshell in the background for the time being.

At the charity event the glee that Elisabeth's parents had in their granddaughter and last link to their lost, successful daughter was obvious - what was also obvious was that the surviving daughter Elisabeth was having real issues with that. Martin's next back story was starting to bubble in his sick business brain.

Elisabeth was a dream come true for a sociopath like Martin. From the first second of his obvious flattery he realised that the overweight underachiever carried a huge crush on her rich, handsome widower brother-in-law and some gentle suggestions could bring her on board to whatever Martin thought up next.

He met her for lunch, and she went with his slimy charm - more so when he started to feed and nurture her distant dream of love, bringing it on to the point of fixation on that sunny 'high tea' afternoon.

"Met Martin again for lunch and he said that Bruce still couldn't express his love for me! Such a shame, but like Martin says I must be patient. Martin says that there is also the problem of his daughter - #quandary!"

Her notes suggested to the psychologists that Martin was undecided whether Elisabeth should become 'nutty kidnapping wannabe mother' to the little girl or whether the next generation 'cuckoo in her particular nest' needed permanently removing so there was more room for her.

She said that she would do whatever Martin told her if it got her and Bruce together; he said that Bruce had told him that he had so much faith in her he gave her keys to all of his properties, including one that he said was for the condo in LA and she was hooked.

Martin said that she needed to maintain the illusion of her previous dislike for the award-nominated, extremely rich movie star for his 'plan', so she continued to cause trouble sending solicitors letters demanding access to a niece she had seen only rarely and during visits to her parents place, where she lived anyway. As the plan went on Elisabeth's diary entries were no less prodigious and went into great depth as to what they had discussed on which day and at what time, and what she had planned when they could eventually tell the world they were in love.

Then their was the new girl; from the start the front page and school website picture of the pretty brunette that was probably his supervisor saying 'no comment' fired Martin's interest.

As if by magic, synchronicity (and his knowledge of his superstar client) reared it's contemporaneous head. He overheard a voice that sounded a lot like the one on local TV, followed by Bruce refusing to talk overmuch during that phone call when they had their first meal at his place. He was in London and too far away from things to investigate. He rang Elisabeth and suggested she go visit and find out what was going on.

She did, taking the keys that Bruce has so innocently given to her mother.

Martin had suggested that she stay calm and focused, and not let the other woman know that she was on to her slutty tricks to try and get their friend Bruce into bed. She tried but even she knew that the hard stares she had given that woman during that meeting were pretty unmistakable.

The website picture Martin sent her had the now suspicious Elisabeth raging that her 'true love' might be being led astray by the curvy, sexy-looking brunette drama teacher. She rang Martin straight back on the cheap smartphone they had bought for her and confirmed she was the same person. He detailed Elisabeth to wait in her car across the street and see what time she left.

When Sarah did eventually drive out of the gated community at a few minutes after seven that morning Elisabeth had fallen asleep, waking in time to see Bruce walking out of the gate with a wave and a shout to Cathy and the babysitter. She followed him to school, worried that he would see and recognise her old tatty Ford Fiesta car.

She spoke to Martin who admonished her for her lack of commitment but then told her he would meet her for lunch again. Sat in the posh restaurant he talked her through how she needed to be better prepared and via her Smartphone they applied for a credit card for her so she could rent a different car, get her hair done and get new clothes.

She was so taken with the espionage that it was her idea to produce the cut-out letter. Thinking on some of the things she had learned from watching her hero DC Shears on the DVD box set of 'Detective', she prepared a 'sterile' space in her bedroom and through a hardware store bought a face mask, glue, gloves, and new scissors, all of which could be dumped after sending the letter.

"Martin is such a nice guy," she wrote in her diary, "he insisted that I give him all of the evidence so he could dispose of it in a bin in the middle of nowhere next week! What a nice fella. It's a shame that Bruce is so much in love with me because I could quite easily fall in love with Martin. It's because he CARES SO MUCH!" she underlined that section and actually drew flowers around it, "He cares for Bruce, I think he cares for Cathy a bit but most of all her cares about me and my future happiness, #luckygirl."

Martin didn't dispose of the evidence of course, he needed bits of it to leave lying around as and when it became necessary.

She then went to relate how she had started to follow Sarah and her notes were extremely useful for the police case against her.

She wrote how she had followed Sarah home from school one evening in her car first discovering the street that she lived in, then was waiting there for her to come home and get the house number the next evebing. This meant that on the night before Sarah left for her first weekend with Bruce she was able to leave the sterile, cut-out letter. She drove past later that night a couple of times noting that Bruce had turned up. She was happier still when the police arrived,

"Pleased to see that the #detective is there, means the silly bitch is taking it seriously, hopefully that will be an end to it."

She parked outside of Sarah's house again that night this time in a different car, Martin had suggested a different one this time so as the shiny Citroen she had rented wouldn't become too obvious. The bloody woman that had surprisingly driven to school that fine sunny morning didn't come home that night though, and Elisabeth cursed her complacency, that bloody skinny cow...

She contacted Martin who didn't know what was going on either. By the time she got to the gated community it was to see that Bruce's car was still on the drive and she was annoyed to discover that the small pedestrian gate at the rear of the property had a new electronic coded entry system fitted and the number had been sent out by text message, not to the email account that Martin had had professionally hacked by a friend of a journalist friend of his.

She went home and sweated on what might be going on. She eventually went home and spoke to her Mother who said that she had no idea what Bruce was doing and wasn't due to have Cathy again until the middle of the next week. By early evening on the Saturday she was almost beside herself and on a pretext rung Bruce's parents' house and it went straight to answer phone.

She was parked half a dozen houses away from the gated community late on Sunday evening when she heard the loud rumble of a motorbike. She knew that he had one, and she recognised his physique and the leather motorcycle jacket she had seen in his place a couple of times that week during the day when she had snuck in when the back gate was still accessible.

At least there was no sign of that 'woman'.

She spent much of the next week on a patrol parking all over the place, always outside of the sphere of the CCTV cameras at his gate and watching for his walk to and from school. She would drive past him and would often find that woman driving or walking into the school gates by the time she passed them. She would go home and sleep, happy that Bruce and that woman were behind watched by almost a thousand other people and nothing untoward could happen there.

Fortunately she didn't know about Sarah's store cupboard and the seven or eight minutes of passion they shared there each lunchtime.

She was in regular phone contact with Martin who told her that she had to stay 'on the ball'. He had tried to find out what was going on over that 'lost weekend' as well but Bruce never answered his mobile phone if Martin tried to ring him. Elisabeth hoped that the threatening letter had done it's thing and chatted with Martin that all was good. She felt tired and drained but did love the taste of the caffeine drinks that Martin gave her to keep 'on mission'.

Her easy confidence was discounted though as when little Cathy came to stay with Nanny Teasdale for a night Sarah insisted on putting her niece to bed and asked what she had done over the weekend.

"I stayed with Nanny and Gramps at their caravan in the Cotswolds," she said brightly, "they took me to see their friends George and Veronica for a barbecue and I got to play with their dogs! They have two labra-dogs," she said, "one's called Toby and the other is called..."

"So what was Daddy doing?!" snapped Elisabeth in a slightly impatient and angry voice.

"Oh he went to stay with his friend Sarah in the country, I was going to go but I wanted to see the doggies, the other one is called..."

"Where in the country?" snapped Elisabeth, annoyed at the less than helpful response to her interrogation of the four year old.

"Dunno!" snapped Cathy sticking out her tongue, her bottom lip protruding. She had never been a huge fan of Aunty Elisabeth, less so now when she was plainly asking about HER weekend, then wouldn't stop going on about what Daddy was doing with his new friend.

"Was it far?"

"Dunno," said Cathy bringing on a large yawn and taking her teddy bear to roll over and go to sleep.

"Catherine!" snapped Aunty Elisabeth, "I haven't finished talking!"

"I'm tired!" she whined.

"Oooohkay," Elisabeth thought about DC Shears interviewed people, "tell me about the Labradors then."

Once Cathy was chatting again she was able to throw in the occasional line about Daddy and his new friend.

No, she didn't come around to stay, and no Daddy hadn't been to her house. Toby and Sparky could catch the ball EVERYTIME SHE THREW IT FOR THEM and never gave up!

"Sweet!" said Elisabeth realising that she had gotten about all she could out of her little witness. Cathy rolled over and went to sleep, and Elisabeth started to think about how this little girl would very soon be her little girl so gave her an extra kiss. Cathy turned over and gave her a hug. That was the start of the 'Mummy' phase.

She rang Martin straight away and told him that all was not well and he had probably been with the woman all weekend. He asked where and she said she only knew that Sarah had a place 'in the country'.

"Right," said Martin, "Phase two, we must find out from that bloody kid..."

"You will not talk about Catherine like that, thank you!" snapped Elisabeth.

"Aaaah," said Martin, another thought in his head, "she's a bit special isn't she!"

"She's going to be... well, as her closest living relative after Bruce she's pretty much my daughter," said Elisabeth.

"Of course!" said Martin, "I expect you promised your sister you'd keep an eye on her if anything happened to her, yeah?"