Access All Areas: HarperImpulse Contemporary Fiction. Charlotte Phillips

She’d been so preoccupied with her father’s failing health that all the day-to-day stuff, including work, had fallen by the wayside. Little had she known the mess she was already in.

      The bank hovered over her like a large and very ugly vulture, ready to swoop in and whip away the only thing that she had left of her family, and all because her father had remortgaged the house to buoy them up through her mother’s illness two years earlier. Of course he’d expected to have years left in him to work and pay the loan off. He hadn’t even mentioned it to Anna until the very end and she only discovered the full extent of the mess when she finally steeled herself to sort through her father’s papers after he’d gone. By then the repayments had quietly lapsed for months. Brown envelopes had been stuffed away as he refused to accept that he wouldn’t beat the illness and turn things around. No one could have guessed that he’d follow his wife so quickly to the grave, leaving Anna alone.

      Well, not alone exactly. She had the bank for company.

      No way was she giving up her family home without a fight. It was all she had left of her old life. And that was exactly what she was doing now, teetering in the gap between the window and the curly black wrought iron railing that came up to her thighs, on a ledge that was designed to hold nothing more than a couple of plants or a window-box. This was her last resort at saving the last remnants of a happy family life which had meant the whole world to her. The loan arrears were gobsmacking, the bank was on the brink of repossessing and Anna had done her best to fend them all off. She’d already tapped friends, family, everyone she could think of for a loan and had sold everything she could bear to part with that wasn’t nailed down. And still it wasn’t enough.

      And then Lucy had uttered those magic words.

      ‘I think I might know a way out of this. A way you could make some money, fast.’

      Anna’s ears were instantly burning.

      ‘You remember that photo you sold a couple of years ago?’ Lucy said. ‘That soap actress on her honeymoon.’

      Anna had happened to be in the right place at the right time. She’d been taking photos for a travel brochure in a lovely Cotswolds village at just the moment when a celebrity nipped to the local shop, following a wedding that had been protected by white screens because she’d sold the exclusive rights to a glossy magazine. Anna had inadvertently scooped the first post-wedding picture and it had sold for a cool five thousand pounds or so.

      Lucy lowered her voice on the phone to a stage whisper.

      ‘Betsy Warrender is staying in the hotel with Kip Bevan.’

      Anna choked on her coffee.

      ‘The Betsy Warrender?’

      Betsy Warrender was a film-and-TV-star-behaving-badly who courted scandal and was the darling of the tabloid press. With her forty-fifth birthday and her third marriage long behind her the media had been mesmerised by her are-they-or-aren’t-they relationship with her most recent co-star, up and coming British actor Kip Bevan, utterly gorgeous and twenty-five years her junior.

      ‘Is there more than one?’ Lucy said. ‘Of course it’s the Betsy Warrender. They’re staying in a suite on the second floor ordering gourmet food and champagne. Barely anyone knows about it and I’m sworn to secrecy but I could do with some spare cash.’

      Anna’s mind whirled.

      ‘What exactly are you suggesting?’

      ‘What do you think? The first photo of the two of them together will fetch a fortune and sooner or later some tabloid hack will get the scoop.’ Lucy said. ‘All I’m saying is, you’re a photographer, you’ve got all the kit, why can’t that person be you? Room 214 has a door directly opposite theirs and it’s empty because of maintenance work. No Joe Public guest is allowed there but I can get you in that room and the rest is up to you. We split the proceeds. What do you say?’

      Anna momentarily lost the power of speech as she imagined just what a photo of Betsy Warrender and her rumoured toyboy lover could fetch. A million times more famous than a C-list soap actress. A-list all the way. Anna could sell a picture of them to an agency, save her family home and probably retire, all in one day.

      Maybe. Possibly.

      It hadn’t quite gone to plan so far.

      Unfortunately an exclusive hot tip was only half the battle. Anna had headed to London quick smart and she’d been on the hotel premises since this morning. Betsy Warrender and Kip Bevan were holed up in the Purple Suite on the second floor, and nothing short of an earthquake looked like blasting them out of there.

      Still they had to come out at some point – right? Lucy had been spot on, room 214’s fish-eye peephole had a full-on view of Betsy’s suite door. Any sign of the happy couple emerging and Anna would be the first to know.

      Trouble was, staking out the peephole of a hotel room door was mind-numbingly and neck-achingly dull. After three hours of it, Anna found herself thinking around the opportunity, trying to find another – ideally quicker – way of getting the money shot. It occurred to her that the Purple Suite took up a large corner of the second floor. And therefore the window of room 214, if she leaned out far enough, could offer an excellent outdoor view of the Purple Suite’s windows and its luxury balcony. She might be able to take a long shot through a window, and you never knew, Betsy and Kip might just come out and wave. It was the middle of summer after all, and the perfect sunny day for lunch in the fresh air.

      Her conscience griped in her stomach, not for the first time, and she squashed it and opened the window as wide as she could. She couldn’t afford principles. They were a luxury.

      She repeated in her mind for her own benefit her standard ‘put-yourself-in-the-public-eye’ speech: If Betsy Warrender wanted the media to dance to her tune when it suited her, bumping up her millions with carefully manipulated photos and controlled column inches, she really was in no position to moan when the media played things a little on their terms. It didn’t really help. Anna still felt somehow cheap, like a loathsome privacy-invading hack. Her father had trained her in portrait photography not paparazzi snaps. But what choice did she have? The house was at stake.

      The best she could do was try for a picture that was flattering. She’d do her best to snap them on the balcony and if they didn’t show then she’d get back to staking out the door. She silently promised Betsy that she’d do her best for a situation where she was looking good instead of one of those awful ‘Stars without Slap’ horror photos.

      Then again, a picture of Betsy Warrender make-up free could also make a mint.

      Her conscience continued to argue with itself.

      The wrought iron railing that ran along the bottom half of the window made leaning out so much easier. The view of the Purple Suite balcony was tantalisingly, maddeningly, just out of view. She could see the corner of it, with covered hot tub and white voile curtains fluttering between the open French windows. If she just craned around a teeny bit more and held up her camera the view would be perfect. Maybe she’d get it by opening the sash all the way and standing on the window ledge – there was no real danger, the wrought iron railings stood between her and the drop.

      She hadn’t counted on the window sliding neatly closed behind her.

      Oh just bloody great.

      Joe Marshall left the meeting room mid-afternoon after an attempt at briefing a team of disinterested hotel staff, some of them temps, the rest of them scrolling idly through their mobile phones because they didn’t earn enough to care, on how attention to detail is key when providing security services to the rich and famous.

      He should know. He’d spent the last six years doing exactly that at the highest level before his return to England, and with every additional day in this new job he regretted that decision more and more. This lot needed a rocket lighting under them.

      The walkie-talkie on his belt buzzed and crackled into life.

      ‘Joe, we’ve had a couple of reports from passers-by.’