The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp Read online

  Copyright

  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London, SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

  Copyright © Sarra Manning 2018

  Cover design Ellie Game © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

  Cover illustration © Shutterstock.com

  Sarra Manning asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008291785

  Ebook Edition © September 2018 ISBN: 9780008291143

  Version: 2018-07-17

  Dedication

  Dedicated to William Makepeace Thackeray who created these wonderful characters that I got to play with. I hope that he would approve.

  Epigraph

  ‘All is vanity. Nothing is fair.’

  Vanity Fair, W. M. Thackeray

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Sarra Manning

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  BATTLE OF THE BIG BROTHER BEAUTIES!

  Will It Be Amelia Or Becky Who Wins Tonight’s Final? Place Your Bets!

  In one corner we have blonde banker’s daughter, Amelia Sedley, 22, the posh totty who’s been unlucky in love but has become princess of the nation’s hearts. And in the other corner we have red-headed stunner Becky Sharp, 20, a care assistant with a big heart and a wicked sense of humour.

  Ahead of tonight’s final, bookies have slashed odds on either of them to win and are saying it’s too close to call. One thing’s for certain, this year’s Big Brother has had a massive ratings boost thanks to these two babes.

  Who can forget Poolgate? Or Becky’s rousing ‘chicks before dicks’ speech? The double eviction of house villains, Leanne and Johnny? Or just how fabulous Amelia and Becky look in their bikinis?

  So The Globe would like to wish both girls best of luck tonight and thanks for all the mammaries!

  ‘Big Brother house! You are live on Channel Five, please do not swear.’

  Even though they’d been expecting the announcement, the two young women jumped as the excited tones of the TV announcer were broadcast into the house on a studio set in Elstree where they’d spent the last two months.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Becky Sharp mouthed to Amelia, her BFF, who was clutching her white acrylic wine glass for dear life.

  The roar of the crowd gathered outside was audible even in the hermetically sealed house. It didn’t sound like a good roar but more like the last thing the Christian martyrs heard before they were ripped to shreds by lions in a Roman amphitheatre.

  Although it was a warm August night, Becky couldn’t help the shiver that ran through her. Her eyes widened and she bit her bottom lip, making sure that her slightly furrowed brow was shown to its best advantage by the camera to her left, positioned high up in the corner. You couldn’t spend eight weeks in a house with eighty cameras in it without knowing exactly where those cameras were. Anyone who said that after a while you forgot their presence and showed your real self – like, say, the ten other contestants who’d already been kicked out of the house – were either liars or idiots. Or both. Yes, definitely both.

  ‘I’m so nervous,’ Amelia said, her wispy voice catching at the same time as her soft, pretty features began to wobble. Becky recognised the signs, Lord knows she’d seen them often enough to recognise when Amelia Sedley was about to burst into tears. On average, at least three times a day. On the day that Amelia had been cruelly cast aside by Gav, an ex-Marine, now personal trainer, from Wigan so he could fall into bed with Chloe, a glamour model from Braintree, she’d cried an unprecedented ten times. ‘Anyway, I won’t win. I don’t want to win. You deserve to win, Becky.’

  ‘Oh, Emmy, if anyone deserves to win, it’s you,’ Becky said, even as the possibility of winning sent a thrill through her.

  ‘So, the votes have been counted and verified and I can reveal that the winner of Big Brother is …’

  Amelia grabbed hold of Becky’s arm so that Becky could feel the tremors running through the other girl. Amelia was entirely lacking in any inner reserves of strength. In fact, after Gavgate, she’d been planning to walk, but it was Becky who’d persuaded her to stay. ‘Chicks before dicks every single time. And if you leave, then I’ll leave too. We made a promise that we were in this together, Emmy, because together, nothing can stop us. So, come on! Stay! Stay in the name of sisterhood.’ Becky had spent hours locked in the toilet rehearsing that speech, so Amelia was right: if anyone deserved to win, it was Becky Sharp.

  ‘Amelia Sedley!’

  You have got to be fucking kidding me!

  It took everything she had not to screech it out loud, instead Becky bit her tongue so hard that it brought tears to her eyes, even as she hugged Amelia, who also had tears in her eyes, because she was gearing up for her biggest, ugliest cry of the summer.

  ‘I’m so happy for you, Emmy! Of course it had to be you!’ Becky said loudly enough that her words could be picked up over the chanting of the crowd.

  Amelia was sobbing too hard to reply so Becky rubbed soothing circles on her back and murmured inanities into the other girl’s blonde hair.

  ‘Congratulations, Amelia, you’re our winner!’ the presenter bellowed and Amelia raised her head from where it had been nestled on Becky’s shoulder and showed her red, blotchy face to the world. ‘Now hold tight, Becky, I’m coming to get you!’

  It was very hard to keep her face from contorting into a snarl of rage but somehow Becky manage
d it. It was going to be even harder to exit the Big Brother house with Amelia, still sobbing, clinging to her like a limpet on steroids.

  ‘Becky, this is Big Brother! Becky, you have been evicted. You have two minutes to say your goodbyes and leave the house.’

  ‘We should go out together,’ Amelia insisted phlegmily as Becky patted her back and prepared to disengage. ‘Really, we’re both winners.’

  ‘No, don’t be silly! This is your moment and I’m not going to spoil it for you.’ Becky would rather die than be accused of stealing Amelia’s thunder. As it was, because she was the runner-up, she’d get a rushed exit interview before they came back to get Amelia. Then there’d be fireworks and cheering and Amelia would cry again as she watched the winner’s prize of £70,000 hit her bank account. Like Amelia even needed the money. Becky eyed Amelia’s tight, black, designer bodycon dress and then looked down at her own ASOS knock-off. At least she could take some small comfort from the fact that Amelia had put on at least half a stone since she’d entered the Big Brother house and her expensive Herve Leger dress now resembled sausage casing.

  ‘Becky, this is Big Brother! You have been evicted. You have one minute to leave the house.’

  ‘Emmy, please, I have to go,’ Becky said firmly, disentangling Amelia’s arms from her neck. ‘Drink some water. Go and repair your make-up so you look beautiful for your big exit and I’ll see you on the flipside.’

  Then she gently pushed Amelia to one side. Took a moment to straighten the skirt of her white dress, which was tight but not too tight, short but not too short, and slightly off the shoulder but not low cut because only the wrong sort of girl did legs and cleavage. Then she straightened her spine and, in time-honoured tradition, took a second with the mirror by the door. Fluffed her red hair, ran a finger under one eye to check that her mascara hadn’t run and mouthed very clearly for the benefit of the viewing public, ‘Come on, Becky, you got this.’

  She pulled open the door, took a deep breath and began to climb the stairs.

  ‘Becky! You have been evicted! Please leave the Big Brother house!’

  She was climbing towards freedom after being trapped for weeks in a state-of-the-art prison. OK, a prison with a huge gold sofa, a swimming pool full of unicorn and flamingo inflatables and copious amounts of alcohol as a reward each time the housemates completed an asinine task designed solely to humiliate them, but a prison nevertheless.

  Outside was unknown. Becky had played a clever game but the general public were fickle. Who knew how she’d come across or how she’d been edited?

  ‘Becky! You have been evicted! Please leave the Big Brother house!’

  There was only one way to find out.

  The doors swung open and the almighty wall of noise that greeted Becky made her rock back on her spindly silver heels. All those people cheering her? Not one single, solitary boo. She put an unsteady hand to her heart.

  You like me. You really like me.

  Ha! Suckers!

  Chapter 2

  It was a blur of light and heat and noise as Becky’s hand was firmly taken by the excitable Emma Willis and she was pulled through the crowd, a camera in front of her, brazenly in her face this time.

  There was a gratifying amount of poorly made banners with her name on them or proclaiming ‘Chicks before dicks’. Hands thrust at her. People screaming. Then up another flight of stairs on to a stage and past her former housemates sitting in two rows. Becky hadn’t even made contact with the chair before everyone’s attention was focused on the big screen above them which showed Amelia sitting on the big gold sofa in the Big Brother house with her head between her knees as she tried not to pass out.

  Considering that Amelia was a posh girl, proper posh, who’d been torn from the bosom of her loving family and sent off to boarding school at the tender age of ten, Becky had been astounded that she wasn’t made of sterner stuff. In a year out from university, she’d even spent two weeks in Niger working in an orphanage, which had done absolutely nothing to toughen her up.

  Maybe the joke was on Becky and Amelia was playing the longest of cons herself. But then Emma tapped Becky on the knee and a producer counted them back from a commercial break and she needed to focus on her own long con.

  ‘So, hello, Becky Sharp,’ Emma said by way of introduction. ‘The housemate whose shoulder everyone cried on, who had more girl power than all the Spice Girls combined, and who might not have found love in the Big Brother house, but found her way into your hearts with 37.4 per cent of the final vote. It was very close, Becky. Amelia just pipped you to the post with 39.1 per cent of the vote.’

  Becky shook her head and smiled. ‘The best girl won,’ she said to approving cheers, because what else could she say?

  ‘And you had quite the chequered love life while you were in the house,’ Emma continued cheerfully. ‘You seemed fated to never get your man.’

  ‘Well, I went into the house to find myself rather than find love, though love would have been nice too,’ Becky said, and she caught the eye of Carlo who she’d enjoyed a brief flirtation with, safe in the knowledge that he’d be evicted in week two because he had all the personality of damp cardboard. Carlo smiled and waved back. ‘Even better than love, I made friends that I know I’ll have for the rest of my life.’

  The script just wrote itself, really.

  ‘You even let one of those friends come between you and what we all hoped was going to be a Big Brother romance,’ Emma said, as footage appeared on the big screen of Becky watching Johnny (who called himself an entrepreneur though he was hard pressed to explain what he actually entrepreneured) and Leanne, PR girl (which really meant that she handed out free, flavoured vodka shots in Cheshire nightclubs), frolicking in the hot tub. One single, solitary tear rolled down Becky’s alabaster cheek, because one tear was far more effective than sobbing all your make-up off at least twice a day.

  ‘Well, I realised that if Johnny and Leanne really cared for each other, then I shouldn’t stand in the way of their happiness,’ Becky explained with another glance over to the housemates. ‘I just never imagined that they’d be put up for eviction because of it or that there’d be a double eviction that week. You guys are still together, right?’

  Of course they weren’t. They were seated as far away from each other as possible and, judging from the skin-stripping looks that Leanne was sending Johnny’s way as a muscle pounded in his cheek, they now hated each other with a passion. Even more passion than when Leanne had given him a blow job in the Big Brother toilet.

  ‘You might have been one of our most popular housemates but you still managed to land yourself in hot water, Becky,’ Emma said urgently, putting one hand on Becky’s knee again. ‘We need to talk about Poolgate.’

  Becky made sure her green eyes were especially wide. ‘Poolgate?’ she echoed breathily.

  Another scene was beamed up on the screen. Becky and Marie curled up on the big swan inflatable in the swimming pool. It was odd that they were curled up so amicably when Marie had earlier accused Becky of stealing a Chanel lipstick from her, though Becky, with trembling dignity, had insisted that the Chanel lipstick in question was hers and that maybe Marie had simply lost her own one.

  ‘Now you weren’t miked up here because you were in the pool but Marie swears that you whispered in her ear, “You chat shit about me again and I will wipe you off the face of the earth, bitch.”’

  Becky put her hands to her cheeks as if they were burning. She couldn’t even look at Marie and the inevitably outraged expression on the other girl’s porcine and pugnacious face. If she did, she might laugh.

  ‘Really? She swears that I said that? Wow! Maybe I had a strange reaction to the chlorine in the swimming pool and it gave me a complete personality change and amnesia too.’ Becky shrugged and shook her head. ‘Because I have no memory of that happening.’

  Emma went on to mention ‘Slag-gate’ (it had felt like the right thing to do to tell Leanne that Marie had called her a sla
g), ‘Pubegate’ (and who could blame Becky for nominating Carlo for eviction because of the shocking state he left the shower in each morning?) and ‘Gavgate’ (of course Becky was going to take Amelia’s side when Gav had done her wrong, even though it was Becky who’d told Gav that Chloe fancied him).

  ‘More gates than a garden centre,’ Becky noted to the approval of the audience, and anyway, she hadn’t been directly involved in any of the incidents. The fact that Primark were now apparently selling ‘Chicks Before Dicks’ T-shirts and the Guardian had labelled Becky as ‘this summer’s most unlikely feminist icon’ was completely beyond her control.

  There was just time for Emma to remind the viewers that when Becky had won a task and been rewarded with a phone call home, she’d given her prize to Amelia.

  Again, there was Becky’s face on the screen – she really did look so much better from her left side – telling a sobbing Amelia that ‘I don’t have a home or a mum and dad, but you do, so I want you to have the call.’

  There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. ‘Is that true?’ Emma gently probed even as Becky could hear the producer telling her to wrap things up. ‘That you don’t have a family?’

  If she concentrated really hard, Becky could always get that single, solitary tear to start its slow descent down her cheek. She’d just recall the sting of her father’s hand across that same cheek as he coached her on how to cry on cue. Rich tourist or DWP case worker, no one could resist a whey-faced little moppet crying so prettily.

  She felt the tear begin its journey now, let it get level with her mouth before she brushed it away with an impatient hand. ‘My mum and dad died so long ago that it hardly even hurts any more. Anyway, friends are the new family, isn’t that what they say?’

  Emma reached forward and gathered Becky into a motherly hug until they both heard the producer snap in their ears, ‘We’re due an ad break, cue her best bits.’

  ‘Becky, you’ve been one of our favourite housemates of all time and here are your best bits!’

  What if the two minutes that comprised Becky’s highlight reel were the sum total of her life’s work? How she’d always be remembered? A slender girl in a white bikini with green eyes, riotous red curls, fair skin and what The Sun called ‘the best boobs in Big Brother’ schooling another girl in a bikini about the ‘most basic rule of feminism. Chicks Before Dicks.’