Beautiful People

by Wendy Holden

  James sighed and pushed up the glasses that were forever slipping down his nose. "I'm not sure what I believe," he had said quietly. "The law, after all, is that people are innocent until proven guilty."

  "Court?" Vanessa exclaimed. "I don't want the police getting involved in this. The publicity would be dreadful. After all, I'm quite famous…"

  Emma felt a tug of fear. She was, she realised, in agreement. Making the matter public would not only endanger her own future, but also increase the risk of her parents finding out about what had happened. No one in the family had been involved in anything like this before.

  "But it's a criminal offence," James protested. "By someone," he added hastily. He turned his bewildered, bespectacled, above all, disappointed glance on Emma. "Personally, I would like to believe that she was innocent."

  "Innocent!" screeched his wife. Her chest was heaving violently up and down.

  "Yes," James said firmly. "And if Emma believes she can clear her name, I'd be delighted." His face fell then, however, and the flame within Emma died proportionately down. "But until such a time, I agree: in the absence of evidence that she isn't responsible, she has to go."

  Emma had no idea how she could clear her name. Where the drugs had come from and who put them there was still a mystery, a horrible mystery. Could it have been someone at the children's party? But who and why?

  Pushing at the back of Emma's mind was the possibility that Vanessa herself had put the piece of paper with its explosive contents in her handbag. But something—Emma hardly knew what it was—made her hesitate to blame her boss. Nasty and cruel Vanessa could certainly be, but once or twice Emma felt she had glimpsed something beneath the surface, something rather lost, helpless, and vulnerable, something touching, almost, that made her doubt, at the last minute, that it was her.

  And so she tried not to think about the injustice of it all, about Vanessa's poisonousness, about James, who she could not help feeling slightly let down by whilst recognising there was little else he could have done.

  And especially she tried not to think about Hero and Cosmo, who she had loved so much and yet who, from the moment the drugs had been discovered, she had not been allowed to see. But whose eyes, round with horror and red with weeping, she had seen briefly through their bedroom windows and felt following her down the street as she walked away from the house for the last time.

  After driving back with Mitch following the meeting with Jack Saint, Darcy had headed straight to her meringue burrow of a hotel bedroom and stayed there. Having completely lost her appetite—the mere thought of food made her feel queasy—she had ordered nothing from room service. When she was thirsty—if she noticed she was thirsty—she simply put her mouth under one of the gold taps in the vast marble-lined bathroom. Otherwise, she merely cried and raged.

  It all felt like a house collapsing. Niall had left her for the type of Hollywood bimbo he most affected to despise. He was a lying hypocrite of the first order. He had tried to prevent her going to L.A., but only because, it appeared, he wanted to go there himself. His high principles had been jealousy, nothing more.

  She had believed in Niall, his principles and his art, even more than her own. Far more than her own. But he had left her for Belle Murphy, a woman whose only interest in art, given her veneered teeth and obviously artificial breasts, was that of the plastic surgeon and cosmetic dentist. She had never suspected, never ever dreamt, that what Niall wanted was a woman like Belle.

  Never had she dreamt, either, that he was anything other than working class and gritty. His interpretation of the angry Glaswegian butcher's boy had been practically Method. Perhaps that was why he had never landed a leading role—he had put so much of his acting energy into the part he played for her every day that there was nothing left for anyone else.

  Had he ever really loved her? But she had loved him. Hadn't she? As well as being good-looking, he had been the image of everything she wanted to believe in most.

  Were she and Niall, after all, both as bad as each other? Flitting across Darcy's mind now came the possibility that she too might have loved what Niall stood for more than the man himself. Otherwise, might she have not looked closer beneath the surface?

  Only—and it was a big only—she had not two-timed him with some screen bimbo while he was away. Well, not exactly. With a surge of acid guilt, she remembered seeing Christian Harlow in the restaurant.

  But that had been a moment's lapse; she had been drunk, tired, jet-lagged. And the moment Christian had gone, she had come to her senses, which, to judge from the pictures in the papers, it didn't look as if Niall was ever likely to do.

  Anger rose within her again. Authenticity, art—he could stuff it. Although, of course, he had stuffed it. More so than his father had ever stuffed a chicken or rolled up a loin of lamb. She'd quite like to roll up Niall's loins, come to that, butcher-style with very tight string.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Emma's savings meant that a long-term stay in the bed and breakfast she found near King's Cross station was out of the question, even if she had wanted to, which she didn't. Her room, all the same, was small and clean with a wardrobe to hang her one good suit. And the nearby library proved a warm place to write applications. It might be full of smelly tramps reading the papers, but it had a computer she could use if she booked times with the front desk.

  Here Emma copied down details of nanny agencies all over London. Off went letters to Servants' Hall, Mrs. Poppins, Domestic Bliss, and You Rang, Madam? Emma felt both relieved and vindicated when, some ten days later, a reply arrived in a thick cream envelope.

  "Looks posh, that," commented Mrs. Cupper as she handed it over. "Most o' the letters we get for folks 'ere are in brown window envelopes from the DSS. Or else white from the police," she added darkly.

  The letter, on thick cream paper, contained the longed-for news that Mrs. Theodora Connelly-Carew of Domestic Bliss, office address 24 Sloane Mews SW1, would like to see her for an interview the following day.

  Mitch was chewing mournfully on a jelly doughnut and reflecting on the nadir his career had reached. He'd just taken a call from his absolute least favourite client—and that was a hotly contested distinction—a British rock singer whose pushiness was in inverse proportion to his success. He blamed this, naturally enough, on Mitch. "When I signed up with you, you were going to help me crack America, man," the singer had whined. "You haven't helped me crack the top of a bloody crème brulee."

  What had made him agree to represent this guy, Mitch wondered. It had been a moment of madness. But then, his entire career seemed to consist of moments of madness, all linked together. His life was one long moment of madness.

  Perhaps the maddest moment of all had been believing Darcy could land the part with Jack Saint. Although it hadn't seemed mad at the time; the whole thing, in fact, had seemed as near to a certainty as anything he had ever been certain about. Perhaps that should have told him something, Mitch sighed. Nothing was certain in L.A. Apart from sunshine, plastic surgery, and cosmetic dentistry. And things not working out, particularly for him. Mitch stared at the grey carpet tiles and wondered if he was sitting on some particularly inauspicious ley line. It was incredible, the bad luck he had.

  While he thought these thoughts, his eyes were trained gloomily through the slatted blinds of his office window on a street cleaner working below. As the man toiled gently in the sunshine, pushing his barrow along and picking up papers with the aid of a long pincer, it seemed to Mitch that he was deriving more satisfaction from his job than Mitch ever had from his own. He too worked mostly with rubbish. But it rarely made him feel as serene as that old guy down there looked.

  His phone rang. And when he put it down at the end of the conversation, Mitch wondered whether he had dreamt it all or whether he was dying and it was one of those wish-fulfilment scenarios people sometimes experienced on the point of expiring. Then he pinched himself, rotated a few times on his long-suffering office chair, and stabbed o
ut Darcy's number. The call he had just finished had come just in time. She was still in L.A.

  The phone at Darcy's hotel bedside shrilled.

  "Hey there!"

  "You sound pleased," Darcy said, rather crossly.

  "Pleased? You bet I am."

  Actually, thunderstruck was more the word.

  "I'll cut to the chase, baby," Mitch said now. "I just got a call from Jack Saint. He liked you."

  "Liked me? But…all those things I said…"

  "He liked your answers. They were the right answers."

  "But you said…"

  "Yeah, yeah, well forget what I said," Mitch said hurriedly. "Point is, he thinks you're honest. Original. Authentic." Mitch paused for effect. Then, with tremendousness, he announced, "Congratulations, baby. He wants you in his picture."

  Then, as Darcy did not react, he added. "Are you listening to me? You're the Grand Duchess of the Galaxy in Galaxia, honey. Shooting starts in Florence, two weeks from now."

  Darcy sat up. All the weariness she had been feeling fell away from her. She felt numb, then excited, then numb again, then excited again. Into the vacuum that had been her life shot a large object, not unlike the missile-cum-helicopter objects she had seen on Saint's model table. Whether or not she actually wanted to act in the movie seemed less important than the fact that she now had a distraction and a direction in life. Moreover, one that would probably really annoy Niall. Or Graham, as she was trying hard to think of him.

  "That's incredible," she managed to say to Mitch. "Amazing."

  Miraculous more like, Mitch thought. He'd never heard of anyone saying what she had apparently said to Jack Saint and being cast. Cast out, more like. And yet Saint had seemed to dig it. "Makes a change not to have a bimbo," he had remarked to Mitch. "Got plenty of them already in this film, believe me."

  Mitch wondered who. Due to the huge scale and fantastical nature of his productions, Saint generally started filming before the movie was entirely cast. The end was sometimes shot before the beginning, and any number of intermediate scenes were filmed as the sets were completed. Much was done at the editing stage, and there would be the computer graphics sequences, which the director was famous for putting in too.

  To an outsider, and to many of the insiders, the process was all incredibly confusing. The only person who ever knew exactly what was going on was Saint; it was part of his legend that he and he alone had the whole apparently rambling edifice organised down to the last tiny detail in his head. For all their apparent complexity, his schedules ran like clockwork, and the end results were always spectacular. Those were the reasons, Mitch knew, for why Saint was so sought after as a director.

  "Saint's people will be in touch about Florence. Sounds pretty nice," Mitch added enthusiastically. "All those canals."

  "That's Venice."

  "Oh…yeah. Right. Well, frankly, baby, if Saint wants canals in this film, Florence might well get 'em too."

  He put the phone down. Below him, through the slatted blinds, the street sweeper continued to pick up litter with his pincers. Mitch no longer envied him, however. He had the rare feeling of wanting to be no one apart from himself.

  As joy seized him again, he swung round on his office chair. When, shuddering, lurching, and creaking, the chair completed the circle and faced front again, Mitch found himself staring at the long, sly face of his least favourite colleague. Greg Cucarachi was staring at him with an expression of cool superiority on his long, sly face. Or more cool superiority even than usual, Mitch corrected himself.

  "Lot of excitement in here," Cucarachi remarked in a voice as smooth as his black hair. He was wearing a well-cut, obviously expensive grey suit, pink checked shirt, and pink silk tie. Mitch envied his colleague his style and trim frame, although not the work he did to maintain it. Cucarachi honed his body hard. He jogged at lunchtimes; he worked out; he did marathons. While, Mitch knew, the only part of himself that raced was his heart.

  He folded his plump arms and fixed Cucarachi's eye with his own. "Yeah. It's kind of an exciting morning. My client Darcy Prince has just landed the female lead in Galaxia."

  Take that, asshole, he wanted to add, but didn't. There was no need. It was a body blow.

  Relishing the moment, Mitch happily anticipated Cucarachi's response, confidently expecting that thin, handsome-if-that-wasyour-idea-of-it face to spasm and contort with jealousy.

  But instead, Mitch's most loathed co-worker simply smiled. "Hey, I'm glad for you, buddy," Cucarachi said.

  Mitch wobbled on his chair. Glad? What was the guy talking about? No agent was ever pleased about another. Unless they were failing.

  "Yeah, I'm real glad." Cucarachi was nodding. "And I know you're going to be just as happy for me when I tell you that I had a conversation with Jack Saint this morning as well. That I too have a client with a starring role in Galaxia."

  "You do?" Mitch gasped.

  "My client Christian Harlow has been contracted to play the Duke of Lilo." The words exploded like bombs in Mitch's disbelieving, red-hot ears.

  "Christian…Harlow?"

  "That's right," Greg beamed, showing his strong, square white teeth. "The Duke of Lilo. The Grand Duchess of the Galaxy's number-one enemy. At first, that is. They're lovers by the end." He winked at Mitch, smirked, and withdrew.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Sloane Mews had gateposts with balls on either end, after which the actual houses were rather a disappointment. It was a small, quiet, cobbled road with a row of low, white-painted buildings on either side. Number 24, where Domestic Bliss was, looked just like all the others. Emma rang at the bell.

  The white-painted door opened to reveal a middle-aged, careworn Filipina wearing a white cap and apron over a black dress.

  "I've got an interview with Mrs. Connelly-Carew," Emma smiled.

  The maid did not smile back. She made a gesture inviting Emma to come in. Emma followed her into a tiny kitchen, which she was surprised to find already inhabited. A polished brunette with long, brown legs, which began in a denim miniskirt and ended in a pair of black ballerina flats, was propping up the sink and talking into a mobile. After rolling uninterested brown eyes over Emma, the brunette continued with her conversation amid much flicking of hair and inspection of perfect nails with the mobile-free hand.

  "New job going well is it, Totty? Must be if you've got all this time to talk on the mobile…"

  Emma, staring at the kitchen's rather grubby floor tiles, blinked. Totty? That Totty? She had a new job? Emma felt relieved for poor Hengist Westonbirt but pitied from the bottom of her heart whatever children Totty was looking after—in the loosest sense of the word—now.

  "The kids are a nightmare? Poor you, Totty. God, you always get the difficult ones, don't you. The mother's mad? The house is horrible? Oh, Totster. But they're taking you to Italy? Well, that's good, isn't it? Pantelleria? Costa Smeralda? Oh…Tuscany." This in a tone of the utmost disgust. "Yawnorama. God, how boring. Poor you, Totty."

  A thought struck Emma. If Hengist Westonbirt was no longer enduring Totty, might he not need someone else? Her, for example?

  "Where am I?" the brunette barked in a gravelly, well-bred voice. She looked scornfully around the kitchen. "Waiting to be interviewed. Daddy's threatened to cut me off if…yeah. I know. You've had that too. Where am I? Theodora's, of course. She sorts us all out, doesn't she? Didn't you get a job here once? What did you say?" The brunette screwed up her face. "Signal's a bit weak…you didn't realise I had childcare training?" She let out a goose-like honk of laughter, so loud it made Emma jump. "Course I don't. Did you? Thought not. Oh, you gotta go? Yeah. OK. Bye, Totty."

  The maid appeared. "Isabella Gough-Chumley-Fylingdales?"

  The brunette gave a curt nod.

  Emma watched them leave. Her mind was churning with what she had just heard. Isabella Gough-Chumley-Fylingdales had not only seemed to be saying that she had no childcare training herself, but Totty hadn't either. Surely that couldn't be t
rue.

  By the time the brunette reappeared, shuffled past with a smirk, and was shown out by the maid, Emma had convinced herself she had somehow misheard.

  Now it was Emma's turn. She straightened her spine, cleared her throat, pulled down her jacket, and followed the maid through the kitchen door into Mrs. Connelly-Carew's inner sanctum.

  This was a small dining room whose walls were crowded with paintings that seemed rather too big for them, and the furniture, while grand, seemed oversized as well. Emma edged past an oval dining room table that almost pressed against the walls.

  A thin woman of about fifty-five was sitting at one end of the desk and looking at her keenly over a pair of gold-rimmed, half-moon glasses on chains. She wore caramel-frosted lipstick, and her brown hair rose in an iron wave from the freckled skin of her forehead.

  "You must be Emma."

  Emma forced herself to rally. What was she worried about? Unlike the last person, her experience and qualifications were excellent.