Fame

by Tilly Bagshawe

  After that I’ll be back in LA for good, five and a half million dollars richer and with enough beautiful girls on tap to push Loxley Hall and Tish Crewe and Sabrina Leon out of my head for good.

  It was always like this on location, Vio reminded himself. Your world shrank to become one place, one small, incestuous group of people. One woman. Two women? No wonder his head was a mess.

  A loud beeping made him look up. It was Tish, driving at a hundred miles an hour, leaning on the horn and spraying gravel everywhere as she skidded to a halt in front of him. Despite himself, Viorel thought how sexy she looked when she was flustered, with her face flushed and strands of hair flying everywhere. Before she’d even turned the engine off, Abi was out of the car, sleek black head down, arms and legs pumping, running into Viorel’s arms and clinging on to him like a monkey.

  ‘Don’t go!’ he sobbed, burying his head in Vio’s open-shirted chest.

  Vio bit his lip. ‘I have to go, mate,’ he said, hugging the child tightly. Before this movie, he’d never thought of himself as remotely paternal. Now he wondered how on earth he was going to cope having his own kids, if it felt this terrible to be leaving someone else’s. ‘We’ll see each other again, though. I promise.’

  ‘When?’ wailed Abel. Tish had got out of the car and walked around to join them. Viorel tried to read her face. There was pain in it for sure. But was she upset because her son was upset or because he was leaving?

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ Vio said to Abel, floundering. ‘Soon, I hope. I’ll have to ask your mother.’

  ‘Mummy likes you,’ announced Abel out of nowhere, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. ‘She acts like she doesn’t, but she does.’

  Viorel raised an eyebrow, but didn’t dare look at Tish. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Abel. ‘Even though you’re extremely irri …’ He frowned, trying to remember the word Tish had used.

  ‘Irritating?’ offered Viorel.

  ‘No, not that.’

  ‘Irresistible?’ Vio tried hopefully.

  ‘Abel,’ Tish did her best to sound authoritative, not easy with her heart beating nineteen to the dozen. ‘Viorel needs to catch his plane.’

  ‘I know!’ Abel grinned as it came back to him. ‘Irresponsible! Even though you’re extremely irresponsible, my mum does actually like you. So please come and visit us.’

  Viorel looked at Tish. If ever there were a chance for them to patch up their quarrel and part as friends, this was it. But both of them were too stubborn to make the first move. Tish gave the briefest of nods and said, ‘Of course. You’re always welcome.’

  ‘See? And when you come you can sleep in my mum’s bed,’ said Abel brightly.

  Tish went puce. ‘Abi! Really, darling, you mustn’t say things like that.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Abel. ‘You’ve got a big bed. There’s a space in it. He can sleep next to you.’

  Viorel grinned. Tish’s blushes had always been one of her most endearing habits. ‘We’ll work it out,’ he said to Abel. ‘Now, I really have to go, kiddo, or I’m gonna miss my plane. I’ll call you from America. After your bedtime, so you’ll have to stay up late. That’s how we irresponsible grown-ups roll.’ Setting Abel down, he got into the car. Watching him go, Tish was mortified by how terrible she felt, how empty. But she pushed the feelings aside.

  ‘Wait!’

  Sabrina, still in costume from an earlier scene, came running down the hill from the set with skirts billowing, holding onto her bonnet like Scarlett O’Hara racing to see Ashley off to war. Above the boned bodice of the dress, her breasts jiggled precariously, as if they might be about to break for freedom at any moment, and her glorious long dark hair streamed behind her like the tail of some dark comet.

  ‘Wait for me!’ She arrived at the car panting, looking as flushed and wanton and desirable as Viorel had ever seen her. She was also smiling broadly, and seemed thrilled to have caught him before he left. And I’m only going for a week, he thought, smugly. She does care after all. Somehow it was doubly gratifying to receive Sabrina’s unexpected show of affection in front of Tish.

  ‘Sorry, angel,’ he said suavely, kissing her on the cheek. ‘It was nice of you to come and see me off but I’ve really gotta fly.’

  ‘Oh, that’s OK,’ said Sabrina. ‘I actually wanted to show all of you.’ Letting go of her bonnet, she held out her left hand, beaming with pride. On her fourth finger, a diamond the size of a small frog glinted dazzlingly in the sunshine.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ she panted, looking triumphantly from Viorel to Tish. ‘Jago proposed to me this morning. We’re getting married!’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ‘Viorel, over here!’

  ‘Vio, Vio, this way!’

  ‘Is it good to be home, Mr Hudson?’

  ‘Very good, thank you.’ Viorel pushed his way through the throng of paparazzi and staring tourists that stood between him and the restaurant. The Malibu Country Mart was a well-known pap-trap, but Vio never really minded being photographed. In fact, after weeks stuck in England, it felt good to be back in the game. Besides, today was definitely a day for a little lazy lunch at the beach. For the first time in months, he’d woken up in his own bed in Venice and to the sort of Saturday morning that only Los Angeles ever really seemed to be able to conjure up: sunny, cloudless and blue skied, with a gentle breeze taking the edge off the eighty-plus-degree heat, and a palpable sense of energy and possibility in the air.

  Carlos from the Bugatti dealership had delivered his beloved Veyron back to the apartment so, after a leisurely breakfast on the terrace gazing out over the Pacific, Vio had taken it for a spin, shooting down the coast almost as far as La Jolla before turning around and flooring it back up Pacific Coast Highway all the way to Malibu, feeling like Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire.

  This is good, he thought, feeling the engine’s immense power at his fingertips, drinking in the sunshine and the acacia trees and the majesty of the swaying palms that lined the familiar streets. This is where I belong. Speeding along the magnificent, winding coast road, he could almost believe that the past summer had been a dream. All of it: Tish and Abel, Dorian and Chrissie, Sabrina and the ludicrous Jago Crewe.

  Although he’d been careful not to show it when he left Loxley yesterday, Sabrina’s shock engagement had annoyed him more than he cared to admit. All the way to the airport, he’d found himself wrestling with an anger that made no sense when he analysed it rationally. Sabrina wanted me, he told himself. I was the one who said no to her. So I can hardly bitch about her finding somebody else. But marriage? To Jago?

  He realized it was embarrassingly egocentric, but ever since Sabrina had got together with Tish’s brother, Viorel had convinced himself it was a ploy to make him jealous. Not an entirely unsuccessful ploy, but a ploy nonetheless. But no one got married to someone just for the attention, not even Sabrina. The idea that she might actually be in love with Jago; that she honestly, genuinely preferred Jago to him, shook Viorel’s ego profoundly.

  Happily, waking up in LA had turned out to be exactly the tonic he needed. Fuck Sabrina Leon. Fuck Tish Crewe. Fuck the lot of them. Loxley’s on-set politics wasn’t real life. This was.

  Sidestepping the last of the persistent photographers, he made his way into Tony’s Taverna. Instantly, every female head turned to look at him. Vio felt his confidence returning like the tide.

  ‘Mr Hudson.’ The maître d’ approached him, smiling warmly. ‘It’s been a long time, my friend. Your usual table?’

  ‘Thank you, Carlos.’

  Vio sat down and took off his sunglasses. The food at Tony’s hadn’t changed in ten years, and he always had the same thing anyway – tiger shrimp salad washed down with an ice-cold glass of retsina – but he reached for the menu on autopilot. As he lifted the stiff, white card, an exquisite blonde at the bar turned and made eye contact. Vio smiled and mouthed Hi. In white cotton hot pants and a tie-dyed vest, her long, tanned legs dangling from the bar stool
like two sticks of toffee, she was a little bit generically Californian, but nonetheless sexy for that. He was about to go over and introduce himself – she was bound to know who he was, but to assume that she did might make him look like an asshole – when he suddenly stopped. A small boy with jet-black hair came running out of the bathroom and wrapped himself around one of the toffee legs. ‘Mommy, Mommy, guess what they have in the boys’ room?’ he breathed excitedly. ‘Magic faucets! You put your hands underneath, and the water shoots out by magic!’

  The girl smiled and bent down to respond to him, but Vio was no longer interested in her. It was the boy. From behind, he looked so like Abi, it was uncanny. All of a sudden a dark cloud descended. The good mood Viorel had so carefully cultivated all morning was gone in a flash, like a candle flame snuffed out in the breeze. In its place, all the churning emotions of yesterday returned: anger, anxiety, unease, guilt. He missed Abel. But it wasn’t just the boy. It was Abi’s mother, too. He’d never had a real friend before. Tish was the first and he’d blown it spectacularly. He pictured her now as he’d last seen her, driving like a bat out of hell through the gates at Loxley, her cheeks flushed and her hair flying everywhere. Objectively, she wasn’t nearly as beautiful as the girl at the bar. But Viorel seemed to have lost his objectivity somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, at least as far as Tish Crewe was concerned.

  ‘May I bring you something to drink, sir?’

  A pretty brunette waitress was hovering at Viorel’s table. Her cleavage was right at his eye level, but he barely looked up.

  ‘Yes. No.’ He frowned, irritated at himself. Two minutes ago he’d known exactly what he wanted. Now, whatever he ordered he knew it would be a glass half empty.

  ‘I’ll leave you to think about it,’ said the girl, smiling sweetly. ‘No rush.’

  Ah, but there is a rush, thought Viorel. I want my life back. He was sick of feeling guilty all the time. His mother had often made him feel like that as a child – inadequate, lesser, disappointing. Tish Crewe seemed to have the same ability, to shame him with a look or a word, to make him feel like a naughty schoolboy when by rights he ought to be feeling like the King of the World. Landing the role of Heathcliff had been the biggest break of Viorel’s career. Even if the film bombed, he would wind up a rich man. So why aren’t I happy?

  ‘Excuse me,’ he called after the brunette. ‘I’ll have a retsina, please.’

  She nodded. ‘One glass of retsina coming up.’

  ‘You know what?’ said Vio grimly. ‘Make it a bottle.’

  He turned to look at the yummy mummy and her son, but they were gone.

  ‘For God’s sake, Jago. You can’t!’

  Tish closed her eyes and pressed her hands to her temples, counting slowly backwards from ten. She was in the kitchen, leaning back against the cool enamel of the switched-off Aga, and her head was pounding with a tension-induced headache that was starting to feel like a brain tumour. Jago was sprawled out in the armchair at the back of the room, with Sabrina coiled in his lap like a beautiful snake. Beautiful and deadly, thought Tish. That girl is pure poison.

  ‘Of course he can,’ Sabrina drawled, yawning dramatically to indicate her boredom at the circuitous debate they’d been having for the past ten minutes. ‘It’s his house. He can do what he likes with it.’

  ‘With respect, Sabrina,’ said Tish frostily, ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Don’t talk to Sabrina like that,’ said Jago pompously.

  ‘Loxley isn’t “his house”,’ Tish told Sabrina, ignoring him. ‘It doesn’t belong to any one person. It’s been left to Jago in trust for the next generation.’

  ‘So you keep saying.’ Sabrina’s green eyes positively shone with mischief. ‘But as the next generation are going to be my kids, then I say where they’re gonna be raised. And it’s not gonna be in this godforsaken corner of nowhere, that’s for sure. It’s gonna be in LA.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Tish exasperated. ‘Then let the tenants move in and keep Loxley on a long-term lease.’

  ‘You’re not listening.’ Sabrina sat forward, like a cobra about to strike. ‘We don’t want to lease it. OK? Read my lips. We want to sell it and use the money to get a fuck-off estate in Beverly Hills. Legally, Jago has every right to sell.’

  ‘And morally, he has no right! Inheriting a house like this is an enormous responsibility.’

  ‘Yeah, Jago’s responsibility,’ said Sabrina. ‘Not yours.’

  Tish looked to her brother for support. Neglecting his responsibilities at Loxley was one thing, but blatantly cashing in on his birthright, on hundreds of years of Crewe family history? That was a new low, even for Jago. A month ago, not even he would have contemplated selling their ancestral home. But already Sabrina’s pernicious influence had changed him for the worse. Perched on top of him now in a pair of skintight black Fendi suede trousers and a ribbed Gucci vest, she looked as tiny and fragile as a nymph. Yet it was crystal clear who called the shots in the relationship. If Sabrina had told him to douse himself in kerosene and light a match, Jago wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. It was hopeless.

  Too exhausted to talk any more, Tish left the room. Thank God Abel was out on the farm with Bill Connelly, so she could retreat to her bedroom and down some Nurofen in peace. If possible, Abel was worrying her even more than Jago. Since Viorel’s departure a few days ago, he’d been so down that Tish hadn’t been able to interest him in anything. So desperate was she to cheer him up, she’d even offered to play World of Warcraft with him on the office computer, a game that he had played with Viorel for hours. Tish loathed computer games, especially violent ones but, thanks to Vio, her son was utterly hooked. But even this concession had been met by the same, monotone ‘no thanks’ that Abel had given to every proffered treat since Viorel left, from chocolate ice cream at breakfast, to a trip into Castleton arcade to win some new Dinosaur King cards. When Bill had offered to take him for the day, Tish was appalled at how relieved and grateful she felt.

  She’d reached the foot of the stairs when Dorian came through the front door. In a plain white T-shirt and khaki shorts, he looked well, Tish thought, tanned from so much outdoor filming and visibly happier now that his return home to Romania was at hand.

  ‘Have you seen Sabrina?’ he asked, looking around the hall as if she might be hiding behind the umbrella stand or crouched under the stairwell. ‘She’s late for wardrobe, again.’

  ‘She’s in the kitchen.’ Tish sighed.

  ‘Everything OK?’ asked Dorian, picking up the weariness in her voice.

  ‘Not really.’ She told him about Sabrina and Jago’s latest bombshell, their plan to put Loxley on the market. ‘I don’t know how serious they are. A few days ago, Sabrina was banging on about how great it was going to be to be mistress of Loxley, and how she was going to rip out all the original features and spray-paint the place gold or some such rubbish. Maybe this is just her latest attempt to wind me up.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Dorian.

  ‘Well, if it is, it’s working,’ said Tish. ‘On a purely practical level, if Jago doesn’t sign the tenancy agreement this week, we’ll lose the renters I lined up, even if he later changes his mind about a sale. Which, please God, he will.’ She closed her eyes again as the throbbing returned. ‘It’s not that easy, you know, finding a family willing to take on an estate this size. And I can’t keep coming back to fix Jago’s messes. I have to get back to Curcubeu, to the kids. I have a life of my own.’

  Dorian nodded understandingly. ‘Sabrina’s in the kitchen, you say?’

  Tish nodded wearily.

  ‘OK. Let me see what I can do.’

  Sabrina and Jago were kissing with all the passionate intensity of a couple of teenagers. Sabrina had turned around in the chair and was straddling Jago, who had slid both hands up underneath her vest, and whose lips were clamped over hers as if he were trying to revive her after a near drowning. With their perfect bodies entwined and their tangled dark hair flyin
g everywhere like wildly spun silk, they looked like one creature, a living erotic sculpture.

  Dorian coughed awkwardly. ‘Sabrina.’

  Nothing. The writhing continued.

  ‘Sabrina,’ he said more loudly. This time she heard him, turning around and disengaging herself from Jago with a half-irritated, half-embarrassed look on her face.

  ‘You were due in wardrobe fifteen minutes ago,’ said Dorian. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Not much, now that you’re here,’ grumbled Jago. Grabbing Sabrina’s hand, he murmured, ‘Do you really have to work, darling?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dorian answered for her, ‘she does. And I don’t appreciate having to leave the set to come and find her and remind her of that fact. Would you give us a minute?’

  Jago looked disgruntled, but left them to it.

  Once he’d gone, Dorian closed the door and stood with his back against it.

  ‘What the hell are you playing at?’

  Sabrina frowned, straightening her hair and tying it back in a ponytail.

  ‘What do you mean? I’m a few minutes late for wardrobe. Jesus. It’s hardly the crime of the century.’

  ‘I’m not talking about that,’ said Dorian. ‘I’m talking about you and Jago.’

  ‘What about me and Jago?’ said Sabrina defensively. ‘It’s not complicated. We’re in love.’

  ‘Right, and I’m Danny La Rue,’ said Dorian bluntly.

  Sabrina flushed indignantly. ‘We are,’ she insisted. ‘You know what, whatever. I don’t have to defend myself to you.’

  Dorian looked at her, like a scientist studying a puzzling specimen. After a few moments, he said, ‘At first, I thought it was just Viorel you were trying to hurt. But now I get the feeling that this charade’s for Tish’s benefit too. Am I right?’