Fame

by Tilly Bagshawe

  ‘I can’t marry you,’ she said, her voice as soft and kind as she could make it. ‘I know there’s no hope for me and Viorel. If I didn’t know that for sure, I wouldn’t have …’ She left the sentence hanging.

  ‘I know,’ said Dorian quietly.

  ‘But that doesn’t change the fact that I still love him. I’m sorry.’

  As she said the words, she thought: What am I sorry for, exactly? That it’s over for me and Vio? Or that I’ve just rejected an offer of marriage from one of the most wonderful men in the world? The truth was that there had always been something between her and Dorian. That night when he’d defended her outside the pub at Loxley and they’d ended up having a screaming row; or after he bailed her out of a police cell in Manchester and they’d shared that totally unexpected kiss; or in Romania, when he’d confided in her about the end of his marriage. There was a spark between them, a connection that ran deeper than friendship or even than the notoriously volatile actress/director relationship. She just wasn’t prepared to have it verbalized here, now, in hospital, only days after Viorel had left her. What else could she say but ‘no’?

  Sabrina’s answer wasn’t what Dorian wanted to hear. But he could hardly claim to be surprised. Even if she weren’t still obsessed with Hudson, what reason on earth would a girl like that – a world-class beauty with her whole life ahead of her – have to be interested in an ageing, past-his-prime retread like him? How foolish must he have sounded, proposing out of the blue like that?

  ‘No,’ he said, embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. It was foolish of me.’

  ‘Not foolish,’ said Sabrina truthfully. ‘I’m flattered.’

  ‘Look, can we just forget this?’ said Dorian gruffly. ‘Let’s talk about something else.’

  ‘OK.’ For the first time since she’d opened her eyes that morning, Sabrina smiled. ‘Let’s talk about our strategy then.’

  ‘Strategy?’ Dorian raised an eyebrow.

  ‘For the Oscars,’ said Sabrina impatiently. ‘I’d have gotten Best Actress for sure if I’d done the decent thing and died.’

  ‘Jesus, Sabrina, don’t say that!’

  ‘Why not? It’s true. But now that I’ve pulled through, we’re gonna have to fight for it.’

  ‘All you need to be fighting for is your strength,’ said Dorian soberly, marvelling for the thousandth time at Sabrina’s apparently limitless ambition. Even with a broken heart, and having just emerged from a coma, she was thinking about her next career move.

  ‘Screw that,’ said Sabrina robustly. ‘Harry Greene fucked your wife. Then he fucked your Sony deal. Are you really gonna sit back and let him fuck your Oscar chances too?’

  Dorian smiled. ‘Well, when you put it like that …’

  ‘Great,’ Sabrina grinned. ‘So we’re agreed. No more weeping and gnashing of teeth. Let’s annihilate the slimy little fucker.’

  Dorian didn’t think he had ever loved her more.

  Two weeks later, Viorel Hudson was trying to get out of his car in Beverly Hills when he accidentally opened the driver’s door into a paparazzo’s face, knocking the man into the gutter.

  ‘Fuck you!’ the photographer snarled, clutching his nose, which was spurting blood like a faucet. ‘I’ll sue you for assault, asshole.’

  ‘Good luck with that,’ drawled Viorel, stepping over the injured man whilst weaving his way through a crowd of his compatriots. ‘Perhaps your lawyer would let me know where I can send the bill for my car? I think you may have scratched the bodywork.’

  He’d decided a few weeks ago that if people were going to paint him as a villain, he might as well live up to his new, dastardly reputation. They want a heartless bastard? I’ll give them a heartless bastard. Sabrina had left hospital a few days ago and given a press conference in which she completely exonerated him of any wrongdoing, but it had made no difference. ‘BRAVE SABRINA FORGIVES EX’, ran the headlines. ‘HUDSON SHAMED BY LEON’S COMPASSION.’ Viorel had broken the heart of the nation’s on-again sweetheart. Sabrina might be prepared to forgive him. But nobody else was.

  As a result, Viorel had emerged from his self-imposed hiding and begun to live his life in public again, eating out at well-known restaurants, unashamedly attending industry parties in the lead-up to the Oscars, and generally behaving like a man who didn’t care that half of America seemed to view him as on a par with Saddam Hussein. Perfecting his best, Jeremy Irons, villainous British accent, he deliberately taunted the hostile media, ignoring photographers and delivering as many pithy, ironic one-liners as he could think of to every earnestly condemnatory journalist who approached him. In private, he had spoken to Sabrina twice since she’d recovered from her overdose. Neither of them were easy conversations, but Viorel was happy that she sounded healthy and focused on work. She was staying at the private guesthouse on Ed Steiner’s property. He’d offered to visit her there to talk things through in person, but she’d declined.

  ‘Truly, I can’t face seeing you. Not yet,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘I’ve told Dorian I’m not up to doing promotion yet, at least not jointly.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Vio wryly. ‘Nobody wants me anywhere near the promotional events. I’d be about as popular as Hitler at a Bar Mitzvah.’

  ‘Yeah. I’m sorry about that,’ said Sabrina.

  ‘Not your fault, angel.’

  ‘It’ll pass. You’ll be yesterday’s news before you know it.’

  Viorel laughed. ‘Thanks a lot!’

  ‘Come on, you know what I mean. I’ve been there, remember? Maybe you should try taking some pills? It worked for me.’

  ‘Don’t joke,’ said Vio angrily. He cared about Sabrina far, far more than people knew, or cared to admit. But, stubborn to the end, he was damned if he was going to show it to the press who were so determined to destroy him.

  A pretty, peroxide blonde in a vintage denim miniskirt and cleavage-bearing, Gucci silk shirt thrust herself in front of Vio as he crossed the street.

  ‘Is it true you’re quitting Hollywood and moving back to England?’

  ‘No,’ snapped Vio. ‘It isn’t. It’s utter crap, but I suspect you’ll print it anyway.’

  Ironically, he found he’d been thinking about England a lot lately. He’d always adored LA. In the last six years he couldn’t bring to mind a single occasion on which he’d felt homesick. But recently the allure of Hollywood’s bright lights had soured, even for him. Cooped up alone in his apartment under self-imposed house arrest, his mind kept returning to Abel and Tish, to Loxley in all its glorious tranquillity, to Tish’s maddening, self-righteous, pull-your-socks-up attitude and clipped, upper-class tones, which had irked him so much last summer, but which now seemed to call to him with all the nostalgic pull of a sea siren’s song.

  ‘Will you be going to the Academy Awards with the rest of the Wuthering Heights cast?’ The peroxide girl was no sea siren. Her voice was nasal and grating, the aural equivalent of lemon juice in the eyes. ‘How do you feel about seeing Sabrina again?’ She smelled even worse than she sounded. Her perfume – Kai – was so strong that Vio felt as if he’d walked into a freshly air-sprayed loo.

  ‘I’ll support the movie in whatever way I’m asked,’ he said curtly. ‘And I couldn’t care less about seeing Sabrina again.’ Cue horrified gasps from the passers-by in earshot. ‘Now be a good girl and fuck off, would you? I’m busy.’

  Pushing past the girl as she gleefully wrote down his last gift of a quote, Viorel hurried into the nearest store. Talk about being hounded. That was truly what the paps were like, a pack of bloodthirsty dogs intent on ripping the flesh from his body. It was a relief when the gold-plated door of Louis Vuitton swished closed behind him, and he found himself on the cool, air-conditioned side of the tinted glass storefront windows, alone at last.

  Or so he thought.

  ‘Well, well. This is a surprise. Mr Viorel Hudson, as I live and breathe.’

  Chrissie Rasmirez stepped out from behind a row of fur coats and fixed him wit
h a coquettish smile. Vio’s first thought was: Christ, she looks good. Dating Harry Greene obviously agreed with her. With her hair newly cut and dyed a softer shade of honey blonde, and her skin glowing like a teenager’s, she looked ten years younger than when he’d last seen her in Romania. The red Hervé Léger minidress she was wearing was probably a bit too young for her, but with her taut size-two figure she managed to pull it off.

  ‘Are you shopping or hiding?’ She gestured towards the photographers lined up outside the shop window like a firing squad.

  ‘Neither,’ said Viorel. He was in no mood to make small talk with Dorian’s bitch of an ex.

  ‘Well, it must be one or the other,’ said Chrissie, either missing his froideur or ignoring it. ‘Perhaps you’re looking for a peace offering for poor little Sabrina? If that’s the case, I can recommend the mink stole. A very comforting fur, mink, I always think.’

  Viorel looked at her, struggling to think of anything to say. Every time he saw Chrissie he felt guilty about Dorian, although their afternoon of lovemaking at Loxley felt like a lifetime ago now. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said brusquely. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Wait, don’t be like that,’ Chrissie called after him. ‘I’d like to talk to you.’ There was genuine pleading in her voice. Reluctantly, Viorel turned around.

  ‘How’s Dorian? I know the two of you must be seeing a lot of each other, what with the Oscars coming up and everything.’

  ‘He’s fine,’ said Viorel frostily. ‘Very good in fact,’ he couldn’t resist adding. ‘Excited about the movie’s chances. We all are.’

  ‘I wouldn’t get too excited if I were you,’ said Chrissie, running her fingers lovingly over a full-length fox-fur coat. ‘Celeste is odds-on to sweep the board.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Vio. ‘What do you care about Dorian anyway? You’ve clearly moved on.’

  Chrissie pouted. ‘We were together for almost twenty years, you know. I still care.’

  Yeah, right, thought Vio. You want to keep your options open in case he gets that Oscar after all, or Harry leaves you for a younger model.

  ‘I read that he’d been at Sabrina’s bedside for weeks like a lovesick puppy,’ Chrissie said archly. ‘I always knew there was something going on between those two, though of course he denied it.’

  Viorel laughed. Her hypocrisy was truly stunning.

  ‘There’s nothing going on. There never was. Sabrina’s young enough to be his daughter.’

  Chrissie laughed loudly. ‘Oh, darling, please. This is LA!’

  ‘Look,’ said Viorel, ‘Dorian’s a friend of mine, OK? He’s doing well, and he’ll keep doing well if you just stay the hell out of his life. Haven’t you done enough damage?’

  The simpering smile died on Chrissie’s lips. ‘Me?’ she hissed. ‘What about you? What kind of friend sleeps with someone’s wife behind their back? Not to mention your cruelty to poor Sabrina. You don’t care who you hurt, so don’t you dare presume to judge me.’

  ‘Leave Sabrina out of it,’ said Vio, angry because he knew Chrissie’s accusations were justified. ‘And you know what, leave me out of it too. If you want to know how Dorian is, ask him yourself. Goodbye, Chrissie.’

  He stormed out of the store. This time he didn’t look back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Tish knelt down and held out her arms as the little boy staggered unsteadily towards her.

  ‘Bravo!’ she smiled encouragingly. ‘Bravo, Sile!’

  The two-year-old beamed. He’d been born with clubbed feet, and had undergone a series of painful operations to correct them. This morning, after months of physio, he was walking unaided for the first time across the brightly carpeted playroom at Curcubeu, toddling proudly into Tish’s arms as the other children looked on, clapping and cheering.

  ‘You did it!’ Tish hugged him, holding him up in the air and tickling him till he could hardly breathe for laughter. It was moments like these that made it all worthwhile. I have to remember that, she told herself. I have to remember why I’m here.

  It wasn’t easy to keep one’s spirits up in Oradea in February. The cold was so bitter, so biting, one’s limbs seemed to be constantly aching, the same ache that shot through your skull when you bit into a too-cold ice cream. And although the snow undoubtedly made the drab concrete streets of the city more picturesque, covering the communist bleakness with a blanket of dazzling white, it also clogged up the roads, froze the pipes and mounted up in endless drifts outside Curcubeu, drifts which had to be shovelled away by hand on an almost hourly basis. The central heating at Tish’s children’s home had broken down twice since Christmas, and in her apartment she, Abi and Lydia spent their evenings huddled around two fan heaters and went to sleep in bedsocks and fingerless gloves.

  The freezing weather was not the only thing bringing Tish down. Like the rest of the world, she had followed the ‘Curse of Wuthering Heights’ drama on television and in the papers, from the movie’s out-of-the-blue Oscar nominations, to Sabrina and Viorel’s shocking split, and of course Sabrina’s suicide scare. Although they’d never seen eye to eye, Tish felt awful for Sabrina. She’d had a small taste of heartbreak herself last year, over Michel, and could imagine the anguish the poor girl must have felt to do something so terrible. Part of her wanted to call when she heard the news, to send her good wishes at least. But since she’d moved back to Romania, Tish had had no contact at all with any of the LA contingent, not even Dorian, who’d been hounding her with calls at Loxley. That period in her life, last summer and the filming back in England, almost felt like a dream now. And though at times she felt wistful or nostalgic for it, she told herself that the severing of those ties was for the best. Particularly for Abel, whose fondness for Viorel Hudson had begun to reach dangerous proportions. The last thing Tish’s son needed was any more disruption in his life, in the form of an unreliable, on/off father figure. No. It was time to move on. Clearly Viorel thought so too, or he would not have stopped calling.

  Despite the radio silence, or perhaps because of it, Tish often found herself wondering about Viorel, and how he was dealing with all the horrible comments written about him in the press, after Sabrina’s highly public overdose. Badly, she suspected. Viorel bucked against criticism, even when he knew it was fair. Blaming him for Sabrina’s suicide attempt, Tish suspected, was unfair, or at the very least grossly oversimplified. She remembered well her last conversation with Vio on the phone at Loxley, when he’d accused her of selfishness for bringing Abel back to Romania. Sometimes, seeing her son’s cold breath hanging in the air as he tried to do his homework in their freezing apartment, his words came back to her. It troubled her. The truth was, everything about Viorel Hudson troubled her. She’d be glad when the Oscars were over and the stories about him and Sabrina ran out of steam. Perhaps then she would finally escape him, and draw a line under that part of her life for good?

  Once she’d handed Sile back to his carer and finished her rounds checking on the other children, Tish got into her trusty (or should that be ‘rusty’?) Fiat and headed back into the city. More in hope than expectation, she turned the fan heater up to full blast as she bumped along the dirt roads out of Tinka. A faint whisper of heat seeped through the ventilation slats, accompanied by a noise like a plane taking off. Shivering, Tish reached across to the passenger seat and pulled a dirty green fleece blanket over her knees. By the time she arrived at the children’s hospital, she was so cold the tips of her fingers were blue and her nose glowed red like an old drunk’s.

  ‘I thought you weren’t coming.’ Michel Henri met her at the fourth-floor elevator. In jeans and an open-necked cornflower blue shirt – it was arctic outside but inside the hospital the wards were kept on perma-roast – he looked as handsome and unruffled as ever, but Tish no longer felt her pulse quicken painfully at the sight of him. She couldn’t pinpoint when, exactly, her feelings for Michel had changed. But she was hugely relieved that they had. The only thing more satisfying than falling in love, she
reflected, is falling out of it.

  ‘Sorry,’ she panted, peeling off the top three layers of her clothing. ‘The roads were lethal.’

  ‘Your car’s lethal,’ chided Michel. He worried about her. Not just about her physical safety, but about her unhappiness, the distance that he’d seen in her eyes ever since she came back from England. Tish wasn’t happy in Romania any more, not the way she used to be. ‘Couldn’t you have used some of your movie money to buy something with a few more mod cons? Like a functioning engine, for example?’

  Tish laughed. ‘Sadly, no. That money was spent before it was earned.’

  ‘On your brother’s house.’

  ‘On the family house,’ Tish corrected. ‘Besides, I like my car.’

  ‘It’s a deathtrap,’ said Michel. ‘You should ask your friend Viorel Hudson to buy you a new one. He probably has dry-cleaning bills bigger than the cost of a new Punto.’

  ‘My car’s fine,’ said Tish, suddenly keen to change the subject. They strode down the corridor towards the Critical Care unit. ‘How’s Fleur? Any cravings yet?’

  Michel grinned. ‘Other than for me, you mean? Non.’

  His fiancée, the gorgeous Canal Plus reporter, was four months pregnant, and Michel couldn’t hide his delight. Tish was delighted for him.

  ‘She’s moody though, my God,’ Michel complained. ‘Last weekend my flight into Paris landed twenty minutes late. She practically clawed my eyes out when I got back to the apartment.’

  ‘You would be late for your own funeral,’ Tish teased him.

  ‘Yes, but this wasn’t my fault!’ said Michel. ‘Plus, she refuses to even discuss the wedding. She thinks she looks fat.’ Pulling out his mobile phone, he showed Tish a picture of a slender, smiling woman in tight jeans pointing at a barely perceptible rounding of her belly.

  ‘She’s stunning,’ said Tish, truthfully.

  ‘I know. I’ve told her a hundred times. I get a bigger gut than that after a couple of beers, but she won’t listen. What is it with you women?’ He threw his hands up in the air dramatically. ‘Crazy, all of you.’