Rich Again

by Anna Maxted

  ‘So … they didn’t want to speak to me … as La-La?’

  ‘Grandmother, Mummy. Just say it. No.’

  ‘Fair enough. Although I do find it slightly odd. After all, I am the story, one would think, having just been freed after five years of wrongful imprisonment, whereas you give an exclusive insight into your “private” life almost every week.’

  ‘I think I might know why—’

  ‘Hello, hello, evening all! What’s this, a mothers’ meeting! Angel, I’ve been looking for you all over. They’re going to kick off with “Money, Money, Money”.’

  Timmy looked dashing in his dinner jacket; the slick floppy hair was so stylish and rat pack. These rich toffs and their model wives made fine-looking stock. Emily didn’t deserve him, spoilt little cow. ‘Oh well, darling, they’re playing your tune, you should go, don’t mind us.’ It was too much. What a brat, stealing the limelight. Any other night, she wouldn’t have minded, but it was her party, her turn to shine.

  ‘Actually, maybe you should wait, Emily, just a minute until I—’

  ‘JESUS, Claudia, what the fuck is it? You’re like a mosquito, fucking whining in my ear. Just say, already, and put us out of our misery!’ Innocence glared at Claudia. Emily also paused, eyebrow raised, hand on slender hip. She looked stunning in a pale pink Vera Wang top, white Prada micro-shorts and gold Christian Louboutin sandals with platinum heels. Timmy looked down his aquiline nose at his sister-in-law.

  Claudia ducked her head, and slowly opened her briefcase.

  ‘What the fuck have you got in there, a bomb?’

  ‘Not exactly, but it’s … nearly as bad—No, Innocence, relax … Well, don’t relax, but … Timmy, I think you must know what this is about. The News of the World are going to run with it tomorrow, and I think they’ve tipped off the Post. In fact I’m surprised that you haven’t been called by reporters.’

  Innocence looked at her son-in-law. He seemed about to puke.

  ‘As you know, Claudia, it is a family rule’ – he smiled at his wife, his expression strained, and grabbed her hand -‘it is a family rule that we turn off our mobiles at five p.m. on a Saturday. Nothing is so important that it can’t wait till Monday morning, and if it’s to do with the children, then Nanny can send Jonny, the under-butler, in a car. If it’s work, however, she knows not to disturb us. As a matter of fact, I have received a number of … curious messages from reporters but I don’t speak to any member of the fourth estate unless the conversation has been officially sanctioned by Emily’s PR.’

  Something was definitely up. His voice had a strange half-hysterical lilt. He was terrified, panicking.

  ‘Well, Timmy, I … I know people—’

  ‘If you know people, Claudia, why don’t you shut them up? Why don’t you make them fucking go away? This is outrageous. I have instructed my lawyers and they are going to sue—’

  ‘Timmy, you can’t sue a paper for printing the truth. They have photos. They have a lot of photos. Photos from six years ago, on that island; photos from last week, on Hampstead Heath. And if you don’t mind me saying, Tim, I find it all pretty low – pretty disgusting when you have a wife and a family. You know, the papers even have a code name for you. They call you “Duke of York”.’

  ‘Hello! Hello? Am I, like, invisible here? What the hell is going on? Can someone please, like, put me in the loop?’

  “‘Duke of York”? I’m not a Duke, I’m an Earl! Or I will be. What the dickens is that supposed to mean?’

  Innocence was starting to feel odd. She was getting that oh-my-God-no feeling. It began with a cold, leaden lump in your stomach, crawled its icy fingers up the length of your spine, and settled with a clammy, choking I-can’t-breathe sensation around your neck. She cleared her throat. ‘Viscount,’ she said, and she heard the high, panicked note in her own voice. ‘Whatever is going on? Have you been less than saintly? Have you done something ghastly? Put your name to an anti-hunting bill, voted for the Liberal Democrats? What is it, exactly, my dear, that you are keeping from us?’

  Slowly, Claudia opened the briefcase. Her hands were trembling, and a sheaf of grainy black and white photographs slipped on to the floor.

  They all looked. They all saw.

  Emily gasped.

  No one spoke.

  And then, swiftly, Emily snatched up a photograph. It showed her husband, gripping a tree, an ecstasy on his face, being ridden by some bloke in a woolly hat.

  “‘Oh, the Grand Old Duke of York,”’ said Emily in a voice as clear as a church bell. “‘He had ten thousand men …”’ She dropped the photograph. ‘I’m going now. I’m going … away. If the papers want a comment, my comment is … I am filing for divorce.’

  Innocence felt a tingle. It started in her left arm and travelled all the way down to the tips of her fingers. She balled her hand into a fist. ‘Timmy?’

  ‘Yes?’

  Now the itch was gone, replaced by an ache. Tim was clutching his nose in both hands. Blood dripped from between his fingers.

  ‘Thank you, Mother,’ whispered Emily. ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Claudia. ‘I just … wanted to warn you.’

  ‘Great … sure … thanks a lot.’ Emily paused. ‘Claudia, can I ask, are you, like, autistic, or just retarded?’ She turned to Innocence. ‘Mummy. Tell Nanny that I’ll … send for her and the children … in, like, a week. I don’t want them to be around me if I’m … not going to be myself.’

  She turned to her husband. ‘Know this. I loved you. The castle was a bonus. Maybe, one day, I will be able to forgive that you betrayed me, in the worst, the grossest way. I’m not talking about gay sex, I am talking about all the bullshit, all the lies, the deceit. Your whole life with me was a cowardly pretence. One day, perhaps, I will be able to forgive you for all of that. But as long as I live and breathe, I will never, ever forgive you for betraying our children. I hate you. You have ruined my life, and I hope you rot.’

  ‘Emily!’ cried Tim. ‘Wait!’

  Emily half turned.

  ‘Please. Please don’t go. I can still offer you … what you want. I can provide security.’

  Emily’s look could have melted paint off a wall. ‘Security?’ she said. ‘You moron. I could get security in a fucking prison. I’m not some doll from the fifties, you prat. You’re not rescuing me from a humdrum life of filing and fetching coffee. I’m now, honey, I’m today, I’m tomorrow, and girls like me don’t settle for a shit life with an arsehole in return for not having to do paperwork. We want more for ourselves than a shitty pair of earrings at Christmas along with a new Dyson from a man who doesn’t care. We don’t shut up and smile while you fuck around because we can’t pay the phone bill ourselves! We’ll work in a shop and like it better. We want to be honest, look our kids in the eye. You can’t buy our silence; you can’t pay us to sign up to your crap idea of what we deserve. Women like me are wise to that, you fucking fuck, we want money, and love; we want the whole fucking Happy Package, and we’ll get it ourselves because we are smart and hot and some loser with a few quid is not our only hope, you … fool.’ Emily gave a strangled sob, and fled the room.

  Innocence lit a cigarette. ‘Get.’

  Timmy and Claudia bolted.

  Abruptly, Innocence sat on the floor. Never, in a million years, would she have done this in ordinary circumstances, in a Dior gown.

  She stared unseeing at the smouldering fag. A blob of ash fell on the shimmery pink skirt. When she brushed it, it left a grey smear. Innocence sighed and shook her head. Jack and the East Coast heiress were off the hook – her libido was nil. ‘Jesus,’ she muttered. ‘Life sucks.’

  7,000 FEET ABOVE PHOENIX, ARIZONA, MARCH 2005

  Mark, Personal Assistant to Mr Ethan Summers

  ‘Pull harder, Mark! They’ve almost got the control zone!’

  He struggled to breathe – G-force was crushing his chest, his ribs were powder in there – and pulled back on the j
oystick in a tight turn. The fighter jet wheeled at a 90-degree angle and he felt the blood sucked from his head. Don’t black out, don’t black out, tense your legs, tense your stomach – resist, goddammit!

  ‘Now go. Go up to get him!’

  The plane juddered against the fierce blue sky, and as his heart hammered out of control, he caught sight of the enemy arcing to his right. ‘We have visual contact.’ He gritted his teeth and squeezed the trigger. The cockpit rang loud with the clatter of machine-gun fire and smoke flared from the other plane. ‘He’s hit! You got him, soldier! We won!’

  Mark’s entire body pulsed with triumph, or perhaps he was trembling all over. The high was electrifying. It was the coolest, most terrifying thing he’d ever done. That knife-edge manoeuvre his instructor had put him in – he was Maverick. It was totally awesome. He, Mark, had won a dogfight. It was incredible, even the bit when he’d flown upside down at 250 m.p.h. and his head had become a cannonball, its great weight threatening to snap his spine in two like a breadstick. He had won, he had won, he had – oh, shit.

  ‘Can we go again, Skip?’ said Mark. ‘And this time we need to lose.’

  ‘Nice try, friend,’ said Ethan, taking off his Ray-Ban Aviators with a grin and punching Mark on the shoulder. ‘But don’t mess with the best!’

  Mark beamed as Ethan’s co-pilot shook his hand and said, stuttering slightly, ‘I’d fly with you any time, Mr Summers.’ He watched, unsurprised, as the real life Top Gun – a man who had shot four enemy aircraft from the skies over Iraq – blushed and added, ‘I’m sure you hear this all the time, but we’re big, big fans of your work, Mr Summers. Would you … would you be so kind as to sign a hello to my wife?’

  Ethan was happy, so Mark was happy. Job done. In the last month, they had taken an Advanced Air Combat class, hunted anaconda in a Brazilian swamp, gone bull-riding in Montana and fired the gun of a Chieftain tank. Not to say that Ethan wasn’t content riding the crystal waves in Malibu alongside Cameron and Matthew, but most of the time he wanted his adrenalin supersized. He thrived on real danger, and it was Mark’s role, therefore, to provide it.

  Mark liked to think that so far he had done a pretty good job.

  He also spent a good half of his life scared out of his wits. As they flew back to Burbank in the private helicopter, his legs still felt shaky and the sweat poured off him. The heat of the desert was insane; it was like trying to breathe in an oven but somehow Ethan remained suave and cool while Mark boiled up like a potato. But, man, despite the terror, what a thrill! He didn’t love the helicopter – seat-of-your-pants way to fly – but after the fighter jet, it was a sedate old lady.

  He loved telling the little people what he did for a living: Chief Personal Assistant to Mr Ethan Summers. You watched their eyes bulge and their mouths drop open with awe. And quite right. He, Mark, was the gatekeeper; he was the one who woke one of the biggest stars in Hollywood with a triple espresso in a Versace mug each morning; he was the one who ranked each call – consequently, he was the one who got his ass kissed and a fucking load of ‘swag’ (gifts, baby, gifts) because he was the key, he had the power. He had the ear of the King, and if anyone wanted anything from Mr Ethan Summers, they had to go through Mark and they knew it.

  All the little people were jealous of the Hollywood celebrity lifestyle, and with good cause. If they only knew!

  They had left the Malibu beachfront villa at three a.m. Ethan had had a quick thrash in the pool, eaten a couple of egg-white and steamed vegetable burritos, and they’d jumped in the 1963 Ferrari 250 GT Berlinetta Lusso to get to the airport. It was a second-hand motor with 56,000 miles on the clock, but you’d forgive a car anything when its previous owner was Steve McQueen.

  Marky didn’t swim, but when he had a moment, he loved to sit in the hot tub or on the balcony and gaze at the pool boy’s butt, or, indeed, the calm blue of the Pacific, which glittered in the sunshine beyond the pristine lawns.

  It was a while, however, since he’d had a moment. There was a lot of admin and he didn’t trust anyone else. Of course, Ethan had his people – the agent, the publicists, the lawyers, the manager – but Marky was his buddy, his fixer, his closest friend.

  Mark knew the real Ethan, a rare privilege that made him proud. He admired Ethan for retaining a degree of mystique, as in the old days. Could you imagine Cary Grant revealing to a tabloid what he ate for breakfast? None of your damn business! Mark was a fan of the old-fashioned form of showbiz : when I play a role, it’s better that you don’t know who I am.

  It was a shame that there were certain journalists who disagreed with this sentiment, but Ethan’s crack legal team were slick, omniscient and unforgiving. Those who attempted to make a buck by spreading false and defamatory slurs were crushed like ants. Ethan valued his privacy. And it was an attitude that obviously worked: the Oscar win had worked its magic. The requests for meetings, the forests of scripts, the salutations were still pouring in, weeks later. Mark had arranged for most of the bouquets to be sent to Cedars-Sinai, along with the chocolate cupcakes and the exotic fruit baskets. The silver Mercedes, the Breitling watch, the Luxuriator diamond frames, the 1982 Cheval Blanc, the platinum jewellery, the Marc Jacobs and Paul Smith suits, the LCD screens: all the free shit would be auctioned off and proceeds sent to St Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

  Ethan wasn’t like other, inferior stars. Mark’s lip curled as he recalled the sight of the anal one from Mates pawing through a goody bag at Sundance. Ethan did not accept freebies. He had integrity and he liked what he liked: he didn’t ‘need the free shit’. Oscars night itself was always a scream. Mark loved to hear the juice they didn’t report: John’s face, tight as a drum; Vince, get some fucking lipo, show some respect; that kid from the Hobbit malarkey, how gay?; Jessica, popular girl, ick; and of course he had marvelled at Ethan’s superb acceptance speech for best actor. Wait, he could remember it, word for word:

  ‘When I was a kid the only time I saw movies was when I waited for the bus in front of the store window. It wasn’t in my realm of reality to imagine that I could one day act in a movie, and to receive this honour tonight humbles me, reminds me of where I came from – basically, nowhere – and tells me that any kid, no matter how poor or disadvantaged, can make his or her dream come true.’

  Mark secretly thought it a shame that Ethan was at a career stage where he could skip red-carpet events unrelated to his own work – Mark adored red-carpet events – but as Ethan had confided to Vanity Fair in a rare interview, ‘You always feel like you’re having your ass kissed or you’re having to kiss ass.’ Cute, that last bit, as if Ethan objected to having his ass kissed!

  But he was honourable. He did not take anyone’s free shit. He didn’t like to owe people. He was about the only star who shunned the ‘hospitality suites’ that sprang up in LA in every fabulous hotel or salon in the pre-Oscars week. He loathed the devil’s pact of grabbing products and treatments for free – from getting your arse sandpapered to your new porcelain fucking teeth – then being forced to pose, shamefully exhibiting your greed, for the vampires at InStyle or People magazine. He liked everything to be square. He found it more satisfactory to pay for things himself. Oh, and he could. You knew a man was fuck-off rich when he lived on the scraped-off top of a mountain. The 23,000-square-foot, Hollywood Hills mansion was beyond cool. It had taken nine years of hard graft to reach this point, but Ethan had made good choices.

  Mark appreciated it. He busied around that place like a mother duck around its nest – he couldn’t have been more proud had he laid every brick himself!

  The vast three-million-dollar trophy pool was finally complete. It had taken two years. The pool had a waterfall, and a garage-door-sized water screen dense enough for a movie to be projected on to it. At the end of the pool stood a four-million-dollar sculpture – Ethan was such a culture vulture, unlike some of these vapid Americans. It was … Oh, what was it? A stunning work by Arno Breker, The Wounded, of a man clutching his head in pain.
It was, as a Californian might say, like totally deep.

  Ethan’s first pool party last Saturday, a week after the Oscars, had blown people away. It was easily better than one of Elton’s bashes, always banging on about AIDS. Couldn’t people enjoy themselves for five minutes without being forced to feel guilty? And it totally outclassed the Vanity Fair do – all they did was chuck out free cigarettes! Even the studio’s Oscar party: goldfish tanks overhead that leaked and short-circuited the lights? Please! A step away from painted silver girls in cages pretending to be tigers! Ethan’s party was old-school class. The food was gorgeous, delicious, simple: caviar, roasted veal, Maine lobster. The dessert: Pinkberry. Mark liked the green-tea flavour; Ethan preferred vanilla: the stuff was addictive. People had to eat something, eventually, so it helped if there were no fat or carbs (choose your poison) within spitting distance – or they’d be spat.

  Mark found it disgusting. Plainly, at least ten of the world’s biggest box-office stars had raging bulimia. Hurl your guts up all you like, but not in my boss’s six-thousand-dollar Japanese toilet. Plainly, Elitist Portable Restrooms didn’t meet their outlandish expectations. But it did not occur to these people to clean up after themselves and it was vastly unpleasant to see spatter, or worse, to smell it, sour and drab. It was a detail that belonged in another sadder, sorrier life, Mark felt. Here, amid the splendour and wealth and exclusivity, it was strange and incongruous. Wrong.

  The staff had served Cristal and cocktails: LA specials, like the Sunset Sour from Bar Marmont and the Burning Mandarin from Katsuya – Ethan’s personal favourite. He was such a gourmet, he loved the surprise kick of the chilli after the sweet sugar and the citrus tang. Then guests had kicked back on floats and watched horror movies – The Omen and Psycho – under a full moon.