The Stylist

by Rosie Nixon

  ‘Oh, fuck,’ said Klara.

  ‘Brilliant!’ squealed Tim, pulling up an invisible chair at the scene unfolding before us.

  ‘I think you need to go and help her. Quickly.’ Rob elbowed me in the ribs as people around us began coming to life again, suppressing giggles and starting to whisper. Suddenly the world began spinning on its axis once more. I became aware of cameras flashing around Mona. In desperation, she raised an arm to cover her eyes.

  ‘I think we’d better get her out of here fast,’ Rob suggested, taking control of the situation for me. He took my arm and began barging people out of the way as we headed towards my boss. The man who had found himself Mona’s spewing target stumbled past us on his way to the gents. A pungent aroma hung in the air as he went by. Suddenly Mona straightened up, bellowing in a slurred voice:

  ‘Where is a manager? I wanna see the GM right now!’ More flashbulbs erupted. Recovering from my temporary paralysis, I got hold of myself and rushed forwards, almost gagging as the stench became stronger. I narrowly avoided planting my foot in the puddle of sick around her feet. Thank God I wasn’t wearing a borrowed designer dress and ridiculous heels this evening.

  ‘Food poisoning!’ she yelled as I put an arm on her back. Rob and I took an elbow each and gently tried to lead her out of the circle that had formed around us. ‘You can’t get away with serving dodgy frankfurters, you know!’

  She wriggled her arm out of mine and limply raised it in a last effort to protest her innocence. As she did so, the colour drained from her face and she sort of crumpled into our arms. Cue more gasps from around the room.

  ‘Mona! What the hell do we do now?’ I looked at Rob. Quickly he shoved one of Mona’s limp arms around his neck, and I helped him support her weight. Klara rushed forwards, too, picking up Mona’s python bag before it could slide into the mess or be snaffled by an opportunist to be sold on eBay. God, I’m useless in a crisis. Suddenly AJ appeared from nowhere and swept Mona up in his arms like King Kong with Fay Wray.

  ‘Where am I taking her, Amber?’ he asked urgently, his earpiece falling onto his collar. I looked at him, panicking.

  ‘I don’t know, AJ … Out of here … Jesus, is she okay?’

  ‘She’s just drunk, she’ll be fine,’ he reassured me. Mona’s head flailed to the side and her hair covered her face, at least sparing her the further embarrassment of the room seeing the salmon-coloured dribble spilling from her lips.

  ‘Out the front, I guess, and I’ll get a cab?’ I offered.

  ‘No, there’ll be even more paps. Out the back, follow me,’ Rob interjected. He was already ahead of us, leading AJ towards a door at the side of the bar. I took up the rear, suddenly feeling fiercely protective of my humiliated boss. Tamara had pushed her way to the front of the assembled crowd of rubberneckers, her hand over her mouth in disgust. As the crowd parted like a tide to let our sombre procession pass I heard her comment to Poppy, ‘The shame … she’ll never get over this …’

  A fire suddenly raged within me; pumped with adrenalin, I screamed, ‘Stop staring—the show’s over!’ at all the ogling pretty people, who now reminded me of ugly trolls. As my heart raced, Rob turned around and smiled. ‘You tell ’em, Amber!’ I hoped AJ wouldn’t judge me for not knowing how to react earlier on. Thank God he’d been in the room. Did that mean Beau was still here, too? I hoped for Mona’s sake she wasn’t—there were bound to be repercussions, perhaps for both of us. But then again, it didn’t really matter. We all knew it wouldn’t be long before the whole of fashion land would be reading all about it, as the gossip grapevine twined out of these walls and into cyber space, gathering destructive reach like the famous Californian forest fires. The Tweeters in the room were already giving their thumbs a workout.

  We watched in silence as AJ called the limo driver round to the back entrance of Morton’s with his one free hand, while Mona struggled from his other and attempted to stand up on her own. There she wobbled, pathetic to behold, a fallen fashionista teetering on her vertiginous heels. I’m certain we all thought the same thing: She’s not got food poisoning, she’s just plain, falling-down, puking drunk. I hadn’t any idea yet what the ramifications would be, but something told me that tomorrow—Golden Globes day—wasn’t going to be pretty.

  Chapter Eleven

  Finally, the big day had arrived. Miley Cyrus blasted out from the radio adjacent to my head, sabotaging a vivid dream in which I was tucking into a large plate of roast chicken at my parents’ dining table. There were no other family members present, but that hardly mattered—what was there mattered: stuffing, perfectly crisp potatoes and parsnips, cauliflower cheese, creamy leeks, honey-roasted carrots and gravy … My mouth watered, just remembering it. Thanks a lot, Miley. I am honestly starting to believe there’s a conspiracy against my eating a hearty meal ever again. Even when I’m asleep.

  Seven a.m., G-Day. It had come around frighteningly fast and I wondered if Mona was feeling as anxious as me. Limply, I silenced the noise—on the surface, it looked like a normal day: morning sunlight streaming through my bedroom window, the gentle ripple of water from the automatic pool cleaner outside, punctuated by the sound of the coffee machine loudly grinding beans in the kitchen. I loved waking up in this spacious, tidy room, and its sounds had already become familiar. But then the memory of last night hit me like a concrete breeze block, making me sit bolt upright. I had almost forgotten my fainting episode, followed by the much larger incident of sick-gate. I threw on a onesie and tried to walk downstairs as quietly as I could, which wasn’t easy in flip-flops on varnished floorboards. I became aware that my head was faintly throbbing, a reminder that I’d drunk too much last night. In the kitchen, Ana was wiping the worktop and humming happily. I wonder if she’d be interested in trading places.

  ‘Any sign of her yet?’ I asked.

  Ana shook her head as I poured myself a glass of tap water and downed it in one. ‘Darling, by the noises she was making in the night, I don’t think we’ll be seeing Mona today.’

  ‘But it’s the big one—it’s Golden Globes day!’ I said. ‘It’s not an option not to see her!’

  She didn’t seem to grasp the enormity of the situation. ‘Oh, it is normal to not see her,’ she added casually, and carried on humming. Normal not to see her? What’s that supposed to mean? As if from thin air, Klara made her usual spectral appearance in the doorway, her skin as pale and translucent as moonstone. I hoped we were still friends after our bonding session last night. After AJ had carried Mona from the limo to her bed, Klara and I had sat in the kitchen drinking coffee together before we moved on to white wine, and I almost wanted to kiss her when she produced a large bag of crinkle-cut crisps from a high kitchen cupboard: her secret stash. We were both reeling from what had happened, replaying the moment of doom over and over, and only salty carbs could lessen the trauma. I told her all about the texts from Liam and how Rob rescued me when I’d fainted at the premiere, and she told me all about her near-miss with Leo DiCaprio and a close encounter with David Gandy. And then she opened up about how she was worried about the pressures of modelling and whether she was cut out for it, when she really wanted to reconnect with her friends in London or perhaps take off backpacking around South America. I ended up coming clean about how I’d got the job with Mona by accident and was bluffing my way through it. We had genuinely found some common ground.

  This morning Klara looked as though she hadn’t slept much, either, but she carried off dishevelled much better than me, her hair loosely tied back in a ponytail, last night’s make-up smudged but passable, wearing leggings and an oversized T-shirt bearing the slogan ‘I’m with the band’. I felt like a tatty old Teletubby sitting next to her in my onesie.

  ‘Do you really think it was food poisoning?’ she asked, pouring herself a large glass of Coca-Cola. Despite the hangover, she remained annoyingly graceful. But at last she was starting to put more between her lips than grapes and hot water.

  ‘Maybe.’ I shrugged, t
hough I still strongly suspected it wasn’t. There was certainly nothing wrong with the ten or so mini hot dogs I had put away during the course of the evening.

  ‘I’ll never forget the bad oyster I ate once,’ she went on, ‘the stuff that came out had the most ran—’

  ‘Okay, Klara, I get the picture! My stomach is rather fragile, too, this morning.’

  ‘Seen Twitter yet?’ she asked.

  ‘Not yet. Why, have you?’

  She sucked in her cheeks. ‘There’s a lot going around about Mona this morning.’

  ‘How bad is it?’

  ‘She was trending at one point.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘And there are photos,’

  ‘Shit—how bad?’

  ‘Don’t worry, they could be worse, most of them just show the back of her head.’

  ‘Any actual puking ones?’

  Klara flicked on her iPhone and began scrolling.

  ‘Not that I’ve seen so far. She looks really thin in them, so she’ll be fine. All Mona cares about is whether she’s thin.’

  ‘Well, it’s not hard to look thin when you’re being carried by a hulk like AJ.’

  ‘You’re in a couple, too.’

  ‘What?’

  I stood up and leaned over her shoulder, struggling to get a look at the screen.

  ‘You’re talking to hot Rob.’

  I bristled. I didn’t like the idea of Klara calling him hot.

  ‘Do I look thin, too? Actually, don’t answer that.’

  I gave up squinting at the phone and made my way to Mona’s office to power up the iMac.

  ‘Is Rob single?’ Klara continued, reverting to type.

  ‘Don’t think so,’ I pretended, realising that I didn’t actually know the answer to her question. Anyway, there were more important things than Rob to dwell on right now. I was very relieved that a quick Google of my name brought up zero entries. Typing in Mona’s, however, revealed a very different story—1287 new items on gossip websites, blogs and social networks around the world.

  ‘If it’s fame she’s after, she’s got it,’ Klara whispered, pulling up a stool alongside me to read the stories. It was both dreadful and fascinating all at once.

  We were eventually forced to stop scrolling through the endless reports of ‘Sick Shame for Celebrity Stylist’, when an apparition appeared before us. At least we hoped it was an apparition, but then it started making noises and we realised that it was, in fact, real.

  ‘Head … hurts,’ uttered the thin, silk kaftan-clad lollipop, clinging onto the door frame as if her life depended on it. The figure, only just discernibly female, resembled what you might expect the aged love-child of Morticia Addams and Keith Richards to look like after spending the night in a coffin. The black kaftan was tied loosely around her waist and she was flashing too much upper leg. Without her usual face of make-up, she looked tired, drawn and—dare I even think it—old. New lines seemed to have appeared around her eyes overnight.

  ‘Good Lord,’ sighed Ana, peering at her from the hallway, looking heavenwards and crossing herself. I fought an urge to do the same.

  ‘Water,’ said the figure, from dry, white-rimmed lips. Ana obediently retrieved a cool bottle of Arrowhead, loosened the screw top and placed it in Mona’s visibly shaking hand. It seemed safer than passing her anything she was likely to smash. There was a strong smell of stale alcohol around her. Klara and I looked at each other nervously—neither of us could bear to be first to break the silence. Eventually Mona summoned just enough energy to speak.

  ‘Darlings,’ she announced, steadying herself with a small, crinkly hand on either side of the door frame, ‘there is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. Surely you know that?’ She lurched from the doorway to a leaning position, her right shoulder against the wall. From there, she dragged her tottering, tiny frame along the wall, her kaftan coming more and more undone as she did so. Finally, she glided to a halt within arms-reach of the keyboard and with her index finger, clicked the browser shut. The conversation was closed. Klara took this as her cue to silently disappear from the room, and I hated her all over again for leaving me. Mona turned to face me, shaking her head to get unruly curls out of her face. She looked so different without make-up.

  ‘Big day for you today, Amber, babe,’ she said. Her face creased like tissue paper as she offered a smile—well, everywhere but her forehead. I shifted my weight and folded my arms across my waist, gripping my elbows for comfort as I waited for what she was going to say next.

  ‘What a mess, you must be thinking.’ She looked down at herself and stifled a laugh. The kaftan gaped a bit more, revealing that she wasn’t wearing a bra. ‘It’s embarrassing.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said, looking at the chipped nail polish on my feet for inspiration.

  ‘I’m not going to be able to prep Jennifer Astley for the red carpet this afternoon—you know it as well as I do,’ she said at last. ‘This food poisoning has really taken it out of me.’ She’s hanging on to her story for dear life. ‘So I’ll need you to visit her at the Chateau Marmont for me. It will be fantastic experience for you, Amber, and Jennifer’s the easiest A-lister there is.’

  A bead of sweat ran down my back. The onesie was hot. She can’t be serious.

  ‘Ana will call you a taxi, it’s only a five-minute drive. Just check she’s got everything she needs, and if she wants you to walk the carpet with her.’ Bloody hell, she really is serious. I chewed my bottom lip.

  ‘Jennifer probably won’t want me, though—doesn’t she always have you and her make-up artist?’ I asked, dreading the response.

  Mona winced and put a hand to her temple, shutting her eyes. ‘Yes, Caroline will be there, too. You’ll be fine.’

  ‘Sure …’ I said, already resigned to the fact that it would be futile to show resistance. It wasn’t as if Mona had anyone else to turn to. And this was the job I signed up for after all. A vibration in my back pocket alerted me to a text message, and then another and another in quick succession, distracting me momentarily. I itched to take out my phone.

  ‘And then there are the pick-ups from the tailors and gowns from the suite to be dropped off with clients. The list is on my iPad, I’ll get it for you in a minute.’

  I remembered that I’d carefully listed all the errands to be done today—luckily. I just hadn’t anticipated doing them all on my own.

  ‘I guess I’d better get ready. One thing, Mona?’

  ‘What is it?’

  Now was as good a time as any. ‘Do you have a day dress or a top that isn’t black that I could borrow, please? I seem to have packed quite badly, and I’m running out of clothes.’

  Come on, it’s the least she can do.

  She smirked shakily. ‘I did wonder. Let’s face it, the goth look was getting embarrassing. You could do with some colour in your cheeks, too.’ Who the hell is she to talk this morning? ‘I’ll have Ana get some old things from my wardrobe, and she’ll take care of your laundry, too. Ana!’ Raising her voice seemed to hurt her head even more. She recoiled, almost melting into the wall.

  ‘Appreciate it, thanks,’ I muttered, scuttling out of the room, dying to check my phone before Mona could ask me to do anything else I wasn’t qualified to do. ‘Hope you feel better.’ I had a sense, with Mona, that I was treading on the thinnest of eggshells almost all of the time.

  I pulled out my phone in the hallway. It had been throwing a party of its own. Six new text messages: three from Vicky, one from Mum, one from Jasmine and—yes!—one from Liam. I read the Liam one first: Morning beautiful x. It made me smile. The guy had only seen me for three minutes, but he already had the ability to make me feel like the most important person in the world. Then I read the messages from the others—news of Mona’s eventful evening had of course travelled across the Atlantic, and they all wanted to know if she and I were okay. I compiled one generic response and sent it back to all three.

  All
fine, Mona still alive but recovering from last night, and I’m styling Jennifer Astley today! Will call after the awards. Love A xx. It would have to do for now

  To Liam I responded: And morning to you, handsome x. This was fun.

  Vicky replied immediately: Go Am—that’s amazing! Will watch E! Love ya xxx ps OMG Mona???!

  Jas replied soon after: Please send Mona my love, hope she’s ok. J x

  And finally Mum: Be careful, the woman’s clearly insane x

  As I left the house for the taxi, feeling much cooler than during my whole time in LA because I was now appropriately dressed in a pretty pale peach APC tunic instead of heat-absorbing black, Ana ran out of the house and down the driveway to hand me a torch. A torch? I looked at it, puzzled.

  ‘Mona says take it,’ she said.

  I studied the slim black gadget, completely muddled as to why I would need it. ‘Are we expecting a power cut this evening?’

  Ana shrugged in response as Mona appeared at the front door; I held the torch up above my head. She cupped her hands around her mouth.

  ‘Secret weapon,’ she yelled, mustering her remaining energy. ‘To watch Jennifer’s train. Use it yourself or give it to Caroline—the torchlight will stop people treading on it. No one wants a tread.’ Obediently, I slipped it into my kit.

  The taxi whizzed down the hill and along Sunset Boulevard towards the legendary Chateau Marmont Hotel, and I finally allowed myself to feel a ripple of excitement. Here I was, in Hollywood, heading to Jennifer Astley’s hotel suite on Golden Globes day, to style her for the red carpet—this should be someone else—it was a pinch-yourself moment. Huge billboards flew past, displaying the familiar faces of many of the famous residents of the Hills above me. We passed the luxury Mondrian Hotel on my right, with its larger than life flowerpots at the entrance. Just a few yards further along on the left, we pulled up on a narrow side street, by the entrance to an underground car park. Above us, built on the hillside and rising majestically above Sunset Strip, was the Chateau Marmont, its white, pointed turrets reaching out of the landscape like a castle from a French fairy tale. At the top of a dimly lit flight of stairs, the reception area had the woody hue of authentic antiques mixed with furniture polish and musk-scented candles. Shabby-chic sofas were dotted around, and old-fashioned reading lamps gently glowed on tables. There was a feeling that every chair had at some point welcomed the derrière of an A-lister; this infamous hotel had seen many wild parties, from as far back as the days of Jim Morrison. It was beyond cool to actually be here. I asked for Jennifer’s suite and was sent to the penthouse. Even the lift had an old-fashioned French feel; it was a world away from the buzzy foyer and sleek, modern interior of the W.