by Victoria Fox
Orlando shrugged. ‘Nothing. Guess I’m better at hiding it than you.’
It had been too much to hope for her brother’s support. Only Noah had believed she could do this. Only he’d had faith. Despite the way her family had treated him in the past, Noah had been adamant that victory was in her blood—and if the men could do it, why couldn’t she? Ever since her great-grandfather had founded a modest Boston department store, through the decades growing it from strength to strength, winning had been the name of the game. On the crest of success her father had expanded into wider markets still: hotels, casinos, fashion labels; on to the Middle East, Tokyo and Singapore …
Today the Silvers brand was a worldwide lifestyle force. Angela was dead-set on running the ship one day. In the meantime, if her father wouldn’t stake her a role, she would simply go up against him. She had to prove herself one way or another.
Gianluca joined them. Together, the Silvers brothers reeked so strongly of a Harvard Business degree it settled like fog.
‘Dad’s got an announcement,’ said Luca, with his irritating I-know-something-you-don’t-know pout. Luca’s wide, thick-lashed eyes and high brushstroke cheekbones were trademarks of the family. Women went crazy for him.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Orlando took another drink. ‘He’s retiring—and you know what that means. Silvers is coming straight to me, baby.’
Luca arranged his jacket. ‘Yeah?’
‘I’m the eldest.’ He swigged. ‘But hey, don’t worry, I won’t fire you.’
Luca smirked. Then he said: ‘May the best man win.’
‘Or woman.’
‘Forget it,’ Luca dismissed, waving a hand about, ‘haven’t you already got this … sideline?’
‘Which is a damn sight more than you’ve got,’ Angela shot back.
A tinkling glass put paid to the dispute. Angela seized the platform, welcomed the sea of guests and press and recounted her journey, from a teenage summer in Paris that had ignited her passion for couture, to the first flame of her Fit for NYC idea; from the funding she’d secured—independently from her father—to the glory of this opening night. She imagined Noah next to her, encouraging her and urging her on.
When the applause died down, echoes of light still dancing from the raft of cameras, she invited her father, as arranged, to offer his congratulations.
As Donald Silvers approached, she fixed her determined gaze on his.
In spite of it all, Angela knew that he believed in her. She had never been the daughter he’d anticipated—she’d been more.
He shook her hand, equal to equal.
Now was her chance to prove it.
2
Los Angeles
Kevin Chase was watching his manager’s mouth. He noticed for the first time that it was a small mouth, the teeth crowded, and the jowly cheeks bolstering it brought to mind a yapping dog wedged between two cushions. The mouth was moving, but no sound was coming out. In the years since becoming America’s biggest solo artist—scratch that, the world’s—and the definitive pin-up for a squillion screeching tweenies (when was his fan base going to grow?), Kevin had honed the art of appearing to concentrate while actually not listening to a single word.
‘Kevin, are you paying attention? C’mon, buddy, this is serious.’
‘Yeh.’
‘Well, what have you got to say for yourself?’
Kevin slumped further into the squishy leather couch in Sketch Falkner’s downtown office and grudgingly lifted his shoulders.
‘Dunno,’ he grumbled. ‘One of those things, I guess.’
Sketch contained his exasperation and came to the front of the desk. He had been in this game thirty years. He had seen it all. As the industry’s top talent spotter and head of the board here at Cut N Dry Records, he knew how to handle his clients.
‘What in hell were you thinking?’ he encouraged.
Kevin folded his arms, stared ahead and refused to reply. His gold FNYC cap was wedged on sideways. His slouch jeans were massive, gangsta style despite his suburban upbringing, and strapped partway down his ass. He wore a white vest adorned by hefty chains, and on his feet were his cherished purple SUPRAs, one of which was jiggling up and down as if he needed the bathroom. Several tattoos were splashed self-consciously across his upper arms, the biggest depicting his ex-girlfriend, pop princess Sandi—and, as if having Sandi’s image branded onto his skin for all eternity wasn’t bad enough, the artist had given her some weird-ass dangly skirt that made it look like Kevin had a thing for chicks with dicks. His frame was slight despite rigorous gym sessions, and the wisps around his chin refused to mature beyond fuzz. The overall impression was one of a junior who had raided his big brother’s closet, or else a snowman that had melted in the sun, leaving only a jumble of clothes behind.
Eventually he said: ‘I want another Coke.’
‘Please,’ put in his mother Joan, seated at his shoulder like a parrot.
‘Please,’ Kevin grunted.
The truth was that a kid in Kevin’s position didn’t need to pay attention. Not really. Kevin Chase had three platinum albums to his name. He was the most talked about performer of his generation. He had scooped a raft of awards: Best Artist, Best Male, Best Single, Best Pop Act, Best Dance Act, Best Video, even Best Hair, which was only right because he took fucking good care of his hair, damn it. He was the ultimate twenty-first-century poster boy. He had close to sixty million followers on Twitter. His adoring fans, referred to as the Little Chasers, treated him like the Second Coming of Jesus. He blew up the media. He played sell-out gigs across the globe. He had his own fashion line, his own fragrance and produced his own movies. He had waxworks of his image in five major cities. He owned a chopper and a mega-yacht and so many properties that half the time he didn’t even know what countries they were in. He was a phenomenon, a philosopher (who could forget the profound opener to ‘Touch My Kiss’? Girl, this life can get so serious) and a poet (You make me so delirious; I’m on this like mysterious). He owned a dachshund named Trey.
At nineteen, Kevin Chase was the biggest superstar on the planet. He couldn’t go for a dump without Security producing the toilet roll.
The Coke was brought over. ‘Thank you …’ prompted Joan.
‘Whatever.’
Sketch nodded towards the paused plasma screen mounted above his desk. On it, Kevin’s image was frozen onstage at the Chicago United Center, mic to his lips, hips strutting, his metallic suit and dark shades part of the Raunchy Robot theme. In the front ranks, a sea of eager Little Chasers grasped for their hero.
‘Joanie,’ tried Sketch, who knew that bringing in Kevin’s mom usually achieved the desired result, ‘what do you think?’
‘Well, I—’
‘I can answer for myself, can’t I?’ Kevin scowled. ‘It’s a fucking hand gesture, what’s the big fucking deal anyhow?’
‘Kevin!’ admonished Joan. ‘Language!’
‘You have to understand that this isn’t what the fans expect.’ Sketch laid it out. ‘Kevin Chase is boyfriend material, OK? He’s about puppy dogs and first dates. He’s about Valentine’s cards. He’s about cookies. He’s about … abstinence.’
Kevin gulped. Recently, he had run an interview with a British tabloid, in which he had happily blasted sex before marriage. Ha! That was some laugh. At this rate he wouldn’t be getting sex until … well that was the fucking funny bit because he couldn’t even think of when. Christ! It wasn’t as if he was short of offers. He was Kevin Chase, for God’s sake; by rights he should be nailing any girl he wanted.
Except he couldn’t … Physically.
That was why Sandi had called it off. The label had tried to salvage it, but Sandi had a fire in her knickers and Kevin’s hose was officially out of order.
Kevin started picking the skin around his thumb. Loneliness swept over him in a silent tsunami. His management had control over every other aspect of his life, so he sure wasn’t about to hit Sketch with a confessional on his se
xual problems.
Sexual problems! Him! It was enough to make him throw up.
‘What Kevin Chase isn’t about is this.’ Sketch gestured once more at the still. ‘Pelvic thrusting. Cursing. Rubbing his crotch like a … I don’t know, like a dog with his balls in a knot. Telling girls he wants to,’ Sketch consulted his iPad and inhaled sharply, ‘grind you up against the wall where your mom and dad can’t see.’
‘That was part of the song.’
‘It wasn’t.’
‘It should’ve been. It’s not my fault I’ve got to sing like a pussy. I told them I wanted the lyrics to reflect my personality.’
Sketch put down his pad. He assumed his I’m listening face, tempered by a twinge of fatherly concern. When all was said and done, he was the closest thing Kevin had to a father—hell, maybe that was where it had gone so wrong.
Abandonment issues: oldest fuck-up in the book.
Of course the record company was doing little to alleviate it.
Forget it. It’s for the kid’s own good.
Sketch contained a gruesome shiver. You just keep telling yourself that.
He straightened. ‘What would reflect your personality, Kevin? Tell me.’
But Kevin didn’t know, or else he couldn’t articulate it. He didn’t even know if he had a personality, outside of what everyone else told him it was. Lately he had started gazing in the mirror and not recognising the person looking back, half expecting the other Kevin to do something he hadn’t asked it to, like stick its tongue out, or burst out laughing at the punchline his life had become. He might laugh too, if he could remember the joke. Instead, every day was a circus of grabbing bankrollers, snatching and pawing at his fame like rabid dogs. He had no real friends.
He scratched at a mark on the knee of his jeans and tried not to cry.
‘Listen to Sketch, honey,’ Joan crooned, leaning forward in her chair. She wore ill-fitting Prada and too much make-up. ‘He knows what he’s talking about.’
‘Yeah right,’ mumbled Kevin. Sometimes he wanted to throttle his mom. She was happy to tag along for the ride but she didn’t appreciate how much work he had to put in, what this job took out of you, how much stress he was under. She should try being Kevin Chase for a day and see how she liked it!
‘Not good enough.’ Sketch ran a hand through his hair. ‘If this was an isolated incident, buddy, then maybe I’d buy it, but the fact is it’s not. You want me to lay it out for you? Turning up three hours late to the Seattle concert. Telling an audience of schoolkids that if they didn’t like it, they could bite me. Flicking the bird to that pap outside your crib. Rocking up drunk to that book signing and breathing vodka fumes in a nine-year-old’s face—it was a treat to see that splashed across USay the next morning, let me tell you. Trying to get that pregnant ape at the California Zoo Convention to drink a can of Kool beer. Forgetting what song you’re meant to be singing. Messing up your routines. Speeding. Swearing. Trashing hotel rooms … and don’t get me started on taking a leak in that plant pot at Il Cielo—’
‘All right, all right, I get it,’ Kevin supplied bitterly.
‘And what’s with the attitude? That dance troupe you worked with on the last video said you gave them hell. Cursing at reporters, telling press where to go, slamming out at that photographer in Berlin. I mean Jesus H., Kevin—’
‘I never trashed any hotel room. I told you. The sound system exploded.’
Sketch took a breath.
‘And I needed a leak! What do you want me to do, pee in my fucking pants?’
‘You could visit the toilet like everyone else.’
‘I’m not everyone else, though, am I?’
‘Think about it,’ Sketch said. ‘You’ve got a reputation to uphold.’
‘I’m sick of having a reputation.’
Joan put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Honey …’
He shrugged her off.
‘I’ve cancelled your commitments this afternoon,’ offered Sketch. ‘Go home, rest up, get looked after; watch some cartoons—’
‘Cartoons?’ Kevin flared. ‘What am I, five?’
‘Relax.’ Sketch put his hands out. ‘You’ve been under a lot of strain and it’s starting to show. My job is to look after you, and this is what I’m prescribing.’
Along with the rest.
Sketch swallowed his conscience like a bad oyster.
‘I’ll call you in the morning. Sound good, bud?’
Kevin allowed himself to be ushered through the door. Joan was fussing over him, picking threads from his back. ‘Ugh, Mom, piss off, will you?’
They took the elevator in silence. Kevin knew he was being an asshole. He wanted to say sorry but he didn’t know how. He just couldn’t help how angry he felt the whole time. That was the only word. He felt like a bomb about to blow off. The slightest word sent him plummeting into a rage. A throwaway comment made him fly off the handle. Right now he hated everyone and everything and he didn’t, for the life of him, know why. All he knew was that he couldn’t sustain it much longer.
Kevin was going to snap, and it was going to be soon. He couldn’t say what would happen when he did, but one thing was certain: it was going to be bad.
3
London
Regardless of how many celebrities she interviewed, Eve Harley would always be amazed at the scale of their egos. Supermodels were the worst.
‘I guess I kinda always knew I was beautiful,’ Tawny Lascelles was saying from her position in the make-up girl’s chair, angling her face as the blusher brush swept across a pair of immaculate cheekbones. Tawny had a lilting, Texan drawl, and a flush of softness to her voice that betrayed what Eve was beginning to suspect was a core of gritty ambition. She was the magazine favourite of the moment, sweet as candy but sharp enough to be interesting, with a well-publicised streak of rebellion.
‘Can you remember your first shoot?’ Eve asked, adjusting her position on the uncomfortable stool alongside Tawny’s cushioned throne. In the portrait awarded by the bulb-lined mirror she accepted the uncrossable distance between prettiness and beauty. Eve was attractive enough, with her neatly cut shoulder-length brown hair, green almond eyes and petite, bright features, but next to Tawny’s Cara Delevingne vibe anyone was going to look like a sack of potatoes.
‘Oh, yes,’ Tawny’s blue eyes widened, ‘a girl never forgets.’ She pouted to permit a rose-pink liner to caress the contours of her perfect, bee-stung lips. Ravishing wasn’t nearly enough for tonight’s parade: she had to be flawless. ‘I was so nervous. I mean, I’m actually totally uncomfortable with this whole “look at me” thing.’
I bet you are, thought Eve, tapping keynotes into her tablet.
‘So, lucky for me,’ Tawny went on, ‘it was on this paradise beach … and d’you know what the really weird thing was? Like, totally surreal?’
Eve took the question as rhetorical, but when Tawny’s sapphire eyes at last deigned to meet hers in their joint reflection, she shook her head.
‘I’d been there before! On vacation.’ The make-up girl tilted Tawny’s chin, lifting it like a petal so she could add a hint of gloss. ‘And as soon as I walked out on that sand,’ Tawny managed to keep her mouth totally still while she spoke, ‘I was, like, Whoa, this is cosmic, y’know? Like it was meant to happen that way. I was meant to do this. I was meant to be a model—and no one was going to stop me!’
Eve highlighted the section on her pad. She had it all on Dictaphone but, when it came to revisiting a piece, she liked to know which bits had jumped out at the time. This was one of them. Tawny’s tone had slipped. An edge of bitterness had crept in, of having earned her place in the celebrity tree through more than a few strokes of luck.
‘So you believe this is your calling?’
Tawny’s eyes were closed against the delicate application of mascara. ‘Oh, absolutely,’ she said. ‘I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.’
‘Don’t you think it’s an empty sort of profession?’
> There was a pause. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Well, good as you might be at it, it’s not really changing the world.’
‘It depends which way you look at it.’
‘Which way do you look at it?’
‘I’m helping people feel better about themselves.’
‘How?’
‘Modelling gives regular people something to aim for.’
‘Even if it’s not attainable?’
Tawny’s eyes opened a fraction, snake-like. ‘What?’
‘The impossible dream, for most women: size 6 and wearing Karl Lagerfeld.’
Tawny batted the make-up girl off. ‘So I should leave them to stew in their fat, sad little lives watching re-runs of America’s Got Talent and stuffing potato chips in their pie-holes?’ Catching herself, she clarified somewhat more demurely, ‘What I mean is, I’m giving them something to aspire to. Beauty … Well, it inspires.’
‘Are you an inspiration?’
‘Yes. In a way.’
‘What way?’
‘Girls want to grow up to be just like me.’
‘Even if they can’t?’
‘Why can’t they?’
Eve thought it was a joke, but Tawny appeared serious.
‘Beauty is a construct,’ she pointed out, ‘right? It’s subjective, prone to change, evolution? In twenty years’ time, will girls want to look like someone else?’
Tawny’s expression was blank.
‘Do you see modelling as philanthropic?’
‘I’m sorry,’ answered Tawny, ‘I don’t know what that means.’
But Eve suspected she did. ‘To enhance the world, to make it a better place.’
‘Then, yes, I suppose I do.’
‘Why?’
Tawny’s eyes opened, flashing danger. The make-up girl’s brush stumbled. ‘Where exactly is this going?’ she demanded. ‘Why, why, why? How, how, how?’
‘It’s an interview.’
‘Well, it sucks.’ Tawny gestured for her assistant. ‘Jean-Paul! Here!’
‘You’ll admit not much is known about how you arrived on the circuit,’ Eve threw out. ‘Maybe something from your childhood made you feel this way?’
