by Cate Andrews
The clock on the DVD player was blinking 4:37am. Lucy stamped the pins and needles out of her foot and loaded up another disc. Stifling a yawn, she zipped through the first few minutes of Stephen and Vincent engaged in another tedious head to head in the director’s office.
After twelve straight hours of watching those two blather on and on at each other, Lucy had learnt all of two things. One, that their conversations rarely strayed from money, or rather how to extort more from Global Studios, and secondly, each conversation inevitably included a dig at Michael Wilson, or some horribly misogynistic comment about Polly. There had been no strippers hanging off Stephen’s fancy designer uplighter or starry-eyed wannabe devouring him on the leather sofa, just two revolting people, boring on at each other’s egos which, in her mind, was considerably less enjoyable than a screen full of static.
Mentally shelving her front-page scoop and centrefold bonanza, she was soon despairing of even a single paragraph in a second-rate Sunday supplement showbiz pullout, when all of a sudden Vincent slumped forward onto the desk and put his head in his hands. It was such an uncharacteristically defeatist gesture that Lucy leapt up from the sofa with a cry.
With trembling fingers, she hit the pause button, freeze-framing Stephen’s stunned expression. Rewinding rapidly, what she learnt over the next minute sent her elevated pulse galloping faster than Red Rum.
Chapter Fifty
The following Saturday, the Awards Season juggernaut rumbled on with a second date at the Beverley Hilton Hotel, this time for the annual Producer’s Guild of America ceremony.
Despite the scene of so much unwelcome drama last weekend, Michael felt compelled to put in an appearance, nominated as he was for his work on Memoir. He could have done without the red carpet bombardment beforehand though. Everywhere he turned there was another reporter demanding a comment on the Joe and Stephen situation. In the end, he was so fed up with it that any pride he might have felt at attending such a prestigious event had scarpered along with his limo.
Once inside, deflated and exhausted, he slumped next to Christine and prepped himself for another sure-fire Love Letter bore-fest by anaesthetising himself thoroughly over dinner. As a result, he was more than a little smashed when the entirely unexpected happened and his name was read out as the winner of one of the night’s top honours. With his head pounding and his legs like mush, in the end it took a quick, sharp shove from Christine to propel him towards the stage.
Blurting out a stunned, monosyllabic speech, he was escorted back to his seat as the enormity of what had happened began to sink in. A Producer’s Guild Award wasn’t an Oscar nomination but it was as good as. Michael knew, as did everyone there tonight, that this lot had a pretty good track record at predicting the Best Picture Winner.
As he sat back down again, Christine lent over to give him a congratulatory kiss. ‘I’ll hope you’ll be a little more eloquent with your speech next month,’ she murmured.
Sod the speech, thought Michael. If they landed an Oscar, he’d do a Bollywood-style shimmy up the aisle.
Afterwards, as he was heartily congratulated by Steven Spielberg, Christine was the only one to notice that his smile wasn’t quite reaching his eyes.
‘Are you ok, darling?’
‘Joe should be here,’ he muttered, as a wispy Angelina Jolie drifted past with her endless pale legs on display. ‘It doesn’t seem right celebrating without him. It’s like winning a gold medal then finding out the adjudicator added up the scores wrong.’
‘Let’s hope he shows for the Oscar nominations this week,’ she whispered.
But Michael was doubtful. He already had half of LA out looking for him but so far zilch, not even a single, discarded Converse lace. Accepting another glass of champagne, to raise in a toast with a pint-sized Martin Scorsese across the room, he just hoped and prayed that wherever Joe was, he was ok.
With only days to go before the Oscar nominations were announced, and as Rachel had predicted, Stephen went on US television to give an impassioned plea for clemency. With his sleek hair lightly ruffled, highlights toned right down, suntan washed out by ingenious make-up and a hefty squeeze of lemon juice making his eyes glisten with just the right amount of remorse, Garrett and his team had gone all out to give Stephen the air of a man in emotional turmoil and wracked by past mistakes.
Plodding out the usual check list of excuses, so often plundered by sleazy politicians, Stephen even had the temerity to imply that Joe had known all along about the affair. With his brother not around to contradict such ludicrous claims, public opinion began to fall hook, line and sinker for the hapless, bumbling Brit character that Garrett created, and pretty soon Stephen and his ego were back in business.
Meanwhile, on the traffic-clogged boulevards outside, Garrett’s publicity push had gone bananas. Aware of the crackdown on aggressive Oscar campaigning once nominations were declared, or rather the countless, excessive cocktail receptions thrown for Academy members that had proved so successful in nabbing statuettes for past hosts and hostesses, Garrett had gone and conceived all manners of crafty ploys to entice the voter. Enormous rotating billboards for Love Letters had sprung up overnight like flickering weeds, Maisie was appearing on a different chat show every night in fewer and fewer clothes, and DVDs and scripts of their movie were being delivered to the doorsteps of Academy Members and key press in posh wicker baskets, furnished with real live Romanian puppies.
Determined to go down swinging, or rather stripping as the case may be, Bill and his team responded with a spectacularly sophisticated photo shoot for Christine in Hot!Hot!Hot!’s classier sister-publication Maire-Antoinette. Benito had even granted a rare interview in The Cinematographer’s Chum which completely expunged Michael after their epic bust-up at the Globes and which was, in turn, picked up by every major news outlet.
On the Eve of the nominations, the Cosmos publicity team had gathered at Michael’s house for good luck champagne and cupcakes. Once again, Joe’s no-show was as conspicuous as an absent groom. The host himself was also noted to be flitting out of the party a great deal more than he was flitting in, but assuming that he was following up an important lead on Joe, Christine let it pass. With a bit of luck, they would all be celebrating a very long list of Oscar nominations this time tomorrow.
‘What do you mean you’re going to LA?’ asked Polly, stupidly, as she watched Lucy tear the flat apart for her passport.
‘It’s a work thing!’ she screeched, upending their newly ordered cutlery drawer. ‘I need to meet with Walt Wilson.’
‘The Walt Wilson?’ Polly was stunned. ‘But he never gives interviews. By the way, you won’t find your passport in there. It’s with mine in the desk by the front door.’
‘Great, thanks! Well, technically I don’t want an interview, just a face-to-face,’ she admitted. ‘I’m hoping that if I camp outside his penthouse office for long enough he’ll take pity on me.’
‘Don’t fancy your chances much. You’re more likely to get moved on like those hairy protesters outside St Pauls, that’s if you get anywhere near him in the first place. The studio’s like Fort Knox according to Michael.’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ muttered Lucy, yanking open the desk drawer.
‘Has this got anything to do with that footage?’ asked Polly suddenly.
‘Bingo!’ cried Lucy, discovering her passport underneath an old Ikea catalogue.
‘Well?’
‘Sorry, can’t say. Not yet anyway.’
Polly’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘It has, hasn’t it? You’ve found something out! Please tell me,’ she begged.
‘I can’t hun, I’m sorry. Not yet, anyway.’
‘Then how long are you going for?’
‘As long as it takes.’ There was the sound of a car honking outside. ‘Shit, that’s my taxi!’ Ripping the old Morocco flight tags from her suitcase, she made a beeline for the drafty hallway but stopped short when she caught sight of Polly’s face. With a sigh,
she reversed up and flung her arms around her friend.
‘I shouldn’t be more than a week, I promise,’ she whispered. ‘Why don’t you go stay with my brother for a few days?’
‘I’d rather stay in the local dump,’ grumbled Polly. ‘There are so many ant colonies in his kitchen I’m always half-expecting to find David Attenborough crouched in the corner with his boom pole.’
‘Ok, but don’t go scoffing pizza every night.’
Polly looked affronted. ‘Why on earth would I do that when there’s a perfectly good Indian around the corner?’
‘Fine. But don’t complain when you get an attack of the guilts and your shin splints flare up after another gym marathon,’ she warned, pecking her friend on the cheek. ‘I’ll call you once I get there.’ But as she turned to go, her feet were leaden with guilt. Suddenly, she had a brainwave.
‘Grab your passport, you’re coming too!’ she yelped, diving under the Ikea catalogue for a second time.
Polly gaped at her in shock.
‘C’mon Pollyanna! Where’s your sense of adventure? You need a break. Plus you’re not exactly inundated with work offers at the moment, are you?’
‘But what about my BAFTA after-party, super-dooper networking event?’
‘That’s not for another week! All being well, we should be back in plenty of time.’ Lucy craned her neck for a peek at the kitchen clock. ‘Look, the flight leaves in four hours. Throw some things together and I’ll meet you downstairs.’
‘But I don’t have a ticket!’
‘For a wannabe scriptwriter, you use an awful lot of ‘buts’,’ observed Lucy dryly thrusting her passport at her. ‘We’ll sort all that stuff out at Heathrow. If the flight’s chocka then we’ll book you onto the next one. Now pack! I’m going to stall the taxi…’
‘This is madness,’ whispered Polly, but Lucy could tell she was wavering.
‘So is sitting around here waiting for the phone, sorry Joe, to ring. You need to sort things out with him, Polly.’
‘I don’t know if you’ve caught The Sun recently but it appears he’s done a bunk.’
‘Not for much longer,’ said Lucy coyly, inclining her head at the TV in the kitchen and the lunchtime headlines. ‘In fact, I’m betting you fifty quid he’s back in his hotel room by sundown.’
‘How can you possibly know that?’ demanded Polly, following her gaze, but all she saw was a blurred outline of a news presenter with thinning hair. At least she imagined he had thinning hair. It seemed to be a pre-requisite these days.
‘So…? What do you think?’ prodded Lucy, eagerly.
‘About what?’ Polly was practically fizzing with frustration. ‘Come on Lucy, you know I can’t see a thing without my glasses!’
‘Sorry I forgot. Right, do you want the good news first or the bad?’
‘Good…no bad!’
‘Ok, Love Letters has five Oscar nominations.’
Polly groaned. There really was no justice in the world.
‘And the good…?’
Lucy grinned. ‘Memoir’s got seven.’
Chapter Fifty-One
During his second week incognito, Joe woke in a state of unbearable twitchiness. Beneath the surface of his legs, big, hairy spiders were engaged in some sort of arachnid Olympics and his heart palpations were like mini electric shocks zapping his chest. With sweat pouring off his chest, he unzipped his sleeping bag but the blast of cold air only made his bare skin ache and shrink his balls to the size of Californian raisins.
Dressing in a hurry, he left his tent in search of breakfast. Unfortunately, not even a smoked salmon bagel on his favourite bench outside the overpriced lodge café, in the gentle early spring sunshine, seemed to offer him relief. This is more than restless leg syndrome, he thought in alarm, as the tic moved up through his torso and into his shoulders. His was a body that was done with textbook scenery, long, indolent days exploring, and facing up to his past. His was a body that wanted back in. All of a sudden, he missed his friends, he missed his job, he even missed his cringe worthy attempts at witty, insightful interviews with intense young journalists who desperately wanted to coax a cracker of a quote out of him then tête-à-tête him into bed.
But most of all he missed Polly.
Polly made a pact with herself as she stood waiting to be welcomed onto American soil by an aggressive border patrol officer with a face like a squished hot dog and arms as puny as his moustache. She was going to spank her Barclaycard, book herself on every city tour going and really let her hair down.
Starting as she meant to go on, she was out of the door as soon as they arrived at their hotel, leaving Lucy all alone in her quest to blag five minutes with Walt. First, she needed to crumble his very own impenetrable Wall of Jericho: Ms Serena Madders.
‘Just five minutes of his time, Ms Madders, that’s all I’m asking for,’ she heard Lucy beg, as she slipped through the door. When she returned, an hour later, her friend was still hard at it, exhibiting all the steely determination of a dirty old millionaire let loose behind the scenes at a Victoria’s Secret fashion show.
‘If you could just put him on the phone, Ms Madders, I promise not to take up anymore of his time than is necessary…Please, don’t hang up on me again, Ms Madders…Yes, I am fully aware of what harassment is, Ms Madders. What is my call concerning? You keep asking that, Ms Madders, but unfortunately, yet again, that’s something I would like to discuss privately with Mr Wilson. If you could just…Damn!’ Lucy slammed the hotel phone down. ‘That’s the tenth time the rotten cow’s hung up on me.’
‘Perhaps it’s time for some of that journalistic creativity?’ suggested Polly, flopping onto her bed.
‘What do you suggest? Phone tapping? Breaking into his mansion when he’s asleep?’
‘Multi-millionaires don’t sleep – they pace up and down their lavish bedrooms all night dreaming up schemes to quadruple their wealth. Why have one underground vault when you can have three? Are you going to tell me what this is all about now?’
‘No’ snapped Lucy, ‘Not until I speak to Walt.’
‘Why don’t you call Michael? He’d be a good skeleton key into Walt’s lair, I mean office, especially since they kissed and made up last spring.’
‘Uh-huh,’ said Lucy shaking her head. ‘I don’t want him involved. Not yet anyway.’
Polly sat up. ‘Now I’m even more intrigued…’
Lucy shot her a look as she picked up the hotel telephone again.
‘Yes, hello, Ms Madders, it’s Lucy Richards again. Yes, I am very tenacious, how right you are,’ she said, the corners of her mouth lifting slightly. ‘Right, Right I see…’ All of a sudden, she let out a defeated sigh. ‘Oh ok, if Mr Wilson really must know what it’s regarding then you can reference his former producer, Vincent Edwards, who, I might add, happens to have a past murkier than a….Fucking woman!’ screeched Lucy, as Serena abruptly hung up on her for an eleventh time.
‘Vile Vincent and the plot that doth thicken,’ joked Polly.
‘Oh shush. I’m not in the mood.’
Two seconds later, the phone rang. Lucy scooped it up like it was a triple chocolate ice cream sundae.
‘Why, hello Ms Madders,’ she said, looking slightly stunned. There was a pause. ‘Good. I’m glad to hear it. I’ll be there shortly.’ She hung up and waved a shaky thumbs-up at Polly. ‘Sorry I snapped at you. Walt wants to see me in after lunch.’
‘Yipee! Pulitzer’s in the post! I knew you’d sweeten the old bag eventually. You must have whipped her into a frenzy with the ‘V’ word. Michael say’s she’s into a bit of S&M.’
But Lucy didn’t flicker. All of a sudden, the thought of pitting five foot nothing of resourceful British pluck against the reputed Don of Hollywood didn’t feel particularly clever or potentially career defining in the slightest. Instead, it smacked of certain suicide.
Lucy’s fears weren’t dispelled by the frosty welcome awaiting her at the Global Studios’ Checkpoint Charlie-esque
security. Glancing at the twenty foot fences ringed with barbed wire and the snarling militia of patrolling hounds, she soon realised that making a swift getaway from this place would be like fleeing Alcatraz with a fridge tied to both legs.
Once they had checked and re-checked her credentials, she was waved through and instructed to park up next to an enormous stone cenotaph, erected only last month in Vincent’s honour. Lucy took one look at it and shivered. Did the same tarmac-besplattered fate await her once she exposed the ticking time bomb in her handbag?
The footage was only ten minutes long, barely six hundred seconds, yet the heart-stopping exposés that had tumbled out of Stephen and Vincent’s mouths in that time were like the falling sparks of a Catherine Wheel. The biggest and most spectacular, by far, was Vincent’s confession about what a dirty fat fraud he was, stealing some poor bugger’s scripts and passing them off as his own. But what was the role of Global Studios in all of this. It was no secret that Walt Wilson turned a blind eye to GBA’s antics, but to what length? Concealing fraud? Had she, Lucy Richards from Surrey, just stumbled across the biggest cover-up escandalo in movie-making history?
Serena Madders herself met her in the doorway of Walt’s building, her pursed lips and bracing blue eyes every bit as hostile as anticipated, and she was whisked wordlessly up to the top floor. There, she was told to wait until called on the hardest plastic chair imaginable, surrounded by dozens of portraits of Walt Wilson in various guises with countless movie industry dignitaries, each one glaring down at her with the intense ferociousness of a triggered security light.
After an eternity, Serena reappeared, her sensible heels clacking sharply on the cold marble floor. Recalling what Polly said earlier, Lucy stared at her shoes and struggled to keep a straight face. The PA clearly saved the six-inch latex variety for weekends.
‘Ms Richards?’ called out Serena dispassionately, like she was calling out the lucky winner of a twenty-year old bottle of bubble bath in a church hall raffle. ‘Mr Wilson will see you now. Please follow me.’
