How to be Famous

by Alison Bond

  7

  Melanie wasn’t sure that she possessed the mental faculties necessary to make this decision. So did that mean she was going to say no? Los Angeles had been a jet-lagged daydream. In that context Max Parker’s offer was simply the bizarre highlight of an exhausted trip. But now that she was back she had some serious thinking to do.

  Melanie had liked Max, he was funny and kind, almost fatherly. Max Parker fitted the picture in her mind of how a superagent should be, a lethal combination of style and substance with a slightly camp gloss. There was something old-fashioned in his courtesy and his knowledge of films was staggering. She hadn’t known it at the time but their hour-long meeting was originally scheduled to last just twenty minutes and his assistants were frantic as a result of his caprice. If Max liked someone he could talk for hours.

  They had talked about the trouble with Bob Rosenburg at the beginning of the shoot. Max confided that he thought Bob was a misogynistic bully and Melanie just got in the way of his greed.

  ‘Wait until the film’s hit,’ said Max. ‘He’ll be claiming he discovered you.’

  By the time Max kissed her on both cheeks to say goodbye he had charmed Melanie completely. She was flattered that he had taken so much trouble to find out who she was, not knowing that an assistant had compiled a detailed crib sheet from the internet as she did every time Max met someone new. It was all part of a meticulously orchestrated plan to make CMG look like the most caring, informed agency in town.

  Now she simply needed to consider all the facts and weigh up her options.

  She knew that the film would change things for her, she just didn’t expect things to change so quickly.

  Max and Jim were talking about a major contract that would last several months, possibly years. One that would dramatically alter the course of her life. Take her away from her mortgage and her boyfriend, to a strange country where she wouldn’t know a soul. Of course she could always rent out her house and knock the Jonathan thing on the head, but… but still, she had just come back from one trip, did she really want to turn around and make another? This time maybe for ever?

  The decision was on her mind every single waking moment. Her dilemma popped up in her dreams; Marilyn Monroe taking tea with Melanie’s father, her new life taking tea with her old. Then her father grabbed the teapot and poured scalding water over Marilyn’s face and Melanie woke up not knowing what the dream was trying to say. She made lists. She read her horoscopes. She even tried doing her tarot cards but couldn’t find the book that tells you what each card means and without that she was lost. The answer eluded her. Only in fleeting moments of self-confidence did she see the amazing chance she had, then her insecurity would rise up and swallow the bravery she needed to make the right choice.

  She didn’t talk to anyone, she kept her thoughts inside where they gnawed constantly at the analytical part of her brain. Everyone would tell her she would be crazy to pass this up, but she couldn’t see things clearly right now and didn’t want to hear it. She was too busy thinking.

  Because she knew she ought to, Melanie visited her sister Amanda in her Chelsea townhouse, set on a quiet little square just far enough back from the King’s Road so that you couldn’t hear the traffic.

  Amanda was the first actress in the family and had enjoyed some considerable success in the mid-eighties, around about the time she had met and married her obnoxious husband, Douglas Mullraine.

  Douglas was a theatre producer who spent more time on the golf course than in the office, walking off his extravagant lunches. Melanie saw him more often drunk than sober, slobbering over her while he poured her wine, trying to sneak a look down her top. Douglas had made passes at his wife’s sister on more than one occasion and only stopped when Melanie threatened to scream rape the next time he so much as looked at her. It hadn’t stopped him looking, but thankfully since then he’d kept his distance.

  Douglas was out at ‘work’ and Amanda was fussing over her one-year-old daughter as the Portuguese nanny, Sara, looked on with a disinterested expression. Amanda’s latest pregnancy was showing and she was sheathed in a busy, floral smock that did nothing for her. Her chestnut hair fell to her shoulders in poker-straight sheets and as usual she was wearing full make-up.

  ‘Mel!’ she cried as Melanie walked into the kitchen where Alessi and Smeg battled for dominance. ‘Sweetheart, you look too thin. What did they feed you out there? Come on, come and sit down.’ Amanda deposited the baby with Sara and started to usher Melanie out of the kitchen. ‘Sara, could you fix us some tea?’

  ‘Hang on, let me see my niece a minute,’ said Melanie.

  ‘Gosh, yes, of course, I forget, more people come to see the baby than me. Sara, give Olivia to Melanie.’

  Melanie grinned at the little girl in her arms. She was much bigger and heavier than the last time she saw her and her hair was curling at the ends. Melanie liked children but they scared her, they were too unpredictable. Melanie felt sorry for this one. Her sister responded with as much warmth to her child as she might to a new car or a pair of shoes. When people admired Olivia, Amanda sighed in the background, bored. She couldn’t grasp the fascination that people seemed to have with a baby; she couldn’t push the pram in the park without complete strangers peering in and breathing all over Olivia, who would invariably get upset from all the attention and ruin the quiet stroll entirely.

  Amanda seemed impatient now as she waited for Melanie to dispense with the child and settle in the sunny conservatory at the back of the house. This room was mercifully free of pictures, given the glass walls, but the rest of the house was lined with images of Amanda, like a shrine, including nude shots in the bathroom that made Melanie embarrassed to take a pee. Douglas admired his wife’s physical perfection, that was sweet, but did he have to wear his heart on his walls? Amanda smiling down from every angle was quite off-putting.

  As soon as they were sitting down Amanda dropped her bombshell, with a wide-eyed exclamation worthy of a soap opera.

  ‘Douglas is having an affair.’

  Melanie was nonplussed. Douglas had tried to chat up every woman she knew, he was a scandalous flirt and it stood to reason that from time to time he’d get lucky. Surely Amanda couldn’t think that her Casanova husband was entirely faithful? Apparently she did.

  ‘I’ll be devastated, Mel,’ said Amanda. ‘What will I do without him?’

  ‘Wait,’ said Melanie. ‘What makes you think that even if he’s having this affair he’d leave you? You’re the mother of his child, children. You’d work it out.’

  ‘I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I’d be too ashamed.’

  Oh Christ, thought Melanie; she really doesn’t have a clue.

  ‘Why do you think he’s having an affair?’ she asked.

  ‘I know he is,’ Amanda replied. ‘It was all sorts of things at first – he went in to work early, he’d come home in the middle of the day, erratic behaviour. All the magazines say look out for erratic behaviour.’

  My sister, the Cosmo queen.

  ‘Then I realized who he was shagging and it all fell into place.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Melanie.

  Amanda gestured towards the kitchen.

  ‘Sara?’ Melanie asked too loudly.

  ‘Shhhh! I know I’m right. She acts all cool around him but I can tell. He spent two hundred pounds on lingerie from Harvey Nichols and I thought it must be for me, then the next time Sara stays over because we’re out late, she’s wearing this gorgeous dove-grey satin chemise, La Perla no less. I mean, how stupid can you get? It’s such a cliché, getting caught with your hand in the till because of bloody underwear.’

  ‘What did you do, go through his credit card bill?’ said Melanie. ‘That doesn’t mean anything, he could have been buying stuff for himself.’

  ‘No, I went through his car. The Harvey Nicks bag was under the seat. I saw the bloody thing.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Melanie, picturing her sister rummaging in Douglas’s Audi convertible an
d desperately trying to keep the smile from her face. Amanda was taking this seriously so she should too. ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know, I can’t fire her without getting a replacement – I can’t look after Olivia on my own, not in my condition.’

  Amanda was happy to let pregnancy exempt her from any task she found too taxing.

  ‘I meant, what are you going to do about Douglas?’ asked Melanie.

  ‘I wondered if perhaps you might talk to him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tell him that I know and he needs to knock it on the head so that things can go back to normal,’ said Amanda.

  ‘No way,’ said Melanie. ‘He’s your husband, I can’t say things like that to him. Why can’t you just sit down together tonight and talk?’

  ‘I really don’t feel I should stress myself. Anxiety can be very bad for the baby.’ She sniffed. ‘Really, Melanie, I do think you’re being a bit harsh. I expected more sympathy from my own sister. I’m a cuckold. Douglas is out tonight anyway at that thing you’re going to. You could just grab him in a quiet corner. You’re so good at that sort of thing. Oh Mel, won’t you do it? He’ll be so embarrassed I’m sure he’ll do whatever you ask.’

  She spared little or no thought to Melanie’s potential embarrassment, only to that of her husband. It genuinely didn’t occur to her that Melanie might refuse her this small favour. After all, she never did.

  ‘So if I say I’ll do this,’ said Melanie wearily, with a feeling that she was about to be convinced, ‘you’ll just take him back and never say another word about it? What about Sara?’

  ‘Sara can stay. She’s a silly little girl and I’m sure it’s just a wild flirtation. I can’t be bothered to go through all the rigmarole of finding another nanny. She’s good with Olivia and once it’s over I’ll enjoy rubbing her face in it.’ A nasty expression came across Amanda’s face and her usual pale English rose complexion flushed violently. ‘I mean, how dare she? Cheeky bitch.’

  Melanie had forgotten all about the party that evening, the opening night of a new musical produced by one of Douglas’s biggest rivals. Of course Douglas would be there, smiling broadly and congratulating everyone involved, while silently hoping that the musical was a commercial and critical failure. She had to go. Jonathan was invited and would expect her to be there. They hadn’t really seen each other since she got back and she was supposed to be his girlfriend after all.

  She hated first nights. Every guest at the after-show party invariably pretended to love the play, as you could never be sure who you were speaking to or who was overhearing. The poor stars sometimes spent all night being told how marvellous they were, relaxing for the first time in months, only to wake up the next day to reviews so scathing that they wondered if it was worth getting up at all. You knew that last night every single person at a party lied to your face.

  Melanie didn’t want to go to the party, she didn’t want to tell Douglas to keep his dick in his pants, she didn’t want to hold Jonathan’s hand and smile during dull conversations with people she hadn’t met; she wanted to go home and think some more. She just wasn’t very good at saying no.

  ‘I’ll talk to him,’ said Melanie. ‘But you owe me.’

  The musical had the biggest cast, the brightest choreographers, the best composer and an elaborate revolving set. But it was still an unmitigated disaster.

  Lynsey was embarrassed for every actor on the stage. It was bad. They were dying out there and they knew it.

  How excited they must have been to get their parts – ‘Honey, I got it! The lead in a West End musical!’ Had they allowed themselves dreams of Broadway transfers and album deals only to come to this? Standing on a stage singing a song about a character everyone had forgotten. Making jokes that didn’t get laughs and missing the high notes because the audience was too intimidating.

  Lynsey shifted in her seat. It had only been an hour but it felt like a week and a half. At least a quarter of the audience had left. How must it feel to see people walking out on you while you were trying to do your job? Only show business could be so cruel.

  Thank God for the afterparty. Every oil slick has a rainbow.

  The afterparty was in full bullshit mode by the time Melanie got through security and entered the pink striped marquee that had been erected in the middle of Great Devon Square. Usually a plain residential London square, it had been transformed into a Victorian fairground for the evening. Waiters in period costume served drinks to women who were trying not to get their stilettos stuck in the mud. Orbs of multicoloured light swung from bunting wound among the trees. In one corner was a bar churning out cocktails as fast as the thirsty crowd could drink them; in another a block of ice held every kind of seafood imaginable and, beside that, two waiters flipped blinis on demand.

  The spectacle was bizarre, a temporary fairground, complete with helter-skelter and candyfloss stalls. The houses that ringed the square looked deserted; perhaps the theatre company had put the residents up at the Halcyon for the night, or gifted each one of them a trip to Paris. The party must have cost a fortune, and for what? So that if the play was terrible there was a chance they might remember only the great lobster? Melanie felt they might have underestimated the cynical nature of your typical theatre crowd. The musical was awful; no amount of vodka and cranberry could change that.

  Over by the free champagne Lynsey Dixon spotted Melanie looking listless and decided to say hello. She had hoped that Melanie might show her face tonight. She was desperate to get an update; she wasn’t very good at waiting for other people. When it came to life choices Lynsey liked to call the shots, at least that way if she was hit she couldn’t blame anyone but herself. She had been on tenterhooks all week, simultaneously trying not to count on it while sorting through her summer wardrobe for beachwear. She was sober enough to remember that Jim had asked her not to talk to Melanie, but drunk enough not to care.

  ‘Hi, Melanie. How are you?’

  Melanie turned and saw that nice girl Lynsey from Jim’s office. The one that sorted out the mess in Indonesia, way back before she was almost famous. It was just a few weeks ago but it felt like another life. ‘I’m fine, thanks, Lynsey. How are you?’

  ‘Feel a bit tipsy actually. It was the helter-skelter, one go too many I think. Either that or the free bar, I’m awful around a free bar.’

  ‘The curtain only came down an hour ago,’ said Melanie.

  ‘Yeah, I know, but the play was so bad, wasn’t it? We left at the interval and came straight here, got a table. Oh shit, don’t tell Jim,’ said Lynsey.

  Her words seemed to be coming out without conscious thought. She may have overestimated her sobriety. Too late she remembered that she was supposed to be making a good impression.

  ‘I won’t tell, don’t worry. Who are you here with?’ said Melanie.

  ‘Oh, you know, Alice, Stuart, Fi. Jim’s here too, would you like me to find him for you? Would you like a drink? Shall we join the others?’

  ‘Lynsey, relax, don’t worry,’ said Melanie, and meant it. She always liked Lynsey’s refreshing honesty but the longer she worked for Jim Taylor the more diluted it was becoming.

  ‘So what’s up?’ said Lynsey. She tried to sound breezy.

  ‘You heard about the television show?’

  ‘Yeah. Congratulations.’

  ‘I’m still deciding.’

  Lynsey started to nod understandingly but as she didn’t understand at all she couldn’t quite pull it off.

  Melanie noticed and started to defend herself. ‘It’s a big decision. I don’t know if I can just pack up my entire life in a week. Could you?’

  Lynsey could pack up her entire life in a day if she had to. That thought made her feel a tiny bit depressed.

  ‘I mean, it’s a big change.’

  Lynsey shrugged. ‘I like change.’

  ‘Really? I hate it.’

  ‘Change is the father of possibility. And I like possibilities.’
r />   Melanie looked so forlorn that Lynsey was stabbed with guilt. She backtracked. ‘But then my life is pre-packaged for change. I don’t own a piece of furniture that I can’t fit in the back of a cab.’

  ‘I have a houseful.’

  ‘And I haven’t got any ties here, no boyfriend, family live miles away. You’ve got your sister and, um, Jonathan, is it?’

  ‘Jonathan. Yes.’

  ‘So you have a lot more to lose. I can completely understand why you might want to turn it down.’

  The two of them sat on an ordinary park bench that would be left behind tomorrow when all this finery was taken away and the square returned to normal. Lynsey found a pack of gum in her hot-pink handbag. She offered one to Melanie and they both sat there and chewed for a while.

  ‘I don’t have anything to lose,’ said Melanie, ‘not really. My house will still be here when I get back and so will my sister.’

  ‘And Jonathan?’

  ‘We’re both wasting time with each other until the right person comes along. The type you’re looking for over his shoulder while he’s talking to you, while anyone’s talking to you.’ Melanie sighed. Breaking down her life like this wasn’t very pleasant. Why was she staying again? The choice had been sailing in her head for so long that her brain was flooded. She was confused.

  Finally she said, ‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My life, my life wasn’t supposed to be like this.’

  Lynsey knew what she wanted to say: ‘Whoa, hold on, honey, you’re losing your grip.’ But instead she said, ‘Well, either way they offered you the part so you must be doing something right.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Definitely It’s a great part, if not for you then for someone else. They really liked you.’

  ‘They did?’

  ‘Of course they did. Melanie, are you okay? For someone who has just been offered a brilliant job you seem very unhappy. I mean, if it were me…’ She trailed off, realizing that it was her, sort of, and that she had been about to tell Melanie. If there was one thing this woman didn’t need it was extra pressure. A kick up the backside, yeah, but no more pressure.