Georgia sucked in her breath.
‘Harsh but true, ’ she confirmed.
Devon grabbed Lola’s hand.
‘Come upstairs with me, ’ she commanded. ‘I know just the right supportive-but-hurt fiancée outfit for you to wear. I’m thinking Elizabeth Hurley just after Hugh Grant got caught with that hooker on the Sunset Strip . . .’
‘Lola! Over here!’
‘Lola! It’s Richie from the Mail! Did you know about Jean-Marc’s drug addiction?’
‘Lola, are you going to forgive him?’
‘Lola! Devon! Can we get you both together, girls?’
Devon had decided that Elizabeth Hurley’s Hugh-Grant-forgiving outfit – all white, with a large crucifix at the throat – might just be overkill, especially as the London sun was considerably fainter than the LA one. She had dressed Lola in black trousers and a polo-neck, worn under a short white trenchcoat, cinched at the waist with a wide black leather belt. Since Lola’s Jimmy Choos were ruined, Devon had lent her a pair of black patent Gina boots, which Lola had had to stuff at the toes with toilet paper, as Devon’s feet were a size bigger (something Devon hadn’t been very happy to discover).
Lola’s golden hair was pinned back in a deliberately dishevelled chignon at the back of her head – ‘Not too tidy, ’ Madison had cautioned. ‘If she’s too pulled together everyone will hate her’ – and large black sunglasses completed the look. Devon had helped Lola do very discreet make-up, just enough to make her skin flawless for the photographs, but not so much that it seemed as though she cared what she looked like. Lola applied a final coat of pale pink lipstick just before they climbed out of the Claverfords’ Bentley.
‘Fab, ’ Georgia said approvingly. ‘Very Grace Kelly.’
‘If Grace Kelly were visiting her tranny-loving fiancé in hospital, ’ Devon muttered.
There were paparazzi ten-deep outside the main entrance to the hospital, and when they saw Devon climb out of the Bentley they turned as one, a huge pack of predators spotting their prey. Camera shutters clicked. A couple of security guards rushed forward, clearing a sort of path for Lola and her posse. Lola walked straight ahead, sunglasses on her head to allow the photographers a good view of her face – pale, resolute and slightly tragic. At the entrance, the girls paused for a second and swivelled to give the screaming paps a few snaps of them before letting the automatic doors swing open.
As they closed again, Madison was already at the reception desk, her long legs giving her an easy advantage.
‘Fourth floor, ’ she announced after a quick interchange with the receptionist.
‘Eew, ’ India said as she stepped into the lift, looking dubiously at the scratches on the floor, the bolted-on steel panelling, and the chipped control panel. ‘This isn’t as nice as I was expecting.’
‘Private hospitals never bloody are, ’ said Devon dourly.
‘Shocking, when you think how much it costs, ’ Georgia commented.
‘I know!’ Devon said. ‘For that much money it should be like a hotel.’
The lift pinged, the doors slid open, and the girls stood back to let Lola exit first. She went up to the nurses’ desk.
‘I’m Lola Fitzgerald, ’ she said, giving the nurse her best you-knew-who-I-was-already-but-I’m-pretending-to-be-modest smile.
‘Oh yes – I mean, of course you are—’ the nurse babbled, the tip of her nose turning an unflattering pink. Plump and freckled, with her hair scraped back for work and not a stroke of make-up on, dressed in unflattering bright blue scrubs, she looked almost like a different species from the glossy It girls. And from the way she was ducking her head, she knew it all too well.
‘I’m here to see Jean-Marc van der Veer, ’ Lola continued.
The nurse was positively writhing with embarrassment.
‘Miss Fitzgerald, I’m so sorry, ’ she mumbled. ‘I’d so let you in to see Mr van der Veer, but I’m not supposed to let anyone in.’
Lola’s eyes dilated in shock.
‘He’s – they said he was out of danger!’ she gasped.
‘Oh no, Miss Fitzgerald, it’s not that, you mustn’t think—’ The nurse’s blush increased, a hectic red circle appearing on each cheek. ‘It’s just that he can’t have any visitors at the moment – he’s not in critical condition or anything, please don’t worry, he’s going to be fine—’
‘Is that what the doctor said?’ Lola asked, slowly recovering from her panic.
‘The doctor says he’s out of danger, but it’s Mr van der Veer – I mean, your Mr van der Veer’s brother – who said no visitors, ’ the nurse said.
Lola read the plastic name-tag pinned over the nurse’s capacious right breast.
‘Deirdre, ’ she said, ‘I’m his fiancée. If anyone should be allowed to see him, it should be me.’
Deirdre looked overwhelmed.
‘Oh, I don’t know what to do!’ she said, wringing her hands. ‘Mr van der Veer specifically said – he was so firm about it – but I’m sure he couldn’t have meant you, Miss Fitzgerald—’
‘That’s exactly who I meant!’ came a man’s voice from the end of the hall. Low and harsh, it cut through the hubbub like a rusty chainsaw.
Deirdre jerked towards the sound as if he’d just Tasered her.
‘Mr van der Veer – I wasn’t sure what to do – this is your brother’s fiancée, Miss—’
‘I know damn well who she is, ’ said the man, striding towards them. ‘I’ve seen enough photographs of her by now.’
He halted a few feet away from the desk, in the middle of the corridor. But he was the kind of man who would automatically seem to be in the centre of anywhere he stood: power and authority radiated out from him in almost-visible rays. His barely controlled anger, however, was even more obvious. His arms were folded across his chest, and Lola instantly sensed that, though this stance was meant to intimidate, it was also because he didn’t trust himself at this moment unless his hands were tucked safely under his well-formed biceps.
‘You’re Jean-Marc’s brother?’ she exclaimed.
‘Niels van der Veer, ’ he said, fixing her with a terrifyingly piercing stare. ‘Jean-Marc’s older brother. Did Jean-Marc mention me at all? Or was he too busy shoving illegal substances up his nose to bother?’
India, standing by the lifts with Georgia and Madison, did the worst thing she could possibly have done under the circumstances: she let out a nervous giggle. Lola could have killed her. Niels van der Veer’s cold grey gaze turned briefly to India, who wilted underneath it like a flower in a speeded-up nature film, blooming one second, dying the next.
His chilly grey eyes swivelled back to Lola, who gulped. She was trying to see any resemblance between Jean-Marc and his brother, and failing. Jean-Marc was golden and sleek, soft-featured and full-lipped, with a tumble of silky blond hair. And he was as slender as a wand.
Niels, on the other hand, was big and looming: much taller than Jean-Marc, with square shoulders, a broad chest, and an air of complete command. Jean-Marc smiled easily, while Niels’s mouth was set in a straight line, and he looked like an attempt to smile would shatter him in pieces. His hair was dark dirty-blond, as Jean-Marc’s would be if he didn’t help it along with discreet gold highlights, but Niels’s was cut shorter than his brother’s, and pushed back from his brow.
Jean-Marc, with his melting blue eyes and soft skin, was the epitome of male beauty. But his brother, far from being beautiful, wasn’t even handsome: his face was much too craggy, his jawline too pronounced, his grey eyes cold. The blondish hair didn’t soften his masculinity at all. Lola doubted he’d look good in photographs; his strong bone structure, his big frame, wouldn’t translate well to film. If he ever wanted a portrait of himself, he’d have to commission someone to chisel it out of a block of granite.
Lola supposed he was good-looking, if you liked men that big and butch. But she didn’t. She never had. And she certainly didn’t like men who looked this angry. Especially since his anger s
eemed, bizarrely, to be directed at her.
‘You don’t look anything like Jean-Marc, ’ she blurted out, and then could have bitten off her tongue for the irrelevance of the comment.
His eyebrows drew together in a scowl.
‘Different mothers, ’ he said concisely, his voice harsh. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me how he is?’
‘Of course!’ Lola protested. ‘Why do you think I’m here? I came to see him!’
‘Did you? Or did you bring along your girl group all dressed up for the photo opportunity outside?’ he sneered, casting a comprehensive glance of scorn over Lola’s friends.
Madison glared back at him; India whimpered; and Georgia and Devon preened themselves a little, flattered at being compared to pop stars.
‘How dare you!’ Lola was furious. She took one step towards him, but came up against what she could only describe as a force field. His anger was like an invisible shield blocking her path.
‘I’m not letting you near Jean-Marc, ’ he pronounced. ‘You’ve done enough damage to him already.’
‘What?’ Lola’s voice rose dangerously high. ‘Are you joking? Did you not notice that Jean-Marc overdosed when he was hanging out with some tranny in a council block? Do you think I sent him off there to get off his face and totally humiliate me?’
Niels van der Veer unfolded his arms, and Lola, involuntarily, took a step back again, hating herself for having done it. But she couldn’t have stood her ground. In all her spoilt, soft, featherbedded life, she had never met anyone half as intimidating as Jean-Marc’s older brother.
‘Humiliate you?’ he said, and now he did smile, and it was even more frightening than his scowl, a smile with no humour in it at all. ‘Humiliate you, Princess? How funny – that’s exactly what you need. Maybe that would make you think about someone else for one damn second of your life. Look at you, all dressed up to the nines, like you’re ready for one of those damn photoshoots you and my brother whored for every time someone asked. You worked out exactly what to wear for those paparazzi scum outside, didn’t you?’
‘Jean-Marc would have hated me to turn up not looking my best!’ she flashed defiantly. Behind her, she could hear the other girls murmuring agreement.
‘Oh for God’s sake, what kind of spoiled bitches are you?’ he demanded, rage gathering in his face. ‘You!’ He pointed at Lola, his hand coming close enough to touch her. ‘Can you even tell me that you love my brother? Can you?’
‘I—’ Lola started, and then the words died on her lips.
Not because she didn’t love Jean-Marc: she did. She always would. But she didn’t love him the way his angry brother meant. He wasn’t her one true love, the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.
She’d never admitted it to herself before – never realised it before now. But here it was, the truth, and if there was one thing she seemed to be completely unable to do, it was lie to Niels van der Veer.
‘I do love him, ’ she stammered. ‘But maybe . . . I mean . . . I do love him, but—’
She shifted nervously, and her foot slipped in the over-large boot. The toilet paper she’d stuffed in the toes had compressed since she’d put them on, and now her feet were sliding around in the too-wide space. Off-balance now, her heel turned under her and she tripped, catching at the top of the counter for support.
Awkwardly she regained her balance. But now Niels was staring at her with open contempt.
‘Are you drunk?’ he demanded.
‘No!’ she said defensively. ‘Of course not! I just—’
And then she remembered the Vicodin and the champagne. Was she a bit woozy still?
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Niels’s hand clenched into a fist. Tightening his lips, he looked at it as if he were angry with it too, angry with the world. He thrust both hands in his pockets, shifting on his feet as if needing to burn off his restless energy.
‘Get out, ’ he said to Lola between clenched teeth. He glanced over at the rest of her friends. ‘All of you, out. And don’t come back. Jean-Marc needs society trash like you like he needs a hole in the head.’
He turned on his heel and strode away down the corridor from the direction in which he had come. Lola stared after him, incredulous. Her brain was racing with stinging retorts: suddenly, she had hundreds of ways to tell him what she thought of him, that his opinion of her was all wrong, that he was the most hateful, horrible man she had ever met in her whole life. But he had tied her tongue into knots. That steely grey stare was paralysing. She was lucky she hadn’t fallen over and twisted her ankle.
‘How dare he?’ Devon gasped. ‘Does he have any idea who I am?’
‘“Society trash”!’ Madison hissed. ‘Outrageous!’
‘That, ’ India sighed, ‘was the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen in my life.’
‘India, how can you!’ Georgia rounded on her.
‘He looks like Daniel Craig’s meaner older brother, ’ India muttered.
‘Look, he’s not going to let you in to see Jean-Marc, ’ Devon said, belting her camel Loro Piana cashmere coat around her waist, ‘so let’s just go. I’m certainly not going to stay in this dump’ – she cast a disparaging glance around the nurses’ station that encompassed the faded industrial green walls, the vinyl floor, and the ugly blue uniform Deirdre and the other nurses were wearing – ‘to be insulted any longer.’
Lola looked pleadingly at Deirdre, who was sucking in her lips, hunching up her shoulders, gestures that meant to indicate her helplessness in the face of Niels van der Veer’s much greater power. And Lola couldn’t blame her.
But, for some reason, it only increased her determination to get in to see Jean-Marc. He was her fiancé, and he had nearly died. She had a right to visit him in hospital, for God’s sake! She needed to see how he was doing: she needed to ask him what on earth he’d been up to the night before, and whether their engagement could be salvaged at all. She had no idea what she wanted to happen, whether they should get married or not, but, with her father’s sudden illness (that was what she was calling it; she couldn’t deal with the idea of Daddy being in a coma right now), one of the two props she relied on had been pulled away, and Jean-Marc was even more important to her than ever before.
And besides wanting to visit Jean-Marc for his own sake, she desperately needed money. Carin had stopped all her cards and told her to go to Jean-Marc for help, and he was exactly the person to ask. Now he was on the mend (and frankly, they all knew people who’d gone a bit too far with the controlled substances, had their stomach pumped and were right as rain afterwards), she knew that Jean-Marc would throw his wallet at her and tell her to use anything she needed for as long as she wanted. He was the soul of generosity anyway, but after the embarrassment he’d caused her, she knew he’d do anything he could to help her. Her girlfriends had already done so much for her – throwing that amazing hen night, rallying round her in this awful crisis – that she was loath to ask them for anything else.
She would see Jean-Marc, and get the financing from him to fly to NYC to see her father. Beyond that, she couldn’t even imagine her next step. It was all too frightening: the mere idea of life without her huge, protective, all-powerful, endlessly indulgent father, whom she adored beyond anything, was so terrifying that every time it tried to enter her consciousness, she jumped on it with both of Devon’s Gina patent-leather boots till it subsided again.
One step at a time.
See Jean-Marc.
Get to New York.
Lola set her jaw. She was determined. And not even Jean-Marc’s arrogant bastard of a brother was going to stop her.
Chapter 4
Evie lumbered out of the lift like a big awkward bear in the three coats she was wearing one over the other. It was complete humiliation. Especially as she was bent over, dragging first one, then the other suitcase, and finally the pole, out of the lift, as its doors repeatedly tried to close on her. At least she was so padded by the coats that she barely felt the thuds
.
Catching her breath, she stood in the lobby for a moment, looking around her. Its granite floor, flecked with sparkling mica, glittered under the huge glass lighting feature. The sight of the lobby had never failed to make Evie’s tiny hard heart sing with happiness. It always reminded her of how far she had come from those filthy projects. You were lucky if the graffitied lobby there didn’t stink of piss and sweat, and the only receptionist was a crack-head or two slumped on the floor, vials crunching under your feet as you picked your way gingerly around them.
Normally, Henry, the day guy, would have jumped to help Evie with her cases. But clearly Benny’s wife (that bitch) had informed him that Evie was being evicted, and Henry barely turned his head to look at her as she reached down for the pull-handles of the suitcases and started to drag them across the lobby, the wheels scraping on the granite floor because the suitcases were so weighted down with stuff.
Suddenly, she was nothing. Dirt on his shoes. This man – who’d grovelled to her for tips and his Christmas envelope – was treating her as he would a food delivery guy: like she was invisible.
Evie had never been invisible. Girls who looked like Evie were never invisible.
Till now.
It was another item to put on her hate-list against Carin Fitzgerald.
She was brainstorming where she could possibly crash, tonight at least. As soon as she’d left the Midnight Lounge, she’d dropped the girls she worked with there: she was determined to better herself, and she wouldn’t do that hanging out with those wild party girls, who’d just have got high, spilt JD and coke over her suede sofas, and tried to steal her meal-ticket sugar daddy.
So, no friends from the Lounge would take her in. Her mom would, but Evie would starve in the street before she went back to Mariluz’s. Because of the shame of it, crawling back home years after she’d defiantly declared that she didn’t need anything from her mother, that she’d make it all on her own; and because it would be a huge step back, returning to that one-bedroom apartment fifteen stinking floors up in the sky, sleeping on her mom’s couch, just like she had throughout her childhood.
Divas Page 7
