Love Lies

by Adele Parks

  Four years’ intimacy?

  Polite small talk is not an option. ‘I’m not in it for the stuff. There’s much more to Scott than his stuff,’ I argue.

  ‘Like?’

  ‘He’s luminously, intensely creative but exposed. He’s stunningly desirable and modish yet quite charmingly open,’ I say.

  ‘Have you been practising that?’ asks Adam.

  Well, yes, I have. I’ve started to write my wedding speech and I’d thought that was a pretty good opener but I’m not going to admit as much to Adam. I hoped my declaration would sound spontaneous.

  Adam sighs, ‘You sound like a fan, not a wife. But maybe that’s no bad thing. I mean, you need to be a big fan to stomach hearing him go on about himself all the time, in that way he does.’

  I don’t bother pretending that Scott doesn’t talk about himself; the truth is, he is rather self-focused but that’s

  ‘It’s not like he goes on about himself all the time out of vanity. It’s just he’s never met anyone more interesting than he is,’ I say. I’m disappointed that my tone is more defensive than upbeat.

  ‘The man met Nelson Mandela!’ points out Adam, snappily. ‘I can imagine that conversation, can’t you? Er, Nel, mate, did I tell you about the time when I shagged a couple of Scandi twins?’ Adam does an impressive impression of Scott’s northern accent; in other circumstances I’d be tempted to laugh. ‘I’ve just read this interview in Dazed and Confused; all he talked about was sex – all he joked about was sex,’ says Adam.

  ‘Well, sex is funny if you think about it for long enough,’ I defend. And I should know, as sex has been all theory to me for weeks now. Obviously, I’d rather strap raw steak to my body and stroll into the lions’ den at London Zoo than admit as much to Adam. Instead I concentrate on shielding Scott. ‘That interview took place before we got engaged.’

  ‘Oh yeah, ages ago,’ says Adam mockingly.

  I’m sorely tempted to point out that not everybody needs four years to decide precisely nothing at all. There is such a thing as love at first sight and whirlwind romance but I sense that Adam would only scoff more, so instead I try to explain why the Dazed and Confused interview was so graphic. Truthfully, when I read it, I had been a little surprised that Scott mentioned the nun he deflowered and defrocked.

  ‘It’s not like he goes on about sex all the time out of

  ‘Whatever you say. You’re the one who knows him.’

  ‘I am,’ I say hotly.

  ‘You’re the one who’s marrying him.’

  ‘That’s right.’ I need to draw this conversation to a halt. I hate it that Adam can rile me. I wish I was in a place where I was impervious to his digs. I should be. Why does he care so much anyhow? He has Jess now. And I have Scott. We’re not an ‘us’ any more. It’s none of his business.

  ‘Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you here.’

  ‘You will. Jess and I will be there supporting you every step of the way.’ His sarcasm is loud and clear, which is irritating, and more irritating still, he manages to hang up first, leaving me with nothing but the buzz of a dead line.

  61. Fern

  Suddenly, with the wedding now just ten days away I find myself with a free afternoon. Following a call from Colleen, who confirms her final decision with regard to which toiletries we ought to have in the portaloos (Huiles & Baumes, ‘being organic and eco aware is so important’), I decide to hop in the car and surprise Scott at the studio.

  I visited the studio once when I first arrived in LA so I recognize the producer, the engineer and the assistant, plus there’s a delightful, unexpected bonus – Ben.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I ask, giving him a big smacker of a kiss on his cheek.

  ‘I come here when I’m not playing with you.’

  Really, since when? He’s never mentioned it. I feel a little guilty that I’ve been so caught up in wedding preparations that I haven’t made more time to come down to the studio to listen to Scott’s new work.

  Scott is thrilled to see me now. He rips off his bulky earphones and rushes out from behind the glass wall to meet me. ‘Sweets, perfect timing. We are just wrapping this up. You can tell me what you think of it. Ben loves it, don’t you Ben?’

  ‘Wait until you hear this album. The man is a genius,’ says Ben excitedly. ‘There are at least half a dozen number ones. This album is going to grab America by the throat! know they want yet.’

  Scott signals to the producer and suddenly the room is bursting with his growly, irresistible voice.

  Ben’s right; this is an amazing album. In the past all Scott’s lyrics have read like a tabloid story; raw, open, apologetic and angry. To understand his songs is to know what it feels like to have nothing and feel everything. The lyrics in Wedding Album hold on to his trademark honesty but they are much more idealistic and celebratory. The album perfectly encapsulates just how dazzlingly astonishing it is to fall in love.

  I listen carefully and know with an absolute certainty that these songs will be the songs a generation falls in love to: men and women will choose them for their first husband and wife dance; these tracks are the sort of tracks that will play in the background as teenagers lose their virginity and disappointed women throw their drinks over betraying lovers. They are seminal, decisive and romantic.

  The songs are buffed to perfection. On each and every track, before the chorus even runs for a second time, everyone in the room is humming along; that sort of reaction guarantees this is going to be an album that enjoys buckets full of air time.

  ‘Oh my God, did that lyric just say, Fern, you make me burn?’ I ask excitedly.

  Scott grins at me. I dash to him and plant an enormous kiss on his mouth. If we were alone I might have tried to persuade him to forget the chastity vow.

  ‘I can’t believe you wrote a song about me!’

  ‘Three,’ he says with obvious pride. ‘You’re named in three.’

  I listen to the rest of the album even more carefully. Sure enough my name pops up in two more songs; one about making his head turn and another all about how he yearns. Out of context these lines sound pretty corny, but believe me, when he sings them accompanied by the irresistible beat as part of a love ballad, they work. I’m overwhelmed. I beam at Scott, thrilled to be the inspiration behind this immense work. The album is the utterly perfect tribute to our love affair.

  ‘The Americans are going to adore this!’ says Ben again. He actually can’t resist jumping up and down on the spot.

  ‘Not just the Americans, everyone will love this,’ I enthuse.

  ‘Yes, but it’s the Americans who are important,’ says Scott seriously.

  ‘Wedding Album is a flawless record compiled by a man shot through with flaws,’ says Mark with a grin.

  ‘He’s not so bad,’ I reply indignantly. I haven’t quite forgiven Mark for the pre-nup and can’t look at him without thinking about it. I don’t like thinking about it, so the easiest thing is not to have too much to do with Mark.

  ‘Fern, darlin’, he’s pure gold and you know it and I know it and soon the American public are going to know it too. Now he’s in luuurve he’ll be irresistible.’ Mark grins and lights a big cigar. I turn away from him and drape my arms around Scott.

  ‘It’s brilliant,’ I gush. ‘This album is the embodiment

  Scott pulls me close to him. We stand foreheads touching, my arms around his waist, his arms hung around my neck. I can feel his breath mingling with mine. He kisses my nose and beams back at me.

  ‘You’re great,’ he says simply as we reluctantly break apart.

  ‘When’s it going to be released?’ I ask.

  ‘Tomorrow. Which gives us eight days for it to climb the charts before the wedding.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ How’s that possible? I don’t know much about the music business (far less than I should) but I thought that it took months to bring out an album. It’s clear that we’ve been listening to the edited version and that the sound has been maste
red by an engineer – but what about the packaging, won’t that take weeks to develop? I must have missed the bit where Scott gets to have his photo taken in loads of different outfits, hanging out with lots of different kinds of people – like leggy blondes, or footballers, or scuba divers or something eye-catching.

  ‘When’s the press conference announcing the release?’ I ask.

  ‘Yesterday,’ says Scott with a beam.

  ‘Yesterday! And the promotional tour?’

  ‘Just after the wedding. Things haven’t been standing still while you’ve been planning this wedding, you know,’ chips in Mark.

  Clearly. Something occurs to me like a brick flying out of the horizon. ‘When you say just after the wedding you mean after the honeymoon, right?’

  ‘Not exactly. We thought we’d make the tour into your honeymoon. We’ll be travelling all across America; New York, Chicago, Boston, Las Vegas,’ says Mark, with a self-satisfied grin.

  ‘You said you always wanted to go to New York,’ adds Scott.

  ‘And you said you hated being on the road,’ I point out. He’d said that being on the road was soulless, that the cities, hotels and crowds always blurred and merged into one, and the long highways – that led to out-of-town fast food joints – inevitably drove him to drink. ‘The last two times you fell off the wagon was when you were on tour,’ I add. It seems like a big risk to me. Is he ready for it? ‘Shouldn’t we have discussed this?’

  Scott smiles at me, kisses my nose again and then wanders back behind the glass and picks up his headset without answering my question. He doesn’t need to. In my heart of hearts I know the answer. Yes, we should have discussed this, the way we should have discussed the pre-nup and the three celebrity bridesmaids I’ve never met and the sleeping arrangements in the country hotel. Suddenly, my head is full of things Scott and I don’t discuss. We talk about feelings but not facts. Facts are Mark’s bag. I don’t have any other choice than to turn to Mark if I want answers.

  ‘I’d like to have been consulted,’ I say shortly.

  ‘He’s going to be crowned King of America, Fern,’ says Mark.

  ‘America doesn’t have a king,’ I say, somewhat tetchily.

  ‘They’ve been waiting for him.’ Mark laughs and his

  ‘At the cost of his health?’ I ask, by which I mean sobriety.

  ‘This album needs to sell at any cost,’ says Mark steadily. ‘Scott knows that. Scott wants that.’ Then he asks, ‘Is this about you not getting a honeymoon? I’ll see he makes it up to you.’ I hate Mark implying I’m being a sulky spoilsport when in fact I’m seriously worried about my fiancé’s health and with good reason.

  Ben is standing shoulder to shoulder next to Mark; he beams at me, reassuringly, and says, ‘I’ll come on tour too. It’ll be fun.’

  I wish Ben had warned me to expect this. I could have given the matter more thought. I feel exactly as I did when presented with the pre-nup; everyone says it’s all OK, but it doesn’t feel OK. Deep down, somewhere in my gut, something feels off. It’s the oddest sensation. I remember having it as a little girl when I was playing hide and seek with my older siblings and their friends. I didn’t really understand the mechanics of the game. I’d cover my eyes and think because I couldn’t see them they couldn’t see me – that I was well hidden and safe. But they could see me as clear as day. I was the one standing alone and exposed, blind because I was covering my own eyes. Everyone around me kept playing and winning the game. It’s a creepy comparison; one I don’t enjoy making. I push the thought away.

  I sigh, confused, beginning to doubt myself. Am I being a spoilsport? Scott’s happy with the decision, Mark says

  ‘Come on Fern, cheer up,’ says Ben. ‘Don’t be grouchy. You, more than anyone, know Scott’s full of surprises.’

  Yes, I do. I do know that much.

  62. Fern

  The wedding guests start to arrive. Unable to suppress their excitement, they burst through the double doors at the airport arrivals; behaving much like popping corn in the microwave, they bounce in every direction. At first I go to greet friends and rellies at the airport, but it soon becomes apparent that picking up in person is impractical when my great-aunt Liz is knocked over by an overzealous photographer. He was clamouring to take a photo of me with greasy hair. I complained to Mark about the scrum of photographers; he said I shouldn’t leave the house without full makeup ever again. The majority of my guests are staying at one of the flash hotels on Sunset. They all ‘oh’ and ‘ah’ at the glamour and fantasy of the enormous rooms with glowing glass walls and white furnishings. Saadi has booked the penthouse for my mum and dad.

  Everyone is excited to meet Scott and to see our home. I was concerned about how he’d respond to me trailing ten parties of eight through the house but he rose to the occasion beautifully by suggesting we throw one big pre-wedding party, around the pool, so that both families can get to know each other in a relaxed way. I worried that arranging another party just days before the wedding would be an impossible task but Mark assured me everything could be attended to without giving me extra stress. Wedding Album’s position. He’s clearly confident and so he should be; the album is awesome. I know all my cousins will still queue for Scott’s autograph, but I agree that on balance one big get-together will be less painful than multiple introductions.

  The party is scheduled to start at about lunchtime. We’re serving Scott’s speciality, barbecued prawns marinated in lime and coriander, the meal he cooked for me the first night we arrived here – which is a really romantic touch. Although Scott isn’t going to do the barbecueing himself – obviously, we have two hundred to feed – so we’ve hired caterers instead. The expectation is that we’ll celebrate through the afternoon and into the evening. I have three outfits for the day. I plan (by which I mean Colleen has planned for me) to start by wearing a purple velvet beaded mini dress with taffeta sleeves; it’s Gucci. She said it will make a stunning but hip first impression, plus Scott loves purple. As it happens, I’m still in a dressing-gown with a towel wrapped around my head when my mum and dad arrive at 8.30 a.m. Not the dramatic first impression I wanted to present.

  One of the pretty girl organizers shows my parents into my room and while my dad immediately wraps me into a brief, self-conscious hug, my mum is too busy falling over herself to be nice to the pretty girl and seems momentarily to forget I’m here at all. She actually bobs a small curtsey as the girl leaves.

  ‘You should have tipped her, Ray,’ my mum scolds my dad.

  ‘No, really, there’s no need,’ I say, wrapping her in a big hug. I can see she’s tense and agitated; she’s made the effort though, she’s had her hair coloured and she’s had a blow-dry.

  ‘It’s tips left, right and centre, over here. I’m bleeding cash,’ mumbles my dad.

  ‘I’m sure we should have tipped her,’ argues my mum.

  ‘She works for me, Mum, you’re in my home. Dad, put your money away, there’s no need for a tip.’

  ‘I’ve gone blonde.’ Mum fingers the edges of her hair shyly. I think she’s telling me she’s blonde because there is a level of uncertainty, the shade is open to interpretation; I’d say it has the same hue as rice pudding – the sort with sultanas and nutmeg in.

  ‘Our Fern will have someone who can do something with it,’ says Dad. ‘Fix the colour.’ He’s said what I’m thinking but the anxiety that floods into Mum’s face stops me backing him up.

  ‘You look fantastic,’ I smile.

  She repays my solidarity by commenting, ‘You’re too skinny.’

  ‘Do you like your hotel?’ I ask.

  ‘Your father struggled to get into the bathroom for thirty minutes. There’s no handle on the door. You just give it a gentle push and then it sort of springs back at you.’ Mum looks smug, as she was clearly the one who conquered that particular Everest.

  ‘Too bloody clever for its own good,’ mutters my dad. I remember feeling just as helpless when I struggled to turn on the taps
that first night I arrived here. ‘And your

  ‘It’s very spacious though, dear, very elegant,’ adds my mum. ‘And those lovely long terraces! Oh, the views, city wide! Stunning. Shame about your dad’s vertigo, though.’

  Clearly they are bewildered and uncomfortable. I bet my mum hasn’t dared use the soap or disturb the towels; she probably brought her own with her. Saadi should have put them in a more traditional hotel. What was she thinking?

  ‘You could stay here,’ I offer, not for the first time.

  ‘We don’t want to be in the way,’ says Mum, gazing around my vast bedroom, which is the size of their house.

  ‘You wouldn’t be.’

  She shakes her head and I know her decision is final. She’s a proud woman and I understand her reasoning. If it’s going to take them thirty minutes to open a minimalist door, they’d rather do that in privacy.

  ‘Listen, how about I get dressed and show you around?’ I offer.

  Mum and Dad are overwhelmed by Scott’s place. They are, in fact, flabbergasted, a word my dad uses to describe his reaction to the snooker table, the gym, the extensive gardens and the Jacuzzis (we have one indoor and one outdoor). My mother repeatedly asks, ‘What will they think of next? A cinema in your house?’ When I show her the cinema in our house, she resorts to Dad’s response of choice; she too is flabbergasted.

  I’ve lived in Beverly Hills, Hollywood, in Scott’s home, for six weeks now and I have already become entirely accepting of luxury. The funny thing about luxury is that it turns out to be more or less the same everywhere and it’s possible to stop noticing it’s there at all, thus defeating the very point of luxury, surely. In just six weeks I’ve started to expect nothing less than perfection. I’m no longer amazed by translucent fabric walls that screen glamorous and outlandish goings-on. I barely register frosted glass furniture that changes colour with the beat of the music (a challenging indigo at the beginning of the evening when lounge music drifts through conversations, then – shifting through the rainbow – a cool blue as the beat intensifies, then an invigorating green as people start to party and then finally a sinful red as the bodies and thoughts flail around the dance floor). I expect every object I encounter – whether it’s a shopping bag or a hotel lobby – to be tasteful, modish, kitsch, discreet, flamboyant or stunning; I expect everything to be, in some way, notable. Nothing is ordinary any more, so in an odd way, once again everything is. Just a different kind of ordinary.