Bad Girls (3 page)

‘It’s Petal Gold!’ the PR hissed at him.

‘So that’s under G, is it?’ The doorman rifled back through the list.

‘It’s
Petal Gold
! She doesn’t even need to be on the list! Just let her in!’

As the doorman rushed to unclip the red velvet rope, the PR mouthed, ‘Sorry,’ at Petal and her entourage.

Petal smiled graciously at her as they sailed on through, Petal’s best friend, Tasmeen, snapping at the doorman: ‘You need to read
Heat
magazine, man! You’re
ignorant
!’

‘What is she, a singer or something?’ the doorman asked the PR as they went past.

‘She’s got a handbag line or something – she writes a column for
Downtown –
she’s
Gold’s daughter
, you idiot!’ the PR snapped back.

‘Oh fuck! Sorry,’ he said guiltily, looking after Petal, trying to see a resemblance between her and her extremely famous father. With her pale skin and thick, unevenly cut bob of red-tinted hair, her eyes heavy with dark blue eyeliner and her lips matte with pink lipstick, Petal looked like plenty of other skinny and sulky London girls in the Camden set. The look was striped T-shirts, bright layers – as if they’d just pulled on some random clothes from their bedroom floor – slouchy boots and artfully disarranged hair.

But the reason Petal looked like all the other girls was because they copied her frenziedly; Petal only had to be photographed in
Grazia
or
Heat
wearing anything to have a ton of teenage girls storming their local shopping parades, looking for a cheap version of her top or her jeans or her bag.

‘I’ve seen her in the papers, come to think of it,’ the doorman admitted. ‘But her hair’s different—’

‘You’re sacked,’ the PR said flatly.

‘God, can you
believe
that guy!’ Tasmeen said to Petal.

‘I
know
.
Total
ignorance. I mean, what’s he doing on a door? He should be, I dunno, working for London Transport or something . . .’

The girls broke into giggles as they made their way to the VIP area, where luckily the bouncer was considerably more
au fait
with the latest hip young London girls about town.

‘All right, Petal,’ he said, waving her and her entourage – Tasmeen, her hairdresser, JC, and JC’s boyfriend, Rudy – up the steps into the crammed, slightly smelly, but much-prized corner of the club designated for VIPs.

‘I hate my name,’ Petal sighed.

‘You’re kidding!’ Rudy exclaimed. ‘You’re so
lucky
to have a one-word name! You’re like Cher! Or Britney! Or
Liza
!’

‘You are
so gay
,’ his boyfriend muttered.

‘Her full name’s Petal Serenity Dream Gold,’ Tasmeen blurted out.

‘
Tas!
’ Petal elbowed Tasmeen furiously, utterly embarrassed.

‘Serenity Dream?’ Rudy was already saying. ‘That’s
wild.
Your parents weren’t even hippies, were they?’

‘I need a drink,’ Petal said, changing the subject. ‘JC?’ She fished some cash out of the little clutch bag hanging from her wrist. ‘Get them in, will you?’

‘God, this place is a bit of a dump, isn’t it? And smelly!’ Rudy complained, wrinkling his pretty nose.

‘It’s very exclusive,’ Tasmeen reprimanded him.

Rudy looked around him, adjusting his neon-bright T-shirt over his skinny ripped jeans. They were closer to the ceiling on the raised area, which meant less air circulation than down below, and the jammed-full little club in Hoxton, with its painted black walls and ripped plastic upholstery smelled of sweat and perfume and hair products, and the occasional sneaky cigarette. But mostly, it smelled of sweat. The walls were beaded with it.

‘Honestly,’ he said dismissively,‘you can make
anything
exclusive these days, can’t you?’

‘Whatever,’ Petal shrugged at him. ‘KillBuzz are playing. It’s a secret gig. That makes this the coolest place in London.’

‘Sorry,’ he said placatingly as JC returned, narrow green bottles of beer dangling from his hands. ‘I
love
your hair, by the way.’

Petal softened. ‘JC did it.’ She reached up a hand to ruffle her fringe. ‘It’s really cool. The messier it gets, the better it looks.’

‘Wash and wear, darling,’ JC said, handing her a Stella. ‘Listen, I want to take you blonde next week. The press’ll go crazy. Really yellow-blonde, like neon.’

‘Really?’ Petal said doubtfully. ‘I like the red . . .’

‘You have to keep changing your look!’ JC insisted. ‘That’s the only way they’ll keep wanting to take your photo!’ He grinned at Rudy. ‘She’s my muse,’ he said. ‘All that lovely thick white skin, you can take her any colour you want. She’s like this amazing canvas.’

‘Eww! Thick skin! What the fuck, JC?’ Petal complained, taking a pull at her beer. ‘Also, don’t muses, like,
do
something?’

‘I meant thick like cream,’ JC said quickly. ‘Heavy cream.’

‘Mmm, delicious!’ said Rudy, picking up his cue. ‘So lickable!’

Tasmeen shot Petal a do-you-
believe-
this-guy? glance. Petal grinned, swallowing her beer. Tas was endlessly critical. She had a bad temper and a non-stop, twenty-four-seven fuck-you attitude. It was one of the things Petal liked best about Tas: she always said what was on her mind, she never sucked up to Petal because Petal’s dad was rock royalty, so famous he was known only by his last name.

Petal had grown up with film stars and rock legends and real royalty, and though her father had gone all Zen in recent years, she remembered the wild parties in her early teens all too well. She’d seen too many world-famous people trashed and behaving badly to have much respect for anyone any more. When you were ten, watching wide-eyed from your window as a gorgeous female singer, famous for her perfect marriage to a film star and her super-healthy macrobiotic diet, had got drunk on tequila, stripped off her clothes, jumped into the pool naked, hit on a member of a girl group, and then thrown up over herself, it sort of did your head in about believing anything anyone ever told you. She’d heard ‘do as I say, not as I do’ so many times in her childhood it was like her dad’s mantra.

Until he got Zen Buddhism and a mantra for real, of course.

‘You’re a bit of a twat, aren’t you?’ Tas was saying to Rudy, who bridled.

‘Don’t let her get to you, Rudy,’ JC said, wrapping his arm round his boyfriend’s narrow waist. They were both fashionably thin, their skinny jeans dropping off their narrow hips. JC, as befitted an up-and-coming hairstylist, had bleached his hair, dipped the ends in pale green, and razored it in a style that, if hanging just right, gave his round friendly face an angularity that it lacked naturally. Mascara and a hit of lip gloss added to the edgy look that he was desperate to cultivate; he would have given anything to have a sullen, bony face rather than the chubby cheeks he couldn’t lose, no matter how much he dieted.

‘She’s
mean
,’ Rudy sniffed, drinking his beer. Rudy looked like all the other boys JC had dated over the years: super-elegant, with smooth beige skin and big dark eyes with ridiculously thick lashes. He pouted prettily with resentment.

‘Oh, she’s a total key merchant,’ JC said. ‘Likes to wind everyone up.’

‘I just say what I think,’ Tas said, shrugging.

She never apologizes, Petal thought. I love that about her.

Also, Petal loved that Tas was definitely on the curvy side, and it didn’t seem to bother her at all. Petal was so obsessed, so driven to be thin – not
too
skinny, of course, or the tabloids would say you had an eating disorder. But if you were too skinny, they’d still photograph you; while if you were too fat, you’d get one photo in a ‘Who Ate All The Pies?’ section of a gossip mag, and then they wouldn’t bother with you again. You needed to be able to get into sample sizes for fashion shoots, wear up-and-coming designers’ tiny clothes out partying, so that next day you’d be ‘Petal Gold, rocking Christopher Kane’s stretch neon mini at the launch party for Chanel’s new range of mobile phone charms!’

It was all about the press coverage. That was the one thing she’d truly learned from her mum and dad. If you didn’t get the column inches, you might as well be dead.

‘They’re on!’ Tas yelled, barrelling her way over to the balcony, which gave an uninterrupted view of the little stage.

This was a secret gig, of course, like all the best ones, with an invite list of London’s youngest, trendiest opinion-formers: DJs, models, music journos and celebrities like Petal, famous solely for dressing up and partying hard and being photographed at the launch of the hottest thing that week. KillBuzz, the band playing tonight, were a new discovery from Newcastle, four cool boys whose songs about going out on the lash and trying to pull were, if their record label was to be believed, anthems for the new generation of club kids.

‘He’s all right!’ Tas shouted to Petal over the roar of feedback as the boys, heads ducked, hair falling into their eyes, launched into their first single, ‘Sod Off If You Can’t Take a Joke’.

Petal looked where Tas was pointing and rolled her eyes. ‘Not
another
drummer, Tas!’

‘It’s OK for you,’ Tas yelled.‘You can have anyone you want! I’ve got to know my limitations!’

Petal couldn’t deny the truth of what, with her usual brutal honesty, Tas was saying. In the normal, civilian world, normal boys mostly liked girls who looked, well, normal, with a bit more meat on their bones than Petal. Girls with boobs and bums, girls with sexy curves, girls who ordered dessert when you took them out to dinner.

But in Celeb World, the rules were all flipped on their head. The thinner you were, the better it was. Because the thinner you were, generally, the better you photographed. You had to lose at least the ten pounds the camera put on, and then some more. Tas was brave to hang out in Petal’s circles, where her size fourteen figure made her a comparative elephant. She was very striking, with her strong features, thick black hair and rich red-brown skin, but she had to put up with a lot of sarkiness from girls with legs the size of pipe-cleaners and collarbones so prominent you could have hung earrings from them.

‘He’s hot,’ Petal admitted, glancing at the drummer, with his Afro and tattoos. ‘But I like
that
one.’

She pointed at the bassist, a sulky-looking boy with full lips, wide cheekbones, and heavy-lidded grey eyes that gave him a look of debauchery. Slanting a glance sideways at Tas, Petal cracked a smile of complete and extreme naughtiness. She didn’t smile much as a rule; it wasn’t cool, and it wasn’t how people wanted to see you. They wanted you bored, petulant, resentful, their image of how teenagers should look and behave. Petal was twenty now, her teens behind her. Still, the shots of her sullenly posing outside nightclubs, fag in one hand, spokesgirl for modern youth, were the ones that the paps wanted.

But when Petal did smile, she came to life, going from pretty to completely bewitching. Twin dimples curved on each side of her mouth, like tiny extra smiles; Petal hated them, but they were entrancing. Her eyes sparkled, her even white teeth gleamed (nothing but the best cosmetic dentists for Gold’s only daughter). Her entire face lit up. She looked mischievous and naughty and completely charming.

‘I’m having him,’ she yelled in Tas’s ear. ‘Him, me, back of a black cab. Tonight.’

‘Fab. And I’ll have the drummer boy. Pact?’

‘Pact.’

They spat on their hands and shook, their code.

‘This is
so
on,’ Petal said, leaning far over the balcony rail, whistling loud enough so that, the first song winding down, the lead singer looked up, head drawn by the piercing sound. ‘Not you!’ Petal shouted cheekily. ‘
You
!’ And she pointed to the bassist.

‘I’m Petal,’ she said forty minutes later, plopping herself down on the lap of her chosen target. ‘And you’re fucking sexy.’

He went bright red.

‘Um, hi,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I’m Dan Drummond. Do I know you? You look sort of familiar . . .’

‘I do a lot of stuff,’ Petal said, shrugging, hating to have to give her surname and watch people’s eyes flicker in recognition of her famous dad. ‘I caught your show tonight. You were brilliant.’

‘Yeah? Cool! We’ve barely gigged in London at all. I was shitting bricks beforehand. We all were.’

‘Well, it didn’t show.’

He mimed wiping his forehead in relief. ‘It’s a lot of pressure, y’know? We’re just a bunch of Geordie lads. We’ve not done much of anything yet, just wrote some songs and got snapped up by this A&R guy who saw a gig we did back home. And now we’re hanging out with all this high and mighty lot. It’s a bit much sometimes.’

Petal perched back on his knee, letting him get a good look at her. She could tell that, though he was trying to play it cool, he wasn’t at all used to girls like her sitting down on his lap and telling him they fancied him; those bone-sharp cheekbones were still pink, and he was babbling away in a mixture of embarrassment and excitement.

‘Maybe you need someone to hold your hand a bit,’ she purred, looking up at him from under her heavy fringe. ‘Guide you through the mad crazy world of London nightlife.’

‘That’s very nice of you to offer, Petal,’ he said, still looking a bit taken aback.

‘I
am
nice,’ Petal agreed. ‘Dan, right?’

He nodded. She could smell his sweat, fresh from throwing himself round the stage like a whirling dervish, his hair still damp with it. His T-shirt clung to his torso, and although he was a typically lean twenty-something boy, his arms had nice definition, whipcord veins standing out along his biceps.

‘You smell good,’ she said.

‘Oh hell – I’m all sweaty.’ He pushed his hair back. ‘You’re so pretty, look at your little top and everything. You shouldn’t be this close to me, you’ll get all messed up.’

He actually meant it. It was really sweet.

‘I like it.’ Petal moved towards him till her mouth was nearly touching his. ‘I told you, I think you’re sexy.’ She kissed him, just a brief touch of her pink-lipsticked mouth to his. ‘Remember, Dan, you’re a rock star now. You’re
supposed
to be sweaty when you come off stage. It’s sexy.’ She kissed him again. ‘It makes all the girls fancy you.’ A final kiss, still light as a feather.