Celebrity Bride (3 page)

'God, do you remember that film?' says Jenny, waving her legs from side to side and nearly booting Katy in the shin.

'Gorgeous,' whispers Katy, while I just stare at the apparition on the screen. We were all too young to fully appreciate the film when it came out seventeen years ago but boy can we appreciate it now.

After
Tarzan
came
Tarzan II
, unsurprisingly, in which Rufus looked even better: more manly, less 'cute'. The boyish good looks had been replaced by a rugged handsomeness that left Jules, Kath and I struggling to stay upright.

'Jeez, he's perfect,' said Katy.

'Mmmm . . .' Jenny and I responded, both of us having lost the power of speech by this stage. Rufus starred in a collection of top box office films after
Tarzan
, including
Dead of Night
and
Justice for James
before playing a psychotic killer in
The Jewelled Dagger
, two years ago – a role that earned him an Oscar.

There wasn't much to be found on his private life. He'd been linked to a couple of actresses, but no one for very long. Most of the references to him away from films featured his charity work.

'He's too fucking good to be true,' said Katy excitedly. 'I mean – looking like that and having no girlfriend.'

'He's probably been concentrating too much on work,' I suggested. 'Or he's gay.'

'No,' said Jenny, decisively. 'He's been saving himself for me!'

'Yeah,' Katy and I chorused, but let's be honest, it seemed unlikely.

When Rufus finally blessed us with his presence in a one-off visit to meet the staff, I don't think I'd ever seen such a handsome man; he was gorgeous. He walked into our scruffy little office with its peeling walls and old wooden desks, and we all started swooning. We'd been in the final rounds of the World Malteser Throwing Championships when he arrived, so we didn't take too much notice of the door opening initially. I was first receiver and had eight Maltesers buried in my cheeks when they walked in. I was standing, feet shoulder-width apart, ready for Katy to hurl a Malteser from behind the pile of coats.

'Ready?' asked Jenny (she'd been appointed chief official for the occasion because she's more sensible than the rest of us – she's in charge of theatre accounts).

'Yesh,' I replied, jiggling the eight Maltesers that I'd already caught in my mouth as I spoke. One of the rules of the game is that you're not allowed to swallow until you've finished catching. Your turn ends when you miss a Malteser. Eight was the most we'd ever done; this Malteser was crucial.

'Five, four, three, two, one,' she said.

Katy tossed the small chocolate ball towards me with a degree of accuracy born of long hours training (most of our salaries go in buying Maltesers). If she'd put that amount of work into the accounts, she'd be running the theatre by now. I caught the chocolate in my mouth, fair and square, thus setting a new theatre record . . . yeeeesssssss . . . but when I looked up – hands aloft, chocolate dribbling down my chin and cheeks full to bursting – expecting there to be cheering and congratulations echoing round the office, there was nothing. Jenny was just staring at the door like a mad woman, and Katy had collapsed down onto the desk. I followed Jenny's gaze. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Sebastian was standing in the doorway, surveying us all quizzically and, next to him, was Rufus George. Oh-my-God. He was beautiful. He was flawless. He oozed sex appeal. There was something so solid and purposeful about him – not just physically, but in his presence. It was like he'd been carved out of granite. He was even more gorgeous than he looked in his pictures, and let's be very clear about this – he looked bloody gorgeous in his pictures.

'Nice to meet you,' he said, looking directly into my eyes. I returned the gaze because, with a man who looks like Rufus, that's what you do. I was well aware, though, of the chocolate-drenched spittle escaping from the corner of my mouth, and I was painfully conscious of the fact that I would have to crunch these Maltesers before I could return the greeting. I did that – masticating madly before swallowing the sticky mess and feeling it claw its way down my throat so slowly that I was forced into making vigorous gulps to help it on its way. What with the almost choking, mad swallowing and chocolate everywhere, it wasn't the ideal position in which to meet a Hollywood heart-throb. I looked up at him again, hoping I looked adorable now I no longer had hamster cheeks, but I was all too aware that the smile playing on his lips probably had more to do with the fact that my teeth, lips and tongue were now all brown, than any warmth he may be feeling towards me.

Then, out of the blue, the most amazing thing happened.

'Let's have a go,' he said, walking behind me, and gently touching my waist as he did so. I felt my hips burst into flames. No, really, I did; I had to look down to check my tight black skirt hadn't caught fire. He took up his position in front of the coats and nodded towards Katy.

'Come on!' yelled Sebastian. 'You can do it. It's boys against girls.'

Jenny continued in her role as chief adjudicator as Katy and I battled for the fairer sex, while Sebastian and Rufus did their best for mankind. We won.

'I think I need some lessons,' said Rufus, looking straight at me afterwards. 'Perhaps you could teach me your technique.'

And that's how it happened. That's how I ended up going for a coffee with a thirty-eight-year-old, completely gorgeous millionaire. He said that the combination of a tight black skirt and top, large breasts, big brown eyes and a vibrant personality did it for him. He also admitted that the fact that I would taste of chocolate was appealing. Coffee turned into a drink, turned into dinner, turned into snogging madly like teenagers. He was captivating, delightful and beautiful. He was just perfect and lovely. I'd never met anyone even remotely like him before, and I knew I never would again. The bizarre thing was that it all felt so natural, relaxed and, well, nice. But this was a mega movie star. How could this be happening? I'd spent the previous six months madly in lust with Paul, the set designer at the theatre, who thought himself too sophisticated for me. He was probably right; sophisticated is something you could never accuse me of being, so why would Rufus George like me?

What surprised me about Rufus was that he was terribly sophisticated and I wasn't, but that didn't bother him. Rather than look me up and down in a sneering way like Paul did, he'd say things like 'we should celebrate our differences' as I walked into small walls and always turned the wrong way when coming out of shops and restaurants. So it took me twenty minutes to find my car in the multistorey. Suddenly I wasn't 'a dope' (Paul), I was 'sweet and adorable' (Rufus).

'If it's too much trouble to find the car, just take the driver,' he'd say, and he wasn't being patronising either. He genuinely seemed to like the fact that I differed from the ever so sophisticated Hollywood types that he was used to meeting and dating. Imagine that?

'I've told Brad and Carl about you,' he said, soon after our first date.

'Brad Pitt?' I asked, somewhat astonished, but delighted, obviously, to be the subject of conversation between Hollywood hunks. Perhaps 'Carl' was a codename for Angelina Jolie? Was I the centre of all conversations taking place in the Pitt household?

'No, Brad Court,' he said, with a laugh. 'That must be the one and only time that old Courty's been mixed up with Pitt. Courty and Carl Deevers, known as Deeves – they're my best buddies from home. We go back years.'

'Oh,' I said, surprised, for some reason, that someone like Rufus would have 'best buddies' in his life. 'But cool,' I added because I guess it was really. It was nice to see that he had proper friends with whom he went a long way back. It made him seem more grounded, and more real.

'We mainly drink beer and watch films,' he added. 'Deeves is a baseball nut. Yankees. He gets plenty of abuse.'

'Are they both living in America?'

'Amerecaar,' he responded, mimicking my English accent playfully. 'Yes, they're both in the US. In New York these days, hence the Yankees connection, but when I met them we were at school in LA. We were all complete sports nuts: basketball, baseball, football . . . proper football, not your kicking it around rubbish. We were obsessed. Brad's a teacher now, and Deeves runs a sportswear shop in Brooklyn. I still get abusive texts off them every day.'

'Just like me, Mandy and Sophie,' I suggested.

'Just like that,' he said warmly. 'Now come here. You are soooo beautiful.'

What's lovely about Rufus is that everything he says is reflected in his face. His lovely green eyes have always said the same thing as his words; every time he tells me he loves me he says it with every part of his face. Since day one he's been like that, and I genuinely think he found me attractive from the moment he saw me. I mean – I'm not being silly – men have found me attractive before. People are always saying that I have a pretty face. A few have even suggested I could model. (Though admittedly the latter's usually followed by 'If you lost a stone.') But I'm not what you would call Hollywood attractive. I'm really curvy for a start, not skinny like all the women he's used to seeing. I bet they've all got ribcages that double as toast racks and I'm sure they never eat solids. I think my breasts alone weigh more than they do. I'm so curvy it's a bloody nightmare sometimes. I end up with jeans that are about two sizes too big on the waist just so that I can get them over my hips and bum, and dresses that swamp my narrow shoulders so that they're big enough to cover my 34Es. These Hollywood types don't have such problems. Any large breasts they have were put there, not by Mother Nature, but by leading cosmetic surgeons.

I bet they're all beautifully groomed too, with perfect nails and hair, and shoes that don't need mending and clothes that always look immaculate. I'd gamble big money on the fact that they don't wrap Sellotape around their stiletto heels when the plastic peels off, and I'd wager they don't own any earrings that are so cheap they leave horrid greeny-black marks on their ears. They all get their eyebrows done professionally, I bet, so they don't have a lopsided face with one brow ever so slightly longer and bushier than the other because they slipped with the razor one time when they'd left it too late to pluck. They're all perfect and I'm not . . . and yet, he's in love with me and I'm moving in there. Yeeeahhhhhhh . . .

'What are we going to do tonight, on your last night?' asks Mandy, fiddling with her baby-fine, long blonde hair. She's got lovely hair, has Mandy, but it doesn't suit her face. We're always trying to persuade her to get it cut shorter because it hangs down by the side of her ears, looking limp and lifeless. She's got a really round face (very pretty, but completely circular; the guys all call her 'moon face'). The style of her hair does nothing to compensate for this. I think she'd look great if she got it cut into a soft bob or something sexy, but she clings on to every last inch, refusing to go near the hairdresser's because Andy – that terrible grotty joke of a boyfriend – once told her it was her only nice feature.

'Well?????' she says. 'What do you fancy doing? It's your last night. It has to be special.'

I'm not sure about all this talk of my 'last night'. It sounds as if I've got the death penalty or something. 'I don't mind what we do,' I say, because I don't.

'You know what I think we should do,' says Sophie, and there's something about the tone of her voice that makes it clear to all of us exactly what she's thinking.

'Suga Daddys!'

'It would be rude not to,' she continues. 'We certainly can't sit in here drinking this crap all evening; we'll be ill.'

'Suga Daddys?' Mandy queries, alarm ringing through her high-pitched voice. 'But it's so tacky there.'

'Er, yeees,' Sophie and I chorus. 'And?'

You see the whole point of Suga Daddys is that it's tacky. That's the appeal of it. It's a nightclub cum naked dancing type place right next to our flat and it's a bloody disaster zone – a magnet for the area's low life . . . mainly men, so there's always lots of fighting, which is the worst part of it. The thing with us is that because we're a) girls and b) neighbours, we get well looked after. Jimmy Lapdance (his real name's Jimmy Lavance so, obviously, we've changed it to Jimmy Lapdance) is the guy who runs the place, and he's after an extension to his licence so he can sell food. (He came up with the surreal idea of offering 'free chicken wings' to women in order to attract them into the club. He's always trying to think of ways of getting more women into the place. I think maybe less fighting and fewer strippers would help, but he's convinced that chicken is the answer. Makes you wonder what sort of women he meets. Anyway, when he offered the free chicken, the council came down on him like a ton of bricks after complaints from neighbours, and he was told in no uncertain terms that he did not have the sort of licence that allowed him to cook chicken on the premises. We did laugh – he can have semi-naked girls cavorting around, and fights every night but chicken wings – no, no, no, no, no.) So, he needs the neighbours on his side when he goes for his licence extension, so whenever we go in there it's free drinks and a bouncer assigned to us for the entire night lest anyone steps out of line and offends us.

Jimmy's a great local character and is the most incredible caricature of a nightclub owner that you could ever wish to meet. When I first moved into the flat, my dad painted the front door for us. He was busy wielding his paint brush when Jimmy went swaggering up to him and said, 'Cooor . . . your girlfriend's a bit of all right, isn't she?'

'She's my daughter,' said Dad assertively.

I think Dad wanted me to move out of the flat right there and then.

Jimmy's club is like something out of the 1950s because, bizarrely, it's both depraved and desperately innocent all at the same time. Its innocence comes from the fact that it's a shambles in there – Jimmy Lapdance would like to think that he's running Stringfellows, but the reality is that he presides over the most unerotic titty bar in the western world. He had a pole in there at one stage but his bikini-clad lovelies were heftier than one might expect from pole dancers and the whole thing came tumbling down one night. There were no injuries, but a girl called Chelsey tried to sue, claiming she was mentally scarred and unable to pole dance any more. Jimmy never put the pole back up and decided, instead, that the barmaids would be topless and dancing from 11 pm (although dancing is a generous description of what they do after 11 pm; as far as I can see, all they ever do is jig around a lot).

We were first alerted to the presence of the club when we found ourselves looking out of the window of the flat at 7.30 pm one night, soon after we moved in, hoping to catch a glimpse of the gorgeous guy from the estate agents'. I should emphasise that this was all way before I met Rufus. The guy from the estate agents' tended to lock up at 7.30 pm on the dot. Locking up involved him bending right over to do the locks on the bottom of the door. Not that we were stalking him or anything, but the window of our flat did afford us the most astonishing view of his trousers tightening over his firm buttocks as he did this. We craned and strained to see the estate agent through a small pair of cheap binoculars that Mandy bought for this very reason (OK, I admit, this is probably sounding a little bit stalkerish now, but it was all very innocent really . . . and I'm sure he knew we were doing it; he'd taken to bending over ever so slowly and staying down there much longer than was strictly necessary). One night, Mandy, who was still looking through the binoculars, said, 'Oooooh, what's this then?'

It was 8 pm We knew that estate agent man had been and gone. What was Mandy referring to? Another handsome man bending over in the street? Surely life couldn't be that kind to us.

No, it was a ridiculous pink, open-top Mercedes backfiring as it made its way down the road with smoke billowing out of the exhaust pipe. It spluttered and banged like a bloody clown's car before screeching to a halt just next to our flat. These girls climbed out of its leopard-skin patterned interior, wearing hideous seven-inch Perspex-heeled shoes and clad in dresses that looked like cobwebs. They had long scraggy hair, orange skin and shrieky voices. It wasn't pretty, but it was very, very amusing. From then on, estate agent man was second favourite viewing to the daily 'arrival of the strippers'. It came to occupy an important place in our timetable.

'They're here, they're here,' one of us would call through the flat, like children spotting the arrival of an ice-cream van; we'd race to the window and practically hang out of it in order to get the best view possible.

Jimmy would come sauntering out of his bar when the car arrived, his small shoulders bouncing from side to side inside his heavily shoulder-padded jacket – like a gangsta rapper from LA, not the middle-aged short-arse from Twickenham that he was. His signet rings and many neck chains glinted along with his gold tooth. If he wore his big cufflinks, I feared we'd end up scorched from the glare.

'Hello, doll-face,' he'd greet each and every one of them as they clambered out, in such an ungainly fashion that you feared for their ability to dance behind the bar later that night. As we got to know Jimmy, we realised the full strength and scope of his delusions of grandeur. He really fancied himself as a big-time criminal, but there was no way he was. He claimed to have been mates with the Krays, and to have modelled himself on them, but he looked more like Del Boy, with his little, tubby body, short legs, astonishingly hairy chest and large gold medallion. He was simply too nice, too kind and too thoughtful to be truly bad. He'd speak of a childhood shaped by the gutter, and by parents who didn't care. Sadly, he was let down by the full force of reality when his parents popped in to visit him one night – two sweet, kind and loving parents eager to check their son was OK. I'm sure he'd have looked less embarrassed if his mum had offered to take her clothes off and dance naked behind the bar for the evening.

One day, the doors to the strippers' Mercedes wouldn't open, and all the girls had to climb out through the open-top roof. I thought that me, Mandy and Sophie might actually die laughing. None of the strippers had knickers on, and two of them had no pubic hair. Now, just in the interests of absolute clarity, this is not the sort of information that I wish to have in my head. I bet the Hollywood starlets don't know about the downstairs hair arrangements of poorly paid lap dancers from Twickenham. I bet their focus is on things on an altogether superior intellectual level. That's what I mean about me and these Hollywood types – we're so different it's like we're different species altogether.

'Come on, let's get ready,' said Sophie. It was 6 pm.

'Get ready?' said Mandy, astonished. Mand doesn't really like getting dressed up, so the concept of spending three hours working out which eyeliner goes with which top, or whether boots or high heels would be best for a night in a topless bar is rather lost on her. She just hates the whole process of dressing up, and always has. She wears the same simple clothes every time we go out, and always with flat shoes. She insists that she's 'too hefty for heels', so slips little ballet shoes on while Soph and I go tripping down the street in the highest shoes we can find. Mandy never wears anything tight either, because she's paranoid about her huge chest and what she describes as her 'ample thighs'. One of her rules about dating men is that they should always have bigger thighs than she has. That's one of the reasons why she always goes out with such humongously large men. Mandy's always to be found in long, flowing, loose and feminine dresses, which cover up every inch of her. Nothing we say or do will change her views on dressing. She's such a sweetie though, is Mandy, that there's nothing about her any sane person would want to change anyway. She's just this gorgeous, sweet old-fashioned girl who always stops and tells tramps that she won't give them money in case they spend it on alcohol, but she will buy them a cup of tea if they want (they never do). She picks up litter, smiles and stops to talk to old people. Christ, she doesn't even have a mobile phone – that's how old-fashioned she is!

'Shouldn't we help Kelly to pack first, before we get dressed?' says Mandy.

'Shit. I'd forgotten about that,' said Sophie. 'I guess we should, but let's get a move on – we want to make the most of our last night together.'

Clutching our glasses, we wander into my bedroom, which is stuffed with things that I rarely use. Rufus's place is immaculate and desperately stylish and all those things I yearn for mine to be, but can't quite manage because I like shopping and hate throwing things away. He has seven bedrooms in the main house and a west wing containing his office, sitting room and dressing room. I've never even asked what's in the east wing. I have just the one room and it's packed with stuff and I mean
packed
. You move one thing and twenty-seven others tumble down after it.

We tip the contents of my drawers onto the bed and look at one another in dismay.

'You're going to have to throw some of this crap away,' says Sophie. 'Honestly, mate, it needs to go.'

'No, take it. If he loves you, he'll love your stuff,' says Mandy. She's the exact opposite to Sophie; she's the glass spilling over type. Mandy's desperately optimistic about everything and Sophie's the living, breathing embodiment of pessimism. For example . . . Sophie hates her body and says that I don't know how lucky I am to have an hourglass figure. She hates her face and says that I don't know how lucky I am to have my looks. She hates her short, fine hair and says I'm so lucky to have my long, thick hair . . . and on, and on . . . . Mandy just says that everyone's beautiful in their own way and that it's not good to be jealous. We should all just be grateful for what we have and what we've been given. Christ but that woman's a martyr. Give her a few years and she'll be marching around the place with a sandwich board about her neck, singing the praises of the Lord. When it comes to Rufus, Mandy's just thrilled for me and thinks good things happen to good people. If that's true then Mandy will end up married to God.

'You know, I always knew you'd end up marrying someone rich and famous,' says Sophie. The edge to her voice has subsided a little, but it still rings with concern.

'I'm not marrying him,' I say defensively.

'No, but you will,' she says. 'I remember when you went on that first date you said, "It won't amount to anything; I'm only teaching him how to catch Maltesers in his mouth." Now look at you!'

I remember that first date as if it happened yesterday. It was 29 April. I mention the precise date because, for some reason, the 29th has become an important number in our courtship; it's the day of the month when things of significance seem to happen to us. Back then, in April, I'd never been more nervous in my life. I went out and bought a lovely new outfit from New Look in an emerald-green colour. It nipped in at the waist and made my breasts look massive and my legs look long and shapely. I wanted him to think me elegant and demure so I vowed not to drink and certainly not to go back to his. As far as I was concerned, we'd just be playing Malteser throwing . . . except I guess I knew that there was more to it than that. Sophie and Mandy both told me not to do my bikini line and certainly not to shave my legs then I'd not sleep with him. It's a good policy and, to be honest, it's served me well several times in the past. However drunk you get, it's funny how you don't sleep with a man if you know your legs aren't shaven. Something inside you kicks in and stops you going too far, no matter how much white wine and lemonade you've hurled down your throat. Well, that had always been my experience . . . until Rufus. Perhaps that was when I knew he was 'the one'; because I couldn't resist his manly charms even though my legs looked like they belonged to a small mountain gorilla.

I was mortified in the morning of course. I woke up bathed in light, as the spring sun flickered through the slats in the blinds and cast dancing shadows across us as we slept. He's got thick cream curtains that he draws across in the winter but, when I first met him, it was just thin slats of expensive wood between us and the morning sunshine.

I got up and tried to sneak away but it was hopeless. The house is too big to go rushing off anywhere. I tiptoed into the long corridor outside Rufus's massive master bedroom and had no idea how to get out. Eventually I headed off towards the enormous sweeping staircase, taking stealthy little steps, hoping I wouldn't be heard. But then, suddenly, I saw this girl standing in front of me who looked exactly like me.