Going La La (21 page)

22

Uncorking the bottle of red wine he’d just picked up from Oddbins, Hugh poured a little to taste. He was disappointed. It was OK, but he’d had better for a tenner. Pissed off with his choice – a recommendation from the
Sunday Times
Wine Club – he filled his glass and set about unwrapping a Thai takeaway, his fourth that week. He looked at his watch – eight p.m. – he’d just got back from the office and he was knackered. Too many people looking to buy and not enough flats to sell. Not even when you included all those poky studios with no room to swing a cat, let alone a sofa bed, selling like hot cakes at two hundred and fifty grand.

Emptying the contents of the silver-foil containers on to his plate, he slumped on to the sofa, loosening his tie and kicking off his brogues. Spearing a slimy chunk of lukewarm coconut chicken, he grabbed the remote control and, turning on the telly, flicked idly over the channels. There was nothing even vaguely interesting. BBC1: a documentary on the tsetse fly. BBC2: some wanker of a chef trying to be clever with couscous. ITV: a
Coronation Street
special. Channel 4: another bloody depressing soap. Channel 5: one of those crappy gardening programmes. He stared blankly at the screen, watching a gang of cheery presenters in matching orange T-shirts trying to turn a piece of scrubland into a Japanese garden with only a bit of gravel, a water feature and half an hour.

Hugh turned off the TV in disgust. He was bored. It was a Friday night and he was sitting by himself on the sofa with a cold take-out and a shit bottle of wine. What happened to all the wild nights out he thought he’d be having as a newly single guy? All the parties? All the women? He chewed a mouthful of congealed Pad Thai noodles. There weren’t any, that’s what. OK, so he’d had a few one-night stands, but they’d petered out pretty quickly. Having a one-night stand wasn’t as much of a turn-on as he’d imagined. In fact, it was a bit of a turn-off. And anyway, most of the women he seemed to meet were after something a lot more serious than sex. They wanted a relationship. Which was the last thing he wanted, seeing as he’d only just come out of one. As for the parties, there’d been Adam and Jessica’s engagement bash a few weeks ago, but then nothing. November wasn’t exactly the best month for parties. It was too cold, too rainy, too dark and too bloody depressing. No wonder everybody seemed to have stopped being single all of a sudden. Everybody had found themselves a mate and had begun hibernating in their living rooms, snuggling up together on the sofa with a DVD and cups of tea. Just like he and Frankie used to.

Still, staying in by himself didn’t bother him. In fact, he enjoyed it. Liked the space. Liked being able to do whatever he wanted. Getting up, he flicked on the central heating. The flat was freezing. Not surprising, seeing as it was about minus 20 outside. God knows what had happened to the autumn. London seemed to have bypassed it and plunged straight into an Arctic winter. He caught his reflection on the side of the stainless-steel fridge. Christ, he looked lousy. Pale grey skin with dark circles under his eyes. He could do with a holiday, some sunshine, a bit of a tan. Frankie would probably have a great tan after nearly a month in LA, lapping up all that Californian sunshine. She always went so brown in the sun, not like him. Even with SPF30, his skin was so fair he always burned and went bright red.

Feeling pissed off, he padded into the kitchen and, flicking the pedal bin, scraped his unappetising food into the bin-liner. Not that he missed Frankie. He had done the right thing by finishing with her. She’d become too sensible, too boring, too devoted. All she wanted out of life was to settle down, get married and spend every evening having a quiet night in. That’s why it could never have worked between them. He was the complete opposite.

Emptying his wine down the sink, he watched the blood-red liquid swirl down the plughole. And yawned. He looked at his watch. It was only half past eight, but he didn’t feel like going out. He was shattered. He was going to stay in and have a long soak in the bath. To be honest, he wouldn’t mind getting an early night.

23

‘I feel like shit.’ Gingerly lifting up her sunglasses in the bright midday sunshine, Rita looked in her rear-view mirror. A pair of bloodshot eyes stared back. ‘And I look like shit.’ Groaning, she lowered her Persols and sank back behind the wheel of her Thunderbird.

Frankie lay next to her in the passenger seat, which was reclined as far back as it would go, trying – and failing – to ignore her thumping headache. She half opened her eyes, allowing a sliver of UV light to hit her pupils, but it was too glary, even through her sunglasses. ‘Ditto,’ she croaked, snapping her eyes tightly shut again and pulling down the peak of her baseball cap until it covered her face.

It was the morning after the night before, and they were stuck in the middle of a traffic jam on Sunset, thanks to Rita, who’d had the bright idea of driving to Malibu. Two hours later, it didn’t seem so clever. They hadn’t reckoned on the all-day rush hour, which meant that instead of recovering on the beach listening to the crashing of the surf, breathing in lungfuls of sea air and topping up their tans, they were stuck at the lights, sweating alcohol in the convertible-turned-sauna, listening to the sound of car horns and breathing in exhaust fumes, their hangovers hanging over them like the Ancient Mariner’s albatross.

Frankie watched as the red needle on the pressure gauge dial edged ever higher towards boiling point. Any moment now the car would overheat, and in this 90-degree heat without air conditioning so would she. Opening a five-litre bottle of water meant for the car’s radiator, she glugged half of it down, trying to quench her thirst. She felt terrible. Too much alcohol and not enough sleep. God knows what time she got home last night. All she could remember was walking off the dance floor and seeing Rita passed out across the bar next to an ice bucket and an empty magnum of champagne, with half a dozen men circling around her like vultures, and deciding that she’d better take her home in a cab before somebody else did. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. She could remember something – somebody – else.
She remembered Reilly
.

Floodgates of panic, guilt, embarrassment and excitement opened as a Polaroid image of them dancing together flashed into her mind. She couldn’t really remember what happened. Not properly anyway. All that tequila and champagne had taken its toll, fuzzing her mind, blurring time, blanking out conversations. Part of her was thankful. It was cringe-worthy enough, remembering how she’d been draped across him in the middle of the Cowboy Palace, without knowing the gory details. She’d woken up this morning with a jumble of images and a few snippets of what he’d said. Nothing too hard to handle. And felt relieved. But as the blanket of grogginess began to lift, she realised that last night had left her with two things: a killer of a hangover and some very mixed emotions.

It was all so bloody confusing. She didn’t know what the hell to think about last night. Had some unspoken thing happened between them? They hadn’t got it together, she could remember that at least, but at the same time she could also remember wanting to. And it was freaking her out. Did that mean she’d suddenly fallen for Reilly? Or was it just a classic case of drinking too much, missing Hugh and wanting affection? After all, it was so long since she’d kissed a bloke, never mind done the full Monty and had sex, who’d blame her for wanting a bit of a song? Even if it was with the wrong man. And Reilly was the wrong man for her. It was Hugh she wanted. Hugh’s arms around her. Hugh kissing her. Last night she’d been pissed. Lonely. Mixed up. She fancied Hugh, only Hugh, always Hugh. And she did not, absolutely, definitely, 100 per cent not, fancy Reilly.

The lights changed and the traffic started moving. Seeing a gap in the lane ahead, Rita put her foot down, overtaking a Range Rover with tinted windows – a favourite with the Hollywood celebpack, wanting to be seen but not seen. Leaving the shops and restaurants behind, they were soon cruising past the manicured lawns and colossal houses of Beverly Hills, sweeping through the palm-tree-lined roads, past the young Mexican boys with their familiar blue and yellow signs advertising $2
starmaps
– an
A–Z
of out-of-date addresses for nosy tourists wanting to drive around in their rented Mustangs seeing where Julie Andrews had once lived – and the infamous salmon-pink Beverly Hills hotel, home to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton during their first marriage, or was it their second?

Lazily peering through her sunglasses, Frankie lay back in her seat and decided to ignore her hangover and enjoy the view. This was how LA was meant to be seen, through three layers, the first being the dark lenses of her sunglasses (horrified at her lack of eyewear, Dorian had loaned her a pair of last season’s tortoiseshell Versaces); the second being the car’s windscreen; and the third being, of course, the smog. Smog was the thick brown layer between the horizon and the perfect blue sky, and Frankie had seen it for the first time when she’d stepped off the plane at LAX. The funny thing was, nobody else seemed to notice it. Which was probably because everybody was too busy being obsessed by a different kind of pollution: cigarette smoke. Smoking was lethal, it polluted your lungs and was a danger to society. But smog. What smog?

After five weeks in LA she’d realised that, for Los Angelenos, smog was an optical illusion. It was always ‘over there’, rather like the end of the rainbow, except in this case it was less pot of gold and more carbon monoxide poisoning. But, as Rita said, in the movie capital of the world, a town built on the manufacture of illusions, being part of it meant believing in perfect, glorious blue, blue, sky . . . because that was the biggest illusion of all.

‘I think I’m gonna be sick.’ Rita gripped the steering wheel, swaying unsteadily.

‘You are joking, aren’t you?’ Frankie stirred from her semiconscious state.

‘Nope.’ She shook her head, inflating her cheeks.

‘Maybe you should pull over.’

‘What? And throw up on the pavement?’

‘Well, it’s better than throwing up over me.’ Pulling her favourite sarong tightly around her, Frankie edged further away to the side of car.

‘I can’t, we’re in the middle of Bel Air . . .’

‘What difference does that make?’

‘It makes a lot of difference. This place has more Hollywood film stars, directors and producers per square inch than anywhere else in the world.’ Rita leaned over, grabbing what was left of the radiator water and pouring it down her throat without swallowing, as if she was drinking Sangria through one of those ‘I’ve been to Benidorm’ bottles with a glass spout and a wicker handle. ‘When I said I wanted to make my mark in Hollywood, puking up at the end of Steven Spielberg’s driveway wasn’t what I had in mind.’

Thankfully, after she had rehydrated, the colour started to return to her cheeks and they carried on without needing to make any emergency stops. They wound along Sunset, endlessly passing through shady suburbs until, finally, they drove over the brow of a hill and into the full glare of the sunlight. The view was glorious picture-postcard stuff, and for the first time in her life Frankie glimpsed the Pacific Ocean, a streak of navy blue on the horizon. It had been a long time coming. And as they headed down towards the coast, she watched it growing wider and wider, stretching back as far as the eye could see, until, like a movie expanding into widescreen, it filled the whole panorama.

Rita parked the car at the side of the Pacific Coast Highway, a busy, dusty stretch of road with six lanes of traffic which continued up towards San Francisco. Frankie felt a stab of disappointment. Where was the famous Malibu beach? Where were all the million-dollar houses? All she could see were ten-foot-high walls and electronic security gates.

‘Is this it?’ she said, climbing out of the car and following a very shaky Rita through a gate and down a corrugated-iron staircase so steep it made the backs of her legs ache. ‘I thought you said Malibu was glamorous.’

‘Stop moaning,’ puffed Rita, a fag in one hand, the other grasping the handrail for much-needed support. Reaching the bottom, she put her hands on her hips, trying to draw breath. Something told her she needed to do more exercise and stop smoking. Taking a drag of her cigarette, she stood up straight, pushing her sunglasses further up her nose. ‘
Now
what do you think? Bit better than Brighton, eh?’

Slipping off her knackered old flip-flops, Frankie sank her bare feet into the damp, yellow sand, feeling its softness between her wriggling toes. Stretching out before her was a beach deserted apart from a few joggers and a couple walking their dog. As with everything in America, it was
big
, appearing to go on for miles, past the rocky headlands in the distance, where she could see a group of surfers, probably all the way up to San Francisco. A few feet back from the breaking waves, a string of lavish beach-houses overlooked the ocean, each one completely different from the next. Rising out of the sand like a piece of modern art was a four-storey building made entirely of blue glass; another was a Disneyland castle, complete with turrets and gargoyles; while further along was a whitewashed Mexican-style hacienda, with sun decks on every level, and raspberry-pink bougainvillaea spilling down one side.

‘Just a bit,’ murmured Frankie, throwing down her beach towel. She flopped on to it, resting on her elbows, and gazed at the view around her. This was the Malibu she’d imagined. The Bo-Derek-running-along-the-beach-with-beads-in-her-hair Malibu. The glamorous-beach-parties-full-of-glamorous-women-with-glamorous-figures-in-glamorous-bikinis Malibu that she’d read about as a teenager in all those trashy Jackie Collins novels. For so long this place had been strictly fictional and now it was for real. And here she was, little old Frankie from Fulham. OK, so her bikini wasn’t that glamorous – it was a two-year-old gingham M&S number with underwired cups and total bottom coverage, not itsy bitsy triangles held on by pieces of string – and her figure was more beanpole than Bo Derek. But crikey, what the hell, she was sunbathing on Malibu beach. Taking a deep breath, she arched her back and lifted her face to the sky.