Going La La (31 page)

‘Well, I think it’s great,’ declared Rita as they trudged around Firs for the Stars, a Christmas tree plot in Beverly Hills, trying to find the perfect Norwegian spruce for their apartment. ‘A fling is just what you need. Especially at this time of year. Just think about all that smooching under the mistletoe.’ Grabbing a clump from a display basket, she stood on tiptoes, teetering on her cork platforms as she tried to waggle it above Frankie’s head.

Laughing, Frankie pushed her away, but she couldn’t help thinking twice about Rita’s choice of words.
A fling
. Is that all it was going to be? A few whirlwind weeks of being drunk and flirty in Italian restaurants, with melted candles in wine bottles on the table and his hand groping her thigh underneath, snogging on dance floors and having more sex than she knew what to do with?

After a week of long-distance phone calls from the far-flung beaches of?  Tulum and the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itzá – brief snatches of conversation across crackly lines from Mexican coin-boxes – Frankie couldn’t help feeling that underneath their casual chitchat there lay unspoken feelings. That it was going to be more than an affair that just fizzled out as quickly as it ignited, with a thanks-see-you-around-sometime farewell. A bit of fun that would leave her with nothing but hazy drunken memories of nights out, a massive credit card bill, and if she was unlucky or lucky, depending which way she looked at it, a bout of cystitis from all that energetic shagging.

This felt different.

Absent-mindedly running her fingers over the spiky needles of a tree, she turned to Rita. ‘I think this one’s perfect.’

‘Do you?’ Pouncing on the branches, Rita shook the fir tree vigorously, holding it away from her to get a better look. ‘Yep, you’re right. I think it’s perfect too.’ Grinning jubilantly at her discovery, she tottered off in search of the good-looking dude in charge, fluffing up her hair and undoing her top button in preparation.

Frankie watched her weaving her way between dark glasses and baseball-capped celebrities and inflatable Santas and smiled to herself. She hadn’t been talking about the Christmas tree.

Over the past week Frankie had accepted that she was no longer just Hugh’s ex but Reilly’s lover.
Reilly’s lover
. It sounded illicit and exciting, a damn sight more exciting than
Hugh’s ex
. But it was also going to take more than a little getting used to. Even now, a whole seven days later, she still couldn’t quite believe it. For the first few days after Reilly had left for Mexico, she’d been nagged by pangs of guilt. As if somehow she was cheating on Hugh. She knew hers was a crazy, warped sense of loyalty, but it wasn’t easy to break the habit of what she’d once hoped would be for a lifetime. Only two months ago she’d been hearing wedding bells, day-dreaming about Tiffany’s diamond solitaires, practising her signature as Mrs Hugh Hamilton, and now, out of the blue, this had happened. Without any warning she’d fallen for a beer-swilling, meat-eating, untidy, arrogant . . .
bloody gorgeous American she couldn’t stop thinking about
.

Except as the days had passed, the more she’d thought about it, the more she’d had to admit that what had happened between her and Reilly wasn’t a surprise at all. The signs had been there for weeks, she’d just failed to see them. It was as if she’d been staring at one of those pictures made up of a thousand tiny meaningless dots, and suddenly she was able to make sense of it and see the real picture underneath. She’d been so immersed in Hugh, so wrapped up in Hugh and what she didn’t have, that she’d been unable to see what she did have. What she
could
have if she reached out and grabbed it with both hands. And now she had, she was going to enjoy it. Whatever happened.

‘Crikey, it’s massive. Do you think you’re going to be able to squeeze it in?’

Rita stared not so innocently at the assistant, a gum-chewing, six-footer called Michael, who was wearing Ray-Bans and a baseball cap on back to front. He was trying to fit the Christmas tree on the back seat of the Thunderbird, which was already crammed with multicoloured tinsel, several boxes of baubles and six cans of fake snow. Rita didn’t like the designer festive look – a minimalist display of silver twigs and a few tastefully arranged tealights – she preferred flashing rainbow fairy lights, canned snow sprayed around the windows (complete with stencils of holly and snowmen) and Christmas cards strung like banners across the ceiling.

Wiping a trickle of sweat from his forehead with one of his suede gardening gloves, Michael smiled knowingly at both Rita and Frankie. ‘I’ve never had a problem before.’ His delivery was as slick as his gelled ponytail, which hung like a black shiny slug out of the back of his baseball cap.

Frankie kept a stony face. What a creep. Surely he didn’t think he was being sexy?

Rita obviously did. Giggling provocatively, she leaned over the bonnet of the car, squeezing her boobs together to make sure that if Michael hadn’t noticed her cleavage before, he sure as hell would now. She knew she was being an outrageous flirt, but she didn’t care. Playing imaginary footsie with the twenty-year-old assistant at the Christmas tree plot was the only kind of sexual kicks she was going to be getting.

Despite the disappointing night of Carter Mansfield’s party, she and Matt were still seeing each other, but she was beginning to have serious doubts about how long she could last with a surfer who liked riding the waves and not redheads from Lancashire. It had been a month and they still hadn’t had sex, and it was becoming more and more frustrating. She’d heard of taking things slowly, but this was crazy. If she didn’t get a shag soon her hymen would have grown back and she’d turn into a born-again virgin.

Not that it wasn’t for want of trying. After the embarrassing failure of the Trashy Lingerie and massage oil, she’d taken Frankie’s advice, which had been to sit down and talk calmly about what was causing his celibacy. Unfortunately, Rita’s interpretation of ‘sitting down and talking calmly’ had been to stand in the middle of the bedroom clutching the cellulite on her buttocks and yelling, ‘It’s because of this, isn’t it?’ Not surprisingly, this softly-softly approach didn’t provide any answers. She still didn’t know why Matt didn’t want to have sex. In fact, the only thing she
did
know was that she wasn’t getting it. And it was getting to her. Big time.

‘Be careful you don’t prick yourself on all those needles. They can be pretty sharp.’ Michael finished tying the tree across the back seat. It was the only way it would fit, despite his earlier testosterone-charged boasts.

‘Don’t worry, I could do with a decent prick.’ Rita winked at Frankie, who was trying not to cringe.

She felt relieved when their verbal shagging was interrupted by the strains of ‘Mission: Impossible’ coming from Rita’s leopard-skin handbag. It was Rita’s new mobile phone. She’d bought it only last week on the advice of her agent, who said she needed to be able to contact her at any time. Unfortunately, for some reason her number kept getting mixed up with that of a twenty-four-hour Thai takeaway on Ventura Boulevard, and instead of being flooded with offers of auditions and film roles, she was being inundated night and day with orders for sweet and sour pork, Pad Thai noodles and boiled rice.

‘If it’s another bloody order for green chicken curry I’m going to tell them to sod off,’ she hissed, scrabbling around in the bottom of her bag. She pulled the phone out just as it was about to ring off.

‘Yes?’ she snapped, ready to launch into a tirade of verbal abuse. Except she didn’t. Wrinkling her forehead, she pressed the phone to her ear. It was difficult to hear, what with Michael Bolton’s unplugged version of ‘Jingle Bells’ being piped out of the overhead speakers.

‘Yeah, speaking . . .’ There was a pause.

Frankie watched Rita’s face drain of colour.

‘Oh . . . OK . . . yeah . . . I mean, of course . . . Yeah . . . OK . . . bye.’ She stared blankly at the phone in her hand as if she’d never seen a Nokia before.

‘Well?’ Frankie was worried something was up. She’d never seen Rita so pale. ‘What’s happened?’

For the first time ever, Rita had been rendered speechless. She seemed to be in a daze, a state of shock.

‘Rita, for Christ’s sake will you tell me what’s going on?’

With a shaking hand, Rita pulled out her packet of cigarettes and lit one. She took a deep drag as the colour came flooding back into her face and her shock gave way to excitement. And a smile plastered itself across her face, so she looked like one of those lottery winners you see in the papers clutching a cardboard cheque. Blowing out a cloud of smoke, she bit her lip and spoke slowly, deliberately, as if she was having trouble getting her mind around the words she was speaking. ‘I got it . . .’ She paused, blowing two chimneys of smoke down her nostrils. ‘I got the part in
Malibu Motel
. Of Tracy Potter, the receptionist . . .’ Her voice broke off as the reality of what she was saying sank in. Gripping Frankie, she stared at her. ‘
Can you fucking believe it? I got the fucking part . . .
’

The incognito celebrity customers at Firs for the Stars stopped loading up their sports utility vehicles with Trafalgar Square-size Norwegian spruces and turned to see where all the shrieking was coming from. Trying to crease their botoxed foreheads, they stared through their designer sunglasses at a pint-size redhead in a leopard-skin top and a miniskirt, whooping with joy and jigging up and down in crazed exhilaration. Grabbing her friend, she’d wrapped strands of tinsel around herself and the sales assistant like silver feather boas and was squirting fake snow into the air, so that it fluttered down over them as if they were plastic figures in one of those snow shakers.

Rita knew everybody was staring, and she didn’t care. She was going to be on the receiving end of a lot more attention in the future, so she might as well start getting used to it.
She was going to be famous
. It was hard to believe, but she’d finally done it.

Rita Duffin was set to become a star. A Hollywood fucking soap star.

34

‘Happy Christmas, darlings.’ Waving a branch of mistletoe and wearing a butcher’s pinny over the top of a snake-skin-print suit, Dorian greeted Rita and Frankie at the door and kissed them both hungrily. ‘Looking totally fabulous as ever.’ He grinned, licking his lips and wrapping his arms snugly around their waists. Ushering them over the threshold and on to his balcony, which he’d decorated with fairy lights and a deluxe, top-of-the-range gold tinsel tree from Barneys, he picked up a cut-glass decanter that was glinting in the sun. ‘Fancy a sherry?’

It was Christmas Day and they’d gone next door to spend it with Dorian, who, after his drugs scare, had turned his Versace back on his sex-drugs-and-party lifestyle. Not that he wasn’t still dealing, but instead of illegal substances, he was now making his fortune trading stocks and shares on the Internet. As well as his new career, he’d also begun some kind of health kick. Instead of lying in bed all day with a hangover and a fully paid-up member of the LA ChildWoman species, he was now up at six a.m., jogging around the Hollywood reservoir with Elvis on a retractable lead, and after working at his laptop all day he spent his evenings cooking low-fat smoked salmon risotto for one, watching films on his state-of-the-art DVD player and going to bed early.

‘I thought you might be missing home and so I made a special trip to the English store in Santa Monica. The old dear that runs the place told me to buy a Harrods Christmas pudding, some of that Bird’s custard, Paxo stuffing and a couple of bottles of Bristol Cream.’ Looking delighted with himself, Dorian took a swig from a glass and pulled a face. ‘Jesus Christ, how can you drink this stuff?’ Coughing, he tipped it into one of his many now-empty plant pots and reached for a bottle of Sky vodka. ‘What about a Bloody Mary instead?’ His new health regime obviously hadn’t vetoed alcohol.

‘Yeah, why not?’ Frankie smiled, trying to look cheerful, when inside she felt anything but.

The day before Reilly had called her from God knows where in Mexico. The line was appalling, but just as the pips ran out she managed to hear what he was saying: ‘There’s been a pretty bad storm . . . a few days to get to Mexico City . . . I’m really sorry . . .’ She didn’t need to fill in the gaps to realise he wasn’t going to be back in LA for Christmas. She’d pretended it was no big deal, but the disappointment was crushing her.

For the past two weeks, she’d been like the space shuttle on countdown. A mixture of nerves, anticipation and excitement at the thought of seeing him again. Looking forward to being able to hold him and unwrap him as if he were her very own Christmas present. Ever since he’d left for Mexico she’d been mentally ticking off the days, hours, minutes until he got back. And now she had no idea how long that would be.

‘Frankie’s fed up,’ announced Rita bluntly, blowing her friend’s brave face. ‘Reilly’s marooned God knows where in Mexico.’ Plonking herself down on the hammock, she swung towards the pile of luxury mince pies that were stacked, in an ice-sugary mountain, in the middle of the rattan coffee table. ‘I’ve told her to cheer up, but you know what it’s like . . .’ Her voice was muffled as she licked her fingers between mouthfuls of pastry . . . ‘You can’t help it when you’re young and in love.’

Frankie cringed. She didn’t want everybody to know how she felt about Reilly. Especially not Dorian. But it was too late.