The Sex Was Great But... (9 page)

“God, you're beautiful. Tell me those are real,” he pleaded.

“Sorry. Silicone,” I told him, even though they
were
real. I just wanted to see what he did.

“Fuck it. I don't give a toss. I've never seen silicone look so good.”

And as he sucked on my nipples I wanted to scream with the thrill of it all—only I knew Joseph would come running. For the next I-don't-know-how-long his kisses trailed down my body. Then I realized he'd peeled off my skirt and my panties, so I decided to pull off my top, which was all bunched up around my chest by this stage.

I know that you probably imagine celebrities have non-crease sex, but actually it's just as rumpled as everyone else's. Making love is never as seamless or as cellulite-free as it is in the movies, where they have double-sided tape and soft filters and body doubles to beautify your bad bits.

By this stage I was naked, truly, truly naked—more naked than I've ever felt with anyone before in my whole entire life. Nudity in the truest sense.

I felt like a headline—“Holly Is Naked”—like a neon
sign, lit up for everyone to see. Like the Hollywood sign, stuck up on a hill.

You might think to yourself, Well, she's a celebrity—she would feel like that, the stuck-up bitch. But this wasn't about celebrity or vanity. Actually, I felt shy and nervous under the spotlight of Leo's eyes.

Last night in the dark it had been different, but in the morning light I found myself putting my hands over my breasts to cover them, which was something I haven't done since puberty. I had another tiny doubt-moment, but not enough to actually say the words, “Stop we can't do this, it's wrong!” I was too far gone down the road of sexual ecstasy to say stop now.

Insane as it was, we felt like the most perfectly matched couple in the world at that moment. I wanted to charge out and carve “Holly Loves Leo” on a tree somewhere. Only I wouldn't do something like that because I know it really hurts the tree. But in my mind I was doing just that—and more.

H
olly has told me secrets. Girls always tell me secrets; they say I'm really easy to talk to. What they don't know is, I don't listen; I just stroke their hair and think about music. I'm bad like that. I always was. It just seemed safer when I was growing up to keep yourself to yourself and not get involved or too interested in other people's lives. First rule of survival is, when someone tells you something they don't want you to tell anyone else, you can put money on it that you definitely
don't
want to hear it.

“Why single me out?” my mum used to say when Auntie Lucy came to her with some rumor doing the rounds of the estate.

It was different now, though. I was in a Hollywood Hills mansion with a genuine Hollywood babe and she was laying down her secrets like a new dance track. We were lying in the dark after making love and I wanted to tell her about how I dreamed of being a DJ, but I was afraid she'd laugh so I asked her to tell me something. She told me about her secret shame in not having a butler.

“A butler?” I said, certain I couldn't have heard right.

But I had. Apparently she used to have a butler, a guy from England, whose name was Periwinkle.

“Bollocks,” I said. “No one's called Periwinkle.”

“Periwinkle is one of the major names in butlering in England,” she informed me, adding, “a byword for prestige and elegance!” Then, as if realizing that she sounded like she was doing an ad for butler suppliers, she fell into my chest and giggled.

The problem with Periwinkle was he became the envy of all and his power grew and grew. Her friends and colleagues started coming over to seek Periwinkle's advice, and he in turn became increasingly demanding.

“Conchita hated him.” She sighed. “I know this will sound really un-Buddhist but I started to hate him, too. He was just so, so, so perfect.”

“That's tough.”

“And the demands! Can you believe he had to have custom-made diamond-encrusted cuff links with a P as part of his uniform? He was more expensive than Ted.”

“Ted? Is that the guy who sold stories about you?” And whose name you cried out when we were making love?

“Yeah. Everything Periwinkle had, Ted had to have, too. It was costing me a fortune.”

I made a noise to show how I understood how difficult these mix-and-match cuff link dilemmas were.

“It was so lucky that Joseph caught him trying on Conchita's underwear.”

I sat up. “You're kidding?”

“No, he was in her corset when Joseph walked in. He was not happy.”

“I can imagine.”

“And her suspender belt.”

 

I was still thinking of Periwinkle all dolled up in Conchita's finery when I was making a snack in the kitchen the next morning. I must have been singing away to myself, because when Conchita came in she joined in. Only she started singing the lyrics in Spanish. It was an old Elvis song my mum always used to sing on long car journeys—“A Little Less Conversation, a Little More Action.” It only works, though, if you sing it badly—so, out of respect, and also because it sounded even madder, I joined her in the Spanish rendition. Soon we were jiving and jitterbugging and I was swinging her around. For an almost entirely spherical woman she was surprisingly light on her feet.

Holly walked in, and I guess I misread the mood, because as I pulled her in for a swing she pushed me away, shooting me a look that was as cold as a slap in the face. I half-heartedly finished off the last chorus with Conchita, and then skulked off outside to sit in the sun. Holly came out a few minutes later and sat beside me, all casual-like, as if she wasn't seeking me out.

I kept my eyes fixed on Joseph, who was doing some work by the poolhouse. I knew that Holly wanted to talk
about the dancing thing in the kitchen, but I wasn't going to make it easy for her so we sat silently for all of a minute. Eventually she broke.

“How are you feeling about the makeover?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Yeah—okay, I guess.” I had my legs stretched out on the lounger. My trainers were well past their use-by date. The stitching around the sides had perished and the laces were broken.

“Only, I want you to feel comfortable here while we're working on you.”

“Thanks.” I kicked my shoes off and immediately regretted it when they made a defeated sort of sound as they hit the ground. My big toe was coming out of one of my miserably worn socks. I tried to stick my feet back into my shoes, but they had gone under the sun lounger where I couldn't reach them. I started flailing about with my legs in an ineffective attempt at locating them. Holly looked at me as if I was having a fit. Okay, so I wasn't being nearly as chilled as I wanted to be.

“I don't mean to be difficult, only maybe it would be better if we didn't let anyone see us together—especially not the staff,” she suggested, while my legs and arms faffed about.

“That might be hard, given that we are living almost under the same roof. We're bound to bump into one another.”

“I know, I'm just saying I think we should be as businesslike as possible,” she explained.

“Sure,” I agreed. “Whatever.” I didn't have a clue what she meant. My only contact with the world of business is my mum's market stall in Islington. My job was keeping my
eye out for Pikeys trying to nick stuff, and then giving them a mouthful and a swift kick when I caught them.

I don't think that was what she meant, though.

“Thanks, Leo. I'm glad we understand one another.” She gave my arm a squeeze and I turned to face her. She looked uncomfortable and out of place, like an employee who's asked for an extended lunch break, not a bit like the star she was, and I started to think that maybe we were both out of our depth with this thing. Maybe it wasn't just me.

“Are you okay, Leo?” she asked.

I sat up and tried to look a bit sane—but I'm not sure I was entirely successful.

“I just don't want any of this to get out,” she said, and she waved her arm, gesturing to the house and the garden. “You know?” She rolled her eyes, as if we both knew what she meant about reputations and things getting out.

I looked around the vast well-kept garden. Seriously, she wasn't worried about
“this”
getting out at all. I bet she'd even appeared in magazine shoots lounging about in her garden. Playing backgammon under the bougainvillea, laughing with Nancy by the pool, swinging on the tree swing in a long white satin skirt. What she was actually worried about getting out was
me.
She was worried about stories of her being at ease with me, stories about the two of us dancing in the kitchen…or making love in the poolhouse.

“You mean stories about you hanging out with someone like me, don't you?”

Her face colored but, picking at a cuticle, all she said was, “You didn't tell me you could speak Spanish.”

I opened my mouth to say something clever, but Holly
got in first, “Nancy will be here in ten minutes. She's already lined up an appointment with her dentist.”

“A dentist?”

“To fix your teeth?”

“Fix my teeth? But my teeth aren't broken.”

“For the makeover? We discussed it, remember? Your teeth are crooked and they need to be capped.”

I was about to say something assertive, but Holly got there first again. “She's also arranged for a personal trainer, and then next week I've got my hairstylist coming over to style you.”

“My hair? My hair's fine, isn't it?” I rearranged the unruly dark mass on my head. It wasn't long or anything; there was just a lot of it. One thing I knew from experience, though, was that it always looked worse the first week after I had it cut.

“Emmanuel will decide.” She shrugged, as if my hair and what happened to it was already out of our hands. “Oh, and Dinny will be here later today. He's a speech therapist. He's the best in the business and Nancy thought we could start the filming during your first session with him. That way he can go to work on you while Wayne films the process.”

I tried to envision what Dinny going to work on me would look like on film. “Go to work on me? What process?” I wasn't too keen on being a process.

“Your makeover—for the show?” She was looking at me like I was tripping off my head. “We talked all about this. You're going to have a camera on you for a few hours a day to capture the various stages of your makeover. You're not on any sort of medication or drugs, are you, Leo?”

“Course not.”

“It's just that you repeat everything I say.”

I didn't reply. I thought about how only a couple of hours ago I'd been wearing my trousers back to front, and how after that we'd been upending breakfast trays and writhing naked all over one another. I wondered if the backward-trouser thing was likely to work again.

I was beginning to feel like a social experiment that knows it's all about to go wrong. A cloud descended on the protective affection I'd been feeling toward Holly up until now.

“Maybe this isn't such a good idea,” I heard myself saying as Holly stood to leave.

She stood over me, the sun behind her lighting up her hair, her tone falsely casual as she said slowly, “Ok-ay, but I thought you'd agreed.”

I squinted up at her. “Well, yeah, I agreed, but I suppose I hadn't thought it through—especially the teeth thing and, you know…about what all this makeover stuff will mean.”

She paused. “Well, it's up to you, obviously. Although I think you should look at what all this could mean for you—the opportunity you're being offered here personally. Changes can be challenging, but they can also bring opportunity, Leo. Maybe if you look on it as a job. A two-week job.” She shrugged, as if this was the easiest thing in the world.

“A two-week job?” Two weeks! I mean, I'm not afraid of work or anything, but the longest job I've ever had was fifteen minutes long, doing break sets at clubs.

“Yeah. You've had jobs before, haven't you?” she asked, still eyeing me up like I was on a high dose of Ketamine.

I returned the look. “Yeah, of course I've had jobs. What do you think I am?”

She giggled then, and I flashed back to the night before. I suddenly envisioned two weeks of having sex and spending time with Holly, and like a yo-yo on the end of a rubber band I sprang right back into the palm of her hand. If this was a job, it was a dream job.

The question was, could I cope with a dream job?

“At the end of the makeover process there's a big party at the Mondrian. Lots of people in the business will be there. If we pass you off as one of them, the world will be your oyster. You can do anything you want Leo—think about it. Anything. You'll have your ticket back to Britain, a new wardrobe, a new look.”

I looked at her for signs of what she wanted, what she felt. Her lips were so kissable it was all I could do not to sweep her into my arms. I told myself that all this would be a bit of laugh. Maybe a new look wouldn't kill me. I mean, it's not as if my current look is doing me any favors.

Sensing my hesitation, she looked down at her hands. “Only, if you're going to go, Leo,” she said quietly, “go now.”

“Go now? You mean this minute?”

She nodded. “Call Nancy and explain, but don't muck me around.” Then she went back inside.

I found my shoes, stuck my feet back in and followed her. I didn't know what I wanted to say, but I knew I had to say something if I was going to have any power in this whole thing.

She wasn't in the kitchen or the dining room, though, so I stuck my head in the freezer and took a deep breath.
Apparently my dad used to stick his head in the freezer when he was hungover. Auntie Lucy told me that. My mum told me never to believe a word Auntie Lucy said.

I tumbled the idea of leaving Holly's mansion around in my head, pictured myself back in my sofa-surfing existence with Kev, Snore and Tifanie. There was no way I wanted to leave now. In two weeks I would have a passport and a ticket, straight teeth and a decent haircut. Think of it as a two-week job, Holly had said. Maybe it was the opportunity of a lifetime. Maybe it was just what I needed to do—stretch my focus a bit?

When there was still no clue to Holly's whereabouts I wandered back out into the garden, where Joseph was still hard at work outside the poolhouse. He was taking apart the shower outside, so I wandered down the hill and watched him.

“Hot,” I remarked awkwardly.

He turned and smiled, so I asked what he was up to. He explained that Holly had asked him to sort out the pressure, then he asked me for a wrench and I passed one up from the suede tool bag at his feet.

We fell into a
Boy's Own
conversation, about football mostly. He asked if I knew Michael Owen, and I admitted that I'd seen him around—as if he and I were always passing one another on the street. We both agreed that American football was pants. As I passed him various tools I couldn't help thinking that maybe this was what it was like having a father: pissing around with DIY jobs, discussing sport and arguing over defensive plays. I tried to imagine passing Mike a ratchet and a wrench. Maybe if he'd stayed with us he would have fixed our washing machine, or done
something useful about the buzzing noise the fridge always made. Then again, maybe he wouldn't have.

“You like Miss Holly?” he asked, replacing the washer.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Many men, they hurt Miss Holly.”

I nodded as I passed him back the showerhead, but he didn't say anything else so I lay down on one of the pool chairs. When he had put the shower back together he came over with his tool bag.

“You not hurt Miss Holly,” he told me, before walking off.

I wasn't sure if it was a question or a command. I wasn't sure if I was even capable of hurting Holly. As far as I saw it, she held all the weapons in our relationship.