St John’s Hospital on Santa Monica and Twentieth was comprised of two gleaming-white towers connected by a lower glass building, and everything about it spoke of modernity, efficiency and wealth. Everything except the Emergency Room, a stinking, windowless basement filled with homeless drunks, incontinent junkies, screaming, bleeding children and their distraught parents and three of the most obese, joyless and unhelpful registrars it had ever been Dorian’s misfortune to encounter.
‘Overdose?’ asked the charge nurse, in the same bored monotone with which a McDonald’s waitress might have asked him if he wanted fries.
‘Yes,’ he panted frantically. ‘Her notes are right here. She’s stopped breathing again. The paramedics have been trying to revive her in the—’
‘Uh-huh. Wait here please.’
‘“Wait here”? I don’t think you’re hearing me. She is not breathing!’
‘I hear you, sir,’ the nurse sighed heavily. ‘Your friend is the third overdose we’ve had in here in the last two hours. We’ll get her intubated just as soon as we can.’
‘It’s Sabrina Leon,’ one of the paramedics blurted breathlessly.
The nurse looked more closely at the wan, masked face on the gurney. ‘It is?’
‘Uh-huh. The one and only.’
‘Well why didn’t you say so?’ Instantly, the fat woman’s face changed from hostile to pleasant. ‘Follow me, please. Room six, triage. Doctor Emanuelle’ll be right with you.’
And from the moment Sabrina’s name was mentioned, Dr Emanuelle was right with them, as were a veritable legion of white-coated voyeurs, all of them swooping down on the triage suite like a flock of fame-hungry doves. Only in LA, thought Dorian bitterly, although for once he was grateful for the special celebrity treatment, stepping back to let them do their work, his own identity apparently unnoticed as they descended on Sabrina’s lifeless form with tubes and needles and an astonishing array of monitors, paddles and wires.
‘What’s happening?’ He tapped one of the nurses on the shoulder, no longer able to see Sabrina at all through the throng. ‘What are they doing to her? Is she breathing again?’
‘Are you family?’ asked the nurse.
‘No. I’m a friend. I’m the one who found her.’
‘Then I’m sorry, sir, but I’m gonna have to ask you to wait outside. We can only share information with immediate family or partners, and even they aren’t really supposed to be in here.’
Unlike the harridan on reception, this nurse was kind and polite in her tone. But she was also firm. Dorian pushed through the double exit doors and stood in the corridor stunned, like a man who’d just been bombed and dug his way out of the rubble into the sunlight. The hallway had been full twenty minutes ago, but now it was empty, save for one blue-scrubbed orderly folding gowns on a trolley. The quiet added to the eerie sense of unreality, but it was soon broken by a familiar voice.
‘Dorian?’
At first glance, Viorel looked his usual suave, immaculate self, the black wool of his jacket and lapis blue of his shirt reflecting perfectly his oil-black hair and azure eyes. But as he came closer, Dorian made out the circles of stress under his eyes, and the haunted sunkenness of his cheeks. He looks almost as miserable as I do.
‘Where is she?’ Vio ran his hand through his hair frantically. ‘I drove here like a fucking maniac. Someone called me twenty minutes ago. I guess I’m listed as her next of kin or something. Is she OK?’
‘She’s alive,’ said Dorian bleakly. ‘But she isn’t breathing. At least she wasn’t a few minutes ago. They’ve got a hundred doctors in with her now.’
‘Oh God.’ It came out as more groan than words. Leaning back against the wall, Vio literally slumped to the floor, like a paraplegic whose wheelchair had suddenly been whipped out from under him. ‘It’s all my fault.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Dorian. There could be no doubting that Viorel’s anguish was genuine. His weakness triggered a return of Dorian’s own strength. He mustn’t be allowed to blame himself. ‘Sabrina took those pills, She made that decision.’
‘Yes, but only because I drove her to it.’ Viorel let out a shout that was half grief, half rage. ‘I swear to God,’ he sobbed, ‘I thought she was OK. When she left the restaurant she seemed fine. Oh Jesus, what have I done?’
Dorian sat down on the floor and wrapped a paternal arm around Viorel’s shoulders. Slowly, piecemeal, the story unfolded: how Viorel had felt trapped by the relationship, by Sabrina’s terrifying need and the growing media fantasy; how he’d been too scared, too weak to break things off sooner; but how tonight, finally, he’d snapped and ended their relationship at a corner table in Mastro’s.
‘I knew she was upset, obviously. She cried, you know, when I told her. But by the time she left she seemed really calm and,’ he searched for the right word, ‘I don’t know. Accepting, I guess.’
‘What time did she leave?’ asked Dorian.
‘Around nine,’ said Vio. ‘Why?’
Dorian did a quick calculation. It must have taken her thirty minutes at least to drive home, and maybe another ten to undress, find all those pills and swallow them. Say nine forty-five at the earliest, probably more like ten. What time had he found her? Eleven? And she threw up in the ambulance twenty minutes later. Which meant the drugs couldn’t have been in her system for that long.
‘No reason.’
The orderly squeezed past them, his trolley piled high with neatly folded gowns.
‘If she dies, it’ll be on my hands,’ muttered Viorel despairingly.
Dorian looked Vio in the eye. ‘No it won’t,’ he said, firmly. ‘You did the right thing. You had to tell her. You couldn’t have known she was gonna do something as crazy as this.’
He meant it too. If anyone ought to feel guilty, it was him. When Viorel told him that he and Sabrina had broken up tonight, Dorian’s first feeling had been one of elation, of hope. With Sabrina fighting for her life behind those doors? What kind of a narcissistic, self-centred excuse for a man am I?
‘She will be OK, won’t she?’ Vio asked, desperate for reassurance.
‘I’m sure she will,’ lied Dorian.
A few moments later, Dr Emanuelle, a tall Latino with a mocha complexion and a faintly off-putting, movie-star white smile, emerged through the swing doors looking stony faced. Viorel practically grabbed him by the lapels.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked. ‘Is she OK? I’m her …’ he hesitated. ‘I’m her next of kin.’
‘I know who you are, Mr Hudson,’ said the doctor, kindly. ‘She’s alive. And she’s breathing. Not on her own, though. With help.’
Dorian felt the room start to spin. ‘With help?’
‘Yes.’
‘You mean a ventilator?’
‘Yes. Miss Leon is in a coma.’
Viorel gasped. Seeing his legs start to shake again, Dorian put an arm around his waist to hold him up. ‘Oh please no. She can’t die.’
‘I know it’s very distressing,’ said Dr Emanuelle. ‘But try to keep calm. The fact that she’s comatose doesn’t necessarily mean she’s going to die. Sometimes the body shuts down in this way so that it can repair itself. A bit like shutting down all the open programmes on your computer so you can restart,’ he added helpfully.
Both men stared back at him blankly.
‘Look, we’ll know more in the next few hours. We’re running a brain scan, a CT, everything. For the moment she is stable. We’re moving her to Critical Care. You can wait up there while they run the tests. It’s a lot more comfortable than this hole.’
Outside in the parking lot, the orderly cupped a hand furtively around his cellphone, making sure he wasn’t overheard.
‘Yes, I’m sure it’s her. I heard Viorel Hudson with my own ears, man. But I’m not telling you nothing else till I see some money.’
The rest of that night was one of the longest in both Viorel and Dorian’s lives. Camped out in the Critical Care family waiting room, they were drip fed information throughout the small hours as Sabrina’s test results came back. Some were positive. Her liver, lungs and heart all looked healthy. Others were agonizingly inconclusive. It wasn’t clear whether or not she would suffer permanent brain damage. Much would depend on when – and if – she emerged from the coma.
‘It could be in an hour,’ Dr Emanuelle told Vio. ‘It could be tomorrow. It could be weeks or months from now. Obviously, we’re hoping that that’s not the case. But you need to be prepared. There truly isn’t much point to your waiting around here. She’s stable, and if that changes, we’ll call you. But you should both go home and get some rest.’
At first, Viorel had refused. But by dawn, the press pack gathered outside the hospital had swelled to close to a hundred, some of them with full camera crews. From the waiting-room window, Vio could clearly see the Channel 9 news team as well as the hated Extra.
‘You should get out of here while you still can,’ said Dorian. ‘It’s you they want to see, not me.’
‘Either me or some doctor telling them Sabrina’s dead,’ said Viorel bitterly. ‘Fucking parasites. How can they make entertainment out of something like this?’
‘Seriously, Dr Emanuelle’s right. There’s nothing you can do here. You need some sleep.’
‘What about you?’
Dorian shrugged. ‘I’m a vampire, remember? We’re not big on sleep. Besides,’ he added wryly, ‘I have nowhere to go.’
Viorel hesitated. ‘You promise you’ll call me if there’s any news at all?’
‘I promise. Go.’
Outside, a spectacular orange-and-pink sunrise was spreading across the Santa Monica sky. Camera crews and paparazzi anxiously corrected their light meters, while reporters and presenters double checked their mikes, in preparation for either Viorel’s emergence or an official statement from the St John’s press office on Sabrina’s condition.
With the hospital staff’s help, Viorel was able to choreograph this so that he was smuggled out of the trade entrance at exactly the same time that Dr Emanuelle walked out front to address the media.
‘Ladies and Gentleman,’ he shouted, raising a hand for silence as the noisy rabble closed in around him. ‘I’m going to read a short factual statement detailing Miss Leon’s current condition. And I will not, repeat not, be taking any further questions at this time.’
With the flashbulbs popping and boom mikes thrust at him like so many padded spears, the handsome doctor read out his prepared statement. Sabrina had been brought in at eleven thirty yesterday evening, after an apparent overdose of prescription medication. Her condition was critical but stable. Test results so far had given grounds for optimism, but there could be no further comment made at this stage as to her ultimate prognosis.
As he lowered his paper and turned to walk back into the hospital, the furore that erupted behind him was deafening.
‘Can you confirm this was a suicide attempt?’
‘Is it true that Sabrina tried to take her own life because Viorel Hudson left her?’
‘Is Viorel with her now?’
‘Is Hudson being charged with any offence? Have the police been involved?’
‘Will Viorel be making a statement?’
Only with the help of three burly security men was Dr Emanuelle physically able to extricate himself from the baying crowd and make it safely back inside.
‘What the fuck’s wrong with these people?’ he complained to one of the nurses. ‘That girl’s fighting for her life up there, and all they’re interested in is getting the Hudson kid’s head on a plate.’
The nurse raised an eyebrow. ‘That surprises you?’
Dr Emanuelle sighed. ‘I guess not.’
‘You live by the sword, you die by the sword.’ The nurse shrugged. ‘That’s the nature of fame.’
The doctor shook his head sadly. Sometimes he hated this town.
Over the course of the next two weeks, Wuthering Heights’ cast and crew prayed to the gods of Hollywood that the old adage was true, about all publicity being good publicity. All over America, all over the world, headlines were screaming.
This year’s Oscar underdog was the movie that had wrecked the once famously solid Rasmirez marriage. That had brought together two photogenically star-crossed lovers, only to break them apart. That would, very possibly, result in the death of one of the brightest, yet most troubled stars of her generation, just weeks before she might have won an Oscar and turned her life and career around.
Like all good soap operas, the Wuthering Heights train wreck had the crucial ingredients of hope and despair, of fame, fortune and glamour side by side with tragedy, misery and disaster. It had a heroine – the newly forgiven and once again adored Sabrina, lying fighting for her life in a hospital bed – and now it had a villain: Viorel Hudson.
Ignoring Dorian’s protests, Vio had funded Wuthering Height’s pre-Oscar PR campaign out of his own pay cheque. ‘I’d have done it for half the money anyway,’ he reasoned. ‘And I want to beat that bastard Harry Greene as much as anybody. Besides, I owe it to Sabrina. And it’s not like I can promote it myself.’
This, unfortunately, was true.
Viorel had refused to release a statement defending himself over his break-up with Sabrina. ‘Why should I?’ he told his agent angrily. ‘I don’t owe the world an explanation.’ With nothing concrete or factual to go on, and with Sabrina irritatingly refusing either to die or dramatically to recover, the tabloids and TV stations filled the dead air with increasingly vitriolic and poisonous character assassinations of Viorel, fuelled by information from anonymous ‘insiders’. The hospital orderly who had overheard Vio’s guilt-fuelled outpourings to Dorian Rasmirez had cheerfully abandoned his $20,000-a-year drudge job at St John’s in exchange for a string of lucrative interviews with every syndicated entertainment show going. Like the others, he painted Vio as a heartless lothario, who had deliberately driven poor innocent Sabrina to suicide with his infidelity, cruelly abandoning her in public on the very day she had learned of her Oscar nomination, crushing her fragile spirit and wantonly annihilating her recent, brave recovery from her ‘demons’.
‘You have to sue.’ Viorel’s attorney, George Lewis, finally managed to get through to his client after the most splenetic and libellous of all the stories so far ran in the National Enquirer. ‘At the very least, let me demand a retraction.’
‘Why?’ Vio responded wearily. ‘What good will it do? It’ll only stoke the flames of this stupid circus. Let them print and be damned.’
They printed. But it was Viorel who was being damned.
Meanwhile, Dorian was emerging as the unlikely hero of the piece, much to his own bafflement, and his soon-to-be ex-wife’s annoyance. It had been Dorian who had found Sabrina ‘just moments from death!’ as US Weekly breathlessly intoned. Her devoted mentor had not left her bedside since.
‘Rasmirez, described by insiders as a father figure to the young star, continues his lonely vigil in Sabrina’s hospital room,’ the magazine reporter wrote. ‘He is said to have refused to allow Viorel Hudson any access to the gravely ill actress and is, friends say, “distraught” by recent events.’
Well, the last part’s true, thought Dorian. He had, in fact, been back to his room at the Beverly Wilshire twice in the last week, once to pick up some clothes and supplies, including his PC, and once for a series of Oscar campaign strategy meetings with the PR firm Vio had paid for. Both times he’d come and gone in a yellow cab and both times remained unnoticed, perhaps because the press believed their own bullshit about him being shackled to Sabrina’s bed, watching her every breath. It was true that Viorel had not returned to St John’s since Sabrina’s admission. But this was purely because of the media intrusion, and the doctors’ insistence that his presence there would do more harm than good, and nothing to do with a ‘banning order’ from Dorian. Indeed, it was Viorel who had given permission for Dorian to be allowed to stay with Sabrina. The two men were in constant touch.
But Dorian was distraught. He knew that with every day that passed, the chances of Sabrina waking up at all, never mind waking up unimpaired, dwindled. Stroking her hand, he would talk to her for hours, reading out every new review of her outstanding performance as Cathy, as well as poetry, novels, even new scripts in an attempt to rouse her, however momentarily, from her dreamless sleep. The doctors were adamant she could not hear him. But Dorian had read hundreds of stories about coma victims waking up after decades and announcing that they’d heard every word said to them. In any case, the talking was for him as much as for Sabrina. To stop talking would be to stop hoping. And he couldn’t do that.
It was a Wednesday morning, and unusually dull and grey outside, when it happened. Clutching his usual morning latte, Dorian was standing at the window of Sabrina’s room, trying to get cellphone reception, when he heard a voice from behind him.
‘Hey.’
It wasn’t a faint voice, it wasn’t hoarse or weak or querulous. It was just an everyday, ‘Hey, how are you?’ kind of voice, and he turned around expecting to see a nurse. But there was no one there. Only him and Sabrina. His heart pounding, Dorian walked over to the bed. Sabrina appeared unchanged, eyes closed, chest rising and falling in its usual rhythm, apparently sleeping peacefully. I must be imagining things, he thought. I’ve been cooped up in here too long.
Just as he had this thought, Sabrina’s eyes opened wide, like a doll’s, and she said, ‘I’m thirsty. I need water.’
Dorian jumped up and ran into the hall. His screams could be heard reverberating all the way to the maternity ward. ‘Get Doctor Emanuelle! Get someone! She’s awake!’ Running back to Sabrina he hugged and kissed her, only with difficulty resisting the temptation to squeeze the life back out of her. When he spoke, to his own surprise he sounded angry. ‘Goddamn it, Sabrina, how could you be so stupid? Do you know how fucking scared we’ve all been?’
‘Water,’ repeated Sabrina weakly. ‘Please.’
‘Oh shit, sorry.’ Dorian hurried to the sink, returning with a paper cup of tap water. He held it to her lips and she drank it greedily, nodding to him for a second cup and then a third.
‘Well, hello!’ Dr Emanuelle walked in looking elated, as well he might. ‘We weren’t sure if you were going to make a reappearance. It’s good to meet you, Miss Leon.’
Sabrina looked at him uncomprehendingly, then turned back to Dorian. He could see, physically see, the memory of what had happened slowly and painfully returning to her, the pain of it spreading like a storm cloud across her features, from her furrowed brow down to her trembling lower lip.
‘I didn’t die,’ she murmured.
‘No, my darling,’ said Dorian gently. ‘You didn’t.’
Sabrina’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I wanted to.’ Slumping back against the pillow, she closed her eyes again.
‘Sabrina!’ Dorian panicked. ‘Do something,’ he shouted at Dr Emanuelle. ‘Help her!’
‘She’s fine,’ said the doctor, looking at the red lines on the monitor measuring Sabrina’s brainwaves. ‘She’s tired, that’s all. Let her rest. I’ll leave the nurse with you. When she wakes up again, we’ll run all the tests, but you should try to relax now, Mr Rasmirez. She made it.’
He was right. It was astonishing how quickly, once she’d come around, Sabrina bounced back to normal. Well, perhaps ‘bounced’ wasn’t quite the right word. Throughout the day her mood remained listless and subdued. She herself did not seem to share the general delight at her survival. But physically, her recovery was as fast as it was miraculous. By the end of that first day she was sitting up in bed, eating and drinking and catching up on the television news. When an item came on about the Oscars, she turned up the volume. But when the commentary turned to her own dramatic recovery – evidently, Ed Steiner had wasted no time releasing a statement – and included footage of her and Viorel together, she became visibly distressed.
‘Turn it off,’ she told Dorian, who was still seated in his usual armchair beside her bed. ‘I can’t watch.’
Dorian did as he was asked. He hated to see her so upset, fighting back the tears.
‘He wasn’t right for you, you know,’ he said gently.
It was the wrong thing to say, like opening the floodgates on an enormous dam of emotion. ‘He was!’ sobbed Sabrina. ‘He was right for me. I wasn’t good enough for him, that was the problem.’
‘How can you say that?’ said Dorian. ‘You’re too good for him. You’re too good for any man, for that matter. You’re perfect.’
Sabrina was so surprised, she stopped crying for a moment. Was this the same Dorian Rasmirez who’d spent the best part of last year telling her what a spoiled, selfish, obnoxious little madam she was? ‘Perfect?’
‘Well,’ Dorian grinned, ‘perhaps not perfect in the strictest sense of the word. But you’re perfect to me.’ Taking her hand, he said solemnly, ‘I love you, Sabrina. I’m in love with you. Will you marry me?’
Sabrina lay still for a long time, saying nothing. I should have known, she thought to herself. He’s been here in the hospital all this time, waiting for me. That’s more than friendly concern. But at the same time she struggled to reconcile the Dorian she knew in England, the dictatorial director, with the man clasping her hand now, proclaiming his love for her.
‘I can’t marry you,’ she said, her voice as soft and kind as she could make it. ‘I know there’s no hope for me and Viorel. If I didn’t know that for sure, I wouldn’t have …’ She left the sentence hanging.
‘I know,’ said Dorian quietly.
‘But that doesn’t change the fact that I still love him. I’m sorry.’
As she said the words, she thought: What am I sorry for, exactly? That it’s over for me and Vio? Or that I’ve just rejected an offer of marriage from one of the most wonderful men in the world? The truth was that there had always been something between her and Dorian. That night when he’d defended her outside the pub at Loxley and they’d ended up having a screaming row; or after he bailed her out of a police cell in Manchester and they’d shared that totally unexpected kiss; or in Romania, when he’d confided in her about the end of his marriage. There was a spark between them, a connection that ran deeper than friendship or even than the notoriously volatile actress/director relationship. She just wasn’t prepared to have it verbalized here, now, in hospital, only days after Viorel had left her. What else could she say but ‘no’?
Sabrina’s answer wasn’t what Dorian wanted to hear. But he could hardly claim to be surprised. Even if she weren’t still obsessed with Hudson, what reason on earth would a girl like that – a world-class beauty with her whole life ahead of her – have to be interested in an ageing, past-his-prime retread like him? How foolish must he have sounded, proposing out of the blue like that?
‘No,’ he said, embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. It was foolish of me.’
‘Not foolish,’ said Sabrina truthfully. ‘I’m flattered.’
‘Look, can we just forget this?’ said Dorian gruffly. ‘Let’s talk about something else.’
‘OK.’ For the first time since she’d opened her eyes that morning, Sabrina smiled. ‘Let’s talk about our strategy then.’
‘Strategy?’ Dorian raised an eyebrow.
‘For the Oscars,’ said Sabrina impatiently. ‘I’d have gotten Best Actress for sure if I’d done the decent thing and died.’
‘Jesus, Sabrina, don’t say that!’
‘Why not? It’s true. But now that I’ve pulled through, we’re gonna have to fight for it.’
‘All you need to be fighting for is your strength,’ said Dorian soberly, marvelling for the thousandth time at Sabrina’s apparently limitless ambition. Even with a broken heart, and having just emerged from a coma, she was thinking about her next career move.
‘Screw that,’ said Sabrina robustly. ‘Harry Greene fucked your wife. Then he fucked your Sony deal. Are you really gonna sit back and let him fuck your Oscar chances too?’
Dorian smiled. ‘Well, when you put it like that …’
‘Great,’ Sabrina grinned. ‘So we’re agreed. No more weeping and gnashing of teeth. Let’s annihilate the slimy little fucker.’
Dorian didn’t think he had ever loved her more.
Two weeks later, Viorel Hudson was trying to get out of his car in Beverly Hills when he accidentally opened the driver’s door into a paparazzo’s face, knocking the man into the gutter.
‘Fuck you!’ the photographer snarled, clutching his nose, which was spurting blood like a faucet. ‘I’ll sue you for assault, asshole.’
‘Good luck with that,’ drawled Viorel, stepping over the injured man whilst weaving his way through a crowd of his compatriots. ‘Perhaps your lawyer would let me know where I can send the bill for my car? I think you may have scratched the bodywork.’
He’d decided a few weeks ago that if people were going to paint him as a villain, he might as well live up to his new, dastardly reputation. They want a heartless bastard? I’ll give them a heartless bastard. Sabrina had left hospital a few days ago and given a press conference in which she completely exonerated him of any wrongdoing, but it had made no difference. ‘BRAVE SABRINA FORGIVES EX’, ran the headlines. ‘HUDSON SHAMED BY LEON’S COMPASSION.’ Viorel had broken the heart of the nation’s on-again sweetheart. Sabrina might be prepared to forgive him. But nobody else was.
As a result, Viorel had emerged from his self-imposed hiding and begun to live his life in public again, eating out at well-known restaurants, unashamedly attending industry parties in the lead-up to the Oscars, and generally behaving like a man who didn’t care that half of America seemed to view him as on a par with Saddam Hussein. Perfecting his best, Jeremy Irons, villainous British accent, he deliberately taunted the hostile media, ignoring photographers and delivering as many pithy, ironic one-liners as he could think of to every earnestly condemnatory journalist who approached him. In private, he had spoken to Sabrina twice since she’d recovered from her overdose. Neither of them were easy conversations, but Viorel was happy that she sounded healthy and focused on work. She was staying at the private guesthouse on Ed Steiner’s property. He’d offered to visit her there to talk things through in person, but she’d declined.
‘Truly, I can’t face seeing you. Not yet,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘I’ve told Dorian I’m not up to doing promotion yet, at least not jointly.’
‘That’s OK,’ said Vio wryly. ‘Nobody wants me anywhere near the promotional events. I’d be about as popular as Hitler at a Bar Mitzvah.’
‘Yeah. I’m sorry about that,’ said Sabrina.
‘Not your fault, angel.’
‘It’ll pass. You’ll be yesterday’s news before you know it.’
Viorel laughed. ‘Thanks a lot!’
‘Come on, you know what I mean. I’ve been there, remember? Maybe you should try taking some pills? It worked for me.’
‘Don’t joke,’ said Vio angrily. He cared about Sabrina far, far more than people knew, or cared to admit. But, stubborn to the end, he was damned if he was going to show it to the press who were so determined to destroy him.
A pretty, peroxide blonde in a vintage denim miniskirt and cleavage-bearing, Gucci silk shirt thrust herself in front of Vio as he crossed the street.
‘Is it true you’re quitting Hollywood and moving back to England?’
‘No,’ snapped Vio. ‘It isn’t. It’s utter crap, but I suspect you’ll print it anyway.’
Ironically, he found he’d been thinking about England a lot lately. He’d always adored LA. In the last six years he couldn’t bring to mind a single occasion on which he’d felt homesick. But recently the allure of Hollywood’s bright lights had soured, even for him. Cooped up alone in his apartment under self-imposed house arrest, his mind kept returning to Abel and Tish, to Loxley in all its glorious tranquillity, to Tish’s maddening, self-righteous, pull-your-socks-up attitude and clipped, upper-class tones, which had irked him so much last summer, but which now seemed to call to him with all the nostalgic pull of a sea siren’s song.
‘Will you be going to the Academy Awards with the rest of the Wuthering Heights cast?’ The peroxide girl was no sea siren. Her voice was nasal and grating, the aural equivalent of lemon juice in the eyes. ‘How do you feel about seeing Sabrina again?’ She smelled even worse than she sounded. Her perfume – Kai – was so strong that Vio felt as if he’d walked into a freshly air-sprayed loo.
‘I’ll support the movie in whatever way I’m asked,’ he said curtly. ‘And I couldn’t care less about seeing Sabrina again.’ Cue horrified gasps from the passers-by in earshot. ‘Now be a good girl and fuck off, would you? I’m busy.’
Pushing past the girl as she gleefully wrote down his last gift of a quote, Viorel hurried into the nearest store. Talk about being hounded. That was truly what the paps were like, a pack of bloodthirsty dogs intent on ripping the flesh from his body. It was a relief when the gold-plated door of Louis Vuitton swished closed behind him, and he found himself on the cool, air-conditioned side of the tinted glass storefront windows, alone at last.
Or so he thought.
‘Well, well. This is a surprise. Mr Viorel Hudson, as I live and breathe.’
Chrissie Rasmirez stepped out from behind a row of fur coats and fixed him with a coquettish smile. Vio’s first thought was: Christ, she looks good. Dating Harry Greene obviously agreed with her. With her hair newly cut and dyed a softer shade of honey blonde, and her skin glowing like a teenager’s, she looked ten years younger than when he’d last seen her in Romania. The red Hervé Léger minidress she was wearing was probably a bit too young for her, but with her taut size-two figure she managed to pull it off.
‘Are you shopping or hiding?’ She gestured towards the photographers lined up outside the shop window like a firing squad.
‘Neither,’ said Viorel. He was in no mood to make small talk with Dorian’s bitch of an ex.
‘Well, it must be one or the other,’ said Chrissie, either missing his froideur or ignoring it. ‘Perhaps you’re looking for a peace offering for poor little Sabrina? If that’s the case, I can recommend the mink stole. A very comforting fur, mink, I always think.’
Viorel looked at her, struggling to think of anything to say. Every time he saw Chrissie he felt guilty about Dorian, although their afternoon of lovemaking at Loxley felt like a lifetime ago now. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said brusquely. ‘I have to go.’
‘Wait, don’t be like that,’ Chrissie called after him. ‘I’d like to talk to you.’ There was genuine pleading in her voice. Reluctantly, Viorel turned around.
‘How’s Dorian? I know the two of you must be seeing a lot of each other, what with the Oscars coming up and everything.’
‘He’s fine,’ said Viorel frostily. ‘Very good in fact,’ he couldn’t resist adding. ‘Excited about the movie’s chances. We all are.’
‘I wouldn’t get too excited if I were you,’ said Chrissie, running her fingers lovingly over a full-length fox-fur coat. ‘Celeste is odds-on to sweep the board.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Vio. ‘What do you care about Dorian anyway? You’ve clearly moved on.’
Chrissie pouted. ‘We were together for almost twenty years, you know. I still care.’
Yeah, right, thought Vio. You want to keep your options open in case he gets that Oscar after all, or Harry leaves you for a younger model.
‘I read that he’d been at Sabrina’s bedside for weeks like a lovesick puppy,’ Chrissie said archly. ‘I always knew there was something going on between those two, though of course he denied it.’
Viorel laughed. Her hypocrisy was truly stunning.
‘There’s nothing going on. There never was. Sabrina’s young enough to be his daughter.’
Chrissie laughed loudly. ‘Oh, darling, please. This is LA!’
‘Look,’ said Viorel, ‘Dorian’s a friend of mine, OK? He’s doing well, and he’ll keep doing well if you just stay the hell out of his life. Haven’t you done enough damage?’
The simpering smile died on Chrissie’s lips. ‘Me?’ she hissed. ‘What about you? What kind of friend sleeps with someone’s wife behind their back? Not to mention your cruelty to poor Sabrina. You don’t care who you hurt, so don’t you dare presume to judge me.’
‘Leave Sabrina out of it,’ said Vio, angry because he knew Chrissie’s accusations were justified. ‘And you know what, leave me out of it too. If you want to know how Dorian is, ask him yourself. Goodbye, Chrissie.’
He stormed out of the store. This time he didn’t look back.