Hal was still edgy. He’d spent the whole afternoon watching golf on Eurosport and flicking through the pile of magazines on the table. He was in the middle of the thirteenth when Vanessa arrived to talk him through the schedule for the next few days.
‘Oh dear,’ he said, laughing with a lightness he didn’t feel. ‘I’ve lost my touch.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I’m bloody number forty-seven. Outrageous!’
‘What are you talking about?’
He held up a copy of People magazine.
‘The world’s fifty sexiest men issue,’ he declaimed in a mock-American accent. ‘I’m sure I did better than this last year.’
‘You were number eleven last year,’ Vanessa confirmed, as if Hal didn’t know.
‘Bloody Hugh Grant. Ralph Fiennes. Jude – sodding – Law! They’re all higher up than me.’ He kept his tone mocking. Because it was all a joke this fame malarkey, anyway. Everyone knew that. Lists and awards and whatever didn’t matter one iota. Though it was annoying that the women’s list, which had come out a month ago, had placed Marina at nine (a giant leap from last year’s twenty-seven) and Flora at fifteen (no change).
‘The others have had a much higher profile than you this year,’ Vanessa reassured him. ‘Hugh had a movie out and so did Ralph.’
‘So did I,’ he reminded her.
‘Yes, but …’ Ha! Now she was at a loss for words. Even Vanessa couldn’t argue that The Apple Cart actually counted as a movie; it was just something he’d done as a favour for his old Cambridge mate Ben Balanton who desperately needed to raise a few grand to pay his third wife’s alimony (though Ben hadn’t bloody returned the favour, refusing to show up to the Italian gig, saying he had to take his fourth wife on holiday), not to mention placating Hal’s parents who had made a few gentle comments about the fact that since he didn’t seem to be working much at the moment perhaps he should start helping Flora with a few of her charity projects.
Hal’s parents liked Flora. Well, maybe ‘liked’ was too strong a word. Flora wasn’t exactly the cosy, daughter-in-law type, but she’d been very polite about Mum’s seafood risotto, even though two-thirds of the evil carbs ended up in Hal’s pocket. But these days Hal suspected his parents wouldn’t mind if he came home with a one-eyed Hungarian shot-putting champion, so long as she was fertile. For the Blackstocks couldn’t have cared less about his film career so desperate were they for grandchildren. Grandchildren, which, annoyingly, were his sole responsibility to produce since his brother Jeremy, a lecturer in particle physics, lived with his hairdresser boyfriend, Stan, in Minneapolis.
‘It’s time for your workout, Hal,’ Nessie said, smoothly avoiding the question of The Apple Cart. ‘Signor Ducelli’s going to escort you to the leisure complex.’
‘Oh God. I don’t know if I’m in the mood for a workout now.’
Vanessa’s expression didn’t even flicker. ‘Shall I tell them you’ve changed your mind?’
‘No, no,’ he said sulkily. ‘It’s fine. I’ll go.’ Though Hal wasn’t entirely sure this was a great idea. He could feel that spot again, pressing against his T-shirt. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to expose it to chlorinated water or to the world at large for that matter. It was the kind of thing a paparazzo hiding in the drainage system would snap with his long lens and then Heat would be full of close-ups saying ‘Hal has a pimple’. Then some medic would spot it in his daughter’s copy and exclaim, ‘Hang on, this is no pimple, it’s a life-threatening tumour …’ He would contact Hal via Callum, his agent, and …
‘Anything else you need for this evening?’ Nessie was asking. ‘Shall I order you some dinner in the room? Or do you want to go out? The concierge has made provisional reservations at a few restaurants.’
Go out. Once that was automatically what he would have done. Got the concierge and Nessie and the local film PR to put together a crowd of the foxiest babes in town and hit a restaurant, followed by a club. Take one, or maybe two of them back to the hotel. But now Flora was in his life this option was closed, the paps would snap him leaving with some bird and the next day he’d be all over the gossip mags and there would be hell to pay.
‘No, I won’t go out. Order me a meal. Pizza or something. And find out if there’s any football or cricket on.’
‘No problem, Hal,’ she said. Behind her the suite’s doorbell ding-donged. ‘Ah. That’ll be Ducelli.’
So after Hal had changed into his tracksuit, Ducelli, who was as smooth as one of his hotel’s body lotions, escorted him to the leisure centre in the basement.
‘I ’ope you are enjoying your stay in Rome, Mr Blackstock. Just remember, if there is anything we can do to make your stay more enjoyable you need only ask. We can arrange a tour of some of the monuments, perhaps. You can go by night, if you are worried about the attention from the public. Or we can provide you with a Vespa, if you wish to tour on your own. The helmet provides good anonymity. Mr Pitt tried this option last time he stayed here and he very much enjoyed it.’
‘Oh yes. And which suite did Mr Pitt stay in?’ Hal didn’t really care but he wanted to tease the man.
Ducelli looked embarrassed. ‘Ah. He was in the Popolo suite. But unfortunately for you, this time, it was already reserved.’
‘I know. By honeymooners. Very sweet. Surely you could find a way to move them on. This is Italy, after all.’ He put on his best Al Pacino voice. ‘Mak a dem an offer dey can’t refuse. A horse’s head in da bed. That’ll sort ’em out.’
Ducelli laughed weakly. ‘I’m so sorry, sir. It is completely impossible. I hope you understand.’ He unlocked the door to the spa complex and led Hal through the reception area to the gym, where he gestured around the empty room. ‘It’s officially closed now. No one to disturb you during your workout. And afterwards if you wish you may have a dip in the hydrotherapy pool. I will lock the door behind you, so no one else can come in. Here is a key. Spend as long as you like here. Enjoy it.’
Once Ducelli had gone, Hal pulled up his sweatshirt and examined his chest. The spot was still throbbing; he could swear its pus-filled eye was winking at him. It was just a bloody pimple; he should have got Nessie to run out for some Clearasil or its Italian equivalent. He’d call her when he got back up to the room and get her on the case. He climbed on the treadmill. Five miles, he decided. That would be plenty of exercise for one day. Hal’s life was a constant battle between laziness and vanity. Usually vanity won, but he hated the idea of anyone knowing that he actually had to work to keep his pecs in shape. Ever since boarding school, when he’d spent prep time horsing around and annoying the monitors, making up for it with secret study sessions with a torch after lights out, Hal had been obsessed with coming top without breaking the slightest sweat.
As he jogged, his mind drifted to Flora, in her hotel room in Jamaica, reading the girls a story, then nibbling on a salad, before settling down for the night with a volume of Proust. Unlike him, Flora didn’t see what was embarrassing about self-improvement. It was hardly that she came across as a bimbo, despite her looks. She had an impeccable, upper-east-side, first-off-the-Mayflower, background; her dad (now dead) had been a distinguished theatre director and her mother (still alive and a pain in the behind) had been a very successful stage actress until she gave it all up to sit on the boards of various charities.
Flora had been to the smartest boarding school in America and would have gone to Harvard, were it not for a friend of the family offering her the role of Ophelia in a new film of Hamlet. She’d got an Oscar nomination for that and had been acting ever since, with the odd break to marry Pierre, pop out her pretty children, and do good works in the developing (not ‘third’, you weren’t allowed to call it that any more) world.
She and Hal met at a dinner party held by Mitch Weldon, a pop star, who’d been around for ever and knew everyone and had no idea how to spend his billions except on entertaining other superstars. Hal was a year out of his relationship with Marina. In fact, she’d just that week taken up with that tosser Fabrizio de Michelis, while Flora had recently divorced, amid rumours of Pierre’s womanizing (annoyingly, she’d never told Hal exactly what had gone wrong). She was only thirty, with her first Oscar just under her belt for her part as a speech-impaired aid worker, and was the most eligible divorcee imaginable. The world was agog to see who she would hook up with next.
From the moment Hal heard she was on the guest list, he decided it would be him.
He was delighted when Mitch sat them next to each other at dinner and only slightly taken aback when instead of wanting to bitch about Madonna’s latest album she engaged him straight away in an argument about third-(sorry, developing-) world debt, an argument which Hal had been ill-equipped to engage in. A week after the dinner he’d got Nessie to phone Flora’s assistant and ask her out for dinner. She’d said no, she was en-route to a tour of Siberia, to publicize the threat of global warming on the permafrost.
For a while, the whole thing was forgotten; he was having excellent sex with a very pretty Slovakian lap-dancer. Then one day out of the blue Nessie announced Flora’s assistant had called inviting him to a fundraising ball for one of the charities she devoted so much of her time to. He’d gone, he’d sat next to her, he’d read up on developing-world debt and managed to impress her and two months later they slept together.
It was the longest anyone had ever kept Hal waiting, ever since Marianne Powers from the girls’ school had refused to let him get to third base for fear of being thought a slut. It made a refreshing change from the starfuckers who normally mobbed him. Although, if he was completely honest, the wait hadn’t been entirely worth it. Sex had been surprisingly jerky and awkward. But sex wasn’t really the point of him and Flora. Sure, it was important, but everyone knew that in order to enjoy a long-term serious relationship you had to look at the bigger picture.
Hal thought about the ring waiting in the safe. He imagined Flora’s delighted face when he slipped it on her slender finger. But when it came to imagining when that might be, his vision grew more hazy. He’d sent Vanessa out to buy it from Asprey’s a couple of months ago, after a rather upsetting encounter with Marina at an awards ceremony. But next time he’d seen Flora, he’d been coming down with one of his migraines and the time for proposing just wasn’t right. And then he’d thought, where was the rush? They’d only been together a year, she was still pretty raw from her divorce. It couldn’t be good for her daughters to have their mum hurrying into something new, and her schedule was so busy for the next year he couldn’t see how they would fit a wedding in. Plus, he simply couldn’t face all the press hoo-ha that would surround an engagement.
But, he thought, as he slowed for a second to draw breath, maybe he was being silly. Maybe he should just get on with it. He was never going to find someone more beautiful, not to mention richer or better connected. And though Hal hated to admit it to himself, it did turn him on that Flora came from this high-class background, that she was on first-name terms with the Kennedys and the Gettys, that she had never had to learn that with cutlery you worked from the outside in, she just knew, that she’d grown up in an apartment the size of a small village.
He couldn’t help comparing it to Marina’s tiny family home in the cul-de-sac in Swindon, where they’d had to sleep on a mattress on the floor of her little sister’s room and go downstairs to use the bog, and the family had been agog to know if they’d ever met Jordan and had eaten their dinners in front of the telly with their jaws gaping open. Perhaps Hal was a snob for thinking so, but so be it.
A proposal in Rome, after all, would be pretty fabulous – something to tell the grandchildren. He quickened his pace. Mmm. Having thought about it, maybe it would be better to have the suite with the view of the rooftops. Much better than some garden which you could find anywhere and with everyone on the restaurant terrace gawping up at them. In the morning, he’d get Nessie to put renewed pressure on the honeymooners.
‘Agh!’
He’d been so deep in thought, he’d not noticed the StairMaster, which had been slowing, had come to a complete halt, causing him to fall off.
‘Damn!’ he said from the floor. But nothing was broken or even bruised.
OK. That was a sign he’d done enough exercise for one day. Heaving himself off the floor and pulling off his shorts and T-shirt so he was wearing only his pink flowered boxers, he headed across the corridor to the spa area. He opened the door of the steam room and stepped into a hot, dense cloud that made everything invisible. His nostrils filled with the smell of eucalyptus. He groped his way to the wooden bench, lay down and exhaled deeply.
‘Waagh.’
Rivulets of sweat ran down his skin.
‘Ooof.’
In his stomach, a bubbling tube of gas begin to writhe downwards through his intestines and towards his bowel. Must be the cannellini beans he’d had for lunch. Hal always found the sensation strangely pleasurable. He lifted his left buttock and let rip noisily.
‘Woorgh. Better out than in.’
It was what he and Jeremy had always said to each other, tucked up in their twin beds in the converted attic of their semi in Didcot. The memory made him laugh. Oh, another one was coming.
Paaaarp. Even Hal was a bit taken aback by its loudness. But as the decibels died away, he heard another sound. A giggle. Soft. But a definite giggle.
‘Hello?’ he said, sitting bolt upright, his hand automatically flying over his spot. ‘Who’s that?’
A woman’s voice spoke through the steam. English. Youngish.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to give you a fright.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Hal said. ‘I thought I was alone.’
‘Sorry,’ she said again. ‘I came down for a swim, but the pool turned out to be a giant jacuzzi, so I’ve been in here for ages. Think I fell asleep. I feel like a prune.’
Through the mist he could vaguely see her now, sitting up. Dark hair piled on her head. A flushed, red face. A red and black bikini concealing rather fabulous breasts.
He lay back on the wooden slats, but he could hear her breathing. It unnerved him. This was a real-life woman, rather than a movie star or a model. Apart from make-up girls and stylists, Hal hadn’t been in contact with an ordinary member of the public for more than a decade. It was a bit like sharing a steam room with a Martian, probably not dangerous, but nonetheless unnerving.
‘So,’ he said awkwardly, ‘are you having a nice time in Rome?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ she said. ‘Are you?’
‘No, not really.’ She must know who he was, but he guessed he’d better play the false modesty card. ‘I’m an actor, you see, here to promote one of my films and it’s terribly dull.’
‘I know who you are,’ she said. ‘You tried to swap suites with me. Or rather your assistant did.’
A light went on in Hal’s head. ‘So you’re the honeymooner?’
‘Yes,’ she said after the tiniest pause.
‘The one who turned Vanessa down?’
‘That’s right.’
Hal peered at her through the steam. Clearly this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for her. It had to be worth a shot. He lowered his voice and fluttered his eyelashes at her, his classic cute British fop pose. It never failed.
‘Listen. Are you sure you wouldn’t be willing to swap? You see, it would really mean a lot to me. My girlfriend’s coming out in a couple of days and she always stays in your suite. It would be so fearfully, fearfully kind of you. And I’d make it up to you. How about VIP tickets for you and your husband to the premiere of my movie on Wednesday? And to the after-show party too. It’ll be frightfully glamorous. You’d really enjoy it.’
‘No, thank you.’
Hal was shocked. People very rarely said no to him.
‘Are you sure? I think you’d find it terribly exciting. And my suite really is jolly nice. It’s got two Picasso lithographs.’
The woman stood up. ‘Well if your suite’s jolly nice, then I’m sure your girlfriend will be perfectly happy in it. Just as I am perfectly happy in my suite. So, please, don’t ask me again, OK?’
She pushed open the door. A whole load of steam whooshed out. Her face was all red and flushed, her mascara had smudged under her eyes. Nonetheless, Hal noted, she had fantastic legs.
‘Enjoy the rest of your stay,’ she said.
‘Um, you won’t be able to leave,’ Hal said. ‘The door’s locked and I have the key.’
‘Well, hand it over.’
For a silly second, he thought about teasing her, but then he relented. He handed her the key he’d been clutching in his sweaty palm.
‘Leave it in the door,’ he said.
‘I will,’ she said, and left the steam room, leaving him alone and steaming on the bench.