Perhaps Vanessa was unhappily married. Perhaps with an overbearing alpha-male husband. Yes, that could be it.
"Sit down," Vanessa said, sitting on the edge of the battered mock-Georgian sofa.
It seemed to Emma that—beyond the obvious about driving licence (yes) and criminal record (no)—Vanessa was soon struggling for questions to ask her. She subtly took over herself, conducting her own interrogation of her employer to be. Vanessa seemed to know little about her children. She had no idea what Hero and Cosmo, as the children were apparently called, liked to eat, what books they liked to read, what games they liked to play, or whether they had special words or names for favourite people or things.
The husband Vanessa may or may not have been unhappily married to worked, it emerged, for the Foreign Office and had been sent to Equatorial Guinea, wherever that was. He would be back in several weeks. "So you see, I really need someone urgently. Now," Vanessa emphasised, skewering Emma with those bulging blue eyes.
But it did not seem to Emma that this urgent need was reflected in the salary offered, which was low. On the plus side, she would be living in, and while she had not been expecting luxury, the fact that the tall house seemed to get colder the further up you got was discouraging. Even more so was the tiny bedroom at the top she was shown into, with the peeling wallpaper, collapsing curtain rail and light fitting that appeared to be masking-taped to the wall and ceiling respectively. Next door was the children's bedroom and, next door to that, the playroom. The "nursery suite" was how Vanessa referred to the whole.
Emma went back downstairs with Vanessa, full of uncertainty. Should she not get out now? Go home? She could always write off for other jobs, after all.
"You can start immediately," Vanessa offered. Or, possibly, instructed.
"But I haven't seen the children," Emma pointed out quickly. If they were awful too, that would decide it.
"Hero! Cosmo!" bawled Vanessa.
The children appeared at the door. Hero, the solid little three-year-old, had a solemn little face and hair so flaxen, so impossibly white, that it seemed lit from within, a silver flame. Cosmo, at four, had eyes that were deep, sunken, and anxious, and his hair was a caramel pageboy, striped with lighter gold. They regarded Emma suspiciously, but that, she felt, was understandable enough, especially if five nannies had come and gone in the last twelve months.
"Ask me if I'm a passenger train or a freight train," Cosmo demanded suddenly in a low, growling voice.
Emma thought of the toy train in her handbag. She had been right, after all. Was there any little boy who didn't like locomotives?
Vanessa rolled her eyes. "God. He's absolutely bloody obsessed with trains. Just shut up, will you, Cosmo? You've driven all the nannies mad with this. Another reason why they've all left," she groaned at Emma.
But Cosmo, ignoring his mother, was looking at Emma expectantly, his blue eyes round through his blond fringe. She sensed it was some sort of test. She smiled, stooping down to his level, and felt the difficulty of doing so in wobbly high heels and trousers that bit at the waist and round the thighs. She looked into his uncertain little face. "Are you a passenger train or a freight train?" she asked, obediently.
Cosmo shuffled his little feet on the carpet. His fingers were joined together and pointing forward, and both arms were revolving by his sides, imitating the moving parts of a locomotive.
"I'm a passenger train," he told her now, his four-year-old face entirely serious.
"Can I get on you?" Emma asked.
"No," said Cosmo, causing Emma's heart to sink rather. Her initiative had been rejected.
"You can't get on me," Cosmo added, earnestly, "because I'm a special train. But you can look at me. Woo woo!" And with that, the little boy steamed out of the sitting room.
"See what I mean?" steamed Vanessa. "He wants to be an engine driver. I ask you, is that what I'll be paying millions in school fees for?"
Emma looked at Hero.
"And Hero's obsessed with cats," Vanessa added, as if this too was a crime.
Emma hardly heard. She was looking into Hero's blue eyes, in which she had spotted an unmistakeable, hungry look that was nothing to do with food but everything to do with the need for affection and attention. It twisted her heart.
"I'll take the job," she said, reaching for her handbag. "And, actually, I've got a couple of presents for them."
Chapter Three
In an apartment in Los Angeles, a phone was ringing loudly beside a bed. As his short, fat fingers made contact with the receiver, Mitch Masterson, actor's agent, squinted at the alarm clock beside his bed.
Who the hell was ringing him this early?
As if he couldn't guess.
Mitch groaned. Last night had been the annual get-together of the Association of Motion Picture Actors' Representatives, an annual red-letter day in the agenting industry that provided unmissable opportunities for networking. Mitch had done so much networking he'd been barely able to stand up at the end of the evening. And now his throat burned, his eyes ached, and his head felt as if someone had stuck a sword in it. The last thing he needed was a call from Belle Murphy.
The day had barely started, and it was a nightmare already. If only he could send it back and get a refund. Or swap it for another one. But no, it was here. Fingers of daylight as thick as his own were poking bluntly and insistently between the wenge-wood blinds that Mitch's interior designer assured him gave his apartment that breezy, Californian, young-stylish-single-guy-with-money-to-burn feel.
Californian as in originally from Cataract, Tennessee, that was. Young as in forty-four. Single in the divorced sense. The money could be better too—Associated Artists was a super-successful agency, sure, one of the biggest in Hollywood. But he was only one of its medium-ranking agents. Nor was he stylish; frankly, he was fat and irredeemably scruffy. His ex-wife had likened him to Humpty Dumpty. After he fell off the wall.
"Hey, Belle, baby!" Mitch struggled to sound as if no call could be more convenient or more delightful.
As usual, Belle didn't waste time on pleasantries. Such as asking Mitch how he was or apologising for waking him up. "You heard from Spielberg yet?" she demanded, her shrill, high-pitched voice drilling the tender insides of Mitch's ear.
Of course, he hadn't heard from Spielberg. Nor was he likely to. The casting director was an old girlfriend and had allowed Belle to try out more to get her off Mitch's back than to put her in the film. No one wanted to put her in a film. In a meeting room in the offices of Associated Artists, a room in which no client ever set foot, was a league table of those the company represented. The Fame Board covered an entire wall and was adjusted each day, like the FTSE and the Dow Jones, to reflect clients' comparative status. On this cruel, if accurate, measure of exactly where she stood in Tinseltown, Belle was currently near the bottom. And yet this time last year, she had been at the top, Associated Artists' number one, most important client.
Even the CEO of the agency had answered her calls then, and at great length. She'd been sent Christmas, birthday, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and every other imaginable kind of present from the agency, including some "just because we love you." Or, to be more accurate, just because of the hit film
Marie
, in which Belle had played Mary, Queen of Scots.
Mitch allowed himself a transporting moment of remembered joy at this most purple of patches. Belle had carried all before her—literally; the costume department had certainly made the most of her assets. Her take on the doomed, impetuous monarch, all plunging cleavage and passionate four-poster scenes, had been a stupendous success. For several months, Belle had been one of the hottest actresses in Hollywood. Her smouldering red pout had sizzled from the cover of every magazine. But then had come Blood
y
Mary
as a follow-up.
Mitch still had no idea why Belle's studio had imagined that a film about an uptight, pyromaniac, religious nutcase was a suitable vehicle for her. No doubt he should have advised her against doing it, but the enormous amount of money the agency had pocketed over the deal had clouded his judgment, as was often the case in Hollywood. The film had bombed, or gone up in smoke, to be more accurate, and now Belle was colder than yesterday's breakfast.
"And what about Ridley Scott? Sam Mendes?" Belle was screeching now. "Have they got back to you?"
"Not as such, baby, but you know they're both pretty busy. Mendes has, ah, um, you know. Kids and stuff…"
"
Kids
?"
"Yeah. You know how busy kids keep people." Mitch was improvising as best he could. "Can't get to the phone or anything…"
"
What
?"
Mitch wondered why he didn't simply put the phone down on her. Any other agent at Associated would have done so, recognising that Belle needed them far more than they needed her at the moment. What complicated things for Mitch was that he felt sorry for her.
He would never have admitted it to either his bosses or his colleagues. It was probably a sacking offence. It was certainly the last thing an agent should ever feel, he knew. And, no doubt, it was the reason he had never got any further than he had.
He simply wasn't ruthless enough, Mitch knew. He empathised. He winced at the way the Hollywood machine chewed people up and spat them out. And although what had happened to Belle was anything but unusual—he'd seen it many times before—that didn't make it pleasant.
And what made it worse, Mitch thought, was that he felt personally involved. To blame, even. He felt guilty that he had not objected to
Bloody Mary
as soon as it was mentioned. That he might have had a hand—a very big hand—in Belle's fall.
Because fall she most certainly had. Even though this time last year, after the sensation of
Marie
, she had been hotter than the earth's core, twelve months was an eternity in Hollywood. Since
Bloody Mary
, Belle couldn't get arrested in L.A. Mitch even feared her studio was about to drop her.
Studios were laws unto themselves, and Belle's studio, NBS, with the workaholic puritan Arlington Shorthouse at the helm, was more of a law than most. It could afford to be—it had a box-office hit rate second to none in Hollywood and was reportedly planning its most audacious assault yet on the multiplexes of the world.
There had been nothing definite yet to confirm that a space saga, provisionally entitled
Galaxia
, about an imaginary universe of robots, spaceships, and fabulous creatures with improbable names along the lines of the blockbustering, all-conquering
Star Wars
, was being planned by NBS. But the rumours were insistent enough for Mitch to wonder if there was anything in it. If there was, the timing could hardly be better for Belle. She needed something—and fast—to turn things around for her.
The fact she was dating Christian Harlow, an actor who had been unknown before he had hooked up with Belle and now was widely tipped to be the new Brad Pitt, was certainly not that something. It was, Mitch thought, fairly obvious that Harlow would dump Belle just as soon as she'd outlived her usefulness.
"Relax, baby," he pleaded with Belle, although he knew there was as much chance of this as of the Californian sun going out.
"I'll call Steven today. Yeah. And Sam too. And Ridley, sure, yeah, mustn't forget him. No. Yeah. No. Promise. See ya." Thankfully, he shoved the receiver back in its cradle and dived back into the refuge of his hot, stewy, and rumpled bed.
Chapter Four
Burdened by luggage, James Bradstock walked slowly down the street leading to his home. He had not seen it for several weeks. Not since setting out on the fact-finding mission in Equatorial Guinea on which his employers in the Foreign Office had seen fit to send him, and from which he had just returned. Not necessarily with the requisite facts, James was aware; the brief had been vague, to say the least. The only things he felt entirely confident about coming back with, in fact, were the pair of pencils with little carved dolls on the top for Hero and Cosmo.
As he went through the small front gate, James felt happy and excited. He had thought of the children constantly while he was away: little white-haired Hero with her serious gaze and determined character, and impulsive and passionate Cosmo. He longed to feel their small but strong little arms around his neck and their faces snuggling into his.
He wondered whether they had grown—but, of course, they would have; there would be something wrong otherwise—and what new words Hero knew. There was sure to be a new interest, as well. When he left, it had been Thomas and trains still, as it had been for some time, but Cosmo might well have discovered something else since. Music, perhaps. He knew Vanessa was starting them on music appreciation classes at—of all places—the Royal Opera House and had high hopes of them becoming virtuosos.
He was looking forward to seeing his wife nonetheless. She scared him rather, but he loved her and was proud of her. Slim, blonde, and always smartly turned out, Vanessa was better looking and better dressed than most of the other Foreign Office wives, most of whom looked like their husbands, only rather more masculine. The fact that Vanessa had a career of her own—her newspaper column— made her even more exotic and special.