Breaking Hollywood (5 page)

Reaching across, her hand found Logan’s, and only then did she find the strength to look back out to the ocean and speak.

‘Happy birthday, my darling girl. We’ll never stop missing you.’

Logan’s arm came around her and she rested her head on his shoulder, her other hand automatically seeking out Jack’s when she heard him choke back a sob.

There were no words, no stories, no reflections on what might have been. Just three people, staring at the water, holding onto each other to survive the pain, immersed in their memories.

Only when she shivered did Mirren realize the sun was coming down.

‘Let’s go in,’ she said softly, standing first, then holding Logan’s hand while he pulled himself up. ‘Jack, you’re welcome to stay.’

The flush of embarrassment that crossed his face told her that he had other plans. Hadn’t he always had somewhere else to be? For all those years, she’d bought the myth about the
pressure of spending months of every year away on location. Only when it was over did she realize that she had no idea who he was or what his life had been.

‘Or not.’ She attempted to make it light-hearted, determined to ensure Logan felt comfortable when his parents were both with him.

Jack’s eyes were red-rimmed as he answered. ‘Thanks, but I’ve got a meeting. Another time.’

It was tempting to rage. Who scheduled any kind of event on their dead daughter’s birthday?

There was no point waging war. Jack was Jack. He’d go out, screw a twenty-one-year-old supermodel and make himself feel better. Instant gratification. That’s what she’d
discovered drove him. Ego. Power. Vanity. Good luck to him. She’d spend the night with her boy, and Zander said he’d drop by later too. Her son and the man who was now, once again, like
a brother to her. That was all she needed.

They were almost at the white picket gate that led back onto her property when she caught the figure fifty yards down the sand in her peripheral vision.

At first, she thought it was a paparazzo. They occasionally came down here in the hope of catching Jennifer Aniston walking her dog. Or Pam Anderson hanging out with her boys in the water.

Perhaps one of them had been smart enough to realize that today was Chloe’s birthday.

Slowing down and shielding her eyes from the glare of the setting sun, Mirren peered across. Nope, no camera. It was a woman. And there was a curve to her back, a profile to her face that jarred
Mirren’s soul. She squinted again, trying to get a clearer view, but the woman was on her feet now, walking in the other direction.

‘You OK, Mom?’ Logan asked, concerned.

Mirren shook off the insidious chill that was working its way through the marrow of her bones.

‘Yeah, I’m . . . Sorry, it’s just for a second there I thought . . . that woman reminded me of someone.’

‘Who?’ Logan was peering after the retreating form now.

‘Erm . . . my mum.’ The second it was out, she cursed herself for not thinking quickly enough to come up with a fabrication that would disguise the truth. Logan was going to be
completely freaked out if she carried on like this, especially as she was clearly losing her mind. They said grief sometimes did that to people, and right now she wouldn’t argue.

It was Jack who was first to point out the obvious.

‘But, Mirren, honey, you know that can’t be.’

It was enough to pull her out of her paralysed stare.

‘I know that, Jack. Of course it isn’t.’ Mirren snapped back to the present and immediately went into recovery mode. ‘It’s just me being . . . overwhelmed. How
could someone be sitting over there when they’ve been dead for over twenty years?’

‘Rehab’ – Amy Winehouse

Zander Leith

He was peeing in a plastic cup.

He earned in excess of $30 million per movie, topping Hanks, Cruise and Downey Jr, and in a recent survey of sixteen- to twenty-one-year-olds, he was more recognizable than Jesus.

Yet Zander Leith was peeing in a cup.

Yup, this was living the dream.

Job done, he exited the cubicle and handed the sample over to a rotund nurse, who eyed him with deep suspicion. Cynical hostility was probably a requirement of the job. The lengths that people
in the industry would go to in order to deliver clean samples was legendary. Hadn’t Tom Sizemore rigged up a fake penis? There was rock bottom, and then there was attempting to pervert the
truth with a manufactured knob.

The nurse gave him the minimum smile required by her last round of client relations training, accompanied by a curt ‘Goodbye’ as he headed for the door.

It wasn’t the reaction he was used to, but in all honesty, he preferred it. If someone was thoroughly unimpressed with him right from the off, then in his extensive experience, there was
less chance of him letting them down when he royally fucked up.

And when it came to fuck-ups, there had been many. The magazines charted his career by the number of years in the business – twenty and counting. He charted his life by the number of times
in rehab and jail. The combined total was disturbingly similar. Six or seven clinics, and at least a dozen nights in the cells after alcohol- or drug-fuelled brawls. The last one came after
he’d punched the face off a particularly annoying reality-TV star, but sadly that didn’t buy him any leniency from the judge. The result was three months in a stunning Malibu haven of
gruesome withdrawals.

That’s when everything changed. It was where he met a spaced-out, angry and bitter teenager and they’d struck up an unlikely friendship. He was the messed-up, macho movie star; she
was Chloe, the teenage daughter of Mirren McLean, the childhood friend he’d grown up with, but hadn’t seen in twenty years.

Two broken souls, kindred spirits who were drowning in an ocean of booze and drugs.

He’d tried to help her, but this wasn’t the movies. He didn’t come charging in at the end and save the day. Chloe was dead. And since the day the drugs claimed her, he’d
been clean.

Promises weren’t enough for the insurance company, though. They were filming the seventh Seb Dunhill movie, the franchise that whipped Bond, Bourne and Indiana Jones, and the studio could
only get him covered if he subjected to weekly testing.

Another week, another piss in a plastic cup.

‘I hope you washed your hands,’ Hollie remarked as he climbed into the passenger seat of her Dodge Durango. He’d bought it for her as a Christmas present, sending her right to
the top of the list of ‘PAs With Fuck-Off Brilliant Presents’. She deserved it. Ten years of bailing his ass out and she still stuck with him. Zander hoped it was devotion – she
claimed it was masochistic tendencies that required the aid of a therapist. They both knew it was love. Not rip-your-clothes-off lust. Just the true, forgiving, platonic love of two people bound
together by friendship, care and their equal ability to fuck up every romantic relationship they ever had. In Zander’s case, addiction, dysfunction, demons and the serial avoidance of
commitment could be blamed for his solitary status. Hollie’s barrier to coupledom was a different one. During his lost years of excess, she’d regularly reminded him that she had no time
to date because looking after a screwed-up movie star was an all-consuming vocation. ‘I’m like a nun who devotes herself to God, except Mother Teresa never had to drag her main man out
of a crack den.’

Hollie flicked her highlighted brunette waves back from her face and pulled her seatbelt over a white tailored shirt that was very slightly straining at the buttons. In any other world, her
naturally large breasts and hourglass curves would put her in the ‘normal size and gorgeous’ category. In LA, she would probably be classed as obese. Not that she cared. She may have
forty-inch hips, but she also had a completely secure body image and more confidence than a therapist’s office full of size-zero starlets.

Zander popped a Marlboro in his mouth but didn’t light it. It was the only vice he had left, but he knew better than to spark up in Hollie’s pride and joy. They pulled out of the
clinic and in five minutes were on the 405 and leaving Van Nuys, heading towards West Hollywood. Hollie checked her mirrors compulsively, not for traffic situations but for paps. The clinic was one
of six they used in rotation so the camera-toting vultures didn’t get a sniff of the visits. The Lomax Films publicity team would bring down a shit-storm of fury if their hero, Seb Dunhill,
the super-spy who had the ear of every government, who had foiled several terrorist organizations and even, in one movie, brought a space shuttle down safely, was filmed looking like shit after
leaving a clinic in which his urine had been subjected to a dip-test.

It wasn’t the image they were going for.

This afternoon’s activities were more in line with the desired public perception.

Hollie steered through the thirty-foot-high mahogany doors that guarded the entrance to the Mondrian Hotel and jumped out. The concierge was instantly by her side.

‘I’ll keep it up top for you,’ he said, referring to the few exclusive spaces by the door. There were definitely some perks that came with riding with Zander Leith.

Unfortunately, Zander Leith didn’t notice. He left the other side of the vehicle with an enthusiasm that sat somewhere between going to a funeral and marching down death row.

Hollie tolerated his lethargy until they walked into the 1,500-square-foot penthouse, to be greeted by a fashion mob, which burst into action as soon as he crossed the threshold. ‘Cheer
up,’ she quipped. ‘It’s better than peeing in a cup.’

An hour later, as a dedicated stylist rearranged the position of his dick so that it gave the Adrianna Guilloti trousers the most flattering drape, he decided that she was wrong.

What the hell was he doing here? Other than fulfilling the requirement for a twice-a-year photo shoot that his contract with Adrianna Guilloti stipulated.

Over the years he’d been offered hundreds of high-end endorsement deals, but he’d refused almost all of them. This one had come with an extra enticement in the form of the company
boss, Adrianna Guilloti. Their first meeting had been drinks at Shutters On the Beach in Santa Monica. He thought it was to be a casual chat with the marketing chief of Guilloti and planned to blow
him off and be out of there in minutes. Instead, he got the boss herself. An intoxicating blend of Spanish and Italian heritage, Adrianna had started her company from scratch, used her beauty and
class to promote it, and her brains to acquire the investment needed to take it from a small, aspirational tailoring company to a design house that was uttered in the same breath as Prada and Dolce
& Gabbana.

That night, semi-wasted, he’d agreed to a million-dollar deal to represent the brand. Hours later, he followed her to New York, took her to a room in the Carlyle and had the most
incredible weekend of sexual pleasure he’d ever known – right up until he discovered she was married to one of the shadiest but most successful property moguls in the country. Neither
current affairs nor illicit affairs had ever been his strong point.

Since then he’d seen her at business meetings and promotional functions, but never alone. For a man with addiction and compulsion issues, it was torture. Booze. Coke. Adrianna Guilloti. He
craved them all, but knew that a relationship with any one of his vices could end with him on a cold slab wearing a toe tag.

The very thought gave him an excruciating desire for a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. Double. He almost smiled given the irony of his current location. After three hours of photographs in the
penthouse, the shoot had moved to the Skybar. It was the perfect setting for the European marketing campaign because it was the ultimate Hollywood cliché – the glorious rooftop pool
area, bordered by cream seats and candle-topped tables, with a city view that was breathtakingly spectacular.

He was on the top of the world, wearing a $5,000 suit, Jack Daniel’s was within reach, he was surrounded by people whose job for the day was to make him happy, and yet he couldn’t
ask them to bring him the only things he wanted. Really wanted.

A sigh escaped him and he caught himself and shook off the melancholy. What the fuck did he have to complain about? Get a grip. Focus on the positives. Stop being a conceited arse.

The legendary photographer went by just one name, Terrano. Which sure sounded more appealing than Terence Pratt, the name he was born with in Clacton, Essex. The name and a French accent were
developed at the same time as his first roll of film back in the 1970s. ‘Ooh,
j’adore. Très bon. Oui
, that works. OK, Zander, ze final pose. Mid-shot.’

The image screamed ‘1950s movie icon’ as Zander leaned his back against one of the ivy-clad pillars, hands in pockets, tie loose, top button of the shirt open, and stared into the
sky, his expression a cross between pensive and brooding. Terrano was an ‘Oh
oui, oui, oui
!’ away from a climax by the time he’d shot off fifty frames and called it a
wrap.

Zander shrugged off the jacket and opened the rest of the buttons on his shirt, letting the early evening breeze cool him down.

As always, Hollie appeared at his side within seconds. In her jeans and white shirt, she was a healthy contrast to the skeletal, black-clad fashionistas who had worked on the shoot. ‘Man,
that lot need to go eat pie,’ she murmured at the retreating crowd, before continuing, ‘OK, I’m off the clock and I finally have a date with a real, live man tonight. But if
there’s any possibility whatsoever that you’re going to go sample anything stronger than coffee at the bar, I’ll stick around.’ She went misty-eyed. ‘Ah, the good old
days – gutters and groupies. I miss the old fuck-up you sometimes.’

Zander threw an arm around her. ‘Me too. Who’s the date?’

Her eyebrows shot up. It was the reason she’d never overdose on Botox – she required some upper facial movement because her raised brows were an early warning system for acute
irritation. ‘What are you, my dad? The morning I pulled a stripper called Stardust out of your bed, you lost the authority to judge my relationships.’