‘Sabrina.’
They had never met, but Viorel recognized Sabrina instantly. She was, after all, one of the best-known faces in America, even if it was for all the wrong reasons. He extended a perfectly manicured hand. ‘Viorel Hudson. How do you do?’
Sabrina shook his hand unsmilingly.
How do I do? Who does this guy think he is – Prince Charles?
She’d be sexy
, thought Viorel,
if only she’d wipe the sneer off her face.
‘I’m glad you’re late as well,’ he said, ignoring Sabrina’s frosty demeanour. ‘The traffic on the ten was bloody awful. Shall we head up together? Safety in numbers and all that?’
Sabrina considered the options. She could hardly stay where she was now and let him go up alone. Not without having to explain the situation with the desk clerk, which would only make her look petty.
‘Didn’t they give you a pass?’ asked Viorel, noticing she was empty handed. He turned to the desk clerk. ‘This is Sabrina Leon. She’s coming up to Dracula with me. Would you sign her in?’
The desk clerk positively beamed with satisfaction as he handed Sabrina the clipboard.
‘Certainly. Just as soon as she writes her name, like everyone else.’
Sabrina scribbled out a signature and passed it back to him, glaring.
‘You have a nice day now.’ The clerk grinned.
Sabrina did not have a nice day.
In fact, the next four hours were to be some of the longest in her life.
When the double doors to Dracula’s production office opened and she and Viorel Hudson walked in together, Dorian Rasmirez exploded. ‘What the fuck time do you call this?’ The rest of the cast, gathered around the large oval table, huddled together nervously. ‘You’re almost an hour late!’
Viorel at least had the decency to look embarrassed, apologizing profusely for keeping everyone waiting and assuring Dorian that it wouldn’t happen again.
‘Damn right it won’t,’ fumed Dorian, ‘Or I’ll want my fucking cheque back. And what the hell is your excuse?’
He turned on Sabrina, who’d quietly taken a seat at the far end of the table and appeared more interested in her cuticles than in pacifying her director. From the moment she walked into the room, Sabrina had unconsciously taken it over, shifting the centre of gravity from Dorian to herself. Even dressed down as she was today, in Love Story jeans and a plain white shirt, she dazzled. ‘I called your receptionist forty-five minutes ago,’ she said nonchalantly, not bothering to remove her sunglasses when she spoke to him. ‘No one came to get me.’
‘
No one came to get you?
’ Dorian stared at her contemptuously. ‘You’ve got legs, haven’t you? Walk to the fucking elevator like everyone else. You think my staff have nothing better to do than run after you like some spoiled child? Well? Do you?’
Sabrina dug her nails into her palm, forcing herself not to react, not to yell back at Dorian the way she wanted to. It was outrageously unfair. Viorel had arrived later than her, but he barely warranted a slap on the wrist. Clearly, Rasmirez was a sexist pig who got some sort of a sick kick out of publicly humiliating women.
Asshole.
‘I expect people to do their jobs,’ she said calmly.
‘So do I.’ Dorian hurled Sabrina’s script across the table, narrowly missing whacking her in the face. ‘Read.’
For Dorian, Sabrina’s attitude this morning was the straw that had broken the camel’s back. The last few weeks had been breakdown-inducingly stressful.
Thanks to the location scouts’ dismal failure to find him a suitable Wuthering Heights or Thrushcross Grange in England, they were still stuck in LA and running six weeks behind schedule. His intention was to shoot as many of the interior scenes as possible at home in Romania. The Schloss was more than grand enough, it would save some money, and crucially it would allow him to spend at least part of the year under the same roof as the increasingly restless Chrissie. But most of the film had to be shot in England. They ought to have been doing today’s read-through on set, not crammed into his LA production office like a bunch of fucking sardines.
To add to his work stresses, things at home had gone from bad to worse in the last few weeks. Predictably, Chrissie had hit the roof when he told her about selling the Holmby Hills house. He’d made the mistake of doing it face to face, on a flying visit back to Romania last week.
‘You sold
my
home in LA, behind my back?’ Chrissie screeched, the sinews in her neck straining with rage, like a starving baby bird demanding food. Sprawled out on a chaise longue in one of the Schloss’s myriad palatial formal rooms, wearing a coffee-coloured silk La Perla negligee and matching lace-trimmed robe, she looked every inch the pampered chatelaine. ‘How dare you! I suppose now you think you can keep me and Saskia locked up here forever?’
‘No one’s trying to lock you up, honey,’ said Dorian exhaustedly. ‘I’m trying to make the best financial decisions for all of us as a family, that’s all.’
‘How?’ yelled Chrissie. ‘By selling our home to fund another one of your shitty, artistic movies? How many people actually saw
Sixteen Nights
? Five?’
Dorian winced. That hurt.
‘This one’ll be different,’ he said quietly. But Chrissie didn’t want to hear it. Another movie meant Dorian spending yet more time away from home, months on end in which she would be left to take care of Saskia alone in this dump while he gallivanted around the world enjoying himself.
‘I’m not going on vacation you know, honey,’ he tried to defend himself. ‘For the first months at least I’ll be stuck in LA, working my ass off, living in some shit-hole of a rented apartment.’
‘Well whose fault is that?’
‘I’ll be lonely as hell.’
‘Ha!’ Chrissie snorted viciously. ‘
Lonely.
You don’t know the meaning of lonely. It’s Saskia and I who’ll be lonely. You’ll be off banging your leading lady.’
‘For God’s sake!’ Dorian lost his temper. ‘You seriously think I’m interested in Sabrina Leon?’
‘Why wouldn’t you be?’ pouted Chrissie.
‘Because she’s a child,’ said Dorian, ‘an irresponsible child. I’ll be babysitting her, not sleeping with her. Besides, you know damn well you’re the only woman for me. How do you think I feel, having to leave you here, knowing every man on this estate wants you?’ Bending down over the chaise longue, he ran a hand along his wife’s taut, Pilates-toned thigh. Even after so many years together, just touching her made him feel ridiculously aroused.
Slowly, Chrissie parted her thighs, allowing him a glimpse of her newly waxed pussy. She’d deliberately had a Brazilian the day before Dorian was due to leave, knowing how anxious it would make him. ‘Don’t go then,’ she said, coyly.
‘I have to go,’ he whispered, his voice hoarse with longing. ‘I need to do this movie, Chrissie.
We
need it.’
Chrissie sat up, clamping her legs shut like a librarian slamming closed a book. ‘Fine,’ she snapped. ‘But don’t you dare complain to me about how hard this is for
you.
’
‘Come with me,’ Dorian pleaded.
‘And what, live in a hotel in my own home city? Schlep Saskia around some freezing-cold film set like a piece of excess baggage? No thanks. I’m not interested in following you round the world as your
little woman.
’
Dorian realized he couldn’t win. He’d offered her the part of Cathy months ago, but as usual she’d turned him down flat, a mask of anger and fear falling over her face like a security grille. ‘Our daughter needs at least one parent,’ she’d told him bitterly. It was almost as if she
wanted
to be unhappy, but still Dorian felt like a failure. Things had not improved between them before he left for LA. He’d been in town for five days now, and Chrissie had yet to return one of his calls.
Angry and anxious, he needed a vent for his frustration. When Sabrina Leon showed up late to this morning’s script read-through, he found one.
The rest of the day was not a rehearsal. It was a bullfight, a gladiatorial combat to the death, and Sabrina was the bull. While everybody else was allowed to get through their scenes, with Dorian commenting on their performance only at the end, Sabrina was picked up on every line. She was sloppy. Her delivery was too fast. She failed to react with enough emotion to Viorel’s lines. She was
too
emotional.
Over and over again, Dorian hit her with the same three words, words Sabrina came to loathe like poison:
‘Do it again.’
By the end of the day, even the most die-hard Sabrina-haters in the cast were beginning to feel sorry for her. Spoiled she may be, and attention-seeking and entitled. But you had to admire the stamina with which she ran back at each scene, over and over and over and over, determined to get it right, switching from her two parts as both the older and younger Catherine with consummate professionalism. As older Cathy, she’d be reading a passionate love scene with Viorel one minute, then jumping straight into a painful scene where, as the younger Catherine, she was being tormented by Heathcliff, forced to live as a common servant in her own childhood home. Even without Dorian’s bullying, the emotional rollercoaster was intense.
At five o’clock, Dorian finally called time on the battle.
‘All right everybody. We’re done for the day. Does anyone have any questions?’
I do
, thought Sabrina.
When are you going to drop dead?
No one spoke. They all wanted to go home. Just watching Dorian shred Sabrina’s performance had been exhausting.
‘I have a question.’ Viorel Hudson’s sexy British drawl rang out through the silence. ‘Do we know when filming’s actually going to start?’
Dorian’s eyes narrowed. ‘Soon. Anyone else?’
‘Is that really all you can tell us?’ Viorel pressed him. ‘I don’t mean to speak out of turn, but I don’t understand the need for all the secrecy. I mean, I haven’t even been told where the location’s going to be. Has anyone else?’
Everyone shook their heads.
‘Whether or not you understand it, you have all signed confidentiality agreements,’ snapped Dorian. ‘All details –
all
details – about the production of this movie remain confidential, and logistical information will be released to you on a need-to-know basis only.
‘In the meantime,’ he went on, ‘I hope I don’t have to remind any of you that you are
all
under contract. I can call you in to work at any time, for any reason, and I will be doing so in the near future. You should expect to be asked to travel at extremely short notice, so I suggest you all go home, pack your bags and wait.’ Dorian closed his script and stood up, a clear signal that the matter was now closed.
Sabrina was the first to leave – she couldn’t wait to get out of there. The rest of the cast swiftly followed her lead. Only Viorel remained behind.
‘Is there something I can do for you, Mr Hudson?’ Dorian’s tone was less than friendly. He was in no mood to be interrogated by his leading man. Considering what Viorel was being paid, he expected him to put up and shut up along with everybody else.
‘I know it’s not my place to say so …’ said Viorel.
‘Then don’t,’ muttered Dorian.
‘But don’t you think you were a little rough on Sabrina in there? Every time she opened her mouth, you practically ripped her throat out.’
‘I did nothing of the kind,’ said Dorian. ‘I directed her performance. Last time I checked, I believe that was considered a key part of my job description.’
Viorel looked troubled. Dorian softened slightly. It wouldn’t do to alienate all his cast before filming had even started. ‘Look. I wouldn’t cry too many crocodile tears over Miss Leon if I were you. The young lady can look after herself. She has a lot to learn, as an actress and in life. If my set is where she has to learn it –’ he shrugged –‘then so be it.’
‘What if she doesn’t learn?’ asked Viorel. ‘She might just end up hating you for it.’
Dorian smiled. ‘I rather suspect she hates me already. But I’m not in this business to make friends, Mr Hudson. Are you?’
‘No, sir,’ said Viorel with feeling. ‘I’m here to make movies.’
‘As am I. In future, show up on time to rehearsals, please.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do your own job properly, Mr Hudson, and I assure you, I will do mine.’
Tish Crewe gasped for breath as the cold water from the shower splashed onto her bare back. She’d turned the heating off at Loxley six weeks ago to save money, and only had the hot water running for an hour in the mornings. Usually, she was able to sneak a hot shower during this window, before she drove Abel to school. But today she’d overslept – after hours of lying awake, tormented by dreams of Michel and his new girlfriend – and missed it.
The girlfriend had a name now (Fleur) and a job (news reporter for Canal Plus, disappointingly impressive). Tish had seen her picture on Facebook, and been alarmed by how badly she wanted to reach into the computer and wipe the smile off her pretty, happy, accomplished face. Bizarrely, it had hurt more that the girl was not the physically perfect superwoman of Tish’s imagination. Fleur was attractive, but in a very girl-next-door type of way: shoulder-length brown hair, long, slightly horsey nose, smooth skin, adorable smile. She wasn’t a bimbo, or a bitch.
She’s actually a lot like me
, thought Tish miserably. She felt as if she’d somehow made a terrible mistake. As if she’d allowed Michel to slip through her fingers and into this other woman’s arms, by not saying quite the right thing, or wearing the right dress, or being in the right place at the right time. Worst of all, Michel had taken to calling her semi-regularly ‘as a friend’ and pouring out his happiness. ‘I’ve never felt like this before,’ he gushed, each word burning into poor Tish’s heart like acid. ‘I truly didn’t think I would ever fall in love. But you were right,
mon chou
. There’s someone out there for everyone.’
During the days, Tish was so busy – between the estate repairs and the finances and taking care of Abel (who’d begged to be enrolled in the village school and was having the time of his life) – that she usually managed to push Michel out of her mind. But at night he haunted her like Banquo’s ghost at the feast. As the weeks passed, the cumulative exhaustion threatened to overwhelm her. At breakfast today she’d snapped quite unnecessarily at poor Abel, who once again seemed to have lost everything he needed for school, from his lunchbox to his reading book to his (
constantly
disappearing) cap. By the time she’d got him ready, dropped him off and made it back to Loxley, it was already half-past nine. By which time, of course, the water in her shower was arctic.