Sabrina didn’t even have to step out of the car for people to turn and stare. Just the sight of Vio’s rented Mercedes SL 500 pulling into the car park was enough to set tongues wagging, and see pint glasses being set down warily on wooden picnic tables. When Sabrina actually walked in, you could have cut the silence with a knife.
‘Table for one?’ she asked the barman, nervously. What had felt like a casual outfit back in her room now seemed ludicrously over the top. Everyone else here seemed to have at least one item of clothing held up with string. Perhaps this had been a mistake.
‘We’re a bit busy at the moment, love,’ the barman began, but he was interrupted by his wife, a stocky woman with wobbly, butcher’s arms and a distinctly lesbian haircut, who grabbed Sabrina’s hand and pumped it vigorously, as if she were a fruit machine in a Vegas casino.
‘
Busy?
Course we’re not
busy
, Dennis,’ she said, smiling ingratiatingly at Sabrina and revealing a row of half-rotten teeth. ‘Table for one, was it? Follow me. I’d expect you’d like somewhere nice and private, would you?’
‘Thank you. That’d be great.’
The landlady led Sabrina to a recessed corner of the room, where an old man was nursing the dregs of a pint of bitter. ‘Let me clear that away for you, Samuel,’ she said briskly.
‘But I’m not finished,’ the old man protested, as she physically prised the glass out of his gnarled hands.
‘You are now. We need the table. Lady’s having dinner.’
‘Oh, please, you mustn’t disturb your customers on my account,’ said Sabrina, embarrassed. Insisting on special treatment at Hollywood clubs was one thing, but she wasn’t in the habit of turfing harmless seniors out on the street, especially not in a little village joint like this one. ‘I can wait.’
‘Nonsense,’ the landlady laughed nervously. ‘Sam doesn’t mind.’
‘Yes, I do,’ muttered the old man with an air of hopelessness as he was dragged from his cosy corner and propelled towards the snug bar.
‘There now,’ said the landlady, ignoring him and turning back to Sabrina. ‘You make yourself comfortable. Dennis’ll be over with a menu in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’
Feeling more awkward than she had since high school, Sabrina sat alone at her stolen table, cursing Vio Hudson. What the hell was she doing here? Grateful for the low lighting, she slunk back as far as possible into the corner and, a few moments later, hid herself behind the large, leather-bound menu. Deciding that as she was here, in a British pub, she ought at least to do the thing properly, she ordered steak and kidney pudding and chips. She was contractually forbidden to drink, but no one was here except for the locals, and they could barely see
her
in the gloom, never mind the contents of her glass, so she ordered a double vodka and tonic, following it swiftly with a second. By the time she’d finished that, and eaten the chips (she took one bite of the pudding and almost gagged), she found she was feeling less awkward and, for the first time since arriving in England, relaxed.
‘You’re that actress, aren’t you?’ A young girl having supper with her parents approached Sabrina’s table. She looked to be about eleven, with braces on her teeth, and wearing a low-cut pink top that revealed nothing at all but which she clearly thought of as teenage and cool. ‘Can I have your autograph?’
‘Of course,’ Sabrina beamed. She used to resent autograph hunters. In the States they were like locusts, they’d swarm you anywhere – at the doctor’s office; while you were on the phone. But she realized with a twinge of panic that this kid was the first person to ask for her autograph since before she went to Revivals, over four months ago now.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Michaela,’ said the girl shyly.
Running her pen across the back of the cardboard coaster, Sabrina felt a rush of pleasure like a heroin shot in the arm.
‘There you go, Michaela. It was a pleasure to meet you.’
The child skipped away happily, clutching her treasure. Sabrina was gazing after her, basking in her own magnanimity, when she felt a tap on her shoulder.
‘I sincerely hope that was a mineral water.’
Dorian Rasmirez was towering over her, holding her empty glass in his enormous, fat-fingered hand. He was wearing corduroy trousers and a chunky knit fisherman’s sweater, which only added to his already substantial bulk, and he was smiling, the first time Sabrina had ever seen him do so.
He’s happy because he’s caught me out
, she thought dully, but she was too tired to care. She felt like an exhausted salmon about to be eaten by a bear.
‘Of course,’ she lied, wearily. ‘Ask at the bar if you don’t believe me.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Dorian, pulling up a chair and sitting down opposite her. ‘Luckily for you, however, I don’t care. You’re entitled to a drink after today.’
Sabrina’s eyes narrowed. Was this a trick?
‘Why are you being nice to me?’
‘Would you rather I wasn’t?’
‘What are you doing here anyway?’ She eyed him suspiciously. ‘Did you follow me?’
Dorian laughed, a deep, throaty laugh that shook his whole chest and made people turn around to look at him. ‘I have better things to do with my evening. Like trying to undo the shit-storm you caused with your little impromptu press conference at Heathrow yesterday.’
‘Look, I’ve said I’m sorry,’ said Sabrina, who felt the beginnings of a migraine coming on herself.
‘Did you?’ Dorian raised an eyebrow. ‘I must have missed that.’
After three tense hours on the phone, pacifying everyone from the British Institite of Race Relations to the American Screen Actors Guild, he’d walked the forty minutes into Loxley village to try to clear his head. Stopping at the pub had been an afterthought, but he was glad he’d had it. The landlady waddled over. Dorian ordered a malt whisky for himself and ‘the same again’ for Sabrina, who instantly tensed.
‘For Christ’s sake, relax. If I didn’t fire you for this morning’s papers, I’m not going to fire you for having a drink. Just don’t make a habit of it.’
The drinks arrived. Dorian raised his glass. ‘To our movie.’
Cautiously, Sabrina did the same. ‘To
Wuthering Heights
.’ After a short pause, she added, ‘I’m not a racist, you know.’
‘I believe that,’ said Dorian, truthfully.
‘That’s why I didn’t want to apologize to Tarik Tyler. I know I should have. It made me look so much worse, not saying anything for so long. But it would have been like I was admitting I said something I never said, you know? Like I viewed people a certain way because of their colour. It’s bullshit. So what if his grandmother was a slave? My grandmother was a crack whore, but you don’t hear me banging on about it.’
After months on the wagon, the alcohol was quickly going to her head. Not only was she babbling, but she found herself staring at Dorian in a way she never would have if she’d been sober, examining his features closely for the first time. When he wasn’t scowling, or shouting, he was actually quite attractive in a rough-and-ready, Sean Penn kind of way. Of course he was old, and certainly not handsome in the way that Sabrina liked her men – no one was going to sign Rasmirez up to model Calvin Klein underwear any time soon, that was for damn sure. But there was definitely something about him.
‘So why are you here?’ she asked him.
‘Same reason as you. I had a shitty day, I needed a drink, and this is the only pub in town. Plus, a friend told me
not
to drink here, which of course made me curious to try it.’
‘A friend? You mean Tish Crewe?’ Sabrina asked archly.
‘Yes, as it happens.’
‘You like her, don’t you?’
‘I do,’ said Dorian, either missing the insinuation or choosing to ignore it. ‘I like you too, Sabrina.’
This was too much for Sabrina, especially delivered with such a straight face. She laughed so hard she choked on her drink, spraying vodka and tonic all down the front of her blouse and narrowly avoiding giving Dorian an impromptu shower.
‘Really?’ she spluttered, cleaning herself up with a napkin. ‘I’d love to see how you treat actresses you
don’t
like.’
‘I treat them exactly the same,’ said Dorian. ‘I’m not in the business of favouritism. If Viorel or Lizzie or Rhys had been all over
The Sun
this morning, I’d have yelled just as hard at them.’
Sabrina looked at him sceptically.
‘It’s true. You personalize everything, Sabrina. I’m not your enemy. If it’s an enemy you’re looking for, try the mirror.’
Sabrina opened her mouth to argue with him, but decided against it. She was too tipsy to defend herself properly, and anyway it made a nice change to be having a semi-civil conversation.
‘Tell me about yourself,’ said Dorian, taking a long slow sip of his whisky. It was delicious.
‘Tell you what?’ said Sabrina. ‘The sob story? Rags to riches? Doesn’t everybody know that already?’ She put on her best whiney, facetious voice: ‘I’m Sabrina Leon, and I’m from a
bwoken home
.’
Dorian just looked at her, arms folded. Waiting.
‘You really wanna know? OK fine.’ Sabrina jutted out her chin defiantly. ‘My mom was a heroin addict. Dad was a petty thief and general, all-round douche bag, or so I’m told. I never met him. I first got taken into care when I was eighteen months old.’
‘First? You went back to your parents?’
‘To my mom, twice. The first time she left me with “friends”, who tried to sell me to pay off a drug debt.’
‘Shit.’ Dorian had heard this story from Sabrina’s agent, but had assumed it was apocryphal.
‘The second time the neighbours called the cops after I almost died climbing out of a second-floor window. Mom’s boyfriend was hitting her round the head with a frying pan. I thought I was gonna be next.’
‘How old were you then?’
Sabrina took a sip of her drink. ‘Three.’
Saskia’s age.
‘By five they made me a permanent ward of the state. Which pretty much saved my life, although after that I was constantly on the move, bouncing around from one foster home to another.’
‘What were they like, your foster parents?’ asked Dorian.
Sabrina smiled. ‘Which ones? There were the Johnsons. They were nice. I lived with them for a year and a half until their older daughter got fed up with sharing her bedroom and they dumped me back on the doorstep of the children’s home like an unwanted Christmas puppy.’
Dorian winced.
‘Then there were the Rodriguez family. The dad, Raoul, believed in “old-fashioned family values”. That basically meant beating me with a bamboo cane across the backs of my legs when I was late home from school, or left food on my plate.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Dorian.
Sabrina smiled. ‘Yeah. It wasn’t the Waltons, but it was better than the next place. The Coopers.’
‘What happened there?’ asked Dorian.
‘Their son, Graham …’ Sabrina began, then broke off suddenly. ‘You know, I don’t really wanna talk about it. Anyway, it doesn’t matter ’cause I ran away and spent the next two years on the streets. Which actually wasn’t as bad as it sounds.’
‘How old were you then?’
‘Twelve,’ said Sabrina matter-of-factly. ‘I got off the streets at fourteen, but I learned a lot in those two years.’
I’ll bet you did
, thought Dorian.
‘Such as the fact that men are assholes who only want one thing,’ Sabrina went on. ‘Luckily, they’re also mostly idiots, so if you’re smart you can use that filthy, one-track mind of theirs to your advantage.’
It was an unusually frank confession. Dorian could imagine just how many men in Hollywood Sabrina Leon had manipulated over the years to claw her way to the top. Now he knew where she’d learned her skills.
‘It was acting that really saved me,’ Sabrina continued. ‘A guy named Sammy Levine ran a youth-theatre company on the outskirts of New Jack City, where I was living at the time. I loved Sammy.’ Her eyes lit up at the memory. ‘He was passionate about theatre, passionate about kids. He was gay, and kind of flamboyant, and he could be tough as old nails when he wanted to. I remember he made me audition four times before agreeing to give me a part in
West Side Story
. And it was a fucking walk-on! Can you believe it?
Rosalia.
’
‘You remember the name of the character you played?’ Dorian was impressed.
‘Of course,’ said Sabrina, surprised. ‘I remember all my parts. They’re part of me. Anyway, I was so mad at Sammy. I thought I should have been Maria. Fuck it, I
should
have been Maria. I was the best.’
‘If you do say so yourself,’ Dorian grinned. Like everyone else in Hollywood, he knew the rest of the story. Tarik Tyler heard an NPR programme on the radio one morning about Levine’s Theatre and drove up to Fresno to take a look. He saw Sabrina, cast her, an unknown, as Lola, the lead in his first
Destroyers
movie. And the rest, as they say, was history.
‘So drama got you off the streets,’ said Dorian. ‘But what about now?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean what motivates you, today. Why do you act?’
Sabrina shrugged. ‘Because I can, I guess.’
‘Oh, no no no, I’m not buying that.’ Dorian leaned forward and looked her right in the eye. ‘What do you
feel
, when you walk out on stage or in front of a camera?’
Sabrina had been asked the question before. Every good director wanted to get inside her head, to find out what made her tick so they could draw it out in her performance, get the maximum emotional bang for their buck. With Dorian, however, she sensed that his desire to understand came from somewhere deeper. It wasn’t just artistic. It was personal.
‘I feel fear,’ she said honestly.
‘Of what?’
‘Of it ending. Of failure. Of going back to where I started.’
Dorian asked her the million-dollar question. ‘So why did you turn on your mentor, the man who helped you more than anyone? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘You mean Tarik?’ said Sabrina dismissively. ‘Firstly, I didn’t turn on him. It was a throwaway remark.
He
turned on
me
. Second of all, everyone says it was Tyler who discovered me and I guess that’s true in Hollywood terms. But Sammy Levine was the one who really changed my life. Sammy showed me the magic. He showed me how to do it.’