‘Thanks,’ said Sabrina. ‘But I don’t think that’s an issue.’
‘Of course not, my dear. You’ll fit right in at Loxley Hall. All it takes is a little practice.’
‘Oh!’ Sabrina laughed nervously. ‘No, no, it’s over with me and Jago. I sincerely hope that I never have to set foot in Loxley Hall again.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Chrissie, her smile wilting at the edges. ‘Then who?’
‘Viorel!’ said Sabrina joyously. ‘It all happened last night, although to be honest we both knew it was coming for a while. Months, ever since we got to England really. I guess I was in denial or something. I wasn’t sure if he felt the same, but now …’
Misinterpreting Chrissie’s stricken face as moral disapproval, Sabrina paused, then backtracked.
‘I didn’t mean to hurt Jago,’ she said defensively. ‘I mean, I know we were engaged and all, but it
had
only been a few weeks. And the way I feel about Vio, well, it can’t be compared. When Jago gets over the shock and sees how in love we are, I’m sure he’ll understand. He will understand, won’t he?’
But Chrissie was no longer listening. She didn’t care about Jago Crewe, or Sabrina, or any of them. Viorel hadn’t rejected her because he felt guilty. He’d turned her down because he had a better offer, from a girl fifteen years Chrissie’s junior. He didn’t want her because she was old.
‘Mommy?’ Saskia was pawing at her trouser leg, trying to get her attention. With a jolt, Chrissie realized that she’d switched off and been in a world of her own, for how long she wasn’t sure. Sabrina was also looking at her strangely, her hateful, flawlessly youthful features knitted into an expression of faux concern.
‘Are you sure you’re OK, Chrissie? Is it the migraine again?’
Chrissie nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She needed to be alone, to think.
This was all Dorian’s fault. Dorian and his obsession with this damn movie. Ever since he’d started work on
Wuthering Heights
, the problems between them had escalated. He’d been away more, neglecting her more, practically pushing her into Viorel’s arms only for him to reject her too. In her mind, it was the movie itself that was the enemy, the catalyst for all her disappointment, anger and fear. But if Dorian thought she was going to lie down and take the humiliation quietly, if any of them thought that, they had another think coming.
Harry Greene sat on his therapist’s couch looking angrily at his watch.
Forty-five minutes of my time, another two hundred bucks down the drain, and all this schmuck’s got to tell me is I need to ‘let go of my anger’? I know that, dip-shit. That’s why I’m here. What I want you to tell me is
how.
Harry Greene had been coming to this bland, corporate-looking office in Beverly Hills once a week for the last eight years. Before that he’d gone to a chick therapist, Liana, in Bel Air. That had been a lot more fun. Liana had a terrific pair of tits, and a penchant for wearing very short skirts and semi-sheer underwear that had made the hour of self-analysis positively fly by. But the bitch had dumped Harry as a client after he’d asked her out for dinner –
dinner, for Christ’s sake! It wasn’t like I tried to rape her; although God knew she’d been asking for it hard enough, the little prick tease. Trying to tell me I’ve got ‘issues’ with women. Fuck you, doctor.
He’d been seeing Dr Brewer ever since.
A slight, balding man in his mid-sixties, with no distinguishing features other than his eyebrows, which were enormously bushy, like two hairy caterpillars intent on taking over his face, Dr Brewer shared his patient’s frustration at the circular nature of their sessions. Harry Greene was a profoundly angry man, a hater-by-nature – of women, certainly, but also of anybody he perceived to have crossed him. This was a very long list, and one that, despite showing up every week on Dr Brewer’s couch, Harry appeared to have no interest whatsoever in reducing.
‘Professionally, things are going well?’ Dr Brewer probed. ‘You’re happy with your current project?’
‘Very happy.’ Harry Greene smiled, as he always did whenever he thought about work. His latest movie was a departure from his normal fare of big-budget comedies or action flicks. A period drama, based around a fallen woman in eighteenth-century Paris,
Celeste
was a visually gorgeous feast of a film starring Marta Erikksen, currently Hollywood’s highest-paid female star, thanks to her breakout success in the latest Tarantino movie. If anyone had told Harry that
Celeste
was a deliberate attempt to go head to head with Dorian Rasmirez’s
Wuthering Heights
, he’d have denied it vociferously. Rasmirez didn’t have a monopoly on artistic, critically acclaimed films. Why shouldn’t Harry branch out? Besides, anyone could do that arty shit – anyone with an eye for the right script and the clout to cast his first-choice actors in every role, right down to the third fucking under-gardener. Harry knew for a fact that his production budget had been more than four times the size of Dorian’s. He also knew that Dorian was going to have a hard sell trying to bring a distributor on board, what with the continued negative press buzzing around Sabrina Leon. Thanks to the veil of secrecy surrounding
Wuthering Heights
, the big studios’ interest was piqued. But it was a long way from piqued interest to a multimillion-dollar cheque. Harry Greene knew that better than anyone. Celeste
is gonna wipe the floor with Rasmirez’s piss-poor remake.
But beating Dorian commercially was no longer enough for Harry. Even if he succeeded in bankrupting Rasmirez, it might not be enough to break the bastard.
I have to get to him some other way. Hit him where it’ll really hurt, hit him so hard he won’t be able to get back up.
Harry’s mind turned back to Dorian’s wife. He remembered the night at the Starlight Ball a few months ago, when Chrissie Rasmirez had reciprocated in a little mild flirtation. Of course, she’d had reason enough to be mad at her husband that night. Would she be as receptive if Harry tried to seduce her now? Physically she was past her prime, of course, and her body was a little too overmuscled for Harry’s taste. But Chrissie Rasmirez was still an attractive woman. How delicious it would be if Harry were to nuke Dorian’s fairytale marriage the way Dorian had destroyed his! That was certainly one possibility, but of course much depended on the lady’s willingness, her appetite for betrayal.
What are Rasmirez’s other weaknesses?
Harry suspected that Dorian was one of the rare breed of film-makers who actually meant it when they told reporters they were ‘all about the work’. Fame meant little to Rasmirez, and money was only important because it enabled him to make more movies, and to keep up that ridiculous Disney castle he had in some East European butthole country no one had heard of. Rumour had it that
Wuthering Heights
was his best work yet. Viorel Hudson’s performance was said to be strong, and the infamous Sabrina Leon’s stellar. Harry had even heard whispers that Dorian might be gunning for an Oscar.
Now
this
was interesting. Dorian Rasmirez had been nominated three times in the Best Director category, but had never won. Independent movies rarely took home the big gongs these days (there were only six that mattered: Best Picture, Director, Actress, Actor and the two Supportings). Without a big studio to finance your Oscar campaign, you stood next to no chance. Could Dorian woo a big studio backer, even this late in the day? Had that been his plan all along?
Harry had already begun his own, slow-burn campaign for
Celeste
with the Academy months ahead of schedule. Was Rasmirez hoping to challenge him? Harry hoped so. If he could sink Dorian’s movie in theatres
and
beat him to an Oscar, that truly would be revenge worthy of the name. Just thinking about it brought a smile to his face.
‘Listen, doc, I gotta go. Speaking of work, you know. The back lot beckons.’
Dr Brewer thought about reminding Harry that the session had another ten minutes to run; that his unwillingness to commit to the full hour was almost certainly a reflection of his inner unwillingness to examine fundamental difficulties in his personality; but he wisely thought better of it. The last psychotherapist to irritate Harry Greene, his predecessor Dr Liana Craven, had been the victim of a whispering campaign so toxic and relentless, her practice had been decimated and she’d ultimately been forced to relocate to Texas. Dr Brewer had never warmed to Texas.
‘Of course,’ he said cheerily. ‘Stay well. See you next week.’
Outside, in the blazing sunshine of Burton Way, Harry Greene immediately felt his spirits lifting. Goddamn shrinks. They always made you feel like a bag of crap. He only went because in Hollywood,
not
having an analyst was like admitting you had a problem. Like
not
having a driver, or a mistress, or a Thai masseuse who gave you all the extras without being asked. For a man in his position, it was unthinkable.
His dark blue Bentley gleamed outside the doctor’s office, with Manuel, his uniformed driver, ready and waiting to take him back to Universal, but Harry Greene felt like a walk. Crossing the street past a line of lithe-limbed teenage girls outside Pinkberry, he headed south toward Wilshire Boulevard. It was Wednesday lunchtime, which meant that Angelica, his ex-wife, would almost certainly be getting her pedicure done in the top-floor salon at Neiman Marcus. Now on her third husband since her divorce from Harry, Angie had become something of a friend in recent years, one of the few women Harry knew for a fact wanted nothing from him.
I’ll surprise her. Take her to lunch. Maybe buy her something sparkly from Neil Lane to tick off that attorney husband of hers.
He turned on his cellphone to check his messages (that was another irritating thing about therapists; they always wanted him to switch his phone off, which inevitably made him doubly tense). It rang immediately.
‘Greene,’ Harry answered, not breaking stride. A few seconds later a broad smile spread across his face. Now that he controlled every aspect of his life with military precision, it wasn’t often he was surprised, still less pleasantly surprised. But this call had done it.
‘Well hello, my dear,’ he purred. ‘Believe it or not, I was just thinking about you.’
Tish stood in the hallway at Loxley, not sure whether to believe her eyes.
Is that a grand piano? Good God. Is it a Steinway?
Preceded by a good two thousand pounds’ worth of Moyses Stevens flower arrangements, an enormous rug that took three men to carry it and looked suspiciously Persian and antique, and a hideous modern painting of two orange-clad Buddhist monks staring at each other, the piano was the latest (but apparently not last) in a procession of luxury goods being carried single file into Loxley’s drawing room. It was like watching a line of leafcutter ants.
When the first Harrods van had pulled up outside twenty minutes ago, Tish had thought little of it.
Another of Mummy’s extravagances. Probably some turn-the-clock-back face cream made of baby seal’s bottom you can only get in London; or a few cases of overpriced Smythson’s stationery with ‘Vivianna Crewe, Loxley Hall’ embossed in gold leaf on the top.
Vivianna was only ever ‘Crewe’ when it suited her, and at the moment it suited her down to the tips of her Bottega Veneta stilettos.
Tish’s mother had flown in two days ago to ‘comfort Jago’, who’d taken to his bed with a bout of melodramatic grief when Sabrina Leon suddenly broke off their engagement. He was still refusing to get up, despite the fact that he knew full well that Tish and Abi were leaving for Romania at the end of the week and that Loxley’s bills were once again piling up.
It was only after the second van arrived, then the third, and the ants began their relentless march through the house weighed down with extortionate loot, that the severity of Vivi’s latest spending spree began to hit home.
‘Mummy!’ Tish called hoarsely, following the workers in hopes of finding the queen. And sure enough, once she got into the drawing room, there was Vivianna, directing her minions to position their various treasures around the room, alternately pointing imperiously and clapping her hands with glee like an overexcited little girl.
Catherine the Great meets Shirley Temple
, thought Tish.
She doesn’t change.
In a simple lemon-yellow sundress teamed with sky-high black Bottega heels and matching black sunglasses, Vivi looked as ravishing as ever. Her glossy black hair was piled, Sophia Loren style, on top of her head, and her slender, French-manicured hands gesticulated in that wild, Italian way of hers, as if somehow disconnected from the rest of her body. Not for the first time, Tish thought:
I’m nothing like you. Genetically, we’re as disconnected as a pair of total strangers.
‘Ah, Letitia
cara
, there you are.’ Vivi smiled. ‘What do you think, darling? Would your brother prefer the piano in the corner of the room – more traditional – or per’aps beneath the window? It is more romantic, no? Looking out across the deer park.’
Tish shook her head despairingly. ‘It’ll have to go back, Mother. It’ll all have to go back.’
‘Back?’ asked Vivi innocently. ‘Against the wall, you mean?’
‘I mean “
back
”,’ snapped Tish. ‘Back to London. Before you lose the receipts.’
Vivianna pouted. ‘I can’t possibly do that, darling. It’s for your brother. He needs something to lift his spirits, something to focus on other than that ’orrible, fickle woman. This house feels like a morgue, no wonder ’e’s so depressed. It must be decades since Henry redecorated.’
‘It’s decades since he could afford to,’ said Tish defensively. ‘How much did all this crap cost, anyway?’
Vivi looked momentarily sheepish. ‘Who can put a price on your brother’s happiness?’
Marching over to the piano, Tish picked up a dangling white paper label and read the number printed on it in bold black ink. ‘Harrods, apparently,’ she said bluntly. ‘This is over a hundred thousand pounds, Mummy!’