‘I haven’t told you everything yet,’ I say, and reach in my pocket. ‘Look what arrived at the hotel.’
I still can’t believe this happened. It was on the last day of our trip, when I was having a small private word with the front desk about the minibar bill. (I didn’t necessarily want Luke seeing how many Toblerones I’d eaten.) The concierge caught sight of me and said, ‘Ah, Mrs Brandon, this has just arrived for you.’
It was a smart white package, and inside was a small silver box engraved with three words:
Thank you Becky
. There was no note. But I instantly knew who it was from. She must have tracked me down. Or I guess her people did.
Now I hand it over to Suze, who turns it over in her fingers wonderingly.
‘Wow,’ she says at last. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘I know.’
‘So this is, like, a bribe.’
Bribe?
‘It’s not a bribe!’ I say, stung.
‘No,’ Suze backtracks at once. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean “bribe”. I meant …’
‘It’s a thank-you,’ I say defensively. ‘Look. It says “Thank you”.’
‘Exactly! That’s what I meant. A thank-you.’ She nods several times, but now the word
bribe
is circling around my brain.
‘Anyway, what was she like?’ Suze demands. ‘What did she look like? What did she say?’
‘Just thin, really. Stressed-out-looking. I hardly spoke to her.’
‘She’s not in good shape, you know,’ Suze says. ‘Apparently her latest movie is beset with problems. It’s millions over budget and the buzz isn’t good. She’s taken on the role of producer for the first time, but she’s bitten off more than she can chew.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh yes.’ Suze nods knowledgeably. ‘Insiders on set claim the star’s high-handed approach has made her enemies among the crew. No wonder she’s stressed out.’
I stare at Suze in astonishment. Has she memorized every single gossip magazine?
‘Suze, how do you
know
all this stuff? Have you been watching
Camberly
on cable again?’ I say severely.
Camberly
is the hottest show in the States right now. Everyone is saying Camberly is the new Oprah, and her interviews get huge press every week, and they show them on E4 in England. Suze twisted her ankle a couple of weeks ago and she got totally addicted, especially to the gossip segment.
‘Well, I’ve got to do something while my best friend is in LA!’ says Suze, suddenly sounding disconsolate. ‘If I can’t go there, at least I can watch interviews about it.’ She gives a sudden gusty sigh. ‘Oh Bex, I can’t believe you’re going to be in Hollywood and meet movie stars all the time and I’m stuck here. I’m so envious!’
‘Envious?’
I stare at her. ‘How can you be envious of me? You live in this place! It’s fantastic!’
Suze’s husband, Tarquin, is even grander than Suze, and when his grandfather died, they inherited this monster house, Letherby Hall. It’s seriously vast. They have guided tours and a ha-ha and everything. (To be honest, I’m still not sure which bit is the ha-ha. Maybe one of the twiddly bits on the roof?)
‘But it isn’t sunny,’ objects Suze. ‘And there aren’t any movie stars. And all we do is have endless meetings about repairing eighteenth-century mouldings. I want to go to Hollywood. You know, I always wanted to be an actress. I played Juliet at drama school.’ She sighs again. ‘I played Blanche Dubois. And now look at me.’
I’m always very tactful about Suze’s ‘drama school’. I mean, it wasn’t exactly RADA. It was the kind where your father pays huge fees and you spend the spring term at the school skiing chalet in Switzerland and no one actually goes into acting because they’ve got a family business to inherit or something. But still, I do feel for her. She is at a bit of a loose end, knocking around in this massive house.
‘Well, come out!’ I say excitedly. ‘Go on, Suze, come to LA! Have a little holiday. We’d have such a laugh.’
‘Oh …’ Her face is torn a million ways. I can see
exactly
what she’s thinking. (This is why she’d make a brilliant actress, in fact.)
‘Tarkie can come too,’ I say, to forestall her objections. ‘And the children.’
‘Maybe,’ she says hesitantly. ‘Except we’re supposed to be focusing on business expansion this year. You know we’re starting weddings? And Tarkie wants to create a maze, and we’re revamping the tea rooms …’
‘You can still have a holiday!’
‘I don’t know.’ She looks doubtful. ‘You know the pressure he feels.’
I nod sympathetically. I do actually feel for old Tarkie. It’s quite a burden, inheriting a stately home, with your whole family looking on beadily to see if you manage it properly. Apparently, every Lord Cleath-Stuart has added something special to Letherby Hall, through all the generations, like an east wing, or a chapel, or a topiary garden.
In fact, that’s why we’re all here today. Tarkie’s launching his first major addition to the house. It’s called ‘The Surge’ and it’s a fountain. It’s going to be the highest fountain in the whole county and will be a big tourist attraction. Apparently he had the idea when he was ten, and drew it in his Latin book, and kept it ever since. And now he’s built it!
Hundreds of people are coming to watch it being switched on and the local TV station has interviewed him, and everyone is saying this could be the making of Letherby Hall. Suze says she hasn’t seen Tarkie this nervous since he competed in the junior national dressage when they were both children. That time he mucked up his half-pass (which is apparently bad) and his father, who lives for horses, nearly disowned him as a result. So let’s hope things go better this time.
‘I’ll work on Tarkie.’ Suze swings her legs off the bed. ‘C’mon, Bex. We’d better go.’
The only disadvantage of living in a house like this is it takes you about six hours just to get from the bedroom to the garden. We walk through the Long Gallery (lots of ancient portraits) and the East Hall (lots of ancient suits of armour) and cut across the massive Great Hall. There we pause, and breathe in the musty, woody aroma. Suze can burn as many Diptyque candles as she likes, but this room will always smell of Old House.
‘It was amazing, wasn’t it?’ says Suze, reading my thoughts.
‘Spectacular.’ I sigh.
We’re talking about the birthday party that I threw for Luke, right here, what seems like no time ago. As if on cue, we both lift our eyes to the tiny first-floor balcony where Luke’s mother, Elinor, stood hidden, watching the proceedings. Luke never knew she was there, nor that she basically funded and helped to arrange the whole thing. She’s sworn me to secrecy, which makes me want to scream with frustration. If only he
knew
that she’d paid for his party. If only he
knew
how much she’d done for him.
To call Luke’s relationship with his mother ‘love–hate’ would be an understatement. It’s ‘adore–loathe’. It’s ‘worship–despise’. At the moment we’re on ‘despise’ and nothing I can say will shift his opinion. Whereas I’ve quite come round to her, even if she is the snootiest woman in the world.
‘Have you seen her?’ asks Suze.
I shake my head. ‘Not since then.’
Suze looks troubled as she gazes around the room. ‘What about if you just
told
him?’ she says suddenly.
I know Suze hates the secrecy as much as I do, because Luke has totally got the wrong end of the stick and thinks she and Tarkie paid for the party.
‘I can’t. I promised. She’s got this whole thing about not wanting to buy his love.’
‘Throwing someone a party isn’t buying their love,’ protests Suze. ‘I think she’s all wrong. I think he’d be touched. It’s so stupid!’ she says with sudden vehemence. ‘It’s such a waste! Think of all the time you could spend together, and with Minnie too …’
‘Minnie misses her,’ I admit. ‘She keeps saying, “Where Lady?” But if Luke even knew they’d been seeing each other, he’d flip out.’
‘Families.’
Suze shakes her head. ‘They’re just the end. Poor old Tarkie’s in a total tizz about the fountain, just because his father’s here. I said to him, “If your dad can’t say anything positive, he should have stayed in Scotland!”’ She sounds so fierce, I want to laugh. ‘We must hurry,’ she adds, glancing at her watch. ‘The countdown will have begun!’
Suze’s ‘garden’ is basically an enormous great park. There are huge lawns and acres of topiary and a famous rose garden and loads of special plants which I now can’t remember. (I’m definitely going on the proper tour one day.)
We head down from the big gravelled terrace to find that crowds are already gathering on the lawn and setting up deck chairs among the trees. Music is playing from loudspeakers, waitresses are circling with glasses of wine, and a massive electronic countdown board reads
16:43
. There’s a rectangular lake, directly in front of the house, and that’s where The Surge is. I’ve only seen an artist’s impression of it, but it’s really pretty. It shoots straight up about a zillion feet and then falls down in a graceful arc. Then it swings backwards and forwards, and then at the end it shoots little droplets into the air. It’s so clever, and there are going to be coloured lights in the evenings.
As we get near, we find a cordoned-off area for VIP visitors, where my mum and dad have commandeered a prime position, along with our neighbours Janice and Martin.
‘Becky!’ exclaims Mum. ‘Just in time!’
‘Becky! We’ve missed you!’ Janice gives me a hug. ‘How was LA?’
‘Great, thanks!’
‘Really, love?’ Janice clicks her tongue disbelievingly, as though I’m putting a brave face on some personal tragedy. ‘But the people. All those plastic faces and whale pouts.’
‘Do you mean trout pouts?’
‘And drugs,’ puts in Martin ponderously.
‘Exactly!’
‘You need to be careful, Becky,’ he adds. ‘Don’t let them suck you into their way of thinking.’
‘Unhappiest city on the planet,’ agrees Janice. ‘It said so in the paper.’
They’re both staring at me mournfully, as though I’m about to be carted off to a penal colony on Mars.
‘It’s a brilliant city,’ I say defiantly. ‘And we can’t wait to get there.’
‘Well, maybe you’ll see Jess,’ says Janice, as though this is the only possible ray of light. ‘How far’s Chile from LA?’
‘It’s …’ I try to sound knowledgeable. ‘Not far. Same general area.’
My half-sister Jess is married to Janice and Martin’s son Tom, and they’re out in Chile, where they’re planning to adopt a little boy. Poor Janice is trying to wait patiently, but apparently it could be a year before they come back.
‘Don’t listen to them, love,’ Dad chimes in cheerfully. ‘LA is a fine city. I still remember the glint of the Cadillacs. The surf on the sand. And the ice-cream sundaes. Look out for those, Becky.’
‘Right.’ I nod patiently. ‘Ice-cream sundaes.’
Dad spent a summer driving around California before he got married, so his version of LA is basically from 1972. There’s no point saying, ‘No one eats ice-cream sundaes any more, it’s all about flavoured fro-yo.’
‘In fact, Becky,’ Dad adds, ‘I’ve got a couple of favours to ask you.’ He draws me to one side, away from the others, and I look up at him curiously.
Dad’s aged a bit recently. His face is craggier and there are little white hairs tufting out of his neck. Although he can still vault over a gate quite athletically. I know this because he was showing off to Minnie earlier today in one of Suze’s fields, while Mum cried out, ‘Graham, stop! You’ll do yourself an injury! You’ll break a metatarsal!’ (Mum has recently found a new daytime TV show,
Doctor’s Surgery Live
, which means that she now thinks she’s an expert on all things medical and keeps dropping words like ‘platelets’ and ‘lipoproteins’ into the conversation even when we’re just talking about what to have for supper.)
‘What is it, Dad?’
‘Well, the first thing is this.’ He takes from his breast pocket a small paper bag and pulls out an ancient autograph book with a picture of a Cadillac on the front and
California
in white swirly writing. ‘Remember this?’
‘Of course!’
Dad’s autograph book is a family tradition. It gets pulled out every Christmas and we all politely listen as he tells us about all the signatures. They’re mostly autographs of obscure TV stars from American shows that no one’s ever heard of, but Dad thinks they’re famous, so that’s all that matters.
‘Ronald “Rocky” Webster,’ he’s saying now, turning the pages fondly. ‘He was a big star then. And Maria Pojes. You should have heard her sing.’
‘Right.’ I nod politely, even though I’ve heard these names a million times and they still mean nothing to me.
‘It was my friend Corey who spotted Maria Pojes, drinking in a hotel bar,’ Dad’s saying. ‘Our first night in LA. He dragged me over, offered to buy her a drink …’ He laughs reminiscently. ‘She wouldn’t accept it, of course. But she was sweet to us. Signed our books.’
‘Wow.’ I nod again. ‘Fantastic.’
‘And so …’ To my surprise, Dad presses the open autograph book into my hand. ‘Over to you, Becky. Fill her up with some new blood.’
‘What?’ I stare at him. ‘Dad, I can’t take this!’
‘Half the book’s empty.’ He points at the blank pages. ‘You’re off to Hollywood. Finish the collection.’
I look at it nervously. ‘But what if I lose it or something?’
‘You won’t lose it. But you’ll have adventures.’ Dad’s face flickers oddly. ‘Oh, Becky, love, I am envious. I’ve never known anything like those adventures I had in California.’
‘Like the rodeo?’ I say. I’ve heard that story a zillion times.
‘That.’ He nods. ‘And … other things.’ He pats my hand, twinkling. ‘Get me John Travolta’s signature. I’d like that.’
‘What’s the other favour?’ I say, putting the autograph book carefully into my bag.
‘Just a small thing.’ He reaches into his pocket and produces a slip of paper. ‘Look up my old friend Brent. He always lived in Los Angeles. This is his old address. See if you can track him down. Say hello from me.’
‘OK.’ I look at the name:
Brent Lewis
. There’s an address in Sherman Oaks, and a phone number. ‘Why don’t you call him up?’ I suggest. ‘Or text him? Or Skype! It’s easy.’
As I say the word ‘Skype’ I can see Dad recoiling. We once tried to Skype Jess in Chile and it wasn’t exactly a resounding success. The picture kept freezing, so we gave up. But then the sound suddenly came back on and we could hear Jess and Tom having a row about Janice while they made their supper. It was all a bit embarrassing.