The Birthday Party (23 page)

Then Neal put his tongue in her mouth.

She tried not to gag. She gave an urgent grunt of disgust, hoping he would get the message, but he plunged it in further.
She tried pinching him, grabbing some of the taut flesh on his side to give him a warning, but nothing doing. She tried to
pull away, but he had her head in one of his hands, running his fingers through her hair. To the onlooker, it seemed as if
they were getting really passionate.

There was nothing for it. She bit down hard.

‘Aaaargh!’ He leapt back. ‘You bitch! You fucking bitch! What the hell did you do that for?’

He looked round the studio in outrage, then spat onto the floor. There was blood.

Shit, thought Coco.

‘Sorry,’ she said, eyes wide with innocence. ‘I got carried away.’

‘You fucking bit me!’

‘I’m really sorry. I’m a little tiger when I get aroused. You’re just lucky it was only your tongue in my mouth.’

The crew collapsed laughing. Neal looked to the director, furious.

‘You’re not going to let her get away with that, surely?’

The director just looked at the clock.

‘I need this in the can by half past. Unless it’s actually hanging off by a thread, can we get on with it?’

‘I’m going to Lisa!’

‘Fine. But after, please?’

For a moment it looked as though Neal was going to storm out. Coco stared down at the floor, biting the inside of her cheeks
to stop herself from laughing. She didn’t dare catch anyone’s eye.

‘Guys, that was totally great. You were on fire. More of the same, please. Without the biting …’ The director tried to keep
the panic out of his voice. If they over-ran it would mean bringing everyone in at the weekend.

Neal turned his back with his hands in his pockets, tossing
up whether to be difficult or not. Eventually he turned back, his expression sulky. He had the sense to realise that no one
was on his side – if he kicked up the only person he would be making trouble for was himself.

‘Let’s do it.’

When they finally went for the clinch again, there were no tongues.

Coco recounted the day’s events to Harley that evening in a little bar in Soho.

‘I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t sue me,’ she gurgled, ‘but I don’t care if he does. It was worth it.’

‘So it’s all going OK now?’

She put a hand on his arm.

‘Thanks to your genius idea. It’s made all the difference.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I could do with some more.’

‘You’ve used it all already?’ Harley looked alarmed. ‘Jesus, Coco. I only gave you more last Saturday.’

‘Some of it spilt in my bag,’ she lied.

‘Crap.’ Harley’s expression was stony.

‘I don’t know why you’re coming over all judgemental. It was your idea in the first place.’ Coco thought she had every right
to be indignant.

‘It was a present. I’m not a bloody dealer.’

‘Why are you taking the moral high ground all of a sudden?’

‘Coco – I wanted to help you. I don’t want you to fuck up. I didn’t realise you were going to hoover it up. I thought you
had more sense.’

‘I know what I’m doing.’

‘Yeah, right. So why are you looking so panicky?’

‘I’m not. I’m just pissed off that you dish it out with one hand and take it away with the other.’

‘I made a mistake. It was just supposed to be a little something to give you confidence, not a crutch.’

Coco fell silent. She was furious with Harley. But the more she protested that she could handle it, the more desperate she
would seem. Well, it wasn’t as though Harley was the only person in the world she could get cocaine from.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her voice sweet. ‘You’re right. I should do without it.’

He nodded, not remotely convinced by her turnaround.

‘You wouldn’t be the first actress to blow it. Coke’s a fickle friend. Before you know it you’ll have a five-hundred-quid-a-week
habit and you won’t be able to operate without it.’

‘Save the lecture, Harley,’ Coco retorted. ‘You’re a fucking hypocrite.’

‘Well, aren’t you glad? If I wasn’t, I’d be slipping you another few grams under the table and watching you go off to destroy
yourself.’

He was being completely melodramatic, thought Coco. She was a million miles away from having a proper habit. After all, she
was out now, perfectly happy without it. She didn’t feel the need to rush to the toilet for a line. It was just a tool, that’s
all. She had her rules and her limits and she stuck to them.

She kept quiet. Harley wasn’t playing ball. Five minutes later, she finished her drink and kissed him goodbye. He watched
her go with a sense of disquiet. He liked Coco, he really did, but he knew she had problems. He hoped she’d taken everything
he had said on board.

It didn’t take Coco long to find another source. She was doing a shoot for a magazine – a feature on four young British actresses
and their style secrets. The photographer’s assistant, a podgy, pasty self-important emo called Gavin, made it pretty clear
that his wages weren’t enough to keep him in the lifestyle to which he had become accustomed, and he had ways of supplementing
his income. He had put his number in her mobile at the end of the shoot.

‘You never know,’ he’d said to her with a flick of his long, black fringe.

Half an hour later, Coco had another stash of coke.

‘Keep me on speed-dial. I’m available twenty-four seven,’ he said as he pocketed the cash outside a pub in Soho.

Coco hoped he was discreet. Well, of course he was. He wouldn’t do much business if he wasn’t. And he certainly wouldn’t give
her a lecture every time she asked for more.

L
ouis waved the eighth scented stick under his nose, and recoiled in disgust.

‘I’m sorry, but it just smells like Toilet Block to me. Why would anyone want to smell like this?’

‘You do need to give it a moment to settle.’

The girl from the perfume company looked anxious.

Next to Louis, Tyger got to her feet.

‘I’m sorry, but I agree with Louis. If we’re going to license a perfume that represents us, it needs to be top quality. I
love the designs for the bottle …’

She picked up the heavy glass flagon with a silver dagger through the stopper that had been mocked up.

‘… but the samples you’ve given us just don’t match up to it.’

Since the world at large had heard about their wedding, Tyger and Louis had been inundated with offers to endorse various
different products. Tyger had taken control, marching Louis along to any number of meetings to discuss Brand Dagger.

The girl nodded, clearly disappointed.

‘I’ll get onto it straight away.’

Tyger picked up her bag and nodded to Louis that it was time to leave.

‘Give us a call as soon as you’ve got some new samples.’

The two of them left the room, arm in arm.

‘We’ll do it ourselves,’ declared Tyger. ‘We’ll market it through the Knickers To It website. I don’t know why I didn’t
think of it before. Oh, bollocks,’ she groaned, as they hit the street to find it lined with paparazzi. ‘How did they know
we were in there?’

Instinctively, she stood closer to Louis on the pavement and smiled.

‘Hey – Mrs Dagger, over here!’

‘When do we get to hear the pitter-patter of tiny Converse?’

‘Show us your ring, Tyger!’

Louis pulled her to him and took her face in his hands lovingly. She was pint-size, reaching up to him even in her five-inch
peep-toe stilettos. As their lips met, the flashbulbs exploded. The picture would be all over this week’s gossip columns.

They were each used to the paparazzi, of course. The fashion magazines had always loved Tyger, with her kooky style, and had
snapped her at every social event, every restaurant and bar, every shop she went into, so their readers could share her world
and see what she was wearing. And Louis had been a target for months, though until now he hadn’t been as cooperative – that
hadn’t been his image.

Now Louis and Tyger were married, their value had more than doubled. They were the celebrity couple of the moment. They were
both photogenic, both style icons, and their picture told a story – the newly-weds, fresh from their elopement. And the fact
that they looked blissfully happy in every photo that had been taken so far was something of a novelty in this age of marital
breakdown and disharmony.

They played up to it, enjoying the attention, laying it on thick. Holding hands wherever they went, wearing matching Ray-Bans,
kissing passionately on every street corner. They teased their stalkers by going into MacDonald’s one minute, Cartier the
next; waiting in a queue for a movie like any other young couple, then dashing into the Dorchester.

Of course, while the nation revelled in this ostensibly perfect marriage what the paps were really waiting for was the money
shot: the disagreement, the drunken row, or the photo of one
of them with someone else. The clock was ticking on their marriage. When would the novelty wear off and the whole thing go
horribly wrong?

Tyger was thriving on the attention, and milked it for all it was worth. At the faux reception party they had been forced
into by Tony, she wore a microscopic wedding dress, and bent over to show her knickers – white with
Mrs Dagger
embroidered
in pink across her bottom – thereby earning invaluable publicity for Knickers To It. And off the back of that she persuaded
Louis to endorse a line of male underwear she had designed – snug, raunchy boxers embellished with a digital print of barbed
wire and gold chains. They sold like hot cakes after he modelled them on her website.

The nation loved her. They loved that she worked hard and played hard, was cheeky, with a sense of humour and a strong opinion,
and that she was so clearly head over heels in love. She might only have become famous because of her lineage, but she didn’t
expect things to fall into her lap. She went out and made them happen. She wasn’t some spoilt brat who believed the world
owed her a living and free entry to every fashionable nightclub in the city. She was lauded as a great role model for young
women.

They were more wary of Louis. He was yet to prove himself. They were poised ready to spring to Tyger’s defence if he hurt
her. He had spent so long nurturing his snarling, love-’em-and-leave-’em image that they found it hard to believe he had it
in him to be loyal to her. Surely he would run true to type and be tempted to stray?

Nothing could be further from the truth. Although he was surrounded from dawn till dusk by stunning women who made it perfectly
clear they were available, he only had eyes for one person. Louis Dagger was falling, hook, line and sinker, for the girl
he had married on impulse.

He couldn’t deny he’d been attracted to her on sight. Somehow he’d known in his gut that she was the only person on the planet
who could handle him. Or who he wanted to handle
him. He knew she admired him, but wasn’t unduly impressed by him. He knew she was unshockable, yet had the potential to shock
him.

What he wasn’t ready for was that the more he got to know her, the more he fell under her spell. She had given him hope. It
was astonishing to think that someone like Louis, who was living a dream, needed hope, but actually his world was very bleak.
Tyger made him see the beauty. He felt as if he was coming to life, unfurling like a flower, a green shoot in the heart that
had been black for so long.

What was lucky was his fans hadn’t turned against him, or her, since the wedding. At the first gig he did, they all threw
rice and confetti onto the stage. He felt as if his songs had more meaning. Instead of being fuelled by anger, they were fuelled
by passion, and his performance went up a notch.

His management were delighted, having initially been royally pissed off that he had gone behind their backs. They’d hauled
him into the office and carpeted him, even though they knew it was a pointless exercise. The thing about Louis Dagger was
that he didn’t seem to care about anyone or anything.

Only now he did.

The photographers appeased, he and Tyger turned and went down into the basement depths of Hakkasan, her favourite Chinese
restaurant. His head was still spinning from the noxious samples the perfume company had waved under their noses – frankly,
he wouldn’t have put his name to any of it. And he felt the sick stone of dread in his chest. There had been hundreds, literally
hundreds of articles written about the two of them since their marriage hit the headlines. It was only a matter of time before
someone took the trouble to do some real digging.

Each day that went by took him closer to the day he would have to tell her. And he would have to. If he didn’t, he would be
living a lie. Every time he thought he had plucked up the courage, he couldn’t do it. He wanted one more day with her, one
day when he was still her hero. Once she knew, he was
pretty certain it would all be over. How could she still love him, after what he had done?

He barely spoke as they ordered cocktails and dim sum in the crepuscular Shanghai chic. When the food arrived, he could barely
touch it.

‘Hey …’ Tyger leaned over the table and spoke to him softly. ‘What’s up?’

‘Let’s go home,’ he said.

‘We’ve only just started eating,’ she protested, but he stood up.

‘Let’s go home,’ he repeated obstinately.

Tyger took her napkin off her lap and put it on the table.

‘OK.’ She sighed wearily.

As they stood up to leave, the waiter came over anxiously to see what was wrong.

‘It’s all fine,’ Tyger reassured him, thrusting her credit card at him. ‘Can we just pay for what we’ve had so far? My husband
doesn’t feel very well.’

Five minutes later they were on the pavement, calling a cab. As Tyger got into the seat next to Louis, he grabbed her, pulled
her to him. He was squeezing her so hard she could barely breathe.

‘You are such a nightmare,’ she chided him. ‘I was looking forward to that. What is it with you?’

He didn’t answer.

‘Well, I’m starving,’ she went on, wriggling out of his grasp and leaning forward to tap on the glass. ‘I’ll get the driver
to stop. We’ll have to get something on the way home—’