‘Yes, ballet. I saw Dad waiting for you outside Sadler’s Wells.’
‘Minty,’ said Mum very slowly, ‘I haven’t been to Sadler’s Wells for
years.
’
‘This is outrageous!’ said Amber to the woman at the Virgin Atlantic check-in two days later. ‘I shall write to Richard Branson personally on my return.’
‘I’m sorry, madam,’ the woman replied, ‘but I’m afraid we don’t give complimentary upgrades to Upper Class on request.’
‘But I guarantee to give Virgin Airlines a very prominent and favourable mention in my new novel,’ Amber went on. The woman smiled as she fastened labels to our luggage, but said nothing. ‘However,’ Amber continued with an air of slight menace, ‘if you don’t oblige, I shall have no choice but to mention some other carrier instead. Pan Am, for example. It’s up to you,’ she added with a shrug.
‘Thank you, madam. But I’m afraid Pan Am no longer exists. I do hope you have a good flight,’ she added pleasantly. ‘Here’s your boarding card.’
‘Now look here –’
‘Please, Amber,’ I said, dragging her away. ‘Economy class is fine. It’s an eleven-hour flight, so we can just watch a film. Or three. Or you could read a few books, or work on your new plot.’
‘Yes,’ said Amber, ‘that’s what I’ll do. I’ll work on my synopsis.’ Which is partly why she wanted to come to LA with me – to do some research for her tenth novel.
‘This one’s going to be a new departure,’ she said enthusiastically as we waited for our own departure in Duty Free. She sprayed a tester of First on to her wrist. ‘It’ll be unlike anything I’ve ever done before.’
‘I thought all your books are unlike anything you’d ever done before?’
‘No – this one’s going to be really different: detective fiction.’
‘Isn’t that a little bit …commercial, Amber?’ I ventured as we wandered through the dizzyingly long glass corridors towards Gate 2.
‘Oh no, it’s going to be
literary
detective fiction, Minty. It’s going to be tough. Terse. Ironic. Realistic. Think Raymond Chandler. Think Dashiell Hammett. Think Philip K. Dick.’
‘Quite hard-boiled, then.’
‘Yes,’ she said animatedly, ‘hard-boiled, that’s it.’
It’ll probably be roasted too.
‘It’s going to be very
noirish
,’ she added, as we found our seats on the plane. ‘It’ll look at the seamy side of Los Angeles, the gritty underbelly of a city racked by riots and earthquakes, forest fires and droughts. It’s going to be about life on the fault line. Life on the teetering edge.’
‘Won’t that be quite hard to research, in five days, from a luxury hotel in Beverly Hills?’
‘No. We’ll hire a car, Minty, and explore. Now, don’t worry,’ she added quickly. ‘I don’t mind driving.’
‘Oh great!’ I said. Oh God.
‘Yes, we’ll cruise around town like Philip Marlowe in
The Long Goodbye.
’ More like James Dean in
Rebel Without a Cause.
‘And I’m sure we’ll find Joe,’ she added reassuringly. ‘I’ll practise my detective skills and help you sleuth him down.’
I didn’t think Amber could sleuth down a missing skyscraper, but I didn’t like to say. It was very nice of her to come with me to the States and to pay for the whole thing too. And when I’d said we could just stay somewhere fairly modest, she had emitted a derisive snort.
‘We shall stay at the Four Seasons,’ she announced.
‘The
Four $ea$on$
,’ I repeated incredulously.
‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I’ve just had a good little run with the stock market. Some rather nice divi-cheques. Anyone who’s anyone stays there,’ she added. ‘It’ll be stuffed with film people, and they might help you find Joe.’
‘We don’t have any leads,’ I said miserably as the stewardess brought us two trays of good plane food.
‘What about his mobile phone?’
‘I’ve tried to ring him on it, but it doesn’t seem to work.’
‘How odd.’
‘Maybe it’s not connected for the States.’
‘Why would he bother to take it with him if it wasn’t? Did you ask his editor where he is?’
‘Yes – he doesn’t know. This is going to be a wild-goose chase,’ I added with a bitter sigh.
‘Don’t worry, Minty,’ said Amber yet again. ‘I just
know
we’re going to find him. It’s nice of Auntie Dympna to look after Perdita and Pedro,’ she added happily as she sipped her wine.
Yes, it was. But I couldn’t help wondering who was ‘looking after’ Dad. Some other woman, no doubt. Oh,
fuck.
Now I understood why he’d been behaving so shiftily outside Sadler’s Wells.
‘I’m really looking forward to this trip,’ Amber declared. ‘And you know, Minty, I’ve got a funny feeling that it’s going to be money well spent.’
Hadn’t I heard that somewhere before? I wondered, as I put on my eye mask and dropped off to sleep.
The setting sun glanced off the wing of our 747 as the plane banked steeply into LA. We staggered, exhausted, into the airport, grabbed our bags off the carousel and joined the long queue for Immigration. And we waited. And waited. And then we waited some more.
‘My God!’ said Amber after we’d been standing there for forty minutes. ‘It took us eleven hours to get here and it’s going to take us another eleven to get
in.
’
‘Purpose of visit, ma’am?’ enquired the uniformed woman customs officer, twenty-five minutes later.
‘I’m looking for a man,’ I replied crisply. Jet-lag and the interminable delay had made me sharp.
‘Well, I hope you find one, ma’am,’ she replied as she stamped my passport. ‘Have a nice day, now.’
‘Thank you, and I hope you have a pleasant and successful day yourself.’
Then we stepped into a yellow taxi, drove to the hotel in the gathering dusk, and slept. Because of the time difference, it was dawn when I woke. I stood on the balcony and watched the sun come up in a scarlet blaze of underlit cloud. Now I could see the city spread before me, in a shallow bowl, enclosed by a mountainous ridge. The tall feathery palms stood up like swizzle sticks in a glass of Martini, and the distant cars glittered in the rising sun as though they were waves in a shining sea. Out there, somewhere, was Joe. I didn’t know where. I hadn’t a clue. But he was there. ‘To disappear enhances,’ wrote Emily Dickinson. And it was true – Joe’s disappearance made him seem all the more desirable. He’d upped and he’d gone. And he hadn’t told me that he was going, because I’d been such a beast. It’s all my fault, I said to myself, again. And I had five days in which to put things right.
‘Contacts,’ said Amber, as we locked our room and headed down the corridor to the lift. ‘That’s what we need – contacts.’
‘Well, have you got any?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said, pressing the ‘Down’ button. ‘But I’ve got a plan. What we do is go to all the places in LA where the scriptwriters and movie people go.’
‘But we don’t know what those places are,’ I pointed out.
‘Oh yes we do,’ she said. ‘It’s all in here.’ She waved the
Time Out Guide to LA
at me. ‘I studied it assiduously on the plane. And the first place we go is Barneys department store and have breakfast in the rooftop café. It’s stuffed with film people and celebrities. So we just ask their advice.’
‘Amber,’ I said, ‘we can’t just go up to famous people and talk to them. They don’t know us. They won’t like it. I wouldn’t like it if I was them.’
‘Oh, don’t be so
silly
, Minty,’ she replied with an indulgent laugh. ‘They’re human beings, aren’t they? Like you and me. They’ll probably be only too delighted to help. No, I’m really not intimidated by famous people,’ she added, as the lift arrived with a bright falsetto ‘ping’. ‘I’m not intimidated at a –’
The doors drew back. And there was Hugh Grant. We looked at him. He looked at us. Then he smiled, slightly shyly, and said, ‘Good morning.’
‘Good morning,’ I replied, as we stepped in. I glanced at Amber. She was staring at the ceiling, her face bright red. And she was unusually silent as we floated down to the ground floor.
‘I thought you said you weren’t afraid to speak to the stars?’ I whispered to her as Hugh Grant faded from view.
‘I’ve just got to warm up to it a bit,’ she said, ‘that’s all. It’s just jet-lag. I’ve got to get into my stride. But I’m really
not
phased by famous people. Oh my
God
!’ She exhaled as violently as if she’d been punched in the solar plexus.
‘What? What’s the matter?’
‘Overthereoverthereover
there
,’ she hissed. ‘Atthe
desk
!’
I looked. Standing at the reception was a very tall, handsome, dark-haired man wearing wire-rimmed glasses.
‘It’s Oscar
Schindler
,’ Amber breathed. ‘Don’t stare, Minty,’ she added fiercely. ‘It’s rude.’
‘I’m not staring. You’re staring. That’s Liam Neeson. Great. Come on.’
The hotel foyer was dominated, appropriately enough, by a vast arrangement of stargazer lilies. Smartly dressed guests tapped their way across the marble floor or sat on plumptious sofas, doing deals. We walked out of the front entrance past a battalion of uniformed doormen, then set off down Doheny Drive. Now, I’m useless at map-reading. I just can’t do it at all. I’m happy to confess that the depths of my cartographic incompetence are quite unfathomable. But Amber’s the opposite. She’s brilliant at it. She reads maps with the same facility and speed that she reads books. She can instantly see what’s north, what’s south, what’s what and what’s where.
‘OK, it’s four blocks this way,’ she said confidently. ‘Then we take a right and it’s six blocks to Barneys. It’ll be good to walk – to get our bearings.’
The sky was Hockney blue and the pavements a refulgent white as we strolled through Beverly Hills in the startling
sunshine. We passed Spanish-style haciendas and miniature mock-Tudor mansions with exquisitely manicured front lawns.
‘Unreal estate,’ muttered Amber, wonderingly.
‘Have you noticed?’ I said after a little while. ‘There are no other pedestrians. Isn’t it spooky?’ Indeed the sidewalks were as deserted as the Marie Celeste.
‘Everyone drives in LA,’ Amber explained. ‘This city was built for the car. Angelenos love their cars so much they drive from their bedrooms to their bathrooms.’
Twenty minutes later we pushed on the door of Barneys and wandered around surveying the merchandise with the enthusiasm of a couple of vampires at a blood transfusion centre.
‘Lovely stuff,’ drooled Amber as we scrutinised some gorgeous velvet scarves.
‘Do you have any questions for me today?’ enquired a sales assistant. She had descended on us with the same certainty of purpose with which a hawk might swoop on a rabbit.
‘Do you have any questions for me today?’ she repeated pleasantly.
‘Questions?’ I said quizzically. What on earth did she mean?
‘Yes. Questions.’
Ah.
This was sales patter, LA-style. ‘Do you have any questions for me?’ the woman tried again.
‘Well, is there a God?’ enquired Amber facetiously. ‘How close are we to commercial space travel? And where might we find the lift to the rooftop café?’
‘We must be
polite
,’ I hissed as we walked away. ‘Americans are very courteous and civil. I don’t think we should be sarcastic to them. It’s not nice.’
‘Don’t lecture me about being nice, Minty. If it wasn’t for you being
not
nice we wouldn’t be here at all!’
This was true. The lift deposited us on the fifth floor at the Greengrass Café. We took a table outside, drank in the sweeping view, then got down to some strenuous eavesdropping while we sipped our Mocha frappuccinos. Amber was right –
this was a good place to start. The air was buzzing with showbizzy badinage.
‘– Kevin will never buy it.’
‘– Not less than eight million.’
‘– friend of Calista’s.’
‘– I think it’s a really great script.’
‘– Not really BO.’
‘BO?’ I whispered to Amber. ‘What’s that?’
‘Box Office,’ she explained knowledgeably, waving a copy of
Hollywood Reporter
at me. ‘Not body odour,’ she added.
Certainly not. Everyone smelt wonderful. Scentsational. And they were dressed with the easy, affluent elegance you find in Cannes or Nice. They were all Pradaed and Karanned. Guccied and Vuittonned. Bodies toned and tanned, gymmed and slimmed – eyelids and jawlines trimmed. We couldn’t approach these people in a million years.
‘Oh dear!’ Amber exclaimed theatrically, as she ‘accidentally’ dropped her sunglasses at the feet of the middle-aged man seated at the next table. He politely retrieved them and handed them back, and within thirty seconds she had told him all about the purpose of our visit.
‘Can you offer us any tips as to how we might find our friend?’ Amber enquired. Her considerable charms were not lost on the man, whose name was Michael, and he seemed only too happy to help.
‘Who’s his agent?’ he asked. ‘That’s the first thing you’d need to know.’
‘Well, he hasn’t got one,’ I explained. ‘He sacked his British agent. He said he was going to sell the film script himself.’
‘I see. Well, he’ll be lucky,’ Michael said. ‘That’s
extremely
hard to do in this town.’
‘But it’s a wonderful story,’ I said.
‘That’s what they all say,’ he replied with a breezy laugh.
‘No, it really is. You see, it’s set in Poland after the war, and it’s about a little autistic boy who’s completely locked in. And what happens, right, is that the boy befriends this stray dog, which has got lost in the snow, and through his friendship
with this dog, the boy’s condition gradually starts to improve and he eventually learns how to speak. And loads of other things happen too, to do with the aftermath of the war, but basically it’s about the way animals can open doors in human minds.’
‘It does sound interesting.’
‘It’s wonderful. And very moving too. It’s taken from his novel,’ I explained. ‘His name’s Joe Bridges, by the way. He’s English. And I’m trying to find him.’
‘Are you in the business?’ asked Amber.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘What do you do?’
‘I work at Paramount.’
‘Do you have any advice on how we can find Joe?’ I said with a sigh.
‘Well, you should contact the agencies,’ he replied, ‘because that’s what he’d be doing. He’d be cold-calling them, trying to set up meetings.’
‘Which ones?’ I asked him as I got out my pen and pad.