Kiss Heaven Goodbye

Suddenly Alex had déjà vu so powerful he shivered. He was almost transported back to the Year Zero days and having almost exactly the same conversations with Emma.

‘Have you ever seen any evidence of that? Don’t you think those groupies would sell their stories to the tabloids in a heartbeat? Have you ever seen a pap shot of me out with another woman? Have you ever caught me feeling up Courtney Love?’

Melissa looked out of the dark window, slowly shaking her head. ‘Justin is gay,’ she said quietly.

‘What?’ he said, glancing at her. Was she kidding? He’d heard the gay rumours before, of course – and not just about Justin Coe. If you listened to the gossip, half of Hollywood’s leading men swung the other way. And some of the gossip was true. The ‘commitmentphobe’ heart-throb who was never without a model, starlet or waitress at his side but who actually had a long-term boyfriend he was deeply in love with. Or the happily married action star who had a secret life cruising Sunset Boulevard and taking discreet male lovers. But Justin . . . He just couldn’t believe it.

‘Justin Coe isn’t gay. Isn’t he supposed to be secretly engaged to that bird off that sitcom?’

‘It’s the best-kept secret in Hollywood, but yes, Justin is gay.’

He frowned at her, wanting to believe her, but not sure.

‘How do you know?’

‘Because he told me!’ she cried, exasperated.

‘Oh,’ said Alex, feeling his cheeks flare. ‘Really? I have to say I’m surprised.’

He thought for a moment. ‘So why did he have his hand . . .’

‘We were acting, Alex! We’re actors! It’s what we do!’

‘All right, all right, I get the message,’ said Alex. ‘I’m sorry, I just thought . . .’

‘I know what you thought, baby,’ she said, scratching him behind his ear. ‘But I think it’s about time you started trusting me. Justin thinks I’ll be perfect as Danielle, and frankly so do I. I need to be creatively stretched, Alex. I need to reach my potential. I don’t want to be the sexy blonde for the rest of my career. I want to win awards, I want to be Meryl Streep . . .’

He put his foot down on the gas pedal, gunning the engine. He didn’t want to hear the rest.

52

August 2006

After the huge publicity from shooting two of Alex Doyle’s platinum-selling album sleeves, Grace’s photographic career took off like a rocket. She was constantly in demand to shoot magazine covers and for editorial spreads and private commissions. Above all, she loved doing portraiture, not the volumes of celebrity stuff that was regularly sent her way, but what she called ‘real-life people’: farmers in the fields, single mothers on sink estates, scientists at work in their laboratories. She loved capturing the lines on their faces, the expressions in their eyes, hoping her camera could reveal their inner secrets.

Today she was doing a portfolio for Rive magazine called ‘Bright Young Things’, subtitled ‘A snapshot of the new millennium’s gilded youth’. She was about to turn the job down – the Toddington Hall renovations desperately needed her full attention – when she got a call from Olivia saying that she had been chosen to appear in the very same photo story. Although she wasn’t too pleased with her daughter being described as ‘gilded youth’, Grace had thought it wise to oversee her modelling debut, so had agreed to the commission.

‘Let me look. Let me look!’

Olivia came running across the grass of Davidson House, a bucolic Georgian manor on the outskirts of London. In skin-tight jeans, huge wedge platforms and floaty white Chloe top, it was no surprise she had been chosen for the shoot. With her long dark hair and huge green eyes, she was growing into a very beautiful young woman, thought Grace with a sense of pride. She handed Olivia the Polaroid of the shot she had just taken; six Bright Young Things, the twin daughters of a rock star, a handsome eighteen-year-old lord who starred in the latest Abercrombie and Fitch campaign, two pretty actresses and Olivia playing croquet with gold balls on the front lawns.

‘Wow, I look amazing!’ said Olivia. ‘Can you make my boobs a bit bigger when you make up the prints?’ she said hopefully.

‘No I will not,’ said Grace.

‘Please, Mum. I’ve already been in touch with a modelling agency, and they want me to send some photographs in. They’re going to freak when they know I’ve already done a Rive editorial. The work will just pile in.’

Grace took a deep breath. It was clear from Olivia’s school reports that she was not going to be an academic, not through a lack of intelligence but from an absence of interest in anything beyond make-up and fashion magazines.

‘Olivia, we’ve talk

ed about modelling before,’ she said. ‘You’re fourteen years old and I think you should be concentrating on your GCSEs and all the stuff you love at school. What about the tennis team and the film club?’

Olivia rolled her eyes. ‘I haven’t done those things for ages, Mum. They’re so boring.’

‘Well, I think you’re too young to model.’

‘Julian says loads of models are my age.’