Mad-for-it, foul-mouthed, kind-hearted Rita. She’d been dumped more often than she cared to remember but always seemed to bounce back. But Frankie had no best mate to help her bounce back. Rita was on the other side of the Atlantic. Miles away. Which is exactly where she wanted to be. Miles away from the whole sorry mess that her life had turned into . . .
And that’s when the embryo of the idea was conceived and, as it grew bigger, and bigger, it triggered off an unexpected endorphinal rush of defiance. Sod Hugh. Sod Lifestyle magazine. And sod the fact that she was nearly thirty. She wasn’t going to lie back and take everything that was thrown at her. She was going to do something. She was going to take control of her life for a change.
Wiping her eyes she picked up the phone and dialled Rita’s number. There was no one in, but Frankie left a garbled message on the voicemail. Rita was always inviting her out to Los Angeles. Well, now she was going to take her up on the offer. Her mind was made up. If Hugh wanted space he could have it. Six thousand bloody miles of it.
7
With a muffled thud, the wheels of the 747 touched down on the tarmac and, decelerating sharply, the plane jolted noisily along the runway. The sudden impact woke Frankie from a deep, dream-riddled sleep. Opening her eyes, she squinted as the bright sunshine glared in through the rows of oval-shaped windows, throwing spotlight beams across her face. Groggy from nearly ten hours of uninterrupted unconsciousness, she blinked a few times, trying to focus on her surroundings. For a brief moment she didn’t know where she was, couldn’t work out what was happening, then suddenly she heard the plummy voice of the British Airways captain over the loudspeaker.
‘The time is twelve-thirty p.m. and the temperature outside is 87 Fahrenheit. Welcome to a hot and sunny Los Angeles, ladies and gentlemen.’
Los Angeles! Thrusting herself forward in her seat, Frankie peered out of the window. Above her the sky was hazy with sunshine and smog, while ahead LAX shimmered in the heat like a mirage. But it wasn’t. This was for real. This was Los Angeles.
It was hard to take in. Only last night she’d been in London, sorting through drawers full of sentimental junk – old cinema tickets, champagne corks, dried rose petals from last year’s Valentine’s bouquet – and trying not to get weepy as she’d turned the pages of photo albums. Only hours since she’d called British Airways’ twenty-four-hour reservation line, maxed-out her credit cards and bought a ticket to LA, then yanked her battered suitcases out from underneath the bed and hastily stuffed them with an assortment of clothes, shoes and God knows what else.
Dawn had broken with the sound of the minicab honking his horn outside in the street below and she’d locked the front door, put her keys through the letter box and clambered into the back seat. Arriving at Heathrow as the check-in desk was opening, she’d been greeted by the uniformed ground staff, bleary-eyed beneath their carefully applied masks of blusher and lipstick, and, without hesitation, signed the credit card slip and collected her ticket. Only then had the adrenalin stopped pumping, allowing her to stop and think about what she was doing. It was all very well packing her bags and flouncing off to LA – it was strong, it was decisive, it showed she had balls, initiative, an I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude. It was her way of singing Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ without having to do karaoke. But if she was so bloody strong, why did it feel as if her heart was breaking?
‘Will everyone please remain seated until the seat-belt sign is switched off,’ a red-faced steward pleaded frantically over the intercom, but his desperate attempts at crowd control fell on two hundred and fifty pairs of deaf ears. Like caged animals, irritable and impatient passengers began scrambling out of their seats, grabbing their hand luggage and pushing and shoving each other in the aisles, desperate to reach the exits and disembark a few vital minutes early.
Watching from the safety of her seat, Frankie glimpsed a Stetson bobbing about at the front of the plane. It was that arrogant American. Trust him to push forward.
Turning away, she stared out of the window. Unlike everybody else, she wasn’t so eager to get off the plane. Last night, shocked and upset, running away to LA had seemed like a good idea. Now, feeling homesick and hungover, she wasn’t so sure.
She’d only ever seen LA in the movies and on TV, when they showed the lifestyles of the rich and famous. From what she’d gathered, it was glamorous and glossy and inhabited by exercise-mad, health-obsessed, surgically altered people who drove around all day long in stretch limos with tinted windows. A city where women needed to have one of two things: a skinny body with giant-sized silicone breasts or a very old boyfriend with a very fat wallet. She had neither. She was now a very single 34B, who wore jeans and woolly jumpers, had a rapidly wilting bottom – in LA you were meant to have buns instead of bottoms – and enough cellulite to believe G-strings should carry a mental health warning. OK, so she had gym membership, but her workout consisted of twenty minutes in the jacuzzi, three times a month, and on top of all that she ate chocolate, got drunk, travelled by public transport, and the only surgery she’d had was to remove her tonsils when she was nine. Frankie closed her eyes again: this could all be one very big mistake.
LAX was a rabbit warren of corridors and moving walkways. Like a rat in a laboratory experiment, Frankie turned corner after corner before finally spotting the escalators that led down to baggage reclaim. Feeling relieved, she leaned wearily against the handrail. Below her, the tops of people’s heads became visible and, gliding downwards, she watched as their bodies gradually came into view. Only then did she realise that these masses of people were part of a queue – a roller coaster of a queue, an-August-Bank-Holiday-at-Alton-Towers of a queue – that zigzagged backwards and forwards around carefully erected barriers. This was Immigration.
Joining the end of the line, Frankie eyed the butch, uniformed guards with pudding-bowl haircuts and fingered her green form nervously. Would they be able to tell she was a desperate, dumped girlfriend, on the run from the dole, singledom and an ex-lover who went by the name of Hugh? She studied the other people around her – backpackers with well-thumbed guidebooks and Converse All-stars, families of four with fold-up pushchairs and pockets full of wet-wipes, businessmen with shiny leather briefcases and take-me-seriously laptops – before looking down at her laddered opaques and motley assortment of plastic-bag hand luggage. It didn’t look good.
Despite the number of people, the hall was eerily quiet as, one by one, jet-lagged tourists edged closer to the front of the line, trying to look all blasé and in holiday mode, while turning their immigration and customs forms into blotting paper in their sweaty palms. This wasn’t passport control, it was Russian Roulette. Impossible to tell who was going to be let in and who was going to be kept out. The seemingly random selection meant that while a tattooed, dope-smoking Hell’s Angel sauntered through without a hitch, an old dear with a blue rinse was gripped under her polyester, flowery-print armpits by two armed guards and frogmarched off into an interrogation room.
Frankie stood and awaited her fate, still reeling from the shock of Hugh’s bombshell. What the hell was she doing here? Everything had happened so quickly. One minute she had a job, then she didn’t – a boyfriend, then she didn’t – a home, then she didn’t. One minute she was in a London bowling alley, the next, Los Angeles Immigration. From the sublime to the ridiculous, and she didn’t know what the bloody hell to think. Did she want to be waved through, free to start a new life in LA? Or, bypassing the bravado, if she was honest with herself, would she rather be escorted on to the next plane bound for the UK and flown back to her old one?
‘Next in line.’
This was the moment of reckoning. Frankie was beckoned forward by an official wearing a tight beige uniform and a pair of Ray-Ban aviators. He looked like Poncherello from CHIPS.
‘And what is your reason for coming to the United States?’
Sitting behind his counter, Poncherello flicked suspiciously through her passport, pausing to stare at th
e unflattering mugshot she’d had taken in one of those crappy photo booths at Waterloo Station. Frankie peered over his shoulder, regretting her choice of the sickly blue curtain. She should have gone for the warmer orange.
‘A holiday,’ she lied, trying to pretend she was a jovial holidaymaker and not a jilted this-close-to-being-a-fiancée. Her acting was lousy, but it didn’t matter. At least it proved she wasn’t a wannabe actress, arriving in Los Angeles with dreams of becoming a film star. In other words, she wasn’t Rita, or a heroine from a Jackie Collins novel.
‘And how long do you plan to stay?’
Never once looking up, Poncherello began typing into his computer. Probably some central, worldwide Big Brotheresque computer that contained every detail about her life, from how much she’d spent at Tesco last week to her smear test results. In fact it was probably programmed to flash up any kind of criminal record or misdemeanour she’d committed. Frankie suddenly remembered the overdue video wedged down the back of the Habitat two-seater. Surely Blockbusters wouldn’t have access to this computer – would they? She crossed her fingers.
‘Erm, two weeks.’
Well, now was hardly the right time to blurt ‘For ever’, was it? She’d be strapped back into her BA economy seat before she’d even adjusted her bodyclock. And the more she thought about it, she had to stay. Going home just wasn’t an option – after all, there was nothing to go home for.
Lots more frenzied movements over the keyboard. Poncherello would have no difficulty passing one of those typing speed tests, mused Frankie who was still bristling from being informed by one of the trendy Soho temping agencies that they didn’t accept people who could only type with two fingers. Luckily it had been over the phone, otherwise she’d have been tempted to show them what else she could do with two fingers.
Finally Poncherello stopped typing and, stamping her passport, stapled something inside before scribbling lots of incoherent graffiti across the pages with his biro.
‘Enjoy your stay.’
His face never moved as he solemnly handed back the passport. Frankie smiled with relief. She wasn’t on the next plane home after all.
Waiting by the luggage carousels, she pulled out her compact mirror from the bottom of her make-up bag and, angling it towards the light, peered at herself. My God. She looked about eighty. The pressurised cabin and a week’s worth of alcohol units had left her with dry, dehydrated skin and two piggy little eyes. Frankie felt even more depressed. How was it that celebrities could spend their life circumnavigating the globe and still manage to waft through international airports looking all chichi in leopard-skin mules and dark glasses, with their skin fresh and dewy? She’d only taken one transatlantic flight and her face looked as if it had been freeze-dried.
Gloomily holding the mirror with one hand and prodding her face to see if she actually had any cheekbones, she suddenly caught sight of that horrible American bloke again, staring at her from over the opposite side of the carousel. Embarrassed, she snapped the compact shut, wishing she too had a pair of dark glasses to hand. In fact any kind of disguise would do, just as long as she was unrecognisable. Now she’d reverted to her usual, sensible, sober self, just thinking about how she’d been wheeled, kicking and screaming, through Heathrow made her cringe with humiliation. No wonder the guy was gawping at her. He must have thought she was off her trolley, not on it.
Ignoring his gaze, Frankie defensively grabbed hold of her cart – well, she was in the States now – and moved closer to where the suitcases were about to begin spewing from the chute. The sooner she got out of there, the better. There was a heavy thud and the first suitcase made its entrance, its black vinyl chest puffed out with pride. Jesus, it was hers! Frankie was gobsmacked. In all her years of air travel, she’d always been one of the last remaining straggle of forlorn passengers, forced to watch a pair of skis and a bashed-up ‘handle with care’ box trundle round and round on the carousel, as she waited with mounting desperation for her holdall. Never, ever had she been in the hallowed position of seeing her luggage cross the finishing line first.
Feeling that her luck had changed, she grabbed her suitcases, breezed through Customs and pushed onwards and upwards towards the exit. Excitement stirred as the automatic doors slid open and she was suddenly greeted by crowds of people hanging over the railings, holding up cards with names or bunches of flowers for loved ones. For a brief moment she wished Hugh was there to meet her, but she caught herself. It was over, she had to forget about him.
Standing on tiptoes, Frankie looked over heads, scanning the arrivals hall. There was no sign of Rita. Maybe she was late, maybe she’d never got the message, maybe . . .
Frankie pushed through groups of people wearing T-shirts’n’shorts, Santa Monica suntans and Persol sunglasses, jangling their car keys, talking on cellphones, drinking from giant-size cups of Coca-Cola. Everything was big, bright and noisy. The collective buzz of a hundred conversations echoed loudly around her. It felt weird hearing so many American accents, as if she’d suddenly found herself on a film set.
Walking over to the smoked-glass windows, she leaned against the wall, feeling the currents of air from outside waft past her, hot and humid against the coolness of the air-conditioning. She stifled a yawn. Her jet lag had kicked in full-time and she wished Rita would hurry up. She knew it was a vain hope. Rita’s timekeeping was a law unto itself. She probably wouldn’t be there for hours . . .
This depressing thought was just sinking in when she heard a familiar noise. Normally it irritated the hell out of her, now it was music to her ears.
‘Yoohoo.’
It echoed around the arrivals hall, bouncing off the walls like a demented cuckoo clock.
‘Yoohoo.’
It grew louder until, like the biblical parting of the waves, the crowds split and through the middle cantered a five-foot-nothing redhead in velvet hotpants and three-inch platforms.
8
‘Blimey, sorry I’m late. The traffic was a ruddy nightmare!’
Flustering and out of breath, Rita impatiently pushed behind her ear a chunk of scarlet hair that had escaped from her ponytail and began tugging at the sides of her shorts, which were fast disappearing up the cheeks of her bum.
‘Still, better late than never.’
Breaking into a grin, she stopped yanking down her hotpants and, as if suddenly remembering where she was and why she was there, threw her arms around Frankie’s waist and began shrieking like a Catherine wheel, ‘I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you’re here!’
Frankie smiled weakly, pinned to the polished floor of Arrivals by Rita’s enthusiastic welcome. Neither could she.
They finished wedging Frankie’s luggage into the boot of Rita’s car – a baby-blue 1950s Thunderbird convertible that stretched out its fabulous fin-tailed limbs along the side of the kerb. Frankie had never seen anything quite like it. It was lean and about twenty feet long. A far cry from the beaten-up Mini that Rita used to bomb around in at home.
Noticing her look of wide-eyed amazement, Rita grinned. ‘So what do you think of the new motor? I figured if I was going to be a Hollywood actress, I better start looking like one.’ Throwing herself across the bonnet, she struck a classic Rita Hayworth pose – leg up, chest out. ‘Suits me, don’t you think?’
Frankie nodded. She had to agree. It had Rita written all over it.
‘So, is that the lot then?’ Rita slammed the boot shut and slid into the driver’s seat.
‘Nearly,’ sighed Frankie, ‘I’ve just got to pop back inside and get one more piece of luggage. Won’t be a minute.’ She disappeared through the airport’s sliding doors.
Waiting in the car, Rita carefully reapplied her brick-red lipstick in the rear-view mirror and, slipping on her sunglasses, began trying out different acting poses for an audition she had later that week: a vulnerable shy-Di head dip, a sultry over-the-shoulder Marilyn pout; a bags-of-confidence, straight-at-the-camera Madonna smile. She was just about to attem
pt a tearful Oscar-winning Gwyneth Paltrow lip tremble when she caught sight of a gorgeous bloke walking up behind, laden with luggage. Angling the mirror to get a better look, she watched as he strode by the car. Doing a shy-Di head dip, she smiled. He smiled back and carried on walking. Rita’s tongue was practically hanging out. Fucking hell, who was he? Talk about sex on legs. She stared lustfully as he began loading his bags into a taxi, eyeing up his bum, his broad shoulders, the tufts of hair escaping from underneath his beaten-up old Stetson. ‘Easy, cowboy,’ she muttered, giving free rein to her wild imagination and picturing herself doing a spot of bareback riding.
Watching the cab pull out, she followed its progress through the traffic. It was just disappearing out of the airport when Frankie re-emerged carrying something large and bulky, partially concealed by a vinyl cover.
‘Bloody hell, what’ve you got in there? The kitchen sink?’ Tearing herself away from her X-rated daydreams, Rita balanced her sunglasses on the end of her upturned nose and peered at Frankie. ‘How much stuff do you need for a two-week holiday?’
Frankie hesitated, looking more than a little anxious. ‘Actually, I was going to tell you earlier . . .’
‘Tell me what?’ Seemingly oblivious of Frankie’s unease, Rita started fiddling with dials of the original 1950s radio, trying to tune in to a station.
‘I was thinking of staying a bit longer.’