‘Would you care to elaborate?’
‘I’m not sure I can, much,’ said Tish. ‘My brother’s choices have never made a lot of sense to me. But you know, running an estate is hard work. I’m afraid that “incredible house” I live in has an incredible appetite for money. You wouldn’t believe how much it costs to run.’
‘Oh, you’d be surprised,’ said Dorian, biting a chunk out of the warm bread the waitress had left on the table. He gave Tish a brief potted history of his own Romanian background, and how he’d come to inherit the long-lost family Schloss. Tish noticed the way his eyes lit up when he spoke about the castle and its treasures, and the way the light faded when he mentioned his wife, and how hard Chrissie had found the transition to life in Transylvania.
‘She’s an actress, you know, so she has that temperament.’
Tish didn’t know, but nodded understandingly anyway.
‘There’s a part of her that still craves excitement and adventure,’ explained Dorian. ‘The Schloss is indescribably beautiful, but it can be lonely, especially when I’m away and Chrissie’s on her own with Saskia.’
‘Saskia?’
‘Our daughter.’ Dorian picked up the last remaining mussel from his bowl and sucked it out of its shell. ‘She’s three.’
Tish thought it odd that they’d been talking about his family life in Romania for fifteen minutes, and this was the first time he’d mentioned a child. ‘You must miss her.’
‘Sure,’ he said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. Reaching in his wallet, he pulled out a photograph and handed it to Tish. She expected to see a little girl’s picture, but instead it was a professional headshot of an attractive blonde woman with tough, slightly angular features. To Tish’s eyes, the woman in the photograph looked cold as ice, but maybe it was just a bad picture.
‘Chrissie,’ said Dorian proudly. ‘Stunning, isn’t she?’
‘Gorgeous,’ lied Tish, wondering if Michel carried Fleur’s picture around in his wallet and showed it to every stranger he encountered. I have to stop thinking about Michel.
‘Tell me about Curcubeu,’ said Dorian, abruptly changing the subject. ‘What exactly is your work there?’
‘Anything and everything,’ said Tish. ‘There’s so much need.’ And she was off, waxing lyrical about the failings of the Romanian government and the shameful neglect of the country’s abandoned children.
‘That’s incredibly impressive,’ said Dorian when she’d finished, ordering a sticky toffee pudding to share and a second bottle of wine, despite Tish’s protests. ‘Not many girls your age would give up a life of privilege back home to go and do something like that.’
Tish frowned. ‘You mustn’t think me some sort of saint. I like the work. Oradea’s a dump, but Romania’s got some strange magic to it, something that keeps drawing you back there – despite the corruption and the bureaucracy and the godawful winters. But I imagine I don’t need to tell you that.’
‘No.’ Dorian smiled.
‘Strange, isn’t it, our paths crossing like this?’ said Tish. ‘And both of us having a Romanian connection?’
They talked solidly for another hour and a half, about Romania, life and literature – Tish had almost as encyclopaedic a knowledge of the Brontë sisters’ work as Dorian did, and could practically recite Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre – and about Viorel Hudson and Sabrina Leon, Dorian’s Heathcliff and Cathy.
‘Viorel has a Romanian connection too, doesn’t he?’ asked Tish.
‘You might not want to bring that up when you meet him,’ warned Dorian. ‘I tried, but Hudson has a low opinion of the motherland.’
Tish, who spent her life in Romanian orphanages like the one she assumed Viorel Hudson had been dumped in, didn’t blame him.
‘I’ll say this for him, though: he’s a terrific actor,’ said Dorian. ‘The minute I thought about doing this movie, I knew I wanted to cast Viorel. He was born for the role.’
‘And Sabrina?’ asked Tish. ‘I’ve only ever seen her in gossip magazines, so I don’t know if she’s a good actress or not, but she doesn’t look like an obvious choice for Cathy.’
‘Not looks-wise, perhaps. But if you want someone as wilful and spoiled and frankly insane as Catherine Earnshaw, Sabrina’s your girl.’
‘Catherine wasn’t insane,’ protested Tish. ‘She was sensible. She chose a decent man over a wicked one.’
Dorian looked at Tish quizzically. ‘You admire that, do you? Being sensible rather than passionate?’
Tish blushed. ‘I think passion can be overrated.’ Suddenly the conversation seemed to have taken a rather personal turn. ‘But I suppose, in an ideal world, one wouldn’t have to choose.’
There was an awkward silence. Tish changed the subject.
‘Is she as pretty as she looks in the pictures?’
‘Sabrina? About a hundred times prettier,’ said Dorian truthfully. ‘That’s part of the problem. For Sabrina and Cathy.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just that when you look like that, no one ever says no to you.’
By the time they left it was almost midnight.
‘I’ll drive if you like,’ said Dorian.
Remembering the sound of his gear-changing when he’d arrived this morning, not to mention the fact that the drive from Manchester had taken him three and a half hours, Tish declined the offer.
‘That’s OK,’ she said. ‘You drank all that second bottle so you’re definitely over the limit.’
They made it back to Loxley without incident. Tish took them home the back way, via Home Farm, which looked even dourer, bleaker and more soul-wrenching by moonlight. Dorian’s heart leapt at the sight of it. That’s my Wuthering Heights. He’d been dreaming this movie for two years now. Today, he’d felt as though he was walking into his own dream. Tomorrow, he would spend all day up at the farm, measuring light and distance and planning the exterior long-shots with Chuck and the camera crew. He couldn’t wait.
‘I’m sorry about all the disruption,’ he said to Tish once they got back to the house. ‘There’ll be a few days of craziness, but once the cast get here next week and we start shooting on a regular schedule, everything should calm down. We’ll try not to get under your feet too much.’
‘You mustn’t worry about me,’ said Tish. ‘Abel and I are quite used to chaos, believe me. Besides, you’ve paid for the house. For the next eight weeks you must consider it yours.’
‘Thank you,’ said Dorian, kissing her on the cheek. ‘Good night.’
Ten minutes later, tucked up in her own bed, Tish reflected on how strange life could be. The very fact of someone coming to Loxley Hall to shoot a film in the first place was unlikely enough. But that that person should turn out to be a Romanian … how small-worldy was that? She didn’t really believe in fate. And yet it did seem uncanny that Dorian Rasmirez should have found his way to Loxley and, in a very real sense, saved them from falling into the abyss. My knight in shining armour.
Wriggling her toes under the blankets, luxuriating in the warmth of her bed, she thought about Dorian’s kind, animated face, the odd mixture of anxiety and love with which he’d spoken about his wife, and his strange detachment from his daughter. After weeks of worrying what he’d be like, she was relieved and surprised to find that she liked him.
Perhaps this summer wasn’t going to be such an ordeal after all?
CHAPTER TEN
Sabrina Leon adjusted her new Prada aviators and arranged her hair into tousled, rock-chick perfection. Heathrow was Sabrina’s second favourite airport in the world after LAX. There was always a scrum of paparazzi waiting for her when she walked through the electric double doors at terminal three, reminding her that she was still famous, still relevant, still alive. If anything, the Brits worshipped celebrity even more than the Americans, although they certainly delighted in seeing the mighty fallen. Sabrina was prepared for the inevitable heckles, and the pasting she was certain to get at the hands of the British tablo
id press. In fact, she was looking forward to it. After three weeks of ‘lying low’, as her agent called it (playing dead, more like it), immersing herself in Sacha Gervasi’s brilliantly written screenplay till she was so gorged on Cathy Earnshaw she could have barfed out her lines, Sabrina was ready for some attention. At Heathrow she knew she would get it, and she wasn’t about to walk through customs till she was sure she looked like a total fucking vixen.
Write what you want about me, you bastards, but you’re not getting a bad picture.
‘You got everything?’
Billy, Sabrina’s Irish bodyguard of the past tumultuous four years, nodded from behind a trolley piled high with Louis Vuitton suitcases. Sabrina had brought two bodyguards with her to England: Billy, who was really more of a friend and had been a total rock since her life turned to shit earlier this year; and Enrique, an enormous hunk of Hispanic muscle who had the brain power of a special-needs rabbit and the quick reactions to match, but who looked good in photos and could always be relied upon to act as an impromptu human dildo should Sabrina find herself in need of one. She usually travelled with at least four guards, as well as Camille and Sean, her two closest hangers-on (officially her ‘stylist’ and ‘personal advisor’), but she knew Rasmirez would have a fit if she brought anything resembling an entourage onto his set. The guy was so tediously holier-than-thou about keeping things low-key, not to mention obsessed with secrecy and having as few bodies as possible on the production. ‘Fewer people means less chance of leaks,’ he’d told Sabrina endlessly, like the world’s preachiest parrot. He’d only divulged the movie’s location to his actors forty-eight hours ago, expecting them to drop everything and get on a plane like a bunch of lemmings.
‘All set, ma’am.’ Billy’s gentle brogue was reassuring. ‘You sure you’re ready for this, now? D’you want me to go in front?’
‘No,’ said Sabrina, her dark eyes glinting with a combination of fear and excitement. ‘I can handle it.’
As it turned out, she couldn’t.
The arrivals hall was complete insanity. A zoo of photographers and reporters literally trampled people underfoot, knocking their cameras into mothers and children and elderly people in their desperation to get to Sabrina. Meanwhile, from all sides, reporters screamed out inflammatory questions, desperate to get a reaction that they could spin into a story.
‘Is it true you’ve come to Britain because no American director will work with you?’
‘Dorian Rasmirez is American, asshole,’ Sabrina shot back.
‘What were you in rehab for, Sabrina?’
‘Exhaustion.’
‘Are you an alcoholic?’
‘No. Are you a moron?’
‘Is it true you were being treated for sex addiction? How many men have you slept with?’
‘Six thousand. That’s why I was exhausted.’
A few of the reporters did at least laugh at that.
‘Have you anything to say to the black community of this country, after your offensive remarks about slavery?’
The press pack was moving in closer. Suddenly Sabrina felt panicked. There were no police, no security at all to protect her. Billy and Enrique were the only things standing between her and being torn to shreds, or at least that was how it felt. Her heart rate quickened and her palms began to sweat.
‘Fuck off,’ she snarled, edging closer to Enrique, who wrapped a tree-trunk-like arm around her tiny shoulders. A cacophony of cameras whirred into action: click click click.
Meanwhile, Billy moved forward, using the luggage trolley as a defensive shield. ‘Give her some space please, guys.’ A seasoned professional, he knew that firm politeness worked a lot better than aggression in these circumstances, and wondered if Sabrina would ever learn to keep her mouth shut. The sad thing was that – for all her stupid outbursts – she wasn’t actually a bad kid. Just scared and insecure as hell, like most actresses.
Finally, they made it outside the terminal building, where a blacked-out limo was waiting for them. Enrique bundled Sabrina inside, lifting her up one-handed and stuffing her into the back seat like a rag doll, simultaneously pushing back two photographers with his other hand. Sabrina put her head down between her knees and waited for all the banging and shouting to stop. Even once the car pulled away, with Billy in the front seat shouting ‘Go, go, go!’ at the driver like a marine heading into battle, she looked up to see grown men chasing after them like a pack of slavering hyenas, the flashes on their cameras hopelessly pop-pop-popping as the car gained speed.
Only once they’d reached the motorway did Sabrina sit up and take a breath.
‘Well that was fucking crazy.’
Billy turned around and gave her a disapproving look. ‘You shouldn’t have said anything, you know,’ he said. ‘They’ll use it against you.’
‘They were attacking me!’ protested Sabrina. ‘If you guys hadn’t been there they’d have torn me limb from fucking limb. You saw it.’
‘Yeah. We did. But whoever sees those pictures in tomorrow’s papers won’t have seen it. All they’ll see is you lashing out and swearing. Is it really that hard to put your head down and say nothing?’
Yeah, thought Sabrina. It is. For me it is. I’ve always been a fighter. If I hadn’t fought back, I’d still be in Fresno, pumping some shit into my arm and getting molested by assholes who knew they could get away with it.
Leaning against Enrique’s chest, she felt comforted by the size and smell of him. The awareness of his strength and closeness, combined with her own wildly pumping adrenaline, suddenly gave her a rush of desire. If only they were alone, she’d pull over somewhere and have him take her right there on the back seat. Screw all the fear and tension out of her head.
But sadly they weren’t alone. They were with Billy who, as usual, was right. She shouldn’t have said anything to the reporters. This movie was her chance, her comeback, her lifeboat back to adulation. She’d already agreed to spend the entire summer holed up in Butt-Fuck Nowhere England with a director who clearly hated her and Vain-o-rel ‘you’re in my light’ Hudson as a co-star, for no pay. So the idea that she might have screwed things up for herself before she’d even reached the set filled her with frustration and dread.
‘How long till we get there?’ she asked morosely.
‘According to the sat-nav, three hours,’ said Billy. ‘Here.’ He threw a pillow into the back seat. ‘Put Mr Muscle down for five minutes and try and get some sleep.’
‘What do you think?’
Viorel looked across Loxley’s deer park to the house in the distance. It was still early morning, and a low, dawn mist hung over the grass like a gossamer shroud. In the air he could smell scents at once deeply familiar and long forgotten – wood smoke, mown grass, rain, honeysuckle – smells of the English countryside. It felt bizarre to be standing here next to Dorian Rasmirez, of all people, with the director holding out his hand like a proud father, as if the exquisite Elizabethan manor were his home and not some movie location he’d rented by the hour.
‘I think it’s perfect,’ said Vio. ‘Quintessentially English. Merchant Ivory couldn’t have dreamed this place up.’
He’d arrived from LA very late last night and gone straight to his room to crash. The housekeeper who’d shown him where he’d be sleeping was a real blast from his boarding-school past, a bossy, no-nonsense matron type who could not have been less impressed by Viorel’s movie-star status.
‘Clean towels are in the cupboard,’ she said brusquely. ‘Sheets are changed on Mondays, and if you want a cooked breakfast you need to be down by half-past eight.’ She was gone with a swish of her tartan dressing gown before Viorel had a chance to ask her her name, let alone where breakfast would be served, or whether she had such a thing as an alarm clock. As it turned out, he didn’t need one. After a fitful night’s sleep on a bed that seemed to have been fashioned out of a solid slab of granite, he woke before dawn to the sound of rooks cawing in the trees and had to pinch himself in order t
o remember that this was not in fact 1996, he was not in his bedroom in Martha Hudson’s Dorset rectory, and that his fabulous LA life, fame and success were not merely a beautiful dream from which he had just woken up.
After a cold shower (no hot water till seven, he later learned), he pulled on a pair of vintage Levis and a blue silk Armani sweater and headed downstairs in search of the kitchen and a cup of coffee. Everyone else was asleep, so the house was quiet and gloomy. It took Vio a while to get his bearings. The place was enormous, a veritable maze of corridors, with servants’ staircases popping up in unexpected places and leading you into another section of the rabbit warren. Vio had been in hundreds of similar houses growing up: grand, old, down-at-heel. Hundreds of bedrooms, no bathrooms. Everyone living in the kitchen. But his memories of England had not been happy ones, and the familiarity of Loxley Hall made him more queasy than it did nostalgic.
Once he found the kitchen, however, he perked up. It was cheerful and bright, with a large jug full of daffodils on the table and a child’s scribbled artwork Blu-tacked to the cupboards. There was real coffee in the fridge, and bacon, and someone had helpfully left a sliced white Hovis loaf and a frying pan out on the table. Two bacon sandwiches and a mug of coffee later, feeling infinitely revived, Vio was just about to explore outside when he ran into Dorian, another early riser. They agreed to take a walk together.
‘Wait till you see the farmhouse,’ said Dorian excitedly. ‘It’s like they designed the thing to Brontë’s exact specifications. You’ll love it.’
Vio followed him down a steeply sloping sheep track.
‘You can cross the river at the bottom,’ Dorian panted over his shoulder. ‘Then it’s up the other side and over the hill.’
‘What are the family like?’ asked Vio, making conversation as they trudged along. ‘They’re living here for the duration, I gather? That’s a bit unorthodox, isn’t it?’