Beautiful People (15 page)

    As James went back down the stairs, an unfamiliar smell surged round his nostrils. Making his way along the threadbare sisal of the passage into the kitchen, James now discovered the source of the mysterious, but by no means unpleasant, scent.

    It was baking. The sweet, warm, rich smell of cakes cooking. He hadn't recognised it because cakes were so rarely cooked in their house. Whenever needed, they were bought in from whatever modish bakery enjoyed Vanessa's favour at the time.

    James's stomach gave a mighty rumble. He loved homemade cakes, and the sight that greeted him now was not only a fantasy made reality, but as if someone had, in one fell swoop, sought to make up for the baking deficit of years in their particular kitchen.

    Every available surface—the table, the units, the cooker itself,

the top of the fridge—was covered in cupcakes in paper cases. Sixty at least, James swiftly calculated. All decorated, all in different ways. Some had the squodge of buttercream icing—a generous squodge too, James noted approvingly—and twin sponge wings of the traditional butterfly cake. Others were jam and cream splits. Some were covered in the sprinkles called hundreds and thousands, others with chocolate, still others with silver balls on top of icing that had a pinkish iridescent sparkle. James stared at the shining, glittering, glowing mass of sweet-scented cakes in childish wonder. It looked like heaven as a five-year-old might imagine it.

    The cakes on the table, James now saw with a more adult appreciation, had been particularly beautifully iced. They had that thick, flat, smooth professional look, some the pale pink of sugar almonds, some white. And with something iced on top of that—cat's faces, James recognised with a stab of delight. The pink ones had an outline in white, lovingly hand done, of a cat's face with silver sugar balls for eyes. The white ones had the same outline in pink.

    A tremor of pure joy now seized him as he noticed, at the back of the kitchen table, a large white cake in the shape of a cat's face, with eyes, nose, and whiskers in pink icing. Other details of fur and eyelashes had been added in the same iridescent pink sparkle—edible paint, James realised—he had spotted on top of the silver-ball cupcakes. Around the cake's edge was tied a fat, pale-pink satin ribbon, to which was attached a small silver bell. Four silver candles stood, two each side, among the whiskers.

    Hero was going to erupt with excitement. Her father felt almost tearful at the prospect.

    Hungry too. Everything looked so delicious. He hadn't had a homemade cake like this for years, and it seemed years, too, since the canteen bacon sandwich that had constituted today's scrappy office lunch. He reached for the nearest cake, which happened to be one of the butterfly ones, and quickly, furtively peeled off the wrapper.

    When Emma entered the kitchen, seconds later, the cake had just entered James's mouth.

    "Sorry," he floundered, his mouth full of crumbs. It was worth the shame however. The cupcake was delicious, every bit as sweet, fresh, and buttery as it looked. Substantial too, not like those cakes you bit into only to find your teeth instantly meeting, that seemed to contain nothing but gritty, sugary air.

    "Don't worry," Emma assured him. "There's plenty to go round. I'm expecting ten children tomorrow…"

    She moved to the sink.

    "Ten?"

    "Yes. For Hero's birthday. We're having a tea party." Emma looked up from stacking the dirty bowls on a small tray to transfer them to the dishwasher in the utility room. It wasn't the most convenient of washing-up arrangements, James knew, but alone of all the nannies he could remember, Emma hadn't complained about it.

    "A tea party?" James was aware that all he was doing was repeating everything Emma said, but he could not help it nonetheless.

    As she looked up, nodded, and smiled, a hank of reddish-brown hair dislodged from the rest and fell fetchingly across her face. "It seemed the easiest thing," Emma said, rather breathlessly. "From what I gather from Vanessa, birthdays had become a sort of torture for her…"

    James raised an eyebrow. Many things were a sort of torture for his wife.

    "And she hadn't got very far with organising Hero's. Obviously she's busy and everything," Emma added hastily. "But, of course, she was thinking about one of those expensive party places…" the nanny continued, her eyes wide and enthusiastic. "And I suggested that, really, that wasn't necessary. That she could save a fortune, and Hero would have a much nicer time if—well"—she shrugged and smiled—"we just had an afternoon birthday tea party at home for Hero's friends. With a few games. Old-fashioned, I know, but nice. Back to basics."

    James's eye flicked towards the glowing, glittering, pink-andwhite display of cakes. There was nothing remotely basic about those. Or if there was, it was his sort of basic. But as he rushed to the kitchen door to hold it open for her, a hideous thought struck him.

    "Who'll do the games?" He pictured himself standing, vainly shouting about Musical Chairs, in the middle of a pack of rioting children.

    Emma was looking at him in surprise. "Well, me, of course. Musical chairs, pass the parcel, that sort of thing. All quite straightforward."

    James stared at her. She was going up in his estimation all the time. Not only was she professionally super-competent and a marvellous cook, but she was possessed of astounding courage into the bargain.

    "You're wonderful," he exploded passionately, ears thumping too hard with excitement to hear the rattle of the front door. Just in time to hear him say this, Vanessa walked in.

Belle lay on the vast bed in the Portchester Hotel penthouse, clutching a bottle of champagne to her like a teddy bear. She was wreathed in creased linen and gloomy thoughts. So much so that she didn't hear the phone shrilling at first.

    "I'm ringing to remind you you've got an audition this morning," Mitch told Belle with a firmness that masked the worry he increasingly felt.

    He had hoped that, in the absence of a PA for Belle, the Portchester Hotel, prompted by him, could organize alarm calls, limos, and so forth.

    As indeed it could, in theory. And, according to the manager, actually had. The problem was that the hotel couldn't physically make Belle go to the auditions. From the sound of her voice during some of their phone conversations, Mitch suspected the limos just took Belle straight to the nearest bar.

    "You haven't forgotten about this audition?" he added suspiciously, into the silence.

    "No," Belle said in a tiny, sheepish voice that Mitch hardly recognised from the thundering complaints of old. "What is it?"

    "
Titus Andronicus."

    Mitch wanted to scream. She had forgotten, damn her. Meaning she wouldn't have learnt any of the lines. She'd have to get through the audition on star power alone, and her wattage was getting dimmer all the time.

    "What's the part?" Belle said sullenly. She sounded utterly unrepentant, Mitch thought. Not to mention ungrateful. He'd had to pull some serious strings to get the director to agree to see her. Word about Belle and auditions had clearly been getting around. Didn't she want to save her career?

    "A queen," he replied carefully. At least, he thought it was a queen. He had only had time to absorb the vaguest outline of the plot, which hadn't sounded too good. The high point of the part Belle was auditioning for was the character realising she has just eaten both her children in a pie. He decided not to draw this to his client's attention just now.

    "There's a limo for you downstairs, " Mitch urged, his wheedling tones spiked with impatience. "And the paparazzi too. Make sure you look good, yeah?"

    Belle took a final, resolve-stiffening swig of warm champagne, which went straight to her empty stomach. She could not remember the last time she had eaten—a proper meal, that was, instead of the skinny lattes and crackers which she normally got by on—any more than she could remember not having a hangover. Her head ached with one now. Low-level but persistent, like someone slowly levering her brain apart. She had a feeling they had become constant around the time that Christian left. But she could not be sure. She hadn't been sure of anything since then.

    She set to work to get ready. But a full face of redone make-up was more than she could be bothered to do. She wiped off the worst smudges from yesterday's mascara, pressed a powder puff to the shiniest bits of her cheeks and forehead, and reapplied her lipstick.

    She pulled unsteadily at the door of the walk-in wardrobe next to the vast and mirrored bathroom, staggered back as it flew unexpectedly open, and grabbed at the first thing which came to hand, a Diane von Furstenberg leopard-print wrap. She pulled her unwashed, unbrushed blonde mane into a ponytail with a black silk Chanel scarf and considered the effect in the dressingroom mirror.

    Bed hair wasn't very Californian, but it was quite London, where everyone seemed pretty scruffy. Or "edgy," as they apparently thought of it. Edgy was about the size of it, thought Belle. She'd felt edgy ever since she'd been in this god-damn city. She peered into the further, gloomier recesses of the cupboard, looking for a bag big enough to hide the three-quarters-finished bottle of champagne in. She needed something to help her through the audition.

    Her eye fell on the very thing. The new, shiny, orange leather Birkin she'd bought yesterday during her blitzkrieg on Bond Street. Various other purchases she had made stood elsewhere in the cupboard, still in their bags. Belle stared at them for a second or two, vainly trying to recall what any of them were.

    With a blast of strong perfume to disguise any smell of alcohol, she was ready. Swinging her bag defiantly, she walked out of the bedroom into the penthouse sitting room where Jacintha sat with Morning. Jacintha wore her usual disapproving expression. Seeing her, Sugar leapt to his feet and started yapping frenziedly; Jacintha's frown deepened. There was, Belle knew, no love lost between Morning's nanny and Sugar. Possibly even less than between Morning's nanny and herself.

    She bent, picked up Sugar, and, crooning softly to him, stuffed him in the Birkin along with the champagne bottle. Then she hurried out of the door, into the private penthouse lift, and down to the limo.

hadn't bothered snapping her. As she was wearing the same black tracksuit and shades as always, there was no point. Madonna was no fool; she knew the name of the game. Or the clothes of the game, at least, which was why, when she was out and about, she'd had on the same outfit for the last three years. To make the pictures look the same as they had for the last three years and render the image unsellable. It was a clever trick, and one all these celebrities who moaned about invasion of privacy would use if they really didn't want to be photographed.

    If they really wanted privacy, Ken thought, they'd stay in, like Liz Hurley and Charlotte Church did until they'd lost the weight after the baby. Or they'd disguise themselves. Properly, like David Bowie always did, travelling on the Tube wearing a pair of cheap sunglasses and reading a Turkish newspaper.

    At least Belle Murphy, whatever else one may think about her, made no bones about the fact she wanted the publicity. She gave good pose too. No one who had never seen a celebrity in full facing-thepaps mode, Ken knew, had any idea how the pictures that appeared in the newspapers were achieved. They imagined they were just shots that were snatched in a second, and, of course, some were.

    But the ones like Belle, the ones who really wanted it, left nothing to chance. Belle would stand there, absolutely still, for minutes on end. Then she would change position very carefully, very slowly, the dazzling smile held for an infinity, even as the flashes went off. And she never blinked when the lights flashed. She had built-in sunglasses in her eyes, that girl, Ken thought.

    Actually, she probably had. From the look of her, she had built-in everything else. Although not built-in famousness, as it turned out. Hers was on the wane, and although it had received a spike upwards from the adoption of the baby—always a good trick, that one—she was hardly big-time any more. Still, she was bigger time than most of the celebs about in London at the moment, which was why Ken was here.