Beautiful People (17 page)

    "Not really. I've been doing them in the evenings, after the children were in bed and I'd finished my coursework."

    "That green-grass thing looks expensive," Vanessa remarked next, starting to prowl around the room. Emma wondered whether Vanessa imagined landing her with an expenses bill for it.

    "It didn't cost anything," Emma assured her. "The greengrocer on the high street let me have it. You know, the one I take the children to sometimes…" She stopped short of adding "…because I was so shocked when I realised Cosmo had no idea what a zucchini was; Hero had never seen an aubergine; and neither of them were entirely sure about tomatoes."

    Vanessa was hardly listening. Her attention now was on the expected guests. Each cat, she saw, had a plate before it and a ribbon round its neck to which a bell and a label was attached. The ribbons were blue and pink: blue for the boy guests, pink for the girls.

    "Each guest has their own cat," Emma started to tell her. "They use the plate for their cakes…"

    "Hengist Westonbirt?" Vanessa was tweaking a blue ribbon. "As in Lord and Lady Westonbirt?"

    Encouraged by the leap of interest, even approval, in her employer's voice, Emma nodded. It puzzled her why, for all the efforts she made with the children, Vanessa only seemed to get crosser. It was almost as if the more effort she made, the crosser Vanessa got.

    Thank goodness, she had done something right there by inviting Hengist Westonbirt. She felt sorry for him; Hengist did, after all, have to suffer having the appalling Totty de Belvedere as his nanny.

    Remembering the tall, sneering, superior blonde with the tigerish yellow eyes, who always wore unfeasibly tight trousers, breast-revealing tops, and too much make-up, Emma hoped with all her heart that Totty, who would no doubt be delivering Hengist to the party, would not stay. Hopefully, none of the other nannies would stay.

    "I do hope Hengist's nanny stays," Vanessa observed as she sailed off upstairs for a lie-down. "I rather like that girl—Totty, is it? Great fun, I always think. Great style. And, of course, very grand. Her father's a duke, isn't that right?"

    Emma, as she positioned the last of the cats, felt the fun had rather gone out of things.

Belle had been poised to flee. After everyone had laughed—nastily—at her horror-movies remark, she had been about to turn on her mediumheight Chanel heel and leave. Athough whether back to the hotel or simply to the nearest bar, she had not yet decided. Then the blackpainted door at the end of the corridor had opened and someone had come in. At that point, Belle decided things were not quite so bad after all.

    The newcomer held something thick and short in his hand. A rolled-up copy of
Titus Andronicus
, Belle saw. She felt excitement pulse powerfully between her thighs. There was such a thing as a sexy British actor after all. One hundred percent solid, muscled, masculine, red-headed, mouthwatering, nipple-stiffening, gasp-making, rootin' tootin' prime beefcake.

    He was about the same build as Christian. Thick-necked, broadchested, and powerfully muscular, if rather paler and with red hair that tumbled about his shoulders in a thrillingly wild sort of way. His blue eyes—much paler than Christian's but just as striking— looked assessingly about as he moved. There was even a touch of anger about him, a resentful flash to that blue glance, that struck her as very exciting. Belle felt a catch in her throat.

    Niall too was finding it hard to believe what he saw. Among the drab and dreary drips in black—whom one found, for some reason, at every Shakespeare audition—was a woman in her early twenties in boots and a clingy leopard-skin dress. She had big blonde hair, big red lips, big black eyelashes, and tits, while not especially big, rammed up so high and hard they almost touched her chin.

    Touching her chin in actuality was the head of a small and nasty-looking brown dog with twitchy triangular ears and big, black, protruding eyes. It poked from the neck of an expensive-looking handbag, the sort that, Niall imagined, cost more than he had earned during the whole of the last month.

    "Hey," she said, in a husky voice directed straight at him, as if no one else in the room existed for her. Which, actually, they didn't. "Come and sit by me."

    Now, with a paparazzi-type flash of memory, Niall recognised her. He realised that celebrity magazine covers were exactly where he had last seen her. Even if you didn't buy them, as he didn't, avoiding her was impossible as she was a fixture on every newsstand. This was Belle Murphy, the American film star. The ultimate Hollywood bimbette.

    "Hi," she said, smiling at him. Between the forests of thickly mascara'd lashes, her pupils appeared a deep, unnatural green. "I'm Belle. Great to meet you."

    Well, it wasn't great to meet her, Niall thought. This woman represented everything he loathed most about the acting profession. If you could call what she did acting.

    "Hi," he grumbled.

    "What's your name?" She dimpled suggestively.

    "Niall." He gave her a hard stare.

    "I didn't realise you were French."

    "French?" It was hard not to burst out laughing at this, and Niall did not resist the urge to do so as contemptuously as possible. "I'm Scottish."

    "Wow. That's so cool. Scottish. Like Mel Gibson."

    "He's Australian, actually."

    "Isn't Scotland near Australia?"

    "No." This, crushingly. And, he hoped, finally.

    "Where in Scotland do you come from?" Belle asked next, brightly. "I think I've got some ancestors in Scotland. The Murphys?" she added, looking at him hopefully. "Do you know them?"

    "Glasgow," growled Niall, ignoring the last half of the question. Murphy, as everyone knew, was about as Irish a name as you could get. "I grew up on a council estate—a housing project to you," he added forcefully. "My father's a butcher and my mother's a cleaner."

    "Wow. A butcher. A cleaner," she said in admiring tones. "That's so, like, authentic. Really real, ya know what I'm saying?"

    Niall ignored her. He unrolled his copy of
Titus
and stared at it hard, hoping she would take the hint and go away.

    "Auditioning for
Titus
, huh?" she asked brightly. She was jiggling up and down next to him. Did she want to go to the loo, he wondered irritably. "I'm cold," she added, snuggling up to his sheepskin-lined leather flying jacket. "Nice coat," she added.

    "Thanks," Niall bit out. The jacket really was nice actually. It was vintage, possibly even a World War II original. Darcy had bought it for him from one of the Knightsbridge charity shops she haunted.

    "What part are you going for?" Belle persisted.

    "Lavinia," he said, ironically.

    Belle looked at him. "Isn't that a female…?" She searched, in vain, for the proper term.

    "Role?" Niall snapped. "Yes it is. I'm extending my range. Besides, all Shakespeare's female characters were originally played by men."

"Wow! Is that right?"

    "What part are you going for?" Niall asked, a sneering tone to his voice.

    Belle tossed back her uncombed hair, clasped her knees with both hands, and announced breathily that she had no idea.

    "No idea?" Niall echoed.

    The hair swished about in a negative. "I've forgotten. Someone who eats her children, I think," Belle sighed. "Gross." Her face seemed to slip. She looked suddenly doleful.

    Up close, her make-up looked less immaculate, Niall registered. The mascara was crusty and the lashes bent. Her eyeliner was wobbly, like Amy Winehouse's, and there was, now, a car-crash air to her that also reminded him of the troubled chanteuse.

    "I wish I wasn't here," Belle said passionately. The effects of the champagne were wearing off, and now she felt cold and depressed. The familiar boom of pain was beginning in her head. If only she could get out her champagne bottle. Her glance darted towards the Birkin that she had now put on the floor. Sugar was scratching about inside it, ruining it, no doubt. Or possibly relieving himself in it; this occasionally happened and, Belle knew, accounted for the enormous number of large and expensive bags women like herself got through.

    "So why are you here?" Niall was asking. "If it's so awful," he added.

    Belle felt suddenly reckless. All the careful speeches Mitch had prepared with her for the benefit of whatever directors and journalists she might encounter, speeches about loving Shakespeare, his genius at illustrating motives and basic human truths, and loving England and its theatre audiences, and wanting to go back to the basics of her craft, suddenly vanished from her mind. She felt bored and frustrated. She wanted champagne. To get out of here. She turned to Niall.

    "Listen. I don't give a rat's ass about Shakespeare," she told him. "I don't even care about acting. But I need to look like a serious actor if I'm gonna be a star again in Hollywood."

    The speech had a seismic effect on Niall, far more so than if Belle had declaimed Lady Macbeth word-perfect from start to finish. First there was the honesty, which was disarming. Then, more powerful still, the reminder that this woman had once had Hollywood at her feet. Whereas he, Niall was suddenly horribly aware, with a clarity he had never allowed himself before, that he hadn't got anything at his, apart from his shoes. What right did he have to despise her?

    "You don't like acting?" he repeated.

    The blonde hair whooshed about in an adamant negative. "Hate it. I'm no good at it." The green eyes filled suddenly with tears. "But I really liked being famous. Being a celebrity was great. And not being as famous is…horrible," she added, in a tragic whisper that had a sob at the end of it.

    She was underselling herself, Niall found himself thinking. She was good at acting. He was almost moved.

    "But I'm not giving up. I'm willing to do anything it takes to get it back, even act in this shit." She waved her copy of
Titus
at him.

    Niall looked around himself at whoever else might be witnessing this heresy. There was no one but themselves now remaining in the corridor. Apart from the dog in her bag, whose hostile stare was fixed unblinkingly on him. Since Belle had started to cry, it seemed to be quivering with aggression, poised to attack at any moment. He tried not to look at it.

    He tried, too, to remind himself of his principles. He reminded himself that this woman was loathsome, the industry she worked for was loathsome, the whole reason she was here was loathsome—to make herself appear, of all things, a serious actress by taking Shakespeare parts away from those, like him, who really needed them.

    "I mean, I know it's pretty disgusting," Belle was sniffing. "Trying to make myself look good by taking parts away from people who really need them. But baby, I really need them. Things have kinda gone into freefall for me in L.A. I need them bad." There was, Niall recognised, real anguish in her face as she looked at him.

    He felt, to his amazement, sympathy for her. Or, more precisely, recognition. Their situations were not so dissimilar after all. He needed a part badly as well, and he too was willing to do anything it took. He looked at Belle speculatively. Here was a famous actress. Not as famous as she had been, admittedly, but still a million times more so than him—or Darcy, at the moment, for that matter. Could she help him?

    Belle's blast of honesty felt to Niall as if it had dislodged something fundamental in him. Something that had been blocking his progress. Tacitly, carefully, he now felt around the hideous possibility that what had lain behind the determination to stop Darcy from going to L.A. was jealousy.

    "You must think I'm such a flake." Belle was weeping now. "Pretending to be a real actress when I'm not."

    He leapt to reassure her. Something was now telling him it would pay dividends to be nice to her. "Of course you're a real actress. You're very successful. You were in that huge hit movie, the one everyone saw…
Marie
…"

    "
Marie
wasn't acting," Belle wailed. "It was lap dancing in period costume."

    As he searched for a reply to this, Niall felt his mouth twitching and a laugh welling up in his throat.

    At the sound of his chuckle, Belle lifted her head. Two wet, green eyes regarded him from a tangle of messy blonde hair. Niall felt a clutch of concern. Was she angry? But then a long-nailed hand crept to her mouth, and Belle's entire skinny frame began shuddering. She was laughing too.