Breaking Hollywood (30 page)

She groaned out loud and covered her face with her hands, finally opening them when Lou’s laughter became contagious enough to make her shoulders shake.

‘Don’t mock. Take pity. Rescue me.’

‘Honey, you don’t need rescuing; you need a twelve-step plan to get you back in the game.’ Mirren speared the olive in her Martini and bit into it.

‘I have no game.’

‘Exactly. You have no game. This is why you need me. So how was it?’

‘What are we, fifteen?’

‘I’m serious. How was it?’

‘Lou, it was a mistake. A one-off, not to be repeated, definite mistake. My head was just in a really weird place.’

‘Is that a description of the action?’

The romantic couple at the next table shot them synchronized evil glares as laughter cut into their doe-eyed moment for a second time.

‘So what happens now?’ Lou asked, mischief written all over her face.

‘Nothing! We’re still locked over the merchandise negotiations, so this couldn’t have happened at a worse time.’

Lou nodded, feigning seriousness. ‘You’re right – probably thinks you fucked him to get some leverage on the deal.’

Mirren groaned. ‘Thanks, chum. Just when I thought I had already reached an all-time low . . .’

Her smile said differently. Where would she have been without Lou for the last few years? No matter how much crap had been thrown at her, the one constant in her life was the woman she could
talk to, cry with, and who made her laugh until her jaw hurt – and often all three, alternated in the course of one evening. The truth was that sleeping with Mark had been a ridiculous error
of judgement that she’d been beating herself up about all week. It was the first time she’d had a one-night stand, and it would be the last. And yet, in Lou’s utterly incorrigible
hands, it had been reduced from a major fuck-up to a tiny blip. ‘Play up the good stuff, cope with the bad, ignore everything else’ was Lou’s motto. And she was right. So
she’d had a one-night stand? So what? In the grand scheme of things, did it really matter?

‘Look who it is!’ Lou’s exclamation interrupted her thoughts. She turned, expecting to see Davie Johnston. He’d asked to meet her and she’d suggested he join them
tonight for an early dinner before he went to the studio for tonight’s
Here’s Davie Johnston.
He was probably feeling lonely without Sarah around.

Mirren turned and saw, to her surprise, that Lex Callaghan and his wife, Cara, were about to pass their table. They spotted her at exactly the same time.

‘Mirren! So good to see you,’ Cara exclaimed, her arms wide. The two women locked in a tight hug, while Lex greeted Lou with an affectionate kiss. ‘All my favourite women in
the same place,’ he joked.

‘Yep, so you can run along and leave us to have a girls’ night,’ Lou quipped, then turned to Cara. ‘We have sex revelations and a large splash of scandal.’

‘Oooh, I’m in,’ Cara giggled.

Lex feigned sorrow. ‘I know when I’m beat,’ he said mournfully.

‘You look incredible,’ Mirren told Cara. It wasn’t an empty compliment. Cara’s long black hair, a throwback to her Native American heritage, hung in one long, glossy,
ebony sheet. Her dark skin and wide brown eyes gave her an exotic beauty; the simple white shift dress added a timeless elegance. She might spend most of her life in jeans and riding boots, with
the wind in her hair and dirt under her nails, but she definitely knew how to pull off the formal look too.

Mirren realized that this was an unusual place to meet them. They rarely came into the city, and they definitely didn’t do upmarket restaurants.

‘Special occasion?’ she asked.

Cara shook her head. ‘Nope. I had to come into town for a couple of appointments, and Lex has an early call in the morning, so we just decided to make a night of it and stay up at the
shack.’

‘The shack?’ Lou asked, horrified. Lou didn’t do ‘shacks’. She did five-star hotels with a concierge who could tend to her every whim.

‘It’s not actually a shack,’ Mirren said, calming her down. ‘It’s a little bit less rustic than it sounds.’

The shack was where Lex stayed when he was in the city. Not for him the glitzy opulence of the grand West Hollywood chain hotels or the bijou boutiques. Instead, he’d bought a cabin in the
hills of Topanga, half a mile from civilization. He’d made some concessions to modern life. There was electricity, hot and cold running water, comfortable furniture and a fifty-inch plasma TV
on the wall, but that was about the extent of his modernizations.

‘Would you like to join us?’ Mirren asked automatically.

Cara grinned. ‘Thank you, but we’ll leave you to it. Much as I’d love to hear those sexual revelations, I only get this man out a couple of times a year and I want to have a
long chat to him to see if I still like him.’

Another flurry of hugs and they were off to the table waiting for them on the other side of the room.

‘God, I love them,’ Mirren said as she sat back down.

‘They’re one of the elusive few,’ Lou added.

‘Few what?’

‘Few couples who’ve never had a single rumour of infidelity.’

Lou’s job on the
Hollywood Post
gave her an encyclopaedic knowledge of every failing, flirt and fuck in town. There was very little she didn’t know. Whether she chose to
publish or not was a different story. It was Lou who’d uncovered Jack’s affair with Mercedes Dance the previous year. It was Lou who told Mirren that Mercedes was pregnant. And it was
Lou who discovered that the DNA test showed the baby wasn’t Jack’s. Not that it mattered to Mirren. The point was that he’d broken their marriage, and no piece of paper with a
negative DNA result could patch that wound.

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry!’ Davie announced as he burst in on her in a restaurant for the second time in just a few days.

‘No worries. We were just talking nonsense until you got here. You can take over doing that now,’ Mirren teased, between double kisses and hugs all round. Lou knew Davie from moving
in the same circles over the last twenty years, but they hadn’t been friends until he and Mirren had rekindled their relationship.

Mirren knew that Lou loved his cheek, his balls and his energy.

They immediately launched into a flurry of orders and chat that took them well into their main courses. ‘So tell me, are you missing Sarah?’ Mirren asked.

Davie nodded. ‘Look, I know I’m supposed to be all cool and macho, but man, I hate that she’s away. I’m not designed to be on my own,’ he admitted.

‘You never were,’ Mirren told him. ‘Remember when your mum was working nights? You practically moved in with Zander, and then when we were older, we had to come stay with
you.’ Her words sparked a memory for both of them. The first time they’d slept together was when she’d been hanging out in his bedroom on a freezing winter night while his mum was
at work. They were sixteen. It was no different from a hundred other nights, until the moment they had a cuddle to warm up and Mirren asked him to kiss her. She discovered later that he’d
been in love with her for years, but at that moment, she’d been terrified. He was too. They kissed, made love and stayed together, convinced they were soulmates.

They were – until Jono Leith’s death destroyed them all. In that single moment, their futures were jacked onto a different track. Not only by the scars of what they did and what they
saw, but because they’d always know just how close love and hate really were. Marilyn had been Jono’s lover for years and adored him, was obsessed by him, lived her life for the moment
he walked into a room and extinguished her spirit the moment he left. He was her king, until he committed the ultimate sin, and Marilyn snapped, plunged a knife into his chest and pulled it back
out, and then left him to die on her kitchen floor.

Love. Hate. Love. Hate. Madness. Death.

Jono Leith was gone. Her mother had never been there in the first place. But right then, that didn’t matter. Because the reason she plunged a knife into Jono Leith’s heart broke
Mirren’s.

‘Hey, you OK? You’ve totally slipped into a dwam.’

The sound of the old Scottish word made her smile as she remembered Davie’s mum using it regularly.
That boy of mine. I swear to the Mother of God he spends his whole blessed life
wandering about in a dwam.

The memory jolted her back to the guy in front of her. Forget the past. It’s done. All that really matters is what’s happening right here and now.

The rest of the meal was filled with indiscreet rumours and salacious chat, and Mirren realized that this was the most she’d smiled in a long time. It felt good. Gave her hope. She
didn’t believe for a minute that time healed, but perhaps if she could occupy it with tranquillity, peace and laughter-filled nights like this one, then it would become bearable. At least,
bearable enough to prevent her from having sex with men she barely knew.

‘So listen, I need to shoot off soon, but there’s something I have to talk to you about,’ Davie announced after the waiter had cleared their plates.

Mirren eyed him with a smile and a raised eyebrow. ‘Ah, here it comes. And there was me thinking that you wanted to join us for my sparkling wit and personality.’

‘That too,’ Davie admitted.

Was it Mirren’s imagination, or was his left eye twitching slightly, that telltale sign he’d had as a kid in times of stress, lies or trouble? Mirren’s stomach clenched with
anxiety, her mind already going to the worst-case scenario. He’d found out about Marilyn. Damn, she should have told him. She should have been honest. He deserved that.

His eye twitched again as he continued, ‘But other than that, there’s something else I really need to tell you . . .’

‘Love Runs Out’ – OneRepublic

Davie

In the busy dining room at Giorgio Baldi, Lou decided to make a diplomatic exit and rose from her seat. ‘Jennifer Garner is over there. Love that girl. I’m just
gonna go for a quick chat.’

Davie stood up while Lou left the table. It was a habit bred into him in childhood. His mother, Ena Johnston, didn’t have

much, but she had high standards of what was acceptable when it came to manners and she made sure her son lived up to them.

‘OK, then, go for it. What’s up?’ Mirren asked, one eyebrow raised in curiosity.

Why did he suddenly have the feeling that what he was about to do was the equivalent of kicking Bambi when she was down? Why hadn’t he considered that Jack Gore’s presence on a show
that Davie produced might be an issue for Mirren?

He returned to his defence that he’d never known Mirren and Jack Gore as a couple, so it didn’t even cross his mind that she might have an opinion on the situation.

OK, preparing arguments for the defence. It had been a lot of years since he’d had to consider anyone else’s feelings and he was out of practice. Hopefully, that one would both bring
her round and even elicit a tiny tug of sympathy. Win. Win.

Second argument: he hadn’t wanted to bother her because he knew she had so much on her mind right now. Didn’t think it mattered. He had a hunch she might not see it that way. Lose.
Lose.

Third and most important argument: if he didn’t make the show, someone else would.
Beauty and the Beats
had killed in the ratings, and any other network would give their right
ball to pick it up. At least this way, he could treat it sensitively, make sure that Mirren and Logan were protected, that Jack was portrayed as an island: a middle-aged, midlife-crisis, tattooed,
island. In an AC/DC T-shirt. Knob.

However, now, looking at Mirren, so unsuspecting and curious, he could see the holes in every argument. It all came back down to the same thing. He should have thought about this sooner. Told
her sooner. Who was the asshole now?

‘Look, this is really difficult and I really hope we can work it out. The series I produce,
Beauty and the Beats
. . .’ he started.

What? Mirren frowned with confusion as she tried to keep up.

‘You know it used to star Carmella Cass and Jizzo Stacks, but sadly Jizzo died . . . ?’

Mirren sussed out the situation immediately.

‘Ah, honey, are you going to tell me that Carmella is seeing Jack? Thank you, but don’t worry – I’d heard and I saw the tabloid coverage of the funeral.’ She put
her napkin on the table and exhaled, and for a second Davie felt the unfamiliar feeling of goosebumps prickling up his arm. God, he’d loved this woman. Loved her so much it had taken him
years to recover from the hole inside him when she left. His break-up with Mirren had shaped him, changed him. Hustling and determination to make something of himself had always been part of his
nature, but back then, they’d all been secondary to how he felt about Mirren. She had been all that really mattered to him. If she’d wanted to stay in Glasgow and live a completely
different life, he’d have gone with it.

Jono Leith’s death took away that option.

Then, when they’d got to LA, it was different. They were different. Too much pain, too much horror. They were drowning in the memory of what had happened and it sucked away everything that
was right about them being together.

So they’d agreed to walk away from the only person they’d ever loved.

That’s when he changed. It was like she was his balance, the good part of him, and when she was gone, what else was there?

It became all about Davie Johnston.

Twenty years, and every one of them lived on his own terms, doing exactly what he wanted, when he wanted and considering no one else. It had occasionally backfired. The three-way with Jenny and
Darcy was a case in point. A wild night with two of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen had turned out to be a one-way ticket to divorce. In truth, it was for the best, though. His
marriage to Jenny had never even come close to what he’d once had with this woman sitting in front of him right now.

He realized she was waiting for a response to whatever it was she’d just said. Not that he had any idea what it was. Blind panic was proving to be the ultimate amnesiac.

Fuck it, he wasn’t telling her.