Bad Girls (18 page)

She knew she wasn’t making the most of all the opportunities her surname gave her. Though she wasn’t tall enough to model seriously, she was actually prettier and more photogenic than any of Mick Jagger’s daughters, and she was deeply jealous of Jack and Kelly Osbourne, who had parlayed their stint on a reality show with their parents into successful TV-presenter careers of their own.

‘Gold’s getting carried away,’ Jinhee said, frowning at her boyfriend, who raised his hands in apology for his language. ‘But it’s because he cares about you. He wants to see you making something of yourself, not just leeching off him. And we feel there’s only one way for you to achieve that.’

Gold raised both his hands to his chest, touched the fingertips and then parted them again, sketching a half-circle in the air as his hands lowered to join in his lap, breathing in and out deeply through his nose as he executed this calming ritual.

‘Ozzy’s kids,’ Gold said, his voice controlled once again. ‘That’s a very good example. Both of them with big drug problems, both had stays in rehab, both are doing really well now. I’ve discussed this with Jinhee and we want to catch this problem of yours right now, Petal. Nip it in the bud.’

‘I don’t have a problem!’ Petal protested quickly. She had a sudden idea of where this was going, and she didn’t like it one little bit.

‘Oh,
Petal
,’ Jinhee said sorrowfully, and Petal saw the trap: if she admitted she might not be quite as on top of her drug use as she declared, then she was in trouble; and if she denied it, well, then, she was in denial, which was even worse . . .

‘You’re booked into Cascabel rehab clinic,’ Gold informed her. ‘Jinhee’s made all the arrangements. You fly out to LA tomorrow morning.’

‘LA!
’ Petal exclaimed in horror. ‘But that’s so far away! It’s the other side of the
world
!’

‘We hear it’s the best,’ Jinhee said. ‘And it won’t hurt to get you away from the bad influences around you in London.’

‘No! I don’t
need
rehab!’ Petal said frantically. ‘I’m just young and having fun! I’m only twenty! I promise I won’t get into any more trouble – you won’t see me in any more papers unless it’s something really positive. And Dan – my boyfriend – he’s lovely . . .’

Jinhee reached out and tapped the photo of Dan in the paper, drinking vodka from the bottle.

‘He doesn’t look like the best influence, does he?’ Gold commented. ‘Musicians . . .’ He sighed. ‘I’m afraid I know exactly what they’re like.’

‘What – you’re sending me to rehab because I’m not going out with an
accountant
?’ Petal protested. ‘This is so
unfair
!’

‘You don’t sound very mature, Petal,’ Jinhee said. ‘I’m afraid you’re just reinforcing our decision.’

‘
Your
—’ Petal couldn’t bear it any more. She looked desperately at her father, but to no avail.

‘You have a choice, Petal,’ he said. ‘We always have a choice. But I’m not prepared to support you financially any longer unless you go to Cascabel.’

‘Ohh!’ Petal screamed. More than a direct hit, this was the killing blow below the ribs, the sword sliding into her weakest spot. No way could she survive without her father’s accountants depositing a juicy sum into her bank every month, and taking care of all her bills.

But who knows how long they’ll keep me in rehab? Sometimes people stay there for months! And if I’m not in London, how quickly will another girl move in on Dan?

‘You’re ruining my life!’ she yelled, and she reached down, upended the tray and sent the teacups and pot flying across the room to crash against the marble fireplace.
In for a penny, in for a hundred fucking pounds.
‘I
hate
you! I wish I’d never been
born
! You’re such a fucking
hypocrite
!’

Panting with anger, her eyes flashing, she put her hands on her hips and confronted Jinhee and Gold. To her horror, she saw a small smile curving Jinhee’s pale lips. The tea trickled slowly down the wall, the sound of the drops falling on the floor the only noise in the room for a good thirty seconds, as it sank into Petal’s mind how fully she had acted out the stereotype of a spoiled rich girl who badly needed a wake-up call.

‘You’re booked on the 11.15 a.m. Virgin flight from Heathrow to LA tomorrow,’ Jinhee said quietly. ‘First class, of course. The chauffeur will be at your apartment at 8.15 tomorrow morning. As your father says, it’s your choice. But I suggest, for your own good, that you’re on that plane. Someone from Cascabel will meet you at LAX.’

Tears were forming in Petal’s eyes. Exile from London, for an indefinite period of time. Exile from Tas, from JC, and above all from Dan. Banishment to a treatment centre with a bunch of druggies whining about their sad lives, and therapists doing everything they could to break her into little pieces. She looked imploringly at her father, all fight drained out from her as surely as the tea from the pot, dripping onto the leather tiles of the floor. There was no way out of this, no way but to get on the plane.

And she was gradually working out why Gold was coming down on her so hard for what was, by his standards, a comparatively minor infraction: that bloody Gregorian chant album. Gold was due on a publicity tour to promote it that would touch down in four out of the five continents. When he was asked the inevitable questions about Petal, he would be able to respond, sadly but wisely, that he had done the right paternal thing by shipping her straight off to rehab. Petal on the loose in London, generating bad publicity for Gold and his reformed-sinner image, was the last thing he needed.

‘
Dad?
’ she said in a tiny voice, something she hadn’t called her father since she was ten, when she’d been told she was too old for that name now, and besides, it wasn’t cool; from then on, she’d had to call him Gold, like everyone else.

Her father’s eyes met hers; they were the same light blue as hers, but his were as calm as hers were wild.

‘Please call me Gold, Petal. And keep in mind – this is for your own good. It’s part of my job as your parent to stop you making the mistakes I did. You’ll thank me for this in years to come,’ he said.

This was so unbelievably annoying that, if she hadn’t already thrown the tea tray, she’d have picked it up then and there and chucked it right in his holier-than-thou face.

‘S
o, she’s a nice girl, this Mara,’ Slava said comfortably, pouring boiling water into the teapot. Slava always waited up on the rare occasions that Amber was out at a work party, to make her camomile tea when she came home. She was bundled up in her dressing gown and slippers, her makeup removed, but her big chunky gold and pearl jewellery still on ears and neck and wrists and fingers; she only took it off to sleep.

‘Very nice,’ Amber said, kicking off her shoes. ‘But,
Matka
—’

‘You sit down, you have your tea,’ Slava said. ‘And you can tell me all about this Mara.’

Amber unzipped her Dolce dress and pulled it off, folding it carefully over the back of a chair. Slava had put out a robe ready for her, and Amber slipped it on, belting it round her slim waist. It was so nice to be comfortable. Dressing up in tight, constricting clothes was part of her job; even off-duty, Slava insisted Amber be groomed to the nines whenever she left the house. When she pulled on a soft dressing gown and slid her feet into fur-lined slippers, it was one of her favourite moments of the day.

She sank into one of the two kitchen armchairs. Slava had muted the TV when Amber came in, and some old black-and-white film was showing, a woman in a toque and raincoat climbing onto a train in a cloud of steam.

‘I’m scared,
Matka
,’ Amber blurted as Slava put the tea down on the table at her elbow.

It came out louder than she had meant; she surprised herself with the strength of it. The champagne she had drunk at the party must have won out over the pills, giving her Dutch courage.

‘Scared?’ Slava’s slanting eyes opened in shock. ‘What is to be scared of? You need some fun! You don’t go out enough, I say that all the time! You go have nice holiday with other girls!’

Amber stared at her mother, amazed. In all her life, she couldn’t remember Slava ever saying that Amber didn’t go out enough, that she needed fun: Slava’s line had always been that she and Amber were enough for each other.

‘The men pay to have pretty girls at parties, that’s normal.’ She settled into the other armchair, next to Amber, putting up her calves on the pouffe in front of her with a grunt of relief. She suffered badly from swollen ankles. ‘And you – American and Russian
Vogue
, on the covers, no less! Of course they give you money to come to their parties! You never know, you might meet some rich man there who wants to marry you!’

‘I thought it was “just you and me, that’s all we need”?’ Amber blurted out, utterly confused by her mother’s change in attitude. ‘You never talked before about me getting married!’

Slava shrugged. ‘Things change,
láska
,’ she said, reaching for the glass at her elbow. Clear liquid, which meant vodka and Sprite. The mixer was always Sprite or Lucozade, and the spirit was always vodka. Slava’s tastes in drink were those of the old-fashioned Eastern European she was, and she could hold her liquor better than anyone Amber had ever met; no matter how much vodka Slava put away, Amber had never seen her mother affected by it.

‘You’ve been working for thirteen years now,’ Slava continued. ‘And they want models younger and younger. All these little Russian girls they find in Nizhny Novgorod at fourteen, like you were. Little skinny peasants they can dress up how they want to. You’re twenty-seven, and all you can do is look pretty. You should get married. So, you go to parties, you meet a rich man, he marries you, he buys you a big house near Harrods with a flat for me.’ She sighed. ‘I thought we would save money. I thought I would buy property and we would own something by now. I don’t know where it all went.’

Pills, Amber thought. Clothes and jewellery and vodka and renting flats in Mayfair. And lots and lots of pills from private doctors in Harley Street, who charge hundreds of pounds just to write prescriptions.

She closed her eyes. Somehow, if she weren’t looking at her mother, it was easier for her to say, in a small, frightened voice: ‘
Matka
, this trip to Dubai – it isn’t just going there for a few smart parties.’

‘Maybe thirty thousand pounds, you said! For a week!’ Slava said dreamily. ‘More than even the biggest advertising money you’ve made! And now for the advertisements they don’t want models, not so much. They want actresses. Or daughters of famous people.’ She pulled a face. ‘Ugly, some of them. Not models at all. You see that daughter of Mick Jagger, with the teeth like a rabbit? With a gap between each one, like her father is so poor he can’t take her to a dentist?’ She clicked her tongue and reached for her glass again. ‘They take work away from you. The world is changing. But thank the heavens, someone will pay you thirty thousand pounds for a week! I was so worried, but now we’re safe again!’

‘
Matka!
’ Amber said desperately. ‘Please, you’re not listening! This trip away . . .’

She got to her feet in a fluid gesture and started pacing the kitchen, her slippers soft on the Tuscan tiles, unable to face her mother. If she thought about what she was going to say she would never have the courage to get it out, but her fear of what Mara had told her was overriding everything else, and the champagne was still bubbling in her bloodstream, helping her on.

‘It’s like the dates I’ve been on, in the last year,’ she continued swiftly. ‘With Tony, and Stephan, and Hans. I didn’t meet them at parties, like I told you. Jared set them up for me.’

‘Very nice of him,’ Slava said, nodding in approval.

‘
No!
’ Amber exclaimed in frustration. ‘No,
Matka
! These men
ordered
me – they took me away and pretended that I was their girlfriend for the weekend, and they paid Jared for it, and they paid me extra. They
paid a fee
. Do you see what I mean? They paid so they could be sure of having sex with me. And now, in Dubai, it’s the same thing. Only there it isn’t just one guy, and it isn’t in a big hotel, where there are people around if something goes wrong. It’s groups of men, and it’s in their own private compound, and it’s for a whole week – and they’re
definitely
not pretending that I’m their girlfriend!’

She ran out of breath. Her circuit of the kitchen had taken her in a loop past the Sub-Zero fridge, past the Smeg twin ovens and hobs (pristinely shining, because they were never used by Amber or Slava) and back to her mother’s cosy nest in front of the TV. Leaning with both hands on the back of her armchair, blushing with embarrassment as she told her mother the truth at last, Amber met Slava’s eyes, mutely pleading for her mother not to be disgusted at what she’d done for money.

‘They were very nice,’ she said in a tiny voice. ‘All the men. It was like it was real. They treated me so well. When Jared told me Tony was in town, I would even look forward to it. He was nice and handsome and he wanted to make sure I was happy . . .’

‘You’re lucky,’ Slava said, her voice so harsh that Amber started in shock.

‘Matka?
’ she asked, daring now to meet her mother’s green eyes, so similar to her own.

Slava was glaring up at her daughter, her mouth pursed in a tight line. Amber might have expected this fury from her mother at hearing that Amber had been paid to be a high-end escort, but not the words that had just emerged. Her brain raced, trying to make sense of her mother’s reaction.

‘Sit,’ Slava said grimly, pointing at Amber’s armchair, her fingers tipped with the bright red nail polish she always wore; it lasted for ever, as Slava’s household tasks didn’t involve any cooking, washing up or cleaning.

‘Sit,’ she repeated, speaking Slovak now. That meant that this was a hundred per cent serious. Amber dropped obediently into the chair as Slava got up and shuffled over to the fridge. She poured Smirnoff, neat, into a tumbler and brought it back to Amber, who took it dutifully, wide eyes focused on her mother.