Angel (11 page)

'Come and see the bedroom, it's got a different
view.'

Different
, Angel thought appreciatively as Mickey
ripped off his clothes and pulled her onto the bed
with him, and altogether more satisfying . . .

Two days later, pictures of them in Paris appeared
in a paper. Angel was puzzled. 'That photographer
we saw in the station must have followed us then,
but how the fuck did he know we were going?'

Mickey shrugged but avoided looking her in the
eye. 'It's a pisser, babe, but you know what it's like,
he probably just got lucky – maybe he did get on
our train.'

'Very lucky,' Angel answered, reading the
article, which seemed to have an awful lot of
information about their trip – from which hotel
they'd stayed in to what they'd had for lunch to how
they'd spent the whole of Sunday in bed. Angel
thought for a moment. Finally, she shrugged and
put it out of her mind. She was in such a blissed-out
state that she couldn't worry about anything other
than when she was next going to see Mickey. And
that was how she spent the next two months.

The lovers were pretty much inseparable. Angel
practically moved into his apartment, going home
only to collect clothes and her post. Mickey
introduced her to his world and she loved it. Every
night they would be out socialising – either at a hip
club or restaurant or going to a launch party or an
awards do. It was like being caught up in a whirlwind
of pleasure, but the best bit of all was
experiencing it with Mickey. She was in that lovedup
state where you can't get enough of the other
person, where nothing else matters except being
with them.

But not everyone shared their happiness. One
night when she was out clubbing with Mickey, she
bumped into Lisa and Vicki in the Ladies.

'Oh, hi, Angel,' they chorused insincerely, as
Angel emerged from the cubicle. The two models
were busy layering even more make-up onto their
already overloaded faces.

Angel managed to smile, then stood next to
them, checking her own appearance (a slick of lip
gloss was enough for her), wanting to get away
from them as soon as possible. But just as she was
turning to go, Vicki spoke. 'Still with Mickey?'

'Yeah,' she replied, thinking,
What's it to you, you
pair of slappers?

'Oh?' answered Lisa. 'I heard that he'd dumped
you.'

'Well, you heard wrong,' Angel snapped.

Lisa and Vicki smirked knowingly. 'Don't expect
it to last that much longer,' Vicki replied, a look of
false concern on her face. 'Mickey doesn't stay with
anyone that long. He likes to play the field, doesn't
like to be tied down.'

'Oh, piss off, the pair of you,' Angel said, walking
towards the door. 'You're just jealous.'

The girls laughed louder this time. 'Don't be
stupid,' Lisa exclaimed. 'We know all about him,
Vicki's shagged him.'

Not giving them the satisfaction of a reply, Angel
marched out of the Ladies without giving them a
second glance, but inside she was fuming. She
managed to contain herself until they got into the
car; she really didn't want Lisa and Vicki seeing
that they had upset her. But as soon as Mickey
closed the door, she was on his case.

'I've just seen Vicki.'

'Who?' Mickey replied casually.

'You know, that glamour girl you shagged,'
Angel answered, raising her voice.

'Oh,
her
,' Mickey replied, smirking. 'Yeah, I had
a one-night stand with her ages ago, but to be
honest, babe, I can't remember anything about it. I
was single and pissed, and she threw herself at me.
I just remember waking up and thinking, Jesus,
who's that lying next to me? She kept phoning me
and texting me afterwards but I never saw her
again, I promise. I'm not interested. She was a
mistake, it didn't mean anything. I love you.'

While Angel didn't exactly think it was great that
Mickey had had one-night stands, she was relieved.
Vicki might have shagged him when he was too
drunk to remember, but it was she, Angel, who was
having a relationship with him. And he loved her
and she loved him. So she resolved to put Vicki
right out of her head, and ignore the silly tart if she
ever saw her again.

Her career seemed to be really taking off – she had
never been busier or more in demand. She was
inundated with offers of work – two tabloids had a
bidding war over getting Angel to sign an exclusive
deal for the next three months, which would be
worth a lot of money. She finally landed the coup of
a shoot with
Tackle
, one of the biggest lad mags.
One of the Formula One teams booked her as one
of their girls – a wildly glamorous job, which
involved dressing up in a skintight scarlet catsuit,
posing for five minutes with the drivers during the
press call, drinking quite a bit of champagne and
hanging out with some seriously gorgeous drivers.
Plus, there was talk of an advertising deal with a
leading mobile phone company.

Carrie had been right about the press interest –
things had definitely picked up since she had been
openly linked with Mickey. People were fascinated
by her and wanted to invite her to all the celeb
parties, launches and premieres. She had become a
household name and she and Mickey were a
regular feature in celeb mags and the tabloids.
They were the golden couple of the moment and
the press couldn't get enough of the beautiful
glamour girl and the successful singer who seemed
to have found true love at last.

But her success wasn't only down to her
blossoming romance with the pop star; that had just
been a starting point. Quickly, the papers and
magazines were starting to wake up to Angel's star
quality. But there was a price to be paid for her
growing fame. More and more often, when Angel
was out shopping or going to the gym, she was
photographed, both by paparazzi and passers-by
and their bloody camera mobiles. Angel had spent
enough time poring over celebs in mags herself,
ogling stars who had been caught out looking
minging, without their make-up on, wearing pikey
clothes, stuffing their faces with a Big Mac and fries.
At first, she had thought that being snapped looking
a bit rough would be the worst thing because people
would be able to see what you looked like when you
rolled out of bed. But that turned out to be the least
of her concerns. What bothered her more than
anything was the feeling that no area in her life was
private any more, because there was always a
photographer waiting to capture the moment and
sell it.

She put up with it for a while, but finally plucked
up courage and complained to Carrie about it. Her
agent just laughed. 'It goes with the territory,
darling, and you'll get used to it. The time to worry
is when they're not photographing your every
move!'

She had a point, but Angel wasn't so sure. She
took to wearing the celebrity uniform of large
shades – Chanel rapidly becoming her favourite –
whenever she went anywhere.

The other thing that was starting to seriously
bug her was the size of her breasts. At 32B she felt
they were on the small side for a girl in her line of
work. Whenever she compared herself to the other
girls their breasts looked so much bigger, so much
sexier, and even though Angel was constantly
being told by Richard and Danni and everyone else
she worked with that she had a perfect figure, she
couldn't help wanting to change. So telling no one,
not even Gemma, she made an appointment for a
consultation at a clinic. She wouldn't rush into
having a boob job, but she definitely wanted to find
out what her options were.

At the end of November she had a shoot booked with Richard
for a Christmas special. They had such a giggle, arranging the fake snow around
the studio, decorating the Christmas tree and arranging presents underneath
it. Angel had posed on a sledge dressed in a red Santa's hat, a red G-string
and nothing else, topless in front of the Christmas tree in white fur-trimmed
shorts and white thigh-high boots and finally as an underdressed Angel in
a silver sequinned thong and a halo. But by five o'clock she was desperate
to finish so she could see Mickey.

'How much longer,' she groaned, pulling off her
halo and rubbing her head where the wire had
pressed against her.

Richard laughed. 'Come on, my little love-struck
bird, just half an hour, then I promise I'll let you
go.'

'Oh God, I can't wait that long!' she exclaimed,
almost unable to stand still a second longer.

'Ah, love's young dream,' put in Danni from the
sidelines. 'I can almost remember that feeling.'

'You two are so cynical!' Angel said in mock
disgust. 'I'm in love!'

'Well, you've lasted longer than any of Mickey's
other girls,' Danni said, obviously meaning it as a
joke and immediately regretting it as the smile
vanished from Angel's face.

'Sorry, I was just kidding, Angel,' Danni said
quickly.

'It's okay,' Angel replied, but it wasn't. Danni's
comment had hit a nerve, a real area of insecurity.
Since she'd been seeing Mickey she couldn't fail to
be aware of the long line of women before her – soap
stars, girl band singers, glamour girls – Mickey's
affairs were well documented in the tabloids and
Vicki and Lisa's bitchy remarks hadn't helped.
Angel felt some of her excitement about seeing
Mickey leave her. Maybe she was stupid to have told
him she loved him. But that was the kind of person
she was: if she felt something, she had to let it out.
She concentrated on the photo shoot, wanting to get
it over with and see him, and feel reassured.

'Hey, babe,' Mickey said as she let herself into his
apartment. He was lying on the white leather sofa
and she rushed over to him, threw herself on top of
him and kissed him as though her life depended on
it.

'I missed you!' she declared, when they came up
for breath.

'It's only been a day!' he laughed. And as she lay
down on the sofa next to him and nestled her head
on his shoulder, he added, 'You'd better go and get
ready, we're due at the restaurant in half an hour.'

'Can't we cancel and stay in?' Angel said, feeling
disappointed – she'd forgotten about the dinner
and all she wanted to do was be close to Mickey.

'Nope, we're meeting Sam and the others,
remember?'

But when she and Mickey turned up at Nobu, it
wasn't just the other members of the band. Dinner
with the four of them would have been fine as
Angel liked them all. Tonight, though, there was
also their manager, several people from the record
company and various girlfriends, so the quiet
informal dinner Angel had been expecting turned
into a table of fifteen. She ended up next to Sam,
who she got on well with, but it was Mickey she
wanted to be next to. She couldn't help thinking
back to the conversation with Danni and Richard
and she kept looking over at him, willing him to
give her a smile. But he was too busy talking to the
guy from his record label and barely looked at her
all evening. Angel tried hard not to, but she
couldn't help feeling neglected.

After dinner Angel was hoping to have Mickey to herself,
but he invited everyone back to his penthouse for a drink. As soon as they
got in, he cracked open the Cristal and turned up his state-of-the-art Bose
stereo, gave her a brief kiss and moved among his guests. Angel tried to talk
to some of the other girlfriends but found she had little in common with them,
their only topics of conversation being the designer clothes they wanted to
buy, the designer clothes they had just bought and bitching about various
celebrities. She wandered aimlessly around Mickey's apartment, sipping her
champagne, looking around for him. She finally found him in the bedroom. She
watched, surprised, as he knelt by the bedside table, busy tidying a tiny
heap of powder into a line on the glass top. Mickey was doing cocaine. Angel
wasn't naïve. She knew perfectly well that for a lot of people in their
circle, coke was normal. She'd already suspected that Mickey was an occasional
user, but had never said much about it because she didn't think it was a problem.
But she'd never actually seen him do it.

'Babe!' he exclaimed. 'D'you want some?'

Angel shook her head mutely.

'Oh, come on – one little line isn't going to hurt
you, and it might put a smile on that beautiful face
of yours.' He got up from the bed and kissed her.
'I'm sorry that all these people are here, but I had
to invite them, you know how it is.'

Angel wasn't sure that she did know how it was.
All she knew was that she wanted to be alone with
Mickey, and half the penthouse was full of
strangers.

'Come on, babe,' Mickey repeated. 'Give it a try,
I guarantee you'll like it. And when everyone's
gone, I'll make it up to you, I promise.' He kissed
her again.

Thinking about it later, Angel had no idea what
prompted her to say 'yes' to the white line Mickey
prepared. She'd never had any interest in it,
generally thinking coked-up people were tossers.
But tonight was different. She'd been feeling
vulnerable, feeling that everyone was waiting for
them to break up, expecting a big story of
heartbreak and misery any day now. All of a
sudden, she felt defiant.
What the hell
, she thought,
I have to get through the next few hours somehow.

'Okay,' she replied. Mickey sat her down and
showed her how it was done.

A few minutes later, she had to agree with
Mickey: she felt much, much better. She suddenly
didn't mind that the flat was full of people; she
grabbed a bottle of champagne for herself and
made sure that she was sitting next to Mickey,
included in all his conversations, and she giggled
and chatted the next few hours away, all her
insecurity gone. When the guests finally went at
five, Angel was still feeling lively and quite drunk.
She dragged Mickey into the bedroom, pulled off
her clothes, then poured champagne over her
naked body.