Celebrity Bride (8 page)

'You're dressed?' she enquires. 'Dressed for the party? You can't be serious.'

Shit. 'Yes, I'm dressed for the party,' I say, trying to sound confident but feeling utterly deflated.

'OK,' says Elody quite kindly when she sees how offended I am. 'Look. There's no problem; my challenge today is to convince you that the glamorous clothes I have with me will be better suited to the party than the ones you have. Trust me, and don't look scared. I'm here to help. You'll look more lovely than ever by the time I've finished with you.'

'Oh thank you,' I say, and I feel myself cheer up instantly. Indeed there are times, as Elody talks, when I feel real warmth coming from her, despite the deathly appearance. She seems to genuinely want to help me to fit into this new lifestyle that I've come stumbling into.

'Now, let's have a look at you,' she says, standing back and letting those scary catlike eyes travel up and down my body. She's stroking her chin and I feel like a piece of meat being sized up by a butcher. 'Lovely décolletage,' she says. 'Good bone structure too.'

Then, there are times when she talks when I feel so stunned by her rudeness that I can barely stay upright.

'You obviously like eating chips.' She scowls.

Whaaat? I mean, really. Is there any need for that? The truth is that of course I like chips – who doesn't, for God's sake? But I'm not fat. I'm a size 12. Is that fat? According to Elody it is.

'I'm sorry. I don't mean to be rude,' she says, and I feel like saying, 'Well, lady, you just have been . . . whether meaning to be or not.' But I don't, of course, I just stand there feeling like the fattest person in the world.

'Everyone I deal with professionally is incredibly slim. You are more . . . um . . . generous in the flesh department. But – no worries. I'm a professional; I can handle this, and I can help you lose lots of weight if you want to . . . trust me – I have a very easy way of doing it.'

I look at her with raised eyebrows, eager to hear her weight loss tips, but she's moved on.

'Now then.' She takes one of my hands in hers and looks at my nails in amazement.

'Goodness gracious, was this for a joke?' she says, grimacing at the sight of the pale-orange colour on them.

'Don't you like this shade?' I thought I was on pretty firm ground with the pale-peach fingernails.

'Mmmm . . . beautiful colour on a fruit like an apricot,' she says. 'But, interestingly, absolutely horrible as a nail polish colour.'

OK, that'll be 'no' then!

I totally understand now when Rufus said that Elody's bark is worse than her bite, and why Julie grimaced into the crab claws at the mention of her name. The woman has this quite breathtaking habit of seizing upon every opportunity to criticise without quite realising that she's doing it. As soon as she realises that she's caused offence, she backtracks by saying it's not a problem and she's here to help, but the offence has been done by then. I guess it's because of all she's been through. I accept that the woman is deeply injured, and I keep trying to remember what Rufus said – that Elody has been through a lot, and I need to cut her some slack – but it still doesn't make the abuse any easier to take.

Many of her criticisms arrive silently, like a knife in the ribs. Some of them come thundering towards me with all the subtlety of a herd of charging rhinoceroses.

'It must be odd to be so busty,' she says. 'I mean, don't you feel a bit cumbersome? Like a lactating cow?'

'No,' I say, alarmed at the suggestion. 'I've never felt cumbersome. In fact, not until this very minute.'

'Oh sorry,' says Elody, presumably sensing the resentment she's caused. 'No offence meant; I guess I was just thinking out loud, because I know I'd hate to have big lumps of lard stuck on the front of my chest. Now, what have we here?' She reaches over and pulls swirls of taffeta and sheets of silk from her bag; they ripple to the floor, a great wave of blues, greens and azures shimmering in the light. 'You'll look gorgeous when I've finished with you,' she says, scooping the dresses into her arms and leading off towards the bedroom. 'Just you wait and see.'

How does she know where the bedroom is?

It takes just ten minutes for Elody to convince me that she really knows what she's doing when it comes to fashion styling, and that she genuinely wants to help me in any way she can. I'm like putty in her hands. She makes me feel gorgeous; she might be the best friend I ever had. In fact, by the time she's layered the chiffon dresses over one another, pulled the whole lot in with a chain loosely slung round my waist, and added earrings, I've quite forgotten my concern about how on earth she knew exactly where the bedroom was. The truth is that I look amazing! Sorry, I don't mean that to sound arrogant or anything, what I mean is that I look more like one of the girls you see in magazines than I've ever looked before. I look stylish; that's the right word. I look as if I understand clothes, as if I have a great apartment and a super job. I don't just look attractive, I look like I'm bursting with attitude and sophistication, something that I've never really grasped before.

For the first time this week I find myself actually looking forward to the party; looking forward to meeting the host of celebrities who will become my new friends.

'Happy?' asks Elody.

'Yes,' I say, beaming. This lady's not so bad after all; I reckon me and Elody could become quite matey. Give me a couple of nights with her and she'll be Malteser catching like a demon.

'I'm glad you're happy,' she says. 'You deserve to be. You seem nice. Now, don't worry about jewellery, we'll sort that out later. I think you need a great statement piece. Do you know what I mean? If you're going to wear a necklace, you should always make sure it says something exciting, like mine.' Around her neck is a platinum chain with two small diamond-covered stars on it. 'Stars are very much of the moment; everybody is reaching for the stars; everyone wants to be a star. Stars say something worth listening to. Jon was a star.' Then she stops and bursts into tears. 'It's from Jon,' she says. 'Jon bought it for me.'

I don't know what the hell to say or do. It's awful. I hardly know her and she's crying like I've never heard a woman cry in my life before: howling, shrieking and mumbling into her hands as she falls to the floor.

Holy fuck.

Oh God, he is. I'm not just imagining it. Shit. He's playing footsie with me. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I pick up my spoon (probably completely the wrong one but, to be honest, cutlery etiquette is the last thing on my mind right now), and begin to tackle the seafood consommé in front of me. Jesus, he's doing it again. Fuck. I don't know what to do.

Rufus is at the opposite end of the long, long table; he smiles lovingly at me, and I wish more than anything that I could be sitting next to him. I had hardly any time to talk to him after his lunch. He sauntered home much later than I expected, wearing a large grin and followed by a rather large entourage of men in suits. They trailed in after him as if he were the Pied Piper, taking up residence in the sitting room where their deep voices carried through the house. Their debates ranged from issues like contracts and intellectual property rights to whether Rufus should be willing to do nudity.

'Ass double,' shouted a voice that I recognised as belonging to Rufus's rotund, cigar-smoking agent. 'Tell 'em Rufus doesn't do his own ass work. Not ever.'

'And we own your face,' the agent added. 'Make a note of that too. That's a given.'

It seemed inappropriate to interrupt when their high-level talks had strayed into areas as surreal as ownership of my boyfriend's face and discussions about his 'ass' so I retreated to the bedroom instead and pondered the issue of what you have to do in life to own someone's face. Do we not just all own our own faces, or am I being naïve?

If I'm honest, I had hoped that Rufus would sense that I wanted to spend some time with him before the party, and join me in the bedroom so we could chat while we got changed. What I was forgetting was that getting changed doesn't mean sticking on a dress while dancing around to Pink and drinking cider any more. It means having a vast army of experts descend on your body and dress it as if it were an abstract concept and not really part of you at all. Being in Rufus's world is almost like going back into the Victorian times when maids would rush in and attend to your every need. I get told off for so much as pushing my hair out of my eyes. 'Stop, stop, stop,' they say. 'Hairdresser, tend to the fringe please.'

So, for the party preparations, a host of people descended and swarmed towards me like a rather terrifying mob of angry wasps. They spoke to each other more than to me, talking about my body and the unique challenge it represented to them as if I weren't there at all. The truth is that my view wasn't relevant: they were the experts, they would do the job. I saw Rufus for about a second, when we passed on the huge landing area. My team and I were heading to the massive floor-to-ceiling mirror at the top of the staircase. That mirror still makes me giggle every time I walk past it because of that first night with Rufus when I became convinced that a woman just like me was standing there! While we were mirror-bound, Rufus and David were going to his dressing room on the far side of the house.

'Hey, how did lunch go?' I asked. 'I haven't had time to talk to you properly.'

'It was excellent, sweetheart,' he said. 'Sorry we haven't had time for a chat but I'll tell you everything later. I'll be going to LA though – that much is definite. This is going to be an era-defining movie.'

There were murmurs of excitement from the women gathered around me clutching clothing, shoes and all manner of beauty implements, but I must admit that my heart fell. It wasn't the concept of him staring in an 'era-defining movie' that gave me the shivers, but the 'I'll be going to LA' bit. When? With whom? For how long? Sadly, there was no time for further debate as I was dragged off by a rather gay-looking hairdresser, who was clutching straightening irons and all manner of lotions and potions. 'Come on, sweetie, if we don't let the dressers do their thing, there'll be no time for hair and make-up.'

Rufus smiled and winked. The gay hairdresser giggled helplessly. Then Rufus and David, his loyal man servant, wandered off towards 'his' wing of the house.

Rufus is now smiling at me from his end of the table. He even blows me a kiss which cheers me up, but I still can't help thinking LA? When are you going to LA? I smile and blow a kiss back but I'm distracted beyond belief. It's not just the LA trip that's causing me anguish but the actions currently taking place beneath the table.

I mean – tell me – what the hell am I supposed to do about Lord James Simpkins, octogenarian and the single most important person in the world of British theatre, who is right at this minute rubbing his expensively shod foot up and down my exquisitely stockinged leg while his wife, Lady Simpkins, sits directly opposite her husband, chattering away to me in her unimaginably cut-glass voice, entirely unaware of all sub-table activity.

Lady Simpkins is an odd character. She hoots like an owl whenever something remotely funny happens. Actually, I take that back; she hoots like an owl – full stop. Random hoots escape from her pale, spongy face at irregular intervals regardless of what's being said or who's saying it. She has something of the woodland creature about her; she wiggles her mouth around like an inquisitive ferret, and extends her neck upwards like a stoat. Add into that the hooting and it's like spending an evening in the forest. Except that these are not small woodland creatures gathered on the seat next to me – Lady Helen Simpkins is a huge woman. She's not just seal plump, she's warthog fat. Not so much well-upholstered as over-stuffed. Her face looks like it's been moulded out of uncooked dough. Her eyes are small and beady in the middle of the mad shapeless face and her mouth is so thin and coated with badly applied brown lipstick, it looks as if a child has drawn it on with a chocolate finger.

The lady's thick, wiry hair is contained by vast quantities of hair lacquer and is fashioned into a style not unlike that sported by Princess Anne. I bet that hair hasn't moved for thirty years. When I look at her husband to see what he's making of it all, he rubs harder against my leg and is almost salivating with glee. Oh God.

'It was divine, wasn't it, Edward?' Lady Helen is saying to
the distinguished-looking doctor sitting next to her. I know that his name
is Edward and that he and his wife, Isabella, sitting opposite him, are the
foremost anti-ageing doctors in the western world. Apparently, if you spend
enough time with these two, you just won't get old. They'll iron out wrinkles,
remove bags and fill out crevices until it's impossible for you to look as
if you've passed your fortieth birthday (referred to here as your thirty-tenth
birthday). I look older than some of the guys round the table tonight, yet
I must be a good twenty years younger.

Who'd have thought age would be such an abstract concept. You'd think you just got older and looked older, but no. It's clear that no one is quite what they seem, age wise, or indeed in any way. As if to remind me of this, my balding companion with the tufts of hair shooting out of his nose shifts his foot a little higher and is now rubbing with a fury verging on the painful against a spot somewhere just below my knee. I knock his foot away sharply and attempt to pull my legs round to the other side, but he's not a man who gives up easily, and soon the foot is back there, pushing against mine.

This is clearly one of the downsides of looking better than you've ever looked in your life before and, I have to confess, it was something I hadn't predicted. Not at any stage in the hour that Elody spent, working her magic on me earlier today, did I think, 'Better watch out – there'll be a randy pensioner at the party who'll take a real shine to you.'

Elody turned me from frumpy to fabulous by squeezing my wobbly bits (the bits that Rufus likes but that the skinny stylist can't stand) into 'shape wear' (these rather hideous, really tight, really big knickers in an unflattering pale flesh colour). She then draped and layered, pulled in, flared out and floated dresses over my newly squeezed-in form until I looked like a goddess of the sea.

'It's Cindy Crawford meets Jane Russell,' she squealed as a team of make-up artists appeared out of nowhere (I have a feeling she keeps them in that huge bag that she carries around with her). They painted gunk onto my face in quantities that would cover a wall in the average sized semi. My head weighed twice as much by the time they'd finished. Jewellery was added so that my ear lobes and neckline twinkled like stars in a midnight sky, and my beautifully polished toenails were slipped into the softest, most elegant and most searingly high shoes I've ever seen. I felt about nine feet tall when I stood up, and most unbalanced. 'These are not shoes to walk in,' said Elody with a straight face, when I complained that getting up and walking across the room without falling over would be a feat of quite monumental proportions.

The hairdressers then took over and my hair was coiffed and teased and sprayed and thickened until I looked like I had twice as much of it. It had never looked so glossy and shiny.

Now I'm sitting here and though there's no question that I've never looked more like the girlfriend of an international film star in my life before, on the inside I'm struggling. They're having debates about the cultural role of the media in modern Britain, and assessing the true impact of Shakespeare not just on the theatre but on mankind's very sense of himself (what does that mean?) and I'm feeling like a total idiot.

'It could be argued,' says Isabella boldly, 'that Shakespeare's contribution to the world of literature has had the impact of redefining our very understanding of ourselves as conscious beings.'

Yep, indeed it could, I think to myself, wishing that Sophie and Mandy were here. It's not that I'm stupid – I did really well at school – it's just that this sort of talk makes me want to run screaming from the room shouting, 'Help, help.' Would that be appropriate behaviour? I'm thinking probably not, so I smile and nod and think, Shakespeare? Shakespeare? Now which one was he?

'His plays are certainly the only ones ever written which don't date,' says Rufus, and I feel a rush of pride that he knows which one Shakespeare is. 'You feel that as an actor.'

Oh yeah, watch him go. My money's on Rufus.

'What about Oscar Wilde?' asks Jan James, a small, slim and rather mumsy-looking woman at the end of the table. She's married to Rock James, the huge rock star, but he's not here. He's on some world tour and, if the papers are right (and I happen to know now that they're not always right, so that's why I question it!), he's sleeping with half the girls in the world on the way round. The papers have been incredibly cruel, printing pictures of the young girls he's supposed to have bedded alongside pictures of Jan. She looks two decades and two kids older . . . because she is. But what I'm discovering tonight is that she's really sweet. She keeps looking over and mouthing, 'Are you OK?' to me and smiling warmly. Her comment about Oscar Wilde doesn't go down too well though.

'Absurd,' squeals Lord Simpkins, who sounds quite beside himself with frustration – and for a minute I think that his fury may result in an end to the continual stroking up and down my leg. But, no. He's one of the few men I know who can do two things at once.

I push his foot off again, this time quite violently, and though it thumps to the floor, causing Her Ladyship to look up sharply, it still doesn't deter him. It's almost as if he's relishing the sport all the more for my participation in it.

'Why, Oscar Wilde was dated before it even hit the stage. The man and his work can only be defined within the context of the period in which he lived. It's nonsense to understand his work in any other way. Shakespeare deals with much broader, more human issues. Wilde's overrated if you ask me.'

'Agreed, my dear. Agreed,' hoots Lady Simpkins and the couple smile warmly at one another before she turns her attentions back to the rather dashing-looking Edward and His Lordship grabs my knee with the sort of strength that wouldn't disgrace an arm-wrestler.

The debate rages across the table. It turns out that Oscar Wilde is overrated; is underrated; is sometimes overrated; can be overrated, depending on your point of view. I feel like saying, 'Isn't that the point? Isn't the point that everyone has a view and no one's views are wrong because it's art, not science,' but I know that'll be wrong, so I shut up and concentrate on Edward. Now, he's an interesting man because he's fabulously handsome – a combination of Barbie's boyfriend (Ken) and the Kennedys. He's so perfect he looks like he's made of plastic, and I have to say that I fear for him greatly as he bends over a little, moving perilously close to a candle. Will he melt into a small puddle of plastic, Botox and collagen before our eyes?

He has hair that's so thick and glossy it looks almost black against his tanned skin. His eyes are the colour of hazelnuts with an intensity that borders on lunacy. His suit is immaculate, and he wears cufflinks and shoes that are so shiny, someone must have been polishing them for days. There's the perfectly ironed shirt and the thick and well-knotted tie. The man looks as if he's been cut out of a magazine. Really, he's an incredibly handsome man but – this is the thing – desperately unsexy. He's too doll-like, too perfect to be considered a handsome man. I mean, there's nothing manly about him at all. I can imagine him hanging up his shirt and making you shower before he'd touch you. I bet he's got his initials written on every towel, handmade shirt and expensive tie he owns. There's just something mind-numbingly asexual about him even though he's model good-looking and perfect in every way. Isn't that interesting? His good looks are very different from Rufus's which are far more rugged, more masculine and sooooo much more appealing. I look up at Rufus as I compare them and see him take a large gulp of wine.

'This is the point though, isn't it? The very reason that we're here and why art matters so much to us is that it provokes these differences in opinion. We all have different views – this is art, not science.'

Fuck, I should have said that.

Edward's wife Isabella applauds him (she's the one who fell out with Elody – I hope you're keeping up here). She is as good-looking as her husband, but very, very feminine and somehow sexy at the same time. She radiates beauty and I keep feeling myself drawn to look at her. No wonder she winds Elody up so much! She's dressed classically, with none of the flair of Elody, but she looks divine. Her skin is plump and fresh (as well it might be given the various solutions that have undoubtedly been injected into it) and her hair runs down her back in glorious, luscious golden waves. She wears a simple cream shirt and subtle gold jewellery and she reminds me of Grace Kelly. I have to stop myself staring. She must be mid-forties but there's something so luminous and divine about her; she's very thin (I'm finding this is a common theme) and her tiny birdlike frame makes her appear slightly helpless but at the same time so cool and in control. I find myself wishing she wasn't with the rather stiff and pompous-looking Edward, but had someone warm and kind.