Darling Sweetheart (8 page)

‘I’m sorry,’ a young female clerk told her, ‘but I have a do-not-disturb order on that room.’

‘I’m the partner of the person staying in that room – he’s expecting my call. I need to speak to him, please.’

‘I’m sorry, but I do have a do-not-disturb order on that room. I can take a message…’

She was so tired and fed up that she nearly said, ‘Hey! I’m Annalise Palatine the actress, now put me through to my boyfriend, you fucking little moron!’

But she killed the line instead. She frowned at the handset.

It had been just over two years, but so much had happened in that time, it seemed like a lot longer.

As with most people, she had first seen Jimmy Lockhart standing on a stage – in her case, at The Fridge in Brixton. She had just finished shooting a period costume drama called
La Belle Joanna
, about Whistler’s mistress Joanna Hiffernan, and the wrap party had shifted from a Caribbean restaurant to the nearest nightclub. Only half-listening to the drunken gabble from several cast and crew, she had noticed the lanky young singer, almost as thin as his microphone stand, his face invisible under a mop of red hair. There had been something about the way he held himself, something about the way he held his guitar, singing up there in the white light – she had drifted away from her companions to watch him and his band perform.

The next afternoon, she had gone mooching alone around Greenwich market to try to shake her hangover. Sucking on a restorative fruit shake, she had drifted from stall to stall, afloat on the colours and smells, until she had wandered out beside Greenwich’s second-most-famous tourist attraction, the
Cutty Sark
. Annalise always felt sorry for the
Cutty Sark
. Every line of the big old sailing ship seemed to be straining to escape from its dry dock, to sail back out to sea where it belonged. Sometimes, she fantasised about a wave, caused by global warming, that would breach the Thames barrier and free the
Cutty Sark
for one last voyage – a poetic end to all things.

Then, she heard someone singing an old song by Soft Cell – ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’ – to a lone acoustic guitar. She knew the song, because Darling Sweetheart had played it all the time when she was little. Thinking it too much of a coincidence, but knowing that she recognised the voice, she’d walked around the great vessel to find the red-headed boy from the night before, busking. But he’d picked a terrible pitch – away from the tourists, close to the river, competing with a cluster of youths crashing around on skateboards. Still, she had leaned against the railings and listened, an audience of one. As the boy sang, an idea occurred to her. When he finished, she walked over and threw a
coin in his otherwise-empty guitar case.

‘Hard times, huh?’

He’d squinted up at her.

‘ Pardon?’

With his explosion of red hair, she’d been expecting a Scots or maybe an Irish accent, but from that one word, she discerned that his was pure middle-class London.

‘I saw you in The Fridge last night. Times must be hard if you have to sing for your supper. But you should move over there.’ She’d nodded towards the prow of the ship. ‘You’d make a lot more money.’

‘I’m not here to make money.’ His face was solemn. ‘I’m here because I’m a pampered wanker who thinks he can build up his street cred by pretending to busk. I’d be too embarrassed to sing for all those tourists.’

She’d laughed, but as it turned out, Jimmy Lockhart had not been joking. His father was something in the City and paid for – amongst many other things – his mother’s insanely unprofitable East End art gallery and a flat for Jimmy across the river from Greenwich in Canary Wharf. But Annalise had found this out only gradually. When, a month after they met, they’d first slept together, it had been at her modest house off Maze Hill. She had bought it herself, on a mortgage against her own earnings. Neither parent had left her a penny; her father’s royalties and all the rights to his work were tied up in some legally moribund trust and after her mother’s death Annalise had even found herself paying creditors back in Ireland. Her father’s trust owned their family home, Whin Abbey, and that too was being fought over as it tumbled into dereliction.

However, Jimmy had never had to work, which was why, he explained, Lone Blue Planet sang about issues – it was his way of putting something back. Annalise had smiled at that, but said nothing. The night they first slept together, the
Cutty Sark
had burned down because some workman who was renovating the
wooden ship had left a vacuum cleaner switched on over the weekend. Annalise had taken that as an omen, but again had said nothing.

Her next film,
Popular Delusions
, was about a young woman apparently falling in love for the first time and soon she and Jimmy were spending quite a lot of time together. When she’d told him about her father, he had been mildly interested but not at all impressed. For most people under thirty, David Palatine was just some famous dead guy from a much older generation. Self-absorbed in an idle but apparently good-natured way, Jimmy never asked questions about anything whatsoever, which suited her fine.

She had gone to his gigs and, in turn, he helped her to learn her lines for
Popular Delusions
. Then, Lone Blue Planet had begun to take off, thanks to a television appearance that Annalise had quietly organised by pullng in a few favours, but without telling Jimmy. She had been genuinely happy for him, even though he now spent more time doing promotional work, showcase concerts and generally obeying the demands imposed by a very effective if creepy manager. Annalise had no idea where Jimmy had picked up Driscoll – that whole hermetic, bitchy world of success-hungry musicians reminded her too much of acting to want to get involved in it.

To get an album out, the band’s new record label had sent them off to a recording studio in Oxford, and during the making of
Popular Delusions
– shot at Pinewood – Annalise had travelled up from London by train most weekends. Her character, Deirdre Orr, was a young student who seems to fall in love with a married art teacher. She had found the necessary mindset straight away, and work on the modestly budgeted film had gone extremely well.

A month after she had wrapped, Lone Blue Planet had finished recording their album, so she and Jimmy had rewarded themselves with a winter holiday in Iceland, where she’d always
wanted to go. They had hit the nightclubs of Reykjavik and swum in thermal lagoons. One day, they climbed to the top of the Gullfoss, Europe’s largest waterfall. Bits of it were frozen, strangely suspended in space. Jimmy had taken a photograph of her then, in a butterfingers moment, had dropped his digital camera over the edge. After a bout of swearing, he had finally laughed and said that that meant she’d be in the ice forever, or until some future archaeologist dug the camera up, took the chip to his lab, and marvelled at how beautiful twenty-first-century women had been.

The release of Jimmy’s album had coincided with her winning a BAFTA, then, three weeks later, the announcement of her starring role in Harry Emerson’s next film. The press had swooped, hunting for fresh meat to sell newspapers. She had kept a very low profile, but Jimmy was rarely off the stage, in full view of anyone wielding a camera. Donnie Driscoll, meanwhile, quickly surrounded the newly popular band with ‘people’ – roadies, security, stylists and several drug dealers, whom he euphemistically referred to as ‘florists’. Then, there was the entourage – friends and friends of friends, hangers-on happy to feed egos in exchange for drink, drugs and kudos. Happy, also, to feed snippets to the tabloids.

With a potential gossip in every corner and a camera in every mobile phone, Annalise had stopped socialising. As her deadline for
The Perfect Heresy
loomed, Jimmy spent less time with her in Greenwich and a lot more time partying with the band. He sold his flat in Canary Wharf and bought a house in Camden – where Driscoll also lived. He started to drop names like Katie, Sienna and Pete into casual conversation; Annalise pretended not to catch the references. Laughing, he had called her the youngest old lady in town.

News of his tour had come as a complete surprise. In her mind, she had been the one scheduled to leave London, but in May 2009, Lone Blue Planet had suddenly announced forty
British dates, spread across three months. The night before he left, she had arranged to meet Jimmy for a meal in an Indian restaurant in Greenwich. She had expected him to stay over, but after a vegetable balti and many promises to meet up when they could, he had called a taxi. He had told her that Driscoll wanted to leave Camden at five the following morning to make a midday press call in Edinburgh. So, she had walked back up Maze Hill alone. And that was that – Jimmy was gone.

She had spent the following fortnight at home, going over her lines in a full-length mirror fixed to her living-room wall. The mirror was old and spotted and had once been part of a wardrobe. Her agent had phoned to make some final arrangements; Peter Tress had rung too, but only to say that Harry Emerson did not want to rehearse or even meet up until his scenes were ready. She had called Jimmy several times but had only reached him twice. Then, her agent had passed on an interview request from the
Guardian
newspaper. She had been reluctant, but he had pointed out that the paper usually gave her work good reviews, so she’d played nice. Though she’d thought the interviewer was a bit of a twit.

She had tried to calm her fears by taking long walks. From the top of Greenwich Park, she’d studied the glass monoliths of Canary Wharf, trying to remember which window had once been Jimmy’s. She’d gone over her script until she could recite every scene by heart, even the few that did not include her. Then, on the longest day of the year, 21 June 2009, she had taken an early-morning taxi to Gatwick airport and boarded a flight to Bordeaux, to start the biggest film of her career.

Her mobile rang. She made a sleepy grab for it, thinking it was Jimmy, but it was only her preset alarm: 5.30 a.m. She fell back into her pillow with a groan. Her head ached; she hoped she wasn’t coming down with something. She lingered in the shower, trying to wake up, then made strong coffee and ate a leftover croissant.

Normally, she loved her work, but today she couldn’t face going in. Today’s scene was with Emerson and Robin McKendry, the elderly Shakespearian actor who was playing Roselaine’s father. McKendry would see straight through her, she just knew it. She pulled on a T-shirt and jeans and carried her tattered script to go over her lines on the walk up the hill. But when she opened the gateway onto the street, she almost bumped into a big, black Range Rover parked hard up against it. There was barely room for her to squeeze past. A smoked-glass window slid open, revealing Levine’s face level with her own.

‘mornin’, Miss Palatine.’

‘What the… what are you doing?’

‘Takin’ good care of you.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. The bodyguard called Bernstein lurked opposite, like an assassin in the early-morning light. ‘When I told H.E. about the paparazzi,’ Levine yawned, ‘he was mighty upset. He sent us back to watch over you.’

‘You’ve been out here all night?’

‘Yup.’

‘But that’s ridiculous!’

‘H.E. thinks you might get papped again.’ In spite of her irritation, she almost laughed. Levine twisted a key and the engine grumbled. ‘We’ll take you in.’

‘No! I mean, no thanks, I’ll walk.’

‘H.E. was very specific, Miss – he wants us to take you in.’

‘Well, I’ll be very specific. The only way you’ll get me into that car is to tie me up and drug me. I want to walk.’ She set off along the street. Bernstein started after her. She halted, hands on hips.

‘This is stupid!’ she protested. Bernstein looked to Levine, who beckoned him into the car. The pair drove off. Harrumphing, she strode to the end of the street, only to see the car off to her left, creeping up the main thoroughfare. Levine had doubled back.

‘Ha! Follow me up this!’

She reached the narrow Chemin du Château and started climbing it at a clip. She rounded two hairpins then tucked herself into a doorway. Sure enough, about a minute later, Bernstein jogged past, already puffing on the steep incline. She waited until he’d disappeared around the next corner then set out again at a more leisurely pace. She consulted her script. In a scene yet to be filmed, Roselaine and Bernard had sneaked into her father’s besieged castle under the cover of darkness. The defenders had welcomed her with amazement, believing her to have been captured. She had, but Bernard had betrayed his own side to rescue her. However, some of the castle guards had not been so gentle with the enemy in their midst and had dragged Bernard in chains before her father Raymond, le Comte de Trenceval.

‘But Father! If you love me as a daughter you will listen to him! Escape is our only option!’

Too shrill – not enough feminine pleading. She tried again. ‘But Father, if you love me as a daughter you will listen – escape is our only option!’

An old man wearing boxer shorts, a vest and a droopy moustache watched her from a balcony above the street.

‘B’jour, M’sieur,’ she nodded as she passed. He stared at her but did not reply.

She arrived at the castle keep to see Bernstein and Levine
explaining themselves to Emerson, who stood imperiously on his trailer steps. When he spotted her, his expression switched from anger to concern and he leapt from his perch, pushing through his burly employees. He took her hands.

‘Annalise! Are you okay? These two clowns were supposed to be Takin’ care of ya!’

‘I’m fine. And don’t be cross with them, they’ve been up all night.’

‘It’s their job to be up all night!’

‘ I don’t know what those stupid photographers wanted with me, anyway.’

‘Kid, when you work at my level, this sorta thing happens a lot. They musta thought it was me in the jeep.’

‘Levine said that, but they still took plenty of shots.’

He grinned. ‘Then welcome to the movies, baby! Next, they’re gonna wanna know what ya had for breakfast!’