Divas (30 page)

‘Don’t tell anyone, ’ Lola begged. ‘I don’t want people to know I’m thinking about it – it would look so bad, with just being arrested and
everything—’

‘God no! Don’t worry, I won’t say a word!’ Georgia assured her.

‘
So!
’ Madison announced triumphantly, tossing Lola her wig. ‘Put that on, and plaster on some more of that horrible make-up!’ She jumped up. ‘Georgia, call a
limo! I know
exactly
where we’re going to have a good time and distract poor Lola from all her troubles!’

‘I shouldn’t go out, ’ Lola protested. ‘I shouldn’t even be
here
. My lawyer said I mustn’t go anywhere at all, just lie low for a couple of
weeks.’

‘Don’t be silly!’ Madison overrode her. ‘No one will know it’s you! And you’ll go mad if you stay cooped up inside for weeks and weeks!’

‘It’d do you good, Lo, ’ Georgia coaxed. ‘Take your mind off your troubles.’

‘Where are we going?’ Devon asked, reaching for her bag.

‘Maud’s!’ Madison said. ‘It’s this new, hot vaudeville club on the Lower East Side. Tables cost $2, 000, but we’re getting one for free, because I did some PR
for the guy who owns it, and he said to bring as many sexy girls as I could. Oh, and we’re drinking for free all night too.’ She winked at Devon. ‘Nothing like saying you’re
bringing a marchioness!’

‘I never have to spend a
penny
in New York, ’ Devon said complacently.

‘I really don’t know if I should go, ’ Lola said weakly. ‘It sounds like there’ll be photographers everywhere—’

‘Not inside, darling, ’ Devon assured her, carefully patting Dior lip gloss onto the bow of her bottom lip to make it look fuller. ‘Never inside. Or no celebs would ever
go.’

‘Maybe it’s not such a good idea, ’ India said doubtfully.

‘Oh, don’t be a party-pooper, India!’ Madison waved a hand at her dismissively.

‘Here, Lo, have some of this, ’ Georgia said, dumping a gram of coke out of its tidy little wrap onto Madison’s glass coffee table. ‘This’ll get you in the party
spirit.’

‘Can’t we just stay here?’ Lola pleaded.

‘What, with the hottest vaudeville club in New York reserving us a table?’ Georgia laughed, expertly hoovering up a fat line of coke with a cut-off straw. ‘Are you
joking?’

‘I should really just go home, ’ Lola said, looking around for her bag.

‘And curl up on the sofa with Jean-Marc and his boyfriend being all lovey-dovey?’ Madison snorted. ‘Don’t be crazy! Come out with us instead!’

Lola was rummaging through the nasty plastic tote bag, pulling out her disguise clothes, but as Madison’s words sank in, she stopped, staring down at the sickly lime-green sweater in her
hands. She
didn’t
want to put this cheap acrylic thing on, slip back into those scratchy trousers, and trudge back to the apartment to spend yet another night on the sofa with
Jean-Marc watching the Lifetime TV movies to which, post-rehab, he was currently addicted.

Lola hadn’t realised till that moment how much she was longing for a girls’ night out, the first one since her hen night. The realisation of how much had changed since then
couldn’t help but horrify her. She no longer had a fiancé. Her father was dead and she was accused of killing him. And she was living on charity – handed out very willingly by
her ex- fiancé, but still, charity.

She had never before been so aware of how precarious existence could be.

India was still looking concerned. But when Devon refilled Lola’s glass of champagne, and Georgia handed her the straw, winking at her to take her turn at the cocaine, and Madison grinned
at her encouragingly, all Lola’s demons flooded in to tempt her; even though she knew she shouldn’t, she couldn’t seem to help choosing drink-and-drug-fuelled distraction from her
woes over the sensible option of going home and having an early night and perhaps a bedtime cup of camomile tea . . .

‘You’re all so naughty, ’ Lola sighed, taking a healthy gulp of her champagne and then bending down over the coffee table, straw at the ready. ‘I
know
I’m
going to regret this somehow . . .’

But her demurral was drowned out by the cheers and whoops from almost all of the girls.

‘T
ake it off! Take it
off!
’ Georgia was howling.

‘Um, Georgia, it’s not a strip clu—’

‘Take it
off!
’ Georgia whooped, deaf to anything but the charms of the six-foot-six, oiled, and frighteningly flexible contortionist onstage, who was busy twisting himself
like a pretzel between his own legs and up his own back.

‘You can’t take her anywhere, ’ Devon sighed, as the contortionist, mercifully, squished and packed his long, glistening limbs up into the tightest of balls and somehow managed
to roll himself offstage.

Tumultuous applause rewarded him. Above the stage, a big metal hoop lowered with a girl draped inside it, covered in what looked like nothing but gold body paint and glitter. It revolved slowly,
glitter trickling down over her, distracting the audience, as it was supposed to, from the black-clad stagehands setting up the stage for the next act.

‘Pretty!’ Georgia exclaimed. Her eyes were shining feverishly and her focus was blurred: by now she had half of Colombia’s annual coke harvest up her nose and about the same
percentage of France’s vintage champagne swilling around in her stomach.

‘She’s always like this when people start taking their clothes off, ’ India reminded them. ‘Remember Lola’s hen night? Her and that stripper guy in the club? I
think they actually did it behind the banquette. Oh – sorry, Lola—’

Lola waved a hand airily.

‘Honestly, you can talk about my hen night all you want!’ she said happily. ‘It wash –
was
– a lovely evening, we all had a very good time—’

‘And now you can spend all Jean-Marc’s money without being married to him, which is the ideal arrangement!’ Devon said, raising her own champagne glass.

Everyone toasted to Lola’s perfect arrangement as the next act took the stage.

‘Ugh, fire-eaters, ’ Georgia said loudly. ‘Who cares?’ She waved her glass of champagne around wildly. ‘I want people to be
naked
. Don’t you, Lola?
Don’t you want people to be naked?’

‘
Please
stop saying my name!’ Lola hissed.

Lola had barely drunk a drop of alcohol for the past few days, and the combination of not much food, a lot of champagne and a few helpings of Georgia’s Colombian marching powder was making
her feel dizzy, fizzy, and divine. She was off her head in the nicest possible way, all her worries and cares, the death of her father, her own arrest, washed temporarily away on a sea of bubbles
and nose candy.

Still, the one thing she was clinging to was that no one must realise that, underneath this dowdy wig, spackled-on make-up, Missoni sweater and narrow jeans was one of the most notorious women
in New York: Lola Fitzgerald. Paparazzi were doubtless camped outside the Plaza still, waiting to see if she was going to try to sneak out under cover of darkness. The doorman had told David that
they didn’t go home till at least two a.m. At the rate they were going, she wouldn’t get home till way past that. But if anyone here heard Lola’s name being bandied around, and
rang the tabloids, she’d really be in trouble.

Lola looked around her. They were sitting at a table in what had once been the stalls section of this little theatre, which had been decorated to resemble a miniature version of the Royal Opera
House, if it had been left to decay for a century or so and then been taken over by artistically dishevelled squatters. The upholstery was red plush, the carved woodwork around the balconies and
proscenium arch painted gold, but everything was faded and distressed and ripped to look in a state of decadent decay. Tattered silk canopies hung from the ceiling; the chandeliers were sculptures,
wax stalactites dangling from their gilt curlicues, the candelabra on the walls draped with strings of tarnished pearls. The wait staff wore 19th-century-styled outfits, corset tops laced too
tight, black chokers round their necks, hair piled up loosely on top of their heads or dyed and curled into weird shapes, their faces decorated with beauty spots and smudged red lipstick.

And the patrons, the people rich enough to pay thousands of dollars for a table and hundreds more for drinks, were all decadent enough themselves to fit into the theme perfectly. Their eyes were
glittering, their mouths open, pumped up for the next sexy or dangerous act that would appear onstage. At the next table, Lola saw a girl with a vial hung around her neck unscrew the cap, lift it
to her nose and sniff, taking a hit openly. A plump boy in a silk jacket was snorting vodka up his nose with a straw. A girl still in her teens, as long and thin as a toothpick, wearing only a
miniskirt and a ripped T-shirt, lounged on the lap of a man twice her age; as he slid one hand up her skirt and the other into the rips in her top, her expression was as bored as if she were in
school listening to a teacher explain calculus.

‘Put your hands together for Diamond, boys and girls, making her debut here in an act created specially for us!’ piped the MC, a dwarf wearing a shiny Lurex jumpsuit and a top hat.
‘Ever lusted after the Little Mermaid? Well, get ready to go crazy for this one!’

And, suddenly, a series of spotlights picked out a glimmering silver pole in the centre of the stage.

Drums rattled, bubbles burst, and ‘This must be underwater love . . .’ sang a girl with a deep alto voice and a faint Spanish accent. ‘This is eet – underwater love . .
.’ There was movement high above, a flash of silver and green and the audience in the stalls tipped their heads back as one, curious to see what was up there.

They saw her hair first, a tumble of gold glinting with silver dust, and then her silvery arms, half-hidden by the hair. She was sliding down the pole as smoothly as if she were swimming down it
into the depths of the ocean, her torso slender and silvered too. And then they saw her tail, and everyone gasped. It was green and sewn with a million tiny sequins that caught and refracted the
light, dazzlingly beautiful. She twisted round the pole as she descended, the music swirling around her, dreamy and slow, and when she reached the ground she paused for a while in a handstand, her
tail flapping in long graceful movements. Then she sank to the floor and arched back, and the audience, seeing her upper body for the first time, naked apart from two silver shells over her
nipples, whooped their applause.

It was a kind of dancing, bending into a full arch, leaning into the pole, body-rocking against it, wrapping herself around it, flicking her tail up it, twisting up and down its length, so sexy
and elegant and athletic that the audience was soon moaning with appreciation.

‘Christ, I wanna fuck that little mermaid
so bad!
’ groaned the plump boy at the next table.

And then, like a snake shedding its skin, the mermaid began to slither out of her tail, teasing the audience, letting them see every pump and grind of her slender hips as she worked herself
free. It was a strip act, but the novelty of the reveal was so effective that it kept a jaded set of spectators on the edge of their seats, mouths open, screaming with excitement when her bottom
worked free and they could see her whole, slim, near-naked, silvered body slipping from the green tail, which she turned to kick deftly into the wings.

‘You know something weird, L – um, sorry?’ Devon said, turning to look at Lola. ‘She looks almost exactly like you!’

‘Oh my God! She does!’ Georgia exclaimed, staring at the mermaid’s face.

The mermaid was fully lit now by the spotlights at the front of the stage, her long golden hair falling over one slim bare shoulder, her brown eyes made huge with fake eyelashes and green and
silver glitter. Despite the heavy theatrical make-up, her resemblance to Lola was suddenly, dizzyingly obvious.

‘She could be your sister!’ Georgia giggled. ‘You don’t have a secret twin, do you?’

The transformed mermaid was twined around the pole again, gripping it between her legs in a way she couldn’t have done in her tail, flipping herself upside down as she tossed her hair from
side to side and played with the shells covering her nipples in a way that was making the plump boy at the next table grunt like a pig in heat.

‘Ah, just take them off, baby!’ yelled a man from the mezzanine, and the theatre went mad with applause and cheers seconding his suggestion.

But Lola could hear nothing but the blood pumping in her head. She saw the mermaid on the pole through a red filter, as if the blood were filling her eyes, working her up to a level of anger so
extreme she had no control over it. The champagne, of course, didn’t help; nor did the coke or the nicotine, making her heart beat faster, fuelling her fury at the girl on stage.

Because she recognised her now. Of course she did. As soon as Devon had pointed out the resemblance, it had all flashed back. The girl in the pale-pink Chanel suit, blonde hair twisted demurely
at the crown of her head, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, standing on the steps of her father’s house. The girl who had actually dared to think that Lola was like her
– another one of Ben Fitzgerald’s mistresses.

Well, so much for the Chanel suit and the elegant hairstyle! This was who that little slut really was, a stripper! Was this how the girl had met Lola’s father – whoring herself on a
pole in front of a crowd of people whooping and yelling at her? The thought of Lola’s father, staring at this girl hanging from a pole, getting turned on by her, this girl who looked so like
his own daughter, made Lola’s stomach churn. She could feel the bile rising, bitter and acid at the back of her throat.

Every shout from the audience, every cheer of applause as the girl wrapped herself around the pole and tossed her golden flag of hair, was like another knife in Lola’s stomach. She pushed
back her chair and stood up. No one noticed, not even her friends.

And then the girl flicked one silver shell off her breasts, throwing it towards the front row of tables. Men jumped up and scrambled for it excitedly. The girl toyed with the second shell,
building up the excitement in the auditorium, making them wait for a long, breath-suspended moment, before she flicked that off, too. It spun in the air, a small flashing twist of silver,
travelling further than the first shell, and there was a rush of movement towards the front of the stage as people vied to catch it, grown men jumping in the air like single women at a wedding
desperate to catch the bride’s bouquet.