Lessons in Laughing Out Loud (14 page)

As they reached the top of the stairs, India pushed her shades into her hair and looked around at the cracked ceiling, the spiderweb strung between the ancient lamp shade and the dusty cornicing, wrinkling her exquisite nose.

“It’s not exactly Blakes, I know,” Willow said, pretending that she was unable to find the key, in a desperate delaying tactic.

“It’s okay, it’s fine.” India smiled. “It’s your home, I would never be so rude to suggest that it was anything less than lovely. One just gets used to five stars, that’s all. And yet, it’s all just a fantasy really. A home like this is real, at least.” She waited.

“India, the thing is . . . something personal came up and . . .”

“Fucking hell, it’s India Torrance. Shit!” Chloe flung open the door, immediately unsheathing her phone and taking several photos. “Wait till I tweet this shit, I’ll definitely be back in.”

“Give me that right now!” Willow snatched the phone out of Chloe’s hand as India was already retreating down the stairs.

“What the fuck?” Chloe protested.

“Go back in!” Willow told her furiously. “India, wait, please!”

India stopped at the bottom of the stairs, her hand on the latch.

“I don’t know what to do,” she stammered, dropping her hand by her side and backing up against the door.

“I’m sorry, she’s an idiot. Well, she’s a teenager, same thing—I didn’t warn her you were coming, I didn’t warn you she’d be there, because Victoria will kill me, but I don’t want her to go. She’s only just arrived, so I was trying to find a way
to tell you. I thought if I could explain, and it’s not like she isn’t good at keeping secrets, she’s been secretly pregnant for months. . . .” Willow faltered to a stop, seeing that India wasn’t really listening to her.

“I mean, if I don’t have Victoria, or my PA, or a stylist or the assistant director or you or someone telling me where to go and what to do, I have no idea what I’m doing. I was going to run away just then but . . . I don’t know how. Pathetic, aren’t I?”

“Do you want to call Victoria?” Willow asked, tentatively.

India shook her head, looking up the stairs. “So that’s . . . ?”

“Chloe. She’s fifteen, I used to be married to her dad. I haven’t seen her in years and she is having a bit of a crisis and she turned to me. I can’t turn her away, I just can’t. You see, I’ve let her down before. . . .”

“Did you say she’s secretly pregnant?” India’s brow furrowed.

“Yes, well, not so secretly now,” Willow admitted.

“I don’t mind, Willow, of course I don’t,” India said carefully. “It’s just that she already almost blew my cover in five seconds flat.”

“I know, but to be fair to her, I hadn’t prepared her for a world-famous actress of such incredible talent turning up on the doorstep. I mean, Chloe is your demographic, she’s your fan base. She adores you.” Willow was rather going out on a limb; she had no idea if that was true, but her main objective was to get India back up the stairs. She’d consider the details once she had her safely inside the flat.

“Is she?” One corner of India’s mouth crept upward, just a fraction. “That’s nice.”

“Isn’t it?” Willow said. “So come on, come up. I’ll make tea and you can meet Chloe and see what you think. If you don’t think it will work out then we’ll call Victoria.”
Shortly followed by the job center,
Willow added silently.

Chloe was sitting on the sofa when Willow opened the front door again, her arms crossed. She didn’t speak as Willow ushered India into the room, only tutted and shook her head.

“Right, let’s just get this out of the way,” Willow said. “Chloe, I work for a talent agency, which is a business—”

“I know what it is,” Chloe snapped.

“Do you? Well, anyway, I have to hide India here for a while. No one can find out she is here. You can’t tell anyone—and by that I mean text, Twitter, Facebook or anything to anyone. And I really mean that. Treat it like . . . well, like a secret pregnancy.”

Chloe looked India up and down, and Willow prayed she wouldn’t say anything too offensive.

“Because you fucked that old man like they said on
This Morning
?” Chloe asked her. Sighing, India dumped her handbag and slumped on the sofa next to Chloe.

“Yes, pretty much.”

Willow braced herself for inappropriate questions, comments, anger, possibly some object throwing, but Chloe just sat next to India.

“Getting dumped sucks,” Chloe said, and she glanced up at Willow. “I don’t want to get her into trouble, but if you’re cool with me being here, I promise I won’t tell anyone, even though it would make me the most famous person I know, next to you.”

“Well, if you’re sure . . .” India looked up Willow. “It will be nice, some company for me. We can share our woes.”

Willow breathed out, “Really—are you sure? I’ve only got two bedrooms, but you can have my room and I’ll stay on the sofa, I don’t mind.”

“Sounds . . . well, I would say perfect, but that would be a lie.” India’s smile was wan. “But then, nothing is very perfect at the moment, so it’s all very . . . fitting.”

“I’ll make tea,” Willow said, turning her back on the young women as she filled the kettle. “You two get to know each other.”

So far, so good. Things almost seemed to be, well, if not working out exactly, they seemed to be not
not
working out, which in her life was a marked improvement. Willow looked down at her shoes, gleaming darkly, as she waited for the kettle to boil. It was foolish to feel so superstitious about a pair of shoes, but the truth was that her life had improved since she’d found them. They were like an instant lucky charm, lost until she found them, secretly sparkling in Bleeding Heart Yard. Willow smiled. It sounded like a place from the world she created as a child, full of streets and cities, valleys and mountains and, most important, the endless possibility of adventure that would carry her away, whether she was staring blankly out of a window during the day or into the darkened corner of her bedroom at night, unable to sleep. It was comforting to get just a sense of that belief in happy endings that she had invested so much hope in as a child. And, given her collection of footwear, rather fitting that it came in the form of shoes.

Still, even a hopeless romantic wouldn’t credit a pair of secondhand shoes for the fact that Chloe was now sitting in her living room chatting to India Torrance.

“So, does the photo they’ve got show your tits?” Willow heard Chloe asked India outright.

“Yes, so lucky really I haven’t got much. It’s really just like looking at a boy,” India said, mildly.

“Mine have gotten massive, since this,” Chloe said. “Do you want to feel?”

“Really?”

Willow focused on searching for a packet of biscuits to accompany the tea, very deliberately not looking up to see if India had taken her up on the offer. Of course, Victoria would
string her up by her intestines if she ever found out that India’s secret hideaway had been violated by a mouthy teen, but Willow thought she could probably keep a lid on it at least until India was ready to go out in public again. By which time Victoria would be making so much money from her notoriety that she wouldn’t mind anymore.

Chapter
           Seven

W
illow put down the phone after talking to Victoria and finished changing the sheets on her bed. Thankfully, Victoria had only wanted to know that India had arrived safely and that she, Victoria, was now free to unleash hell on Hugh Cranmer without having to worry about India’s getting mobbed by the press for free.

“Just keep her happy, darling, get her whatever she wants. Money no
objet d’art,
you know the drill,” she said.

Willow wasn’t exactly certain about the true extent of Victoria’s control freakery, but her boss had once joked that she had all of her employees’ home phones bugged. Everybody had laughed politely and then gone home and unscrewed their light fittings. Willow wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if Victoria had some extra surveillance keeping an eye on her most precious asset, so she was relieved that the phone call had not been an interrogation about the strange girl she was secretly harboring.

“I’m going out,” Willow told the two girls, who were watching reruns of
Friends,
India’s head on Chloe’s shoulder, as if the relative proximity of their ages and plights had immediately bonded them. Willow felt a pang of jealousy that the
international movie star and pregnant fifteen-year-old had found common ground already.

“I’ve met her,” India told Chloe, nodding at the screen, as they both ignored Willow.

“Really?” Chloe was suitably impressed. “Is she that beautiful in real life?”

India nodded. “More beautiful. That’s her real hair color.”

“Hello?” Willow persisted, wondering how it was that she already managed to feel like an outsider in her own home. “I said I’m going out. Get some provisions, stuff to keep you entertained so that you don’t spend your entire time sitting there moping, banging your head against walls, not eating and crying until your eyeballs look like chopped liver.”

“Can you get satellite TV while you’re out?” Chloe asked, without taking her eyes off the TV. “Not the basic package, I want movies and shit.”

“No, I cannot.” For a moment Willow considered joining them on the sofa, but they looked so settled, she didn’t think there was room for her. “I’m getting DVDs, an iPod dock, crisps, chocolate, alcohol. Any requests?”

“No films with Hugh in them, please.” India smiled weakly.

“Nothing under a certificate eighteen,” Chloe demanded. “Get zombie films, I like zombie films. Or some of that vampire shit, but not the soppy one. The sexy one.”

“Oh, I know him too, the sexy one—he asked me out, you know,” India added.

“No shit, what was he like?” Chloe’s makeup-heavy eyes widened.

“I didn’t go, it was when my affair with Hugh had just started.” India’s face fell. “I thought I’d found the love of my life. . . .”

“You had a choice between the sexiest vampire ever and that old twat?” Chloe looked appalled. “You are a fuckwit!”

“Chloe! I’m so sorry, India, she seems to think she can say whatever she likes.”

But India was giggling. “I am, aren’t? I am. I chose a fat, old bald man with sporadic erectile dysfunction over an Adonis!”

Willow smiled as the girls giggled together, Chloe looking happy and relaxed for the first time since she arrived, a faint echo of the giggling little girl she used to know. The nine years between them seemed like nothing at all. She was torn, she wanted to sit down, to join in, to be part of it, but she didn’t know how. And besides, she wanted just a little time with Chloe, just the two of them.

Willow tried again. “Chloe, come with me. India’s in hiding, but there’s no reason why you should be cooped up. You can help me choose.”

“I’m busy,” Chloe said, staring at India with new levels of adoration.

“Come on, come with me.” Willow tried hard not to sound like she was pleading. She hadn’t really had a chance to talk to Chloe since she turned up. She knew nothing about what had happened to the girl over the last few years, except the obvious, and as much as she dreaded finding out, she also needed to know. She needed to know if the way things were between Chloe and Sam was her fault. “It’ll do you good not to be cooped up.”

Chloe eyed her suspiciously. “I like being cooped up. I like India, she’s cool. I want to stay here.”

“You could do with some fresh air,” Willow persisted.

“There is no fresh air in London, and anyway, I don’t like going out. People look at me.”

“Put your big top thing on. No one will ever know. Come on, Chloe.” Willow added, well aware of the desperation in her voice, “You came to me for some reason. Let’s hang out.”

“I told you, there was no one else,” Chloe said darkly, turning
her face back to the TV. “It doesn’t mean I want us to be best friends forever.” Defeated, Willow went to the table and picked up her bag, the magical shiny morning suddenly rather dulled.

“You should go,” India said, catching Willow’s expression. “If you go I know you’ll choose really cool stuff for me.”

“Really?” Chloe said. “You think that about me?”

“Yeah.” India nodded. “Don’t leave our movie-viewing choices up to Willow. We’ll end up with the soppy vampire instead of the sexy one.”

Chloe chewed her bottom lip for a moment and then held her hands out to Willow for a pull up. “Fine, okay, I’ll go. Just don’t make out that you’re my mother, okay?”

Their first stop was the dry cleaner.

“How is this shopping?” Chloe asked. She draped herself over a plastic chair next to a bald shop dummy decked out in a cheap-looking wedding dress. A square of cardboard propped up against it read
Preserve Your Dreams Forever—Antibacterial Too!

Willow handed over her ticket and waited expectantly for the coat.