The Birthday Party (6 page)

Which, of course, to a large extent they were. You had to tick a few boxes to begin with, but walking out of the house looking
a million dollars took time, effort and money, even if
you went for the casual, natural look.
Especially
if you went for the casual, natural look and you were breathing down the
neck of fifty.

Fifty. Where had all those years gone? Somehow it was only when something momentous happened that you took the time to look
back and wonder how you had got here.

Delilah was originally Deborah, an ordinary girl from Bradford on Avon with extraordinary looks who worked in a travel agent.
She and her friends had gone on a day trip to London, where she had been spotted by a talent scout at the Hard Rock Café.
On her agent’s advice, she’d changed her name from Deborah to Delilah (her mother was a Tom Jones fan), and it had taken her
more than six months to remember to respond to the name when someone called her. She had taken to modelling like a duck to
water, being unselfconscious and imaginative, but most important of all hardworking.

She’d come to the public’s attention when she’d starred in a series of television adverts for a popular chocolate bar. She’d
been filmed devouring it with sensual pleasure along with uninhibited moans in a variety of inappropriate places – in a box
at the opera, at a board meeting, in the middle of a wedding – and the ads had developed a cult status, sending sales of the
chocolate bar soaring. Delilah had found herself a public figure overnight, unable to walk down the street without people
humming ‘Mmmm …’ as she passed. A whole new world had opened up to her. She’d worked hard and played hard, jetting all over
the world, never out of work because of her versatility, her professional attitude and her constant smile.

Then one day she was offered a part in a film. She had shied away at first, until she learned that she didn’t actually have
to act. She was to play the object of the leading man’s obsession – a fantasy figure he lusted over from afar, in a bucolic
coming-of-age love story that ended in tragedy. It was being heralded as the next
Tess
, a sensual, passionate tale with ‘tasteful’
nudity. Delilah had agonised over whether she should agree to being
filmed without her clothes on, but the director’s credibility was so high that in the end she gave in. Polanski hadn’t done
Nastassja Kinski any harm.

Everyone had warned her about Raf: her agent, the director, her mother, the milkman. Good for nothing, ne’er-do-well womanising
drunk was the general consensus. She’d been quite certain that she would be immune to his looks and his charm. She’d fought
off enough come-ons from men who thought they were God’s gift. Raf Rafferty wasn’t going to cause her any problems.

He took her breath away on sight. Nothing could have prepared her for the depth of his blue eyes, the clarity of his skin,
the perfection of his bone-structure. She had never seen anything so close to a deity, and this was a woman who mixed with
perfection in her job every day. And she hadn’t been prepared for his sincerity, though a little voice inside her
told
her
he was an actor, that it was an act, that this was what he did day in, day out for a living, and she shouldn’t be fooled.
When he looked at her, she felt her soul trying to fight its way out of her body and into his. When he told her – told her,
not asked her – he was going to kiss her three days into the shoot, she was lost.

Everyone working on the film saw it. It was as if they were the only two people who existed, with an invisible force field
around them. The crew rolled their collective eyes at the predictability of it – there hadn’t been a leading lady yet who
Raf hadn’t worked his magic on. But this time it was different. This time he wasn’t playing a role. This time he truly was
in love, and it shone out in his performance, as his character burned with an unrequited passion. There were even hushed rumours
of an Oscar. And by the end of the film, they were Mr and Mrs Rafferty. The cast and crew attended the wedding; the photos
were on the front page of every newspaper in the world.

The first six months of married life were bliss, as both Raf and Delilah decided to take some time off. They bought a huge
garden flat in Kensington, furnished it from antique stalls, went out for dinner, caught up with their respective old friends
and made new ones, took little trips to places they’d never been – Florence, Marrakesh, Portmeirion. And then Delilah had
discovered to her delight that she was pregnant. She couldn’t wait to become a full-time mum. The film had bought and paid
for the flat between them; she had plenty of savings. And Raf was thrilled to be becoming a father. They did a sumptuous shoot
for Nigel Dempster, Delilah in a floaty chiffon dress leaning back on Raf, who had a proud hand on her stomach. They were
the golden couple, fêted by everyone, a fairy tale.

And the drinking wasn’t a problem. Yet. Of course she knew Raf drank. It was like breathing to him. But he seemed to have
it under control, because he was content. On the set, he hadn’t raised hell, because he had been absorbed in the pursuit and
capture of Delilah, much to the relief of the director and producer. It had been the easiest Raf Rafferty movie to shoot,
and the industry kept its fingers crossed that Delilah had tamed him, and that from now on casting him would not be so fraught
with fights, hangovers and broken-hearted actresses who had fallen for his charms and then been dropped like a hot potato.
For the time being, his drinking was something he did a lot of, but in a sociable, acceptable way. Sure, there were always
empty wine bottles piled up, but they were a newly married couple having fun.

It was a marriage made in heaven …

Delilah felt tears well up as she remembered the simplicity of those days, pottering about with her burgeoning bump, a paintbrush
in one hand. It had always seemed to be sunny, though of course it wasn’t. The biggest decision she ever had to make then
was what to cook for Raf’s supper—

‘Are you OK?’

She jumped. Polly was standing in the doorway.

‘I’ve brought you up a cup of tea – and some things to sign.’

Delilah sat up wearily. Couldn’t she even have a lie-down without someone interrupting her? But it was her own fault. She
had got into the habit of Polly coming up to her room to go through paperwork while she got ready in the morning. Delilah
was a firm believer in multi-tasking – if she could get through her mail while she did her make-up, then she was ahead of
the game. Her bedroom had become like a second office.

‘I’m fine, Poll. I’ve just got a bit of a headache.’

Polly looked concerned. It wasn’t like Delilah to feel unwell.

‘Why don’t you have a sleep? I’ll leave this stuff with you to look through. We can go through it later.’

She put the papers down on Delilah’s bedside table, pinning it down with an Emma Bridgwater mug full of peppermint tea.

‘Thank you.’ Delilah shut her eyes, willing Polly to go. She wasn’t in the mood for explanation.

As Polly left the room, she turned over and buried her face in the pillow.

The marriage made in heaven soon became hell.

The honeymoon was over. Raf went back to work: a three-month shoot in New York. Being pregnant, Delilah decided she would
stay in England, preparing the flat for the baby’s arrival, and without Delilah at his side Raf slid back into his old ways:
carousing in the local bars every night, drinking till dawn. Photographs of him with various women hit the press. Rumours
of on-set affairs emerged via dubious sources: makeup girls, the leading lady’s body double. If you were to believe what you
read, he was insatiable and indefatigable. On his return he protested his innocence. Yes, he’d been socialising, but only
because he was away from home and lonely and that was how he coped. And as for the girls – yes, there’d been girls when he
went out, but he hadn’t done anything with them. It was just the press stirring it all up, looking for a story where there
wasn’t one.

Delilah wanted to be reassured. It was impossible not to
believe him, with his beseeching blue eyes and his contrition. And when he was by her side, he was beyond reproach. Attentive,
dutiful, loving, funny, generous. He came shopping for baby things: they bought a beautiful antique cot, and he restored it
and put it up in the nursery and she filled it with beautiful lace-edged bed linen. Standing there in the nursery, holding
his hand, she felt as filled with love and pride and hope as it was possible to be.

‘I adore you. You must never forget that.’ He held her face in his hands and looked right into her soul, and she was reassured.

When the carousing continued, she told herself she was being over-sensitive because she was heavily pregnant. As her due date
arrived, he was shooting a small cameo role in a gangster movie, and several times in the papers there had been pictures of
him out with Penny Porter, the leading lady.

‘It’s part of the job. You know that. See and be seen,’ he protested.

Everyone on the film knew she was due any day. They wouldn’t have thought it strange if he had ducked out of socialising.
But she didn’t say anything. When the baby was here …

Even Coco’s birth turned into an excuse for revelry, as Raf and his mates hit the drinking dens of Soho, raising toast after
toast to the little baby girl he had breathed fumes over in the hospital. Delilah was too exhausted to protest, the midwives
were too starstruck to demur, and Raf crawled home at five o’clock the next morning. When the papers hit the doormat with
photos of him out celebrating, he slumbered on, totally forgetting he was supposed to collect his wife and daughter from the
hospital and bring them home later that afternoon. When the telephone finally drilled through and woke him up, he had to take
a taxi to the hospital. And in his drunken stupor, he ordered armfuls and armfuls of flowers to be delivered, forgetting they
would be left to languish in the regulation hospital vases just hours after their arrival because Delilah
would no longer be there. The bemused nurses distributed them around the rest of the ward, knowing the other mums would be
thrilled with a floral tribute from Raf Rafferty, even if it was by default.

Thus began fifteen years of accusation, recrimination, retribution and resolution. Every time Delilah confronted him, he eventually
put his hands up, went down on his knees and begged forgiveness, promised to change. She spent fifteen exhausting years trying
to hold it together while bringing up the three girls, wondering every time why she was prepared to have him back. They belonged
together, he was the love of her life, and he was the father of her children. And, she suspected, he needed her. It was only
because of his weakness that he fell prey to temptation.

Delilah often wondered what would have happened if the
Iliad
debacle hadn’t happened. Would they have gone on like that for
years, until eventually she couldn’t take any more humiliation? As it was, the tables turned when he was thrown off the film.

Raf spent two days in the clinic before walking out. He recognised he had a problem, but he wasn’t going to let somebody else
profit from it. If he was going to be dry, he would do it himself. Luckily he had a fantastically sympathetic GP who was a
huge fan of Delilah and had seen the girls through all their childhood ailments. He was able to provide Raf with support,
and sleeping tablets, and encouragement.

Financially, the Raffertys hit crisis point. Raf had to pay his fee back to the film company, they had a huge tax-bill they
hadn’t saved for, the girls’ school fees were due for the smart day school they attended. Delilah ploughed through the paperwork
with mounting horror, added up their outgoings (huge) and their incomings (minimal) and realised they had to come up with
over sixty thousand pounds cash on the spot if they weren’t going to face total ruin, have the house sold from under them
and the girls politely asked to leave school. And that was just to avert immediate crisis.

Raf wasn’t going to be any help at all. If he was to stay on the straight and narrow he had to avoid any situation that involved
temptation and, besides, no one would touch him with a shitty stick. She couldn’t go back to modelling – she was nearly forty
and had had three children. The only thing she could really do was entertain. Could she open a restaurant, perhaps? There
were plenty of people in Richmond wanting somewhere good to eat. But of course she couldn’t – how could she raise the capital
for a venture like that when they were already hurtling towards bankruptcy?

She sat down at the kitchen table with a bulging file of recipes. Some were handed down from her family, others taken from
friends, snipped out of magazines, or secrets she’d winkled out of restaurant chefs. She sorted them carefully into piles
of starters, main courses, puddings, cakes, canapés, trying to establish some sort of order. There were certainly enough for
a book.

There were plenty of serious cook books out there. Worthy tomes that demanded you make your own veal stock or rough puff pastry.
But nothing that was carefree and simple and joyous, just dedicated to giving pleasure to your friends and family. So many
women viewed cooking as torture, and were terrified of it. Delilah dreamed of taking the fear out of cooking and entertaining,
and instead making it into a pleasure.

She invited three publishers to the house. While they were there, she sat them in the kitchen with a glass of very good wine,
and talked to them while she cooked. Each of them sat, entranced, while she casually threw together a mouth-watering feast,
making it look as easy as breathing, then served it up in the conservatory.

Two of them phoned back with the offer of a deal later that afternoon. The third called the next morning, begging her to hold
off from making a decision just one more day. When he finally called the next day, she nearly fell off her chair. He didn’t
just want to do a book. He had phoned a production company. They wanted to sign her up to do a pilot television
show, with a view to running a six-part series. The book would accompany it.