Valentine

• About the Author
  
• Title Page
  
• Copyright Page
  
• Dedication
  
• Acknowledgements
  
• Chapter 1 Valentine's Day Mascara
  
• Chapter 2 Thong and Dance
  
• Chapter 3 Can't Get You Out of My Head
  
• Chapter 4 Fairy Queen
  
• Chapter 5 Much Ado About Something
  
• Chapter 6 Family Values
  
• Chapter 7 Primrose Hill Poison
  
• Chapter 8 The Ex Factor
  
• Chapter 9 Last Night
  
• Chapter 10 First Contact
  
• Chapter 11 A Kiss is Just a Kiss
  
• Chapter 12 Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be . . .
  
• Chapter 13 If Only . . .
  
• Chapter 14 Hampstead Hell
  
• Chapter 15 Brief Encounter
  
• Chapter 16 A Break
  
• Chapter 17 Of All the TV Dramas in All the World
  
• Chapter 18 Lily's Divers
  
• Chapter 19 The Final Curtain
  
• Chapter 20 A Leap of Faith
  
• From Random House
  

Valentine

Rebecca Farnworth has worked as a celebrity ghostwriter.
She lives in Brighton with her husband and three children.
This is her first novel.

Rebecca
Farnworth

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

ISBN 9781409062226

Version 1.0

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published in the United Kingdom by Arrow Books in 2009

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Copyright © Rebecca Farnworth, 2009

Rebecca Farnworth has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
to be identified as the author of this work.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the
author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is
entirely coincidental

This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

First published in Great Britain in 2009 by
Arrow Books

Arrow Books
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA

www.rbooks.co.uk

Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at:
www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

ISBN: 9781409062226

Version 1.0

To my fantastic four:
Julian, Joe Amelie and Lola

Thank you Maggie Hanbury, my fantastically wise agent,
I really appreciate everything you do for me.

Thank you to everyone at Random House especially
Mark Booth and Charlotte Haycock.

Thank you Anna for your insights into the acting world.
Dahling
you were marvellous!

Thank you Alison for being the voice of reason and
calm in a sea of wittering.

Thank you Claire Jones for always believing I could
do it. You are a star shining brightly in the darkness of
self doubt!

Thank you Ali for all those emails to cheer me through
when it was most needed.

And thank you Isobel Williams who got me going on
the right track in the first place.

Valentine Fleming took a long hard look at herself and
despaired.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who has the fattest bum
of all? Is it me in these trousers? Should I even be wearing trousers
to the audition? Jesus Christ my arse looks VAST! What was I
thinking of, wearing black Capri pants with my backside? I should
be in a reality freak show for people with massive arses; they could
call it Arse Swap
.

She was just hours away from auditioning for the part
of Titania, the fairy queen, in
A Midsummer Night's Dream
,
but instead of channelling her character's magical and
powerful qualities she was gripped with self-doubt and blind
panic. To make matters worse the audition was on her
least favourite day of the year – Valentine's Day – which
also happened to be her birthday. Up until a year ago
Valentine had loved having a birthday on the fourteenth
of February. How she used to enjoy strolling down the
road, flipping through her impressively large bundle of
mail, noting the looks of envy coming at her from the
women she passed, who weren't to know that they were
seeing birthday cards. And yes, it was shallow, but did that
make her a bad person? Did that mean that she had
deserved what had happened on this day a year ago?

It was imperative not to think about that now. She had
to focus on the audition. But it was no good. Suddenly,
as if she'd been wearing Dorothy's ruby slippers, she was
transported back to the scene in Café Pasta, Covent
Garden. She was sitting opposite Finn Steele, the love,
she was sure, of her life. She was blissfully happy and felt
ever so slightly smug that she had a date on this night of
all nights. She neglected to reflect that Finn wasn't in fact
her boyfriend; he was someone else's. After six months
of their affair Finn had just revealed that he was finally
going to leave Eva, his girlfriend – something he'd been
promising to do from the moment he and Valentine got
together. It was a perfect moment. Too perfect to be true,
apparently, as into the lovers' idyll stormed an angry-looking
blonde who would have been pretty were her face
not puce with rage. The girlfriend. For a second Valentine
remembered thinking it was remarkable that her face was
very nearly the same colour as the deep red roses she was
carrying, and wasn't that taking accessorising a little far?
Then the red-faced blonde violently hurled the bouquet
at Finn, causing his carbonara sauce to splatter into his
eyes. While he shouted that she had blinded him, she
screeched that he was a two-timing bastard. Then she left
and Finn ran after her, begging her to forgive him,
declaring that he loved her and only her. In the aftermath
of their affair ending so publicly and so painfully
Valentine had developed an almost pathological hatred
of red roses and Italian food, which was a shame as she'd
always loved Penne alla Vongole.

She should have hated Finn after that. God knew she
had cause. Instead she still loved him, still hoped that one
day they could get back together. Now she picked up her
phone, hoping he'd texted (the fifth time she'd checked
in an hour) and even as she did it she despised herself
for being such a cliché. What becomes of the broken
hearted? They compulsively check their phones and stalk
their exes on Facebook. Technology had a lot to answer
for. There was no text and she was torturing herself by
even looking, but she just couldn't help it. Finn was the
itch under her skin, always there. It hadn't helped that
they'd met up since the break-up – always on his terms,
always for sex. Ten times to be precise. Valentine remembered
every single detail of every single encounter. Every
time had been intoxicating, intense but ultimately disastrous
for an addict like Valentine. It had stopped her
moving on and getting over him, left her in a permanent
limbo.

Oh God, thinking about him now was not going to
help. Would he be thinking about her? Fat chance. He
was most likely bringing his girlfriend champagne and
flowers in bed, pulling out a single red rose from the
exquisite bouquet and lightly caressing her body with the
petals, switching between the flower and his hands and
tongue, turning her on and STOP! She put up a mental
roadblock sign in her mind. If she carried on like this she
would be guaranteed to balls up the audition. She turned
her thoughts from Finn to another ruthless scrutiny of
her arse – really, Trinny and Susanna had nothing on
her. There was no getting away from it: the trousers were
a disaster. She looked more Beth Ditto (no offence Beth,
lovely girl and all that) than Audrey Hepburn in them.
She frantically flicked through the clothes in her wardrobe,
growing ever more desperate. When she couldn't find
anything she ended up pulling everything out and
dumping it on the floor in frustration, creating a hideous
jumble of garments and giving her even less chance of
finding something suitable.

'You're going to be late if you don't step on it, V,' her
flatmate Lauren advised, standing at her bedroom door,
smoking. She'd just got out of bed but still looked stunning
in a turquoise silk kimono. She resembled the
Hollywood actress Diane Kruger with her sculpted cheekbones,
slanting blue eyes, full lips, perfect skin and long,
naturally blonde hair. When Valentine had first met her
at drama school seven years ago, she had never imagined
that they could be friends. Lauren seemed completely out
of her league and frankly what kind of masochist wants
to be friends with someone who would always outshine
them? But they had bonded as witches in a student production
of Macbeth, discovering they shared the same wicked
sense of humour. In Lauren she found a best friend who
kept her going, even through the darkest times. Sometimes
she didn't even notice her beauty.

'Don't smoke near me!' Valentine wailed. 'You know
I've given up and this is my weakest hour!'

Lauren narrowed her eyes. 'I hope you haven't been
obsessing about
him
again. I know what today means to
you, but you've got to get a grip.' Lauren loathed Finn so
much for his treatment of Valentine that she couldn't even
bring herself to say his name. While Valentine told her
friend most things, she hadn't let on about the secret meetings.
She felt too ashamed and too conflicted to confide.
Lauren's best qualities, her unflinching honesty and her
straight talking, could also be her worst. 'He's a gutless
bastard who nearly destroyed you, remember?' This was
the mantra Lauren had tried to drum into her, with limited
success it had to be said – hence the ten shags. 'You've
got to focus on the audition. You must have a core of
steel.' The latter comment being her other mantra.

'I am! I do!' protested Valentine, whose core felt more
like jelly. She avoided looking at Lauren, who could always
tell when she was lying.

'Well, I'll leave you to it then.' Lauren blew a smoke
ring at her.

'No!' Valentine begged. 'This is a 911 situation!' Both
she and Lauren were convinced that 911 sounded more
twenty-first century than 999, which always strangely
reminded them of Michael Buerk and his TV programme
with its dramatic reconstructions of people rescued from
potholes. 'You've got to help me!' This was the torturous
ritual Valentine went through with every single audition.
The mad, headless-chicken panicking that she had nothing
to wear, the worrying that she wasn't pretty enough / thin
enough / blonde enough / straight-haired enough / tall
enough / small enough to get the part. Casually
Lauren walked towards the heap of clothes, picked out
a black wrap dress, a pair of black leggings and black
pumps and handed them to Valentine. 'Try these,' she
said calmly.

Quickly Valentine slipped off the rejected outfit and
put on Lauren's choice, triggering another frantic self-appraisal
in the mirror.

'You don't think the dress makes me look too—'

She couldn't get the words out before Lauren cut in,
'No, you look great.'

'Are you sure I don't look a bit—' Valentine persisted,
but Lauren had stuck her fingers in her ears and was
singing 'la la la' at the top of her voice. It was fair enough,
Valentine reasoned; Lauren had endured this routine
many, many, many times.

'What about the make-up?' Valentine asked. The trick
about audition make-up was that you were supposed to
look as if you weren't wearing any. God knew the natural
look was fiendishly hard to perfect.

'Maybe a tiny bit more blusher,' Lauren advised,
advancing towards her with a brush and adding the merest
hint to Valentine's cheeks.

'Not too much!' Valentine protested. 'You know I
always go red under pressure.' She took one last look in
the mirror. Would she do? She'd tried to emphasise her
large green eyes – her best feature, she always thought –
by curling her lashes and with subtle eye make-up. She'd
spent ages blending in her foundation, covering up the
few freckles on her nose in case the director didn't like
them, and she was wearing the most natural-coloured
lipstick she had. Even though she was hyper self-critical
she knew she wasn't bad looking, could admit on her good
days to being pretty. However she also knew that she
didn't fall into the beautiful category so effortlessly occupied
by Lauren. But then Valentine always underestimated
her looks, probably because she'd had so many rejections
at auditions and because she lived with Lauren. She didn't
realise how attractive and sexy she was, with her sensuous
lips and beautiful eyes. And she was constantly obsessing
over her weight; being a natural size twelve was no fun
when you were always up against size-eight and size-six
skinnies. She sighed as she tried to tuck one of her curls
back into place and cursed her mother yet again, from
whom she had inherited her wild chestnut hair. Why
hadn't she been born in an era that appreciated curls?
Say the eighteenth century? Then again, there would have
been no Pringles, no teeth-whitening toothpaste, in fact
no toothpaste and no George Clooney.

'Knock em' dead kid and we'll have a birthday drink
when you get back, plus I'll give you your present,' Lauren
said as Valentine headed out of their top-floor flat.
Downstairs in the hallway the post had arrived. Let there
be a card from Finn, Valentine prayed as she feverishly
went through it. But there were just cards from her mum
and brother, and several of her friends, along with three
Valentine cards for Lauren. If she hadn't been her best
friend Valentine would have had every reason to hate her.

She walked rather despondently to the bus stop, then
tried to pull herself together. She really needed this part.
She hadn't had an audition for five long months, which
felt like for ever. She often thought that being a struggling
actress was like enduring a series of humiliations
and living on perpetual tenterhooks. There was the endless
waiting for auditions, chipping away at her self-esteem,
not helped by other people forever asking her what she
was in at the moment, reminding her that she wasn't in
anything.
When she replied she was between jobs they'd
exclaim cheerily, 'So you're resting. All right for some!'
Valentine would smile politely and resist the impulse to
tell them to fuck off. Then there would be the moment
of hope when she actually got an audition, but it was
hope mixed in with a large measure of insidious doubt
that she wasn't pretty enough / thin enough, etc. etc. to
get it. There was the audition itself where nine times out
of ten she was treated like total shit by the director and
didn't get the part anyway. Then there were those all-too-brief
times when she got a part and even if it was tiny
and the pay was rubbish (as it invariably was) it somehow
made up for everything else and kept her going.

And when she wasn't acting there were the humiliating
jobs she had to do just to survive. Her 'theatre in
education' work, for example, which sounded worthwhile
but always seemed to involve trying to get testosterone-charged
Lynx-wearing teenage boys interested in
Macbeth
while ignoring their sexually suggestive comments. There
was her temping work, which she loathed. To make it
more interesting she used to practise her acting skills and
go into jobs as different characters, but she'd had to
abandon this when she had pretended to be from Bulgaria
and her boss had been Bulgarian. What were the chances
of that? Having to fess up had been deeply embarrassing.

And there was her work as a children's party entertainer.
She winced in recollection of the most recent booking,
for which she had dressed as the sugar plum fairy to entertain
twenty precocious six-year-old girls. It had gone wrong
even before she arrived at the party, as she'd had to borrow
Lauren's pink leotard, two sizes too small. Consequently
she'd ended up showing far more cleavage than was probably
acceptable for a children's birthday party and the
thong had nearly caused her a serious gynaecological
injury. Lauren had taken one look at her and burst out
laughing, calling her 'Porno Fairy'. And she'd been right
– Valentine had been whistled at all the way to the party
by white van drivers who'd called out lewd comments
about where they'd like to stick their wands. Valentine
had retaliated by giving them the finger and shouting that
she knew where she'd like to stick hers, and been witnessed
by several mothers with small children – they wouldn't
be booking her for a party any time soon. And things
had only got worse. At the party the children, who were
all spoilt, rich darlings, were already on a wild sugar rush,
and had turned their noses up at every single game
Valentine had suggested and kept doing
whatever minger
hand signals at her. Meanwhile the father of the überobnoxious
birthday girl, Harrison Foster-Twat Arse or
something (a city banker type in chinos, a garment for
which Valentine had an irrational hatred) spent the entire
time leering at her cleavage or trying to grope her. She
winced at the memory.
Please let me get this part, God
. She
didn't believe in God, but maybe if she succeeded in
acting she would undergo a rapid conversion.