Chapter 6
6
OLLIE
It didn’t matter how sunny it was in LA, or how bustling the New York sidewalks were, Ollie always got more of a kick driving through the streets of Glasgow, especially on a day like today, when the Christmas lights were still up, and the pavements were already busy with folk on their way to work, and shoppers headed to bag a bargain in the January sales.
When he was a kid, his mum and Jacinta would bring them all into the city centre on a Saturday afternoon, to go to a matinee at the cinema or – if they’d just been paid and had a bit of extra cash – the theatre. Years later, when they were in high school, Kara would drag him into town every Christmas for the switch-on of the lights at George Square. In the summer, they’d all lie on the grass in Victoria Park or over in Kelvingrove Park in the West End. And when they were in college, they would pub crawl their way around half the bars in the city centre. Glasgow was part of him – and the more he was away, the more he missed it.
Sienna had never felt the same way about his home city. Born and raised in Santa Monica, she’d grown up in the warm sunshine at the beach and in the swish opulence of the stores on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, so the grey, rainy streets of Glasgow had no appeal. That had been part of the whole ‘opposites attract’ thing when they’d met – him, a working-class lad from Scotland, with a mother who was a legend in pubs and karaoke bars across Glasgow, and her, a wealthy California beach chick from a famous acting family that stretched back three generations. Even her considerable acting skills hadn’t been able to pull off any kind of enjoyment of the life here in Glasgow. She’d come back with him three or four times since they married, but every time, he could see after a week or so that she was craving her own world.
All of that made what he was about to do today even crazier. They’d already driven from the Park Circus area of the West End, across the city to the South Side, where they’d stopped for bacon rolls and mugs of builder’s tea in a greasy spoon that had been there since Ollie was a kid. He’d pulled a beanie down over his hair, shoved on a pair of fake specs, and neither of the two other people in the place had batted an eyelid at the strangers. No-one would expect a world-famous super star to be sitting in the corner munching crispy bacon. Although, the waitress had raised an eyebrow when Calvin had pulled a napkin out of the table dispenser with a flourish and tucked it into the neck of his cashmere sweater.
Now, they were about five minutes away from their destination, and the whole point of the trip.
‘How’s your mum doing?’ Calvin chatted away while he drove. ‘Ah, I miss that woman. In another life, if I hadn’t… you know… been irrevocably attracted to handsome but flawed chaps with a touch of arrogance and a nifty line in chat, then I would have swept that fine woman right off her furry slippers.’
Despite the unease that had been seeping through his bones as he pondered his incompatibility with his wife, Ollie grinned. ‘She’s doing great. She docks in Miami tomorrow and then she’s flying to Hawaii for a family friend’s wedding. I’m meeting her there. She always asks for you too. You know she loves you.’ Calvin had been his mum’s manager for many years, and he always said…
‘You know, I’ve said it a million times, but it was one of the great injustices of my career that Moira Chiles didn’t make it in theatre. I wholeheartedly believe she could have been one of the great musical stars of her generation.’
They both knew why that hadn’t happened. She’d simply refused to live in London because she was a single mum to a small child and she wouldn’t leave him. She also had elderly parents and she wouldn’t even consider leaving them in anyone else’s care. ‘I do just fine and I’m perfectly happy up here in the pubs and clubs,’ she said, so often that he truly believed that until he was well into his teens and developed enough emotional intelligence to understand that she’d had to convince herself of that because the reality was that despite her gargantuan talent, she’d sacrificed her dreams so that she could be his mother.
‘I’ll tell her you said that again. It’ll make her day. She’s still convinced that she’ll get her name in lights one day and I wouldn’t bet against her.’
Before Calvin could say any more, he let out a yelp and a couple of expletives as the car skidded in the slush when they turned a sharp corner. The windscreen wipers had been on full pelt to clear the snow that had been falling since they left his house, and it was laying thick as they turned into a side street lined with tenements that had seen better days. There were a couple of empty shops. Some boarded-up windows on the bottom-floor flats. A few teenagers hanging out by a chip shop at the end of the road, its shutters already up and the lights already on. They drove about halfway down before Calvin pulled in and stopped the car, in front of a building that Ollie knew only too well, but it looked a lot different now than it did in his childhood, when he would be brought here every Sunday by his grandparents.
‘Majestic, so it is,’ Calvin quipped, with a grin. ‘I tell you now, if this church collapses to rubble when we’re in there, and wipes us both out, I’ll be having a word with the big man about his real estate when I get upstairs.’
Ollie didn’t reply, too busy taking in every inch of the building as he climbed out of the car.
There was a gent in a suit, with a parka over the top, huddled under the porch at the entrance, who stepped towards him now, hand outstretched. He introduced himself as the estate agent handling the sale of the property and then held open the huge, wooden door for them to enter, launching straight into his sales spiel.
Ollie tuned in and out of what he was saying.
‘It hasn’t been a house of worship for over twenty years.’
‘Used as a community centre for a decade, then bought by a developer.’
‘For the last ten years, the developer has been sitting on it, waiting for the area to undergo some kind of regeneration.’
‘Developer has decided to cut losses and sell.’
It was pretty much all information that he knew already, because Calvin had done the research and briefed him on it.
The idea was simple – a theatre school for kids with a passion for acting or singing, who couldn’t afford private lessons, one that would be a safe haven and somewhere that they could come to learn, to socialise and to develop their talents. It was Calvin’s retirement project, something that would leave a real lasting legacy. He already had a group of talented actors on board, grants lined up, and plans for fundraising, but he needed a big name to partner with him and provide a substantial cash injection to buy the building and share the cost of the renovation. Calvin also wanted someone who would be more than just a name, someone who would not just make a financial commitment, but a time commitment too.
When Calvin had first brought this to him, Ollie knew his old friend was hoping he’d throw his heart into the ring and be that main partner.
Ollie wanted to be that guy. He just didn’t know if he could get Sienna on board and if he couldn’t, it was a deal-breaker.
They spent the next hour walking the premises, talking through plans, options, costings. By the time they got back in the car, he was sold. This could be awesome. The chance to do something that mattered. Make a difference to the community.
Calvin hadn’t even put his seatbelt on before his enthusiasm got the better of him. ‘So what do you think? Shall I steal your wallet right now or just hack into your bank account and Venmo the cash over to my offshore account?’
Ollie sighed, picking his words. ‘I love it. I can see potential, and I think we could create something really special.’
‘I sense a “but” coming. Will I need my morning cocktail before I hear it?’
‘Sienna. Give me a few days because I’m going to have to speak to her and try to get her agreement, but it’s going to take some work.’ He didn’t add that she was already pissed off with him, so that might make it a tad more challenging. ‘It’s not even the financial investment. She’s on my case to spend less time here, so I’m really going to have to graft to get her to buy into this.’
Calvin started up the engine. ‘And what about you? How do you see the future mapping out?’
Ollie shrugged. ‘I’m committed to the show for seven years, and it’s mostly filmed in Europe and Vancouver. To be honest, I’d rather move my base back here. LA life is great, but it’s not home.’
Calvin pulled out of the parking space and as they passed the group of youths on the corner, eight teenagers gave them the finger and one threw an Irn-Bru can that bounced off the back window.
Calvin remained totally deadpan. ‘Totally understand. I mean, Malibu is a hovel compared to this little slice of paradise. Home or lunch?’
‘Sorry, mate, raincheck on the lunch. I need to get home and packed. I’ve got a flight out of here later today. Talking of which, just need to make a quick call.’
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and tried Kara again. He’d originally planned to ask her to come here with him today, because she had a brilliant eye for all things theatrical. They were definitely products of their childhood. Kara’s mum, Jacinta, had been an aspiring actress at the same time as his mum was taking as many singing gigs as she could get to pay the bills, so both women had dreams of stardom. When fame didn’t come to them, they’d both turned into rampant stage mums, and put all their kids in drama classes. As they hit their teens, Ollie was the only one who stuck with it. Kara’s older sister, Drea, got a boyfriend and decided watching him play football on a Saturday was a far more enjoyable way to spend the day. Kara kept going but only to keep Ollie company and because she could sew, so she was a brilliant help with the costumes.
Kara’s phone didn’t even ring, just went straight to voicemail. Dammit. It was easier for him to get a hold of Hugh Bloody Jackman than it was to track down his lifelong friend. He tried Drea, who picked up, with, ‘Kara McIntyre’s secretary here. Fielding calls for my sister since 2006.’
‘Hey, it’s me.’
‘Who?’
He shook his head, but couldn’t help laughing. He would never get big-headed or carried away with his own ego as long as he had friends like these. ‘You’re hilarious, you know that?’
‘I do. I also know that you’re probably looking for my sister, because she hasn’t answered her phone for two days.’
‘I am. Is she okay? How bad is it?’
‘Not okay and pretty bad. I’d like to do all kinds of illegal things to Josh Jackson right now. Life would have been much simpler if you’d just married her when she asked you.’
‘I was eight, and she only asked me because she wanted my bike.’
‘Also true,’ Drea chuckled. ‘Look, I’ll let her tell you what’s going on because she’ll want to explain it all in detail and I’ve got a to-do list the length of a toilet roll to get done before we leave for the airport. She’s at the studios for a meeting right now because she told them to stick their job?—’
‘What?’ he exclaimed, making Calvin swerve. She loved her job. This didn’t make any sense at all. What the hell was going on?
‘Another long story. Look, we can spill all the sordid details at the airport. Tell me you’re still coming.’
‘I’m still coming.’
‘Okay, see you there, 4p.m. I need to go now because I’ve got a wedding to pack for and my time is far too important to waste on idle chit-chat with TV stars. Love you and bye.’
Click.
Calvin kept his eyes on the road, but was clearly intrigued. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Yeah, just one of my mates having a hard…’ His words faded away as a ping on his phone interrupted him. Then another. Then another. Then Calvin’s phone, attached to the dashboard by some magnetic device, started popping off too. It was like the scene in so many movies where there’s a press conference and all the journalists’ phones start ringing at the same time to alert them to some unrelated travesty.
Frowning, Ollie scanned his phone screen. Notifications from Instagram. X. Facebook. Texts. WhatsApp messages. Either he’d been nominated for something amazing, or he’d been cancelled, or the press had got hold of some false rumour and it was firing around the cyber-verse.
He opened the first one and got the answer straight away. A salacious headline on a celebrity blog:
Sleepless In Sienna? Actress spotted in mid-flight clinch with co-star.
Yet another false story. Alert over. He felt his shoulders drop down a few inches. These fricking people were just scumballs, making up shit like that for clicks. It was nonsense. Probably some fake photo of a woman who looked remotely like his wife. He’d been doing this long enough to know that it didn’t warrant another moment of his time.
Ping. Ping. Ping. Bloody hell, the internet was really going for this one. At least three journalists he knew on a personal basis had just texted him. He was about to click off the article and read the texts when curiosity got the better of him.
He scrolled down, until the photo became clearer and his shoulders rose right back up again. The inside of an airplane cabin. A guy that Ollie immediately recognised as Van Weeks, Sienna’s co-star in the play that had just closed. Although, you couldn’t see every detail of his face because it was being partially blocked by the woman who was joined to him at the lips. Black baseball cap. Long dark hair.
If this was a fake photo of his wife, it was the best one he’d ever seen.
Just as the car turned into his street, his gaze dropped down to the line below.
CLICK HERE TO SEE FULL SHOCKING VIDEO OF SIENNA MONTGOMERY IN ILLICIT ENCOUNTER WITH VAN WEEKS!
His finger hovered over the button. This might be a made-up story for clicks, but he was about to take the bait.