Chapter 32
Flint’s client was a model called Liberty Taylor.
With her was her boyfriend, a weasely, pasty-faced boy with strange, combed-forward hair who was ‘no one’, according to Flint.
How weird, thought Ana, to be ‘no one’ just because your girlfriend was skinny and pretty and got paid to have her photograph taken.
Ana watched in wonder as the two of them emerged from a large white house with wrought-iron balconies, all unsmiling cool and tatty vintage clothes.
She had it, she thought, peering curiously at Liberty, whatever it was that it took to be famous, she had it.
Her hair was jet black and gelled into Marcel waves across her forehead, and she was wearing a flimsy, chiffony dress and shoes so strappy that they barely existed.
She was unbelievably pale and had a pink blob in the middle of each cheek.
Her boyfriend looked like a recalcitrant teenage brother who’d been made to dress up for the night.
They didn’t talk to each other as they left the house, just sort of wafted silently out and lowered themselves professionally into the back of the car as Flint held the door open for them.
She heard the ‘no one’ boyfriend muttering ‘Cheers, mate,’ as the door was closed behind him.
‘Where are we taking them?’ Ana whispered to Flint as they pulled away.
‘You don’t need to whisper,’ whispered Flint, turning towards her and smiling. ‘They can’t hear us.’
‘Oh. Right.’ She grinned at him, thinking, ‘You are a juicy-rare-burger-and-thick-cut-chips of a man and I want to eat you.’
‘We’re going to a film premiere,’ he said, ‘some cockney-caper thing. Sunny Moore’s in it.’
‘Who’s Sunny Moore?’
‘Another model – I think they used to be flatmates, or something.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I told you,’ he smirked, ‘I know absolutely everything about celebrities.’
‘What – even stuff like flatmates?’
‘Yup. Even stuff like flatmates. It scares me sometimes how much room in my tiny little brain is taken up by things like the name of Liz Hurley’s new boyfriend.’
‘Oh,’ said Ana smugly, ‘even I know that one – it’s Hugh Grant, isn’t it?’
Flint threw her a pitying look. ‘You poor, poor little thing,’ he said, ‘you really don’t know a thing, do you?’
‘What,’ Ana objected. ‘But it is, isn’t it? Liz Hurley does go out with Hugh Grant, doesn’t she?’
‘No, my child. Liz and Hugh split up a few months ago and Liz is now going out with a guy called Steve Bing who is some hotshot Hollywood film producer. A big fella, a bit like me. He’s also in line for about 14 billion or something when his dad pops off.
They were first photographed together, in much the same way as Jennifer Anis-ton and Brad Pitt, on a balcony at a charity rock concert. ’
‘Oh my God, Flint – that’s sick – knowing that much about a pair of strangers is sick.’
‘I know,’ he said, ‘I agree. But what’s frightening is how easy my brain finds it to absorb that sort of information and how hard it finds it to absorb important stuff.’
‘You mean your studying?’
‘Uh-huh. They say that your powers of memory are at their peak when you’re twenty-six, and it’s all downhill after that.
Which in many respects is true. But if that really is the case, how come I remember so much trivia?
It’s all information, isn’t it? It uses the same part of the brain.
And I retain it perfectly. Yet give me an important fact and it’s gone in seconds.
’ He clicked his fingers. ‘It’s a mystery to me, it really is.
Oh. Hold on. Her ladyship is calling.’ He looked down at the dashboard, where a little light was flashing.
‘Yes,’ he said solemnly into a tiny microphone.
‘Oh,’ said a breathy, Sloaney voice, ‘yeah. Hi. Driver. Could we, like, er stop, please. At a chemist. I just have to … yeah …’
‘No problem, Miss Taylor,’ said Flint before pulling over at a big glitzy-looking place called Bliss that looked more like a nightclub than a chemist.
Liberty emerged from the back of the car like a frightened little bird.
Rush-hour traffic whizzed by noisily and homeward-bound commuters surged past her.
She looked frail and lost, like the Little Match Girl in a posh frock, and Ana suddenly felt inexplicably sorry for her.
Before she’d even thought about it, she’d opened her door and was standing next to Liberty.
‘Hi,’ she said, ‘I’m a friend of the driver’s.
Would you like me to go in there for you?
I’m probably a little more suitably dressed for a chemist run. ’
She grinned and the waif-like Liberty smiled wanly at her. Would you?’ she said, ‘really?’ Except she said ‘Rarly?’
‘Yeah,’ said Ana, ‘sure. Tell me what you want and I’ll get it for you.’
‘God – that’s rarly sweet of you,’ said Liberty, ferreting around in a tiny satin pouch for an even tinier satin purse with a minute zip that she could barely get a grip on.
She opened it and pulled out a tiny crumpled ￡5 note and passed it to Ana.
‘My fucking period’s just started and I didn’t bring any tampons.
It’s just sooooo fucking annoying. And Mr “I’m, like, a guy I can’t buy things like tampons” in there’ – she indicated the back of the car – ‘refused to go in for me. Would you mind? SuperPlus? Non-applicator? Thank you. You’re a complete star.
’ And then she stalked back into the car and pulled the door closed behind her.
Ana bought the tampons, thinking what a funny old world it was – one minute you’re buying organic barley for your agoraphobic mother in Devon, the next you’re buying jumbo-tampons for a supermodel in Marble Arch.
Liberty opened the car door as Ana knocked on it.
‘Oh, you star,’ she said again, grabbing the plastic bag and the change from Ana’s hand.
‘God, I just can’t thank you enough.’ Her boyfriend was sitting at the other side of the car, staring into the middle distance, sniffing loudly and sucking his teeth, his legs apart, one leg bouncing up and down to the music playing in the back.
‘That’s a fantastic jacket, by the way – where’s it from? ’
‘Vivienne Westwood,’ said Ana, feeling happy to be wearing a famous designer label and then feeling really annoyed with herself for being so shallow. ‘It’s my sister’s. Was. My sister’s.’
‘Well – you should keep it – it rarly suits you. You look fabulous.’
For a second, the two girls stared at each other.
Ana looked into Liberty’s eyes and wondered what it would be like to be her, to be Liberty Taylor.
And as she looked, she noticed with shock that Liberty was staring at her, doing exactly the same thing.
Ana pinkened and smiled and closed the door gently behind her before climbing back into the passenger seat, feeling strangely substantial.
‘Do you know,’ said Flint, turning to smile at her, ‘that a supermodel, a girl who has been on the cover of Elle and Vogue, a girl who is widely held to be one of the most beautiful girls on the planet, has just told you that you look fabulous?’
‘Yeah,’ she replied.
‘Do you believe it now?’ he said.
‘Believe what?’
‘That you’re beautiful?’
‘Oh,’ she scoffed, ‘fabulous is one thing. Beautiful is another. And anyway – she was talking about the jacket. Not me.’ But even as she said it she knew it wasn’t strictly true.
Because suddenly, and for the very first time in her life, she actually felt like she might be beautiful.
She really might be. Well, maybe not beautiful exactly, but, you know – not bad-looking.
She smiled and turned her head to the window, watching the hordes of early evening office-bods scuttling around greyly, and felt positively serene.
They parked in a sidestreet around the back of Leicester Square, picked up a KFC and scoffed it in the front seat of the car, watching the world go by.
After the premiere they drove Liberty, her ‘no one’ and a few other beautiful, sad-looking people to a club in Soho for the post-premiere party.
As Liberty emerged from the back of the car she knocked on Ana’s window.
‘Hi,’ she beamed, ‘take this.’ She handed Ana a sliver of white card. ‘My friend Rosa’s a scout for Models One. Give her a ring. I think she’d really like to see you. Yah?’
‘Me?’ said Ana, touching her chest with her palm, ‘but I’m not … I mean … I’m … my nose,’ she blustered.
‘Yah. That’s cool. They’re looking for you know, what’s the word, er … edgy – that’s it – edgy girls. You know. Unusual. You’ve got a great look. She’ll love you. Phone her. Yah?’
‘Oh. God. Yeah. Well. Yeah. Thank you.’ She took the card and stared at it for a while. When she looked up again, Liberty and her friends were all half-way up the steps to the club where a red-velvet rope was instantly unclipped for them to pass through.
‘Yeah,’ said Flint, one elbow resting against the window ledge, eyeing Ana sceptically, ‘it wasn’t you.
It was the jacket. Right.’ He rubbed the top of Ana’s head with the palm of his hand.
‘Well, well, well,’ he laughed hoarsely, before steering the car deftly away from the front of the club and pulling out towards Piccadilly. ‘Well, well, well.’
‘So,’ said Ana, feeling suffused with some ridiculous feeling of complete and perfect joy, ‘where are we going now?’
It was eleven-thirty.
‘D’you fancy getting in the back?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ teased Ana.
‘Get in the back,’ said Flint, ‘I’ll drive you around for a while. It’s the best way to see London.’
‘OK,’ Ana grinned.
She sat smack in the middle of the black-leather seat and spread herself out a bit, running her hands over the leather pleasurably.
‘Sit back, have a glass of champagne, listen to the music and just watch the world,’ said Flint, ‘just watch and feel …’