FAME
By Tilly Bagshawe
and
WUTHERING HEIGHTS
By Emily Brontë

Table of Contents

Fame

Wuthering Heights

Copyright

About the Publisher

Tilly Bagshawe
Fame

For Viorel Rezmives

and in loving memory of Abel Teglas.

Heathcliff shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer’s heart.

Fred Allen

Contents

Epigraph

Part One

Prologue

At the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, the Eighty-Fifth Academy Awards…

Chapter One

‘I’m not asking you, Sabrina, I’m telling you. You have…

Chapter Two

‘Oh my God, Vio! Don’t stop! Please don’t stop. Oh…

Chapter Three

‘I hate you! I fucking HATE YOU, you selfish bastard,…

Chapter Four

As Dr Michel Henri lifted the child out of its crib…

Chapter Five

Striding past the waiting paparazzi, ignoring the catcalls and boos…

Chapter Six

‘Hey, Mum, guess what?’ It was the third time Abel…

Chapter Seven

Dorian Rasmirez’s production company, Dracula Pictures, had offices on the…

Chapter Eight

Tish Crewe gasped for breath as the cold water from…

Part Two

Chapter Nine

‘I’m not asking for directions again, OK? I am not…

Chapter Ten

Sabrina Leon adjusted her new Prada aviators and arranged her…

Chapter Eleven

Harry Greene lay back against his purple velvet pillows and…

Chapter Twelve

Sabrina awoke gripped with fear. A familiar fear: her bedroom…

Chapter Thirteen

Chrissie Rasmirez stretched out her lithe legs on the sun-lounger…

Chapter Fourteen

Two days after Chrissie Rasmirez’s arrival on the Wuthering Heights…

Chapter Fifteen

For the next three days, until Chrissie left for Romania,…

Chapter Sixteen

For the next ten days, Sabrina and Jago were inseparable.

Chapter Seventeen

‘Viorel, over here!’

Part Three

Chapter Eighteen

Chrissie Rasmirez arched her back and thrust her hips forward,…

Chapter Nineteen

Saskia Rasmirez rearranged the plastic Little Mermaid tea set on…

Chapter Twenty

Tish stood in the hallway at Loxley, not sure whether…

Chapter Twenty-One

The final weeks of shooting at Dorian Rasmirez’s Romanian Schloss…

Chapter Twenty-Two

‘No.’ Chrissie Rasmirez’s angular face hardened, her lips drew tighter…

Chapter Twenty-Three

Dorian Rasmirez gazed sadly out of the restaurant window and…

Chapter Twenty-Four

‘We had a deal, Mike. You shook my hand, in…

Chapter Twenty-Five

‘Give me twenty more bicycle crunches. Go!’

Chapter Twenty-Six

Sabrina sat down at the corner table at Mastro’s, aware…

Chapter Twenty-Seven

St John’s Hospital on Santa Monica and Twentieth was comprised of…

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Tish knelt down and held out her arms as the…

Chapter Twenty-Nine

For three hundred and sixty four days a year, the…

Chapter Thirty

Three thousand people gasped as one.

Chapter Thirty-One

All over Los Angeles, people were throwing lavish, glitzy parties…

Chapter Thirty-Two

Viorel stared out of the grimy taxi window at the…

Acknowledgements

Other Books by Tilly Bagshawe

PART ONE

PROLOGUE

At the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, the Eighty-Fifth Academy Awards were about to get under way.

In the hushed luxury of the auditorium, opposite the vast, 130-foot stage, designed by David Rockwell especially with the Oscars in mind, two men took their seats. Tonight, their bitter feud would be settled for better or worse. It would be settled in front of their peers, the three thousand of Hollywood’s chosen sons and daughters who’d been invited to tonight’s ceremony. It would be settled in front of the estimated sixty million Americans expected to tune in to the broadcast at home, as well as the hundreds more millions who would catch the Oscars around the globe. For one of the men, tonight would be a victory so sweet he knew he would still be able to taste it on his deathbed. For the other, it would be a defeat so catastrophic, he would never recover.

As the ceremony dragged on interminably – Best Live Action Short; Best Sound Mixing; Did anybody in the universe care? – both men kept their eyes fixed straight ahead, ignoring the smiles of well-wishers as totally as they ignored the pruriently intrusive television cameras constantly scanning their features for a reaction.

Disappointment.

Hope.

Humour.

Despair.

The cameras got nothing. Neither of the two men had got to where they were today by giving away their emotions. Certainly not for free.

At last, after almost three long hours of torture, the moment arrived. Martin Scorsese was standing at the podium, a crisp white envelope in his hand. He gave a short, pre-prepared speech. Neither of the men heard a word of it. Behind his diminutive Italian frame, a montage of images flashed across an enormous screen, clips from the year’s most critically acclaimed pictures. To the two men, they were nothing but shapes and colours.

I hate you, thought one.

I hope you rot in hell, thought the other.

‘And the Academy Award for Best Picture goes to …’

CHAPTER ONE

‘I’m not asking you, Sabrina, I’m telling you. You have to take this part.’

Sabrina Leon looked at her manager with queenly disdain. Ed Steiner was fat, balding and past his prime (if he’d ever had a prime). In cheap grey suit trousers and a white shirt with spreading sweat patches under each arm, he looked more like a used-car salesman than a Hollywood player. He also had an intensely irritating, domineering manner. Sabrina did not ‘have’ to take the part. She did not ‘have’ to do anything. I’m the fucking star here, she thought defiantly. I headlined in three Destroyers movies. Three! That’s Destroyers, the most successful action franchise of all time. You work for me, remember?

Ignoring Ed, Sabrina got to her feet and walked across the room to the French windows. Outside her room, a lush, private garden exploded with colour and scent. Bright orange, spiky ginger flowers fought for space with more traditional roses in white and yellow, and orange and lemon trees groaned with fruit beneath the perfectly blue, cloudless California sky. Then there were the views. The house was built at the top of a steep canyon, so even from the ground floor they were spectacular, across the rooftops of the exclusive Malibu Colony, home to some of Hollywood’s biggest, wealthiest stars, and beyond to the endless, shimmering blue of the Pacific Ocean. If it weren’t for the resolutely hospital-like furnishings in all the rooms – white metal beds, uncomfortable, hard-backed chairs – you could almost imagine you were in a junior suite at the Four Seasons, and not locked up like a prisoner at Revivals, the infamous $2,000-a-night rehab of choice for burned-out Young Hollywood.

It had been Ed Steiner who had forced Sabrina Leon to check herself into Revivals. Two weeks ago, Ed had driven round to his client’s mansion off Benedict Canyon at eight in the morning, packed an overnight bag while she watched, and frog-marched Sabrina into his shining new Mercedes E-Class convertible.

‘This is ridiculous, Ed,’ she’d protested. Still in her party clothes from the night before, a black leather Dolce & Gabbana minidress and sky-high Jonathan Kelsey stilettos, with heavy black eye make-up smudged around her eyes, Sabrina looked even more desirable and vixen-like than the tabloid caricatures that were wrecking her career. ‘I’m not an addict. There’s nothing wrong with me.’

‘Grow up, Sabrina,’ Ed Steiner snapped. ‘This is not about you. It’s about your career. Your image. Or at least what’s left of it. How many ratzies saw you staggering out of Bardot last night looking like that?’

‘Looking like what?’ Sabrina bristled, her sultry, almond-shaped eyes narrowing into slits, like a cat about to pounce. ‘Looking sexy, you mean? I thought looking sexy was part of my job.’

Ed fought back the urge to slap his truculent, twenty-two-year-old client across her spoiled, heartbreakingly sensual face. Sabrina knew full well she had no business being in that club last night, or any club for that matter. She could be foolish, and reckless, but she wasn’t stupid. He started the engine.

‘Right now your job is to look contrite,’ he said crossly. ‘You are deeply sorry for your behaviour, for what you said to Tarik Tyler, you are addressing your problems, you are asking for privacy while you heal during this difficult time, yadda yadda yadda. You know the drill as well as I do, kid, so do us both a favour and quit playing dumb, OK?’ He glanced over to the passenger seat. ‘What the fuck is that?’

In the outside zip-up pocket of the overnight bag, a bottle top was clearly visible. Pulling it out, Ed Steiner found himself clutching a half-drunk bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

Sabrina was unapologetic. ‘Helps me sleep.’

‘You think this is funny?’

‘Oh, c’mon, Ed, give me a break. Rehab’s boring. I’m not gonna get through it without a drink.’

‘You think you’re Marianne Faithfull or something?´ To Sabrina’s consternation, Ed flung the bottle into the rosemary bushes that lined her driveway. ‘You think people are gonna forgive you this bullshit because it’s so rock ’n’ roll? Well, let me tell you something, Sabrina: they won’t. Not this time. You are this close to being finished in this town.’ He held up his thumb and forefinger, waving them inches from Sabrina’s face. ‘This close. Now put your fucking seatbelt on.’

Sabrina yawned defiantly, but she buckled up anyway, slipping on a pair of Oliver Peoples aviators to shield her eyes from the sun’s early morning glare. Outwardly, she continued to play the rebel – it was all she knew how to do. Inside, however, she felt her stomach flip over, a combination of last night’s excessive alcohol consumption on an empty stomach and visceral, gut-wrenching fear.

What if Ed was right?

What if she really could lose it all?

No. I can’t. I won’t let it happen. If I have to go back to my life before, I’ll kill myself.

The headlines of Sabrina Leon’s rags-to-riches, True Hollywood Story were familiar to everyone in America. Homeless kid from Fresno gets plucked from obscurity by big-shot Hollywood producer Tarik Tyler, becomes a mega-star thanks to her lead role in Tyler’s Destroyers movies, and slides spectacularly off the rails.

Snore.

No one was more bored by Sabrina’s past than Sabrina, as she’d made patently clear in Revivals’ group therapy sessions.

‘Hi, I’m Amy.’ A shy, middle-aged woman in a drab knitted cardigan introduced herself. ‘I’m here for alcoholism and crystal meth. I pledge confidentiality and respect to the group.’

‘I’m John, I’m here for cocaine. I pledge confidentiality and respect.’

‘Hi, I’m Lisa, I’m an alcoholic. I pledge respect to the group.’

It was Sabrina’s turn. ‘What?’ She looked around her accusingly. ‘Oh, come on. You all know who I am.’

‘Even so,’ said the therapist gently, ‘we’d like you to introduce yourself to the group. As a person.’

‘Oh, “as a person”,’ Sabrina mimicked sarcastically. ‘As opposed to what? A dog?’

No one laughed.

‘Jesus, OK, fine. I’m Sabrina. I’m here because my manager is an a-hole. Good enough?’

Things got worse when patients were asked to talk about their childhoods. Sabrina sighed petulantly. ‘Dad was a junkie, Mom was a whore, the children’s homes sucked. Next question.’

‘I’m sure there was more to it than that,’ prodded the therapist.

‘Oh, sure. There were the assholes who tried to rape me,’ said Sabrina. ‘From twelve to fifteen I was on the streets. Poor little me, right? Except that it wasn’t poor me, because I got into theatre, and I got out. I got out because I’m talented. Because I’m different. Because I’m better.’

It was the first time Sabrina had expressed any real emotion in session. The therapist seized on it gratefully. ‘Better than who?’ she asked.

‘Better than you, lady. And better than the rest of these junkie sad sacks. I can’t believe you guys actually signed up for this piece-of-shit programme out of your own free will.’

Everyone knew that Sabrina Leon was not at Revivals by choice. That her manager, Ed Steiner, had staged an intervention as a last-ditch attempt to salvage her career.

Stumbling out of a Hollywood nightclub a few weeks ago, with a visible dusting of white powder on the tip of her perfect nose, Sabrina had lashed out at Tarik Tyler, the producer who’d discovered her and made her a star, calling him a ‘slave driver’. Tarik, who was black and whose great-grandmother had been a slave, took offence, as did the rest of the industry, who demanded that Sabrina should apologize. Sabrina refused, and a scandal of Mel Gibson-esque proportions erupted, with outrage spewing like lava across the blogosphere. Access Hollywood ran Sabrina’s feud with Tyler as their lead story, devoting three-quarters of their nightly entertainment roundup to a vox-pop of ‘celebrity reactions’ to Sabrina’s ingratitude, all of them suitably disgusted and appalled. Even Harry Greene, the famously reclusive producer of the hugely successful Fraternity movies, emerged from his self-imposed house arrest to brand Sabrina Leon ‘a graceless, racist brat’. In one, single, ill-judged night, the tide of public affection and goodwill that had swept Sabrina Leon to unprecedented box-office success – America loved a good rags-to-riches story and Sabrina had been the ultimate poor girl made good – turned so suddenly, so violently and completely, it was as if her career had been swept away by a tsunami.

And when the tide finally receded, she’d washed up at Revivals.

‘There’s no need to be insulting,’ chided the therapist.

Isn’t there? thought Sabrina

She had to get out of this place.

Two weeks she’d been here now. It felt like two years, what with the early-morning starts, the gross, tasteless health food served at every meal, the boring, self-obsessed patients. All the faux emotion of the therapy sessions, the embarrassing over-sharing of feelings, the fucking hand-holding. It made Sabrina want to throw up. Rehab was such a cliché. And, according to Ed Steiner, she still had six weeks to go.

Now, turning back from the window, Sabrina glowered at her manager defiantly.

‘I’m not working for free, Ed,’ she announced bluntly. ‘Not in a million fucking years.’

Ed Steiner sighed. He was used to spoiled, ungrateful actresses, but Sabrina Leon really took the cake. She ought to be on her knees, kissing his hand in gratitude. Here he was offering her a life-line – not just a role, but the lead role in Dorian Rasmirez’s much-hyped remake of Wuthering Heights – at a time when she couldn’t get cast in a fucking Doritos commercial. And she was bitching because Rasmirez wasn’t going to pay her. Why the hell should he? Dorian Rasmirez doesn’t need you, you dumb bitch. You need him. Wake up and smell the coffee.

‘Yes you are,’ he said robustly. ‘I accepted on your behalf this morning.’

‘Well you can damn well un-accept!’ screamed Sabrina. ‘I decide what roles I take, Ed. It’s my life. I have control.’

‘Actually, according to the release you signed when you admitted yourself into the eight-week programme here, I have control. At least over your career and business decisions.’ He handed her a piece of paper. Sabrina glanced at it, balled it up in her fist and threw it to the ground.

‘And it’s a good job I do,’ said Ed, unfazed by this childish show of temper. ‘Let’s not go through this charade, OK, Sabrina? It’s boring, it’s bullshit, and you know I’m not buying it. You know as well as I do that you need this part. You need it. Right now no other director in Hollywood would piss on you if you were on fire. Sit down.’

Sabrina hesitated. In jeans and a long-sleeved navy-blue tee from Michael Stars, with no make-up on and her long hair pulled back in a ponytail, she looked about a thousand times prettier than she had the last time Ed had seen her. Healthier too, less scrawny, and with the glow restored to her naturally tawny, olive skin. This place must be doing something right, he thought. All she needs is to lose the attitude.

‘Sit,’ he repeated.

Sabrina sat.

‘Dorian Rasmirez has had his issues,’ he went on, ‘but he’s still a big name, and this is gonna be a big movie.’

Sabrina softened slightly. ‘When does it start shooting?’

‘May probably. Or June. They’re still scouting for locations.’

‘Locations?’ Sabrina pouted petulantly. A location shoot meant months away from LA, from the clubs and parties and excitement that had become her drug of choice. ‘What’s wrong with the back lot at Universal?’

‘Nothing,’ said Ed sarcastically, ‘except the fact that it’s not a Universal Picture. And it’s Wuthering Heights.’

Sabrina looked blank. She’d never been big on literature.

‘Wuthering Heights? One of the greatest classic novels of all time? Cathy and Heathcliff? Set on wild, windswept moorland?’ Ed shook his head despairingly. ‘Never mind. The point is, it’ll do you good to get out of Los Angeles for a while. Out of the public eye altogether, in fact. We issued your apology statement the day after you came in here, which may have helped a little. We’ll probably do another one before you check out. But it’s still a shit-storm out there. You need to disappear and you need to work. Come back in a year, healthy and happy and with a hit movie under your belt—’

‘A year!’ Sabrina interrupted. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

Being away from the LA party scene was bad enough. But the thought of being out of the media glare for so long – of not having her picture taken or seeing her face in magazines – made Sabrina’s heart race with panic. You might as well tell her she couldn’t breathe, or eat. Without attention she would wither and die, like a sunflower locked in a cellar.

Ignoring her, Ed Steiner went on.

‘I know they’re filming some of it in Romania, at Dorian Rasmirez’s Schloss. I’m told that’s worth seeing,’ he added, trying to strike a more cheerful note. ‘Oh, and I didn’t tell you the best part. It’s not a hundred per cent confirmed yet, but it looks like Viorel Hudson’s signing on as Heathcliff.’

Sabrina rolled her eyes. That was the ‘best part’? What was the worst part? Were they filming it naked in Siberia? The one, the only, good thing about Dorian Rasmirez’s offer was that it would be a vehicle for re-launching Sabrina back into the box-office big league. If Viorel Hudson was involved, she’d have to fight for top billing, and probably for the dressing-room mirror as well. Rumoured to be unimaginably vain, Viorel Hudson was probably the one man in Hollywood whose sex appeal, and arrogance, rivalled Sabrina’s own. They had never met, but Sabrina knew instinctively that she would loathe Viorel Hudson.

Ed Steiner looked at his watch. ‘I’d better go. I have a meeting at The Roosevelt in an hour.’

Rub it in, why don’t you? thought Sabrina bitterly. I have a meeting with a bunch of whining alcoholics and a ‘speerchal’ healer from Topanga Canyon whose last brain cell died in 1972.

‘I’ll bike you over the script tomorrow. Give you something to do between sessions. How’s it going, by the way? This place helping you at all?’

Serena smiled sweetly. ‘Go fuck yourself, Ed.’

That night, staring at the ceiling in her hard, uncomfortable single bed, Sabrina hugged herself and said a silent prayer of thanks.

She’d played it cool with Ed, just as she played it cool with everyone. But she knew what a miracle Rasmirez’s offer was. Dorian Rasmirez was one of the most respected directors in Hollywood. He’d have had actresses lining up to play the part of Cathy. Actresses whom the world wasn’t unfairly branding a racist. But for some reason, Rasmirez had chosen her.

Fate, she thought. I was born to succeed. It’s my destiny.

All Sabrina had to do now was to give the performance of her life. And to make sure she out-dazzled the smug, self-satisfied Viorel Hudson. Still, she reassured herself, that shouldn’t be too hard. If all else failed, she could always seduce Hudson. Once Sabrina Leon slept with a man, her power over him was total.

Hollywood might have written her off. But Hollywood was wrong.

Sabrina Leon was on her way back.

CHAPTER TWO

‘Oh my God, Vio! Don’t stop! Please don’t stop. Oh … Jesus!’

Viorel Hudson had no intention of stopping. The girl lying spread-eagled beneath him on the soft-pink bed of the Chateau Marmont’s exclusive Bungalow 1 was Rose Da Luca, currently the highest-paid model in America and number one on most adult males’ ‘fantasy fuck’ lists. Unusually for such a stunning girl, Rose was also good in bed: coy on the surface, but wildly passionate and adventurous underneath. In fact, scratch adventurous, thought Viorel delightedly as he felt Rose’s index finger circling his asshole. She’s filthy. I think I might be in love.

Flipping Rose over onto her knees – much more of that finger and he was going to come on the spot – he entered her from behind, slowing his pace till he could feel her writhe in delicious, agonizing frustration. Looking down at her arched back, and that famous mane of red hair spread over the pillow like a halo, he felt a familiar rush of triumph. It was the same feeling he got whenever he bedded a woman he wanted, or landed a role that he knew countless other actors coveted. For Viorel, the pleasure of any experience was always enhanced by the sense of competition. Acting was fun. Sex was even better. But winning … that was the biggest thrill of all.

Nailing Rose Da Luca was actually the final triumph in what had been a uniquely triumphant day. Not only had Viorel signed on the dotted line to play Heathcliff in the remake of Wuthering Heights, which meant he would be working with one of his all-time idols, Dorian Rasmirez; but to his surprise (and his agent’s frank astonishment) Rasmirez had offered him five and a half million dollars for the privilege. Five million was the magic number in Hollywood, the number that separated successful film actors from bona fide movie stars. It was a rubicon that, once crossed, pretty much guaranteed you a place in the pantheon of the greats. Until your first big box-office flop, of course, at which point you could slide back down the snake into the twos, or sometimes even lower. For Viorel Hudson, however, it was a win–win situation. Despite his high public profile (last year he’d been named Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine, an accolade that he claimed to be embarrassed by but secretly revelled in), Viorel had never earned more than a million dollars on a movie. That was because he’d carefully chosen projects with artistic merit over blockbusters with multimillion-dollar budgets. As a result he was revered by many of his peers as an actor with integrity, an actor’s actor: low-key, professional, devoted to his craft.

In fact, nothing could have been further from the truth. While it was true that Vio preferred to work with good scripts than poor ones – who didn’t? – his apparently eclectic choice of movie roles was actually part of a diligently planned strategy, the purpose of which was to make Viorel Hudson as rich and as famous as possible as fast as possible. By carving out a niche and a name for himself on the indie circuit (he’d already starred in two Sundance winners and this year’s runner-up at Venice), while simultaneously using his publicist to push his image as a mainstream sex symbol, Viorel’s intention was always to make a sideways leap into big-league commercial movies, leapfrogging past his rivals faster than he could have hoped to had he taken a string of small parts in forgettable box-office hits. Even in his wildest fantasies, however, Vio had not imagined that he would sign a contract of this size for at least another three or four years. And to get it for a Rasmirez movie! – to be able to combine the pay-cheque he craved with the genuinely good-quality work he enjoyed – that was really the icing on the cake. He’d have accepted the part for a million, maybe even less. Rasmirez must have been dead set on casting him to have offered so much over the odds. Either that or he was secretly gay and hoping to get into Viorel’s boxer shorts; which, given that Dorian had a reputation as the most happily married man since Barack Obama, was probably unlikely.

Rose Da Luca’s perfect body shuddered as she finally climaxed, her taut muscles clenching and spasming gloriously around Viorel’s dick. ‘Oh Christ,’ he moaned, exploding inside her in what was undoubtedly the best, most satisfying orgasm he’d had all year. If only my bastard classmates from school could see me now, he thought joyously, savouring the moment, knowing in that instant that there wasn’t one of his childhood tormentors who would not have sold their souls to trade places with him.

Yes, today had made it official.

Viorel Hudson was a winner.

Shortly after midnight, Viorel was back behind the wheel of his Bugatti Veyron, driving west on Sunset Boulevard, when his mother called.

‘Darling. You rang.’

Martha Hudson’s clipped tones instantly made him feel tense. Incredible how in three short words, England’s most celebrated adoptive mother, MP for Tiverton and a saint in the eyes of much of the British public, could convey so much disappointment. Why the hell did I call her? thought Viorel angrily. He was angry because he already knew the answer. He’d called because deep down he still wanted Martha’s approval. And he wasn’t going to get it.

He tried to keep his tone casual. ‘Yes. I thought you and Johnny might like to know. I scored a huge part today. I’m playing Heathcliff in the new Rasmirez movie.’

Johnny Hudson, Martha’s much older husband, was Viorel’s legal father, but Viorel had never called him ‘Dad’, nor had Johnny ever asked him to. The two weren’t close.

‘Heathcliff?’ Martha Hudson MP sounded disapproving. ‘You mean somebody’s remaking Wuthering Heights?’

It was eight in the morning in England now. Viorel pictured the hallway of Martha’s Devon rectory – he’d never thought of it as home, just the house he came back to after boarding school: the faded Regency wallpaper, the neatly stacked pile of constituency post on the hall table next to the phone, and thought how far away it all was. Not just geographically, but emotionally. It was another world.

‘Yes, Mother,’ he said wearily. ‘Dorian Rasmirez is remaking it. He’s one of the—’

‘But why?’ Martha interrupted. ‘The original was a masterpiece. Let’s face it, my love, with the best will in the world, you’re hardly going to do a better job than Olivier. Are you?’

And there you had it. Just like that, Viorel’s mother had taken his triumph and squeezed all the joy out of it. Just like she always did.

The British public revered Martha Hudson for her heavily publicized fight to rescue Viorel as a baby from a horrific Romanian orphanage. Viorel’s earliest memories were of strangers coming up to him and telling him how lucky he was, and what a wonderful mother he had. In reality, however, his childhood had been horribly lonely. Though he didn’t want for material comforts, he knew that Martha never really loved him. It wasn’t personal. Martha Hudson had never really loved anyone except Martha Hudson. But it left Viorel feeling doubly rejected, not to mention permanently displaced.

His career had driven a further wedge between him and his mother. Martha Hudson had never wanted her son to become an actor. She wanted Viorel to be a doctor. In her fantasy, he would have gone back to Romania, the country of his birth, to help the poor, orphaned children still left there – ideally his return would be documented by photographers from the Daily Mail, which would inevitably remind readers of Martha’s own selflessness (for adopting him in the first place), and devotion to children’s causes everywhere.

But it hadn’t worked out that way. Viorel had selfishly decided to pursue fame and fortune instead. Martha could have forgiven him for trying. What galled her was that he had succeeded, to the point where he was now infinitely more famous than she would ever be.

‘I’ll be better paid than Olivier,’ said Viorel. ‘They’ve offered me five million dollars.’

Even Martha Hudson paused at this number. It was a pause-worthy number.

You’re impressed, you mean-spirited cow, thought Viorel. Just admit it.

But of course, Martha didn’t. ‘Oh well,’ she sniffed, ungraciously. ‘That’s all well and good, I suppose. But money isn’t everything you know, darling. Now look, I must run. I’ve got a select committee meeting this afternoon and I’m going to be late for my train.’

It was Terence Dee who had rescued Viorel from England and his mother’s stifling ambitions. Martha Hudson had only ever seen her son as a PR tool, an adorable, photogenic prop with which to bolster her image as the caring face of the Tory party. But Terence saw something else in Viorel: talent.

After Eton, Viorel dutifully followed his mother’s bidding and went up to Cambridge to read medicine at Peterhouse. But that was where Martha Hudson’s fairytale abruptly ended. After joining Footlights, Cambridge’s famous dramatic society Viorel was talent-spotted at the end of his first year by a London agent, and immediately cast in a British rom-com, Bottom’s Up. The movie went straight to video, but Viorel Hudson’s smouldering performance as a Casanova con man was good enough to get him noticed by Terence Dee, then the most powerful casting agent in Hollywood. In his mid-fifties, with a shaggy mop of dyed blond hair and a penchant for wearing pastel sweaters draped casually around his shoulders, Terence Dee was as flamboyantly gay as any Vegas drag queen, and it would be fair to say that his early interest in the edible young Englishman was not strictly professional. But clearly, Terence had no hard feelings over Viorel’s lack of hard feelings, for his own sex in general, and Terence in particular. He swiftly found the boy both a manager and an apartment in LA, on condition that Viorel drop out of university and pursue his acting career full time.

Viorel did not need to be asked twice. After a brief, frosty farewell with his mother over lunch in London (and a longer, warmer one with his girlfriend Lucinda, his co-star on Bottoms Up, and the woman who had finally relieved him of his virginity; despite his astonishing good looks, Viorel was a late bloomer), he boarded a flight to LAX and never looked back.

That was five years, six movies and countless hundreds of women ago, and in all that time Viorel had not returned to England once. Largely because of Martha, but also because he wanted to leave his shy, lonely childhood self behind. US audiences might idolize him for his Britishness: that clipped, Hugh Grant accent that for some unfathomable reason seemed to make American girls swoon, but Vio Hudson considered himself an Angelino through and through. From day one he had adored Los Angeles: the sunshine, the optimism, the gorgeous, liberated, oh-so-available women. Best of all, no one in LA had ever heard of Martha Hudson MP. And, though the US press had inevitably got hold of the story of Viorel’s childhood adoption, with the help of a first-class PR team, Vio had at last managed to shake off the image of victimhood that had haunted him all his life. Yes, he was adopted. Yes, his mother was a politician. So what? All that mattered now was that he was a star, a player, a winner. Hollywood had offered Viorel Hudson the second reinvention of his short life, and this time, it was on his own terms.

He’d made it. And he had no one to thank for his success but himself.

After hanging up on his mother, Viorel was home in ten minutes. He had left Rose Da Luca in bed at the Chateau (but not before paying the bill in full and ordering breakfast and roses for her the next morning – no need to be a dick about these things). As much as he loved bedding beautiful women – and Rose really had been beautiful, in a class of her own – Viorel was pathological in his need to wake up alone and, whenever possible, in his own bed. By using hotels for sex, he was able to satisfactorily compartmentalize his life and protect his privacy. His apartment, right on the sand at the end of Navy, a quiet, no-man’s-land between Santa Monica and Venice proper, was his sanctuary. Vio unashamedly adored the attention, glitz and glamour of Hollywood, but even he needed to know he could shut the door on the madness at the end of the day. Viorel Hudson the man was outgoing, sociable and charming. But the lonely, angry little boy he had once been still needed a fortress to retreat to.

Hidden from the street by a forbidding grey stone wall, into which was set a pair of prison-like, reinforced-steel security gates, Vio’s apartment was that fortress. Once inside, however, the feeling of space, light and openness was incredible. In the living room, floor-to-ceiling windows provided a jaw-dropping view of the ocean, shimmering grey-blue beyond the empty, white-sand beach. Give or take the occasional cyclist, no one came by this quiet stretch of coastline. Sipping his coffee on the balcony in the mornings, Vio often forgot he was in a city at all, with nothing but the distant caw of seagulls and soft crashing of waves to break the silence. The apartment wasn’t huge by movie-star standards: about two thousand square feet of lateral space. But Viorel had made it feel infinitely bigger with his simple, modern decor, the clean, geometric lines of his furniture and the calming palette of whites and greys that somehow managed to feel warm in winter and cool in summer. Had he not been an actor, he often thought he might have made a good designer, or perhaps even an architect. Every time he walked through his front door he felt a warm sense of pride, like a parent coming home to a beloved child. It was the first and only place he had ever felt completely at home, and he loved it.

Throwing his keys on the kitchen countertop, he kicked off his shoes and wandered back into the master bedroom. Dropping the rest of his clothes in a heap on the floor – Cecilia, his housekeeper, would clean up in the morning – he skipped the bathroom and crawled straight into the delicious comfort of his Frette sheets. His limbs throbbed with exhaustion, Rose had really put him through his paces, but he was too preoccupied to sleep.

Five and a half million dollars.

For five months’ work.

God bless Dorian Rasmirez!

Viorel had yet to meet the great director in person. Today’s deal had been entirely brokered through his agent. He wondered how soon he would be asked to come to a read-through, and when the locations would be finalized. Already, a bizarre aura of secrecy was growing up around the movie, with Rasmirez drip-feeding Vio’s agent information on a need-to-know-only basis. Then again, every director had their little quirks. And some things, presumably, could be taken as read. Because it was Wuthering Heights, an English classic, most of the film would have to be shot in England. In all other respects, getting the role of Heathcliff was a dream come true, but this was a homecoming that Viorel was not looking forward to. Worse still, according to his agent there were rumours swirling around that a lot of the interior scenes were to be shot at Rasmirez’s ancestral family castle in, of all places, Romania. It was an ironic twist of fate that both Viorel and his director should have been born in the same, distant, impoverished country. Although clearly, Rasmirez’s family must have come from the opposite end of the social scale to Viorel’s. My ancestors probably polished his ancestors’ silverware, thought Viorel wryly. If there was one country on earth that he felt less enthusiasm for than England, it was bloody Romania. He hoped the rumours were untrue.

What was true, confirmed a couple of days ago, was that Sabrina Leon had been definitively cast as Cathy Earnshaw, his leading lady. This also bothered Viorel. Sabrina might be the hottest thing on legs (or, in her case, on back) in Hollywood, but she was also a complete liability, the biggest Tinseltown train-wreck since Lindsay Lohan. Viorel couldn’t imagine what had possessed a seasoned pro like Rasmirez to hire her, especially with the flames from her most recent scandal still raging through the industry like a forest fire.

He must have got her on the cheap. Perhaps that’s how he can afford to flash so much cash at me.

He could have done without England, Romania and Sabrina Leon. But for five and a half million bucks, they were three crosses that Viorel Hudson was willing to bear.

Fuck you, Martha.

Switching off the light, he finally drifted into sleep, dreaming of England, Heathcliff and Rose Da Luca’s deliciously soft thighs.

CHAPTER THREE

‘I hate you! I fucking HATE YOU, you selfish bastard, I hate this house, I hate this country and I want a goddamn fucking DIVOOOOORCE!’

Dorian Rasmirez ducked as another priceless piece of Byzantine porcelain flew past within millimetres of his left ear before smashing spectacularly against the bedroom wall.

‘Jesus Christ, Christina!’ he yelled. ‘Calm down.’

‘Calm down?’ Stark naked, her small, hard apple breasts jutting towards her husband like weapons, and her cute, pixie-like features contorted into a puce mask of rage, Chrissie Rasmirez had no intention of calming down. ‘Fuck you, Dorian, you self-centred cunt! You think you have the right to tell me what to do?’ Scanning the room for her next missile, her eyes lit on the ornately framed oil painting above the bed.

‘No, Chrissie, don’t!’ pleaded Dorian. ‘Not the Velásquez!’

Like a panther, Chrissie turned and pounced, leaping towards the painting with her perfectly Pilates-toned arm outstretched. Acting on instinct – there was no time to think – Dorian jumped after her, rugby-tackling her down onto the bed. Dorian Rasmirez was a big man, six foot plus in his socks, and with the sturdy, solid build of a labourer. At two hundred pounds, he was also almost twice the weight of his petite, gym-bunny wife. Even so, he struggled to contain Chrissie as she writhed, bit and kicked furiously beneath him, spinning herself around to face him so that she could claw his arms and back with her newly manicured talons.

What the hell am I going to do with her? thought Dorian despairingly. Anyone watching them fight – or rather watching Chrissie fight, while Dorian struggled vainly to defend himself – would have assumed it was he who’d been caught cheating, and not Dorian who had walked in on Chrissie in soon-to-be flagrante with one of the estate carpenters. Dorian was leaving for Los Angeles today and had come home early from his little local office in Bihor to say goodbye to his wife and daughter and finish packing. Walking into the master bedroom, he’d discovered his wife already naked in their bed, and young Alexandru, a nineteen-year-old local joiner, hopelessly overexcited as he tried to free his rock-hard erection from his Abercrombie jeans. At least the boy had had the sense to make a swift exit, leaving his shirt and boots behind in his eagerness to get out of there. He was probably on the other side of the Carpathian Mountains by now. But, as always when she was in the wrong and cornered, Chrissie Rasmirez had come out fighting, hurling abuse at her husband as if he were the one who’d been caught with his pants round his ankles.

Was it any wonder she had to take lovers, when Dorian was never here?

What did he expect when he kept her locked up in this godforsaken castle like Cinder-fucking-rella, while he gallivanted off, living the good life in LA?

She hated it here. She was bored, she was trapped, she was stifled. She was practically a single mother to Saskia, their adorable blonde-headed three-year-old girl. And so it went on. Before he knew it, Dorian found himself on the back foot, apologizing, comforting, explaining. He would get her more help with Saskia. He would make sure he came home more often. The thought of his darling Chrissie being touched by that boy, that kid, made him want to rip the guy’s throat out. But, at the end of the day, he blamed himself. I’m the architect of my own destruction, he thought miserably. I’m driving away the one thing I love more than anything else in the world.

Eventually, too exhausted to struggle any more, Chrissie went limp. Overwhelmed with anger and wildly sexually frustrated – she’d been looking forward to bedding Alexandru for weeks – she burst into tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sobbed into Dorian’s blood-spattered shirt. ‘It’s just that … you never look at me like you used to. You don’t notice me any more.’

Dorian was aghast. ‘Don’t notice you? That’s not true! How can you say that? I adore you.’

‘It is true,’ wailed Chrissie. ‘You leave me here all alone, day after day, with no life, no career, no escape. As if taking care of Saskia is all I’m good for.’

Dorian did not point out that with three full-time nannies on twenty-four-hour call, it was debatable whether Chrissie did, in fact, take care of Saskia.

‘When Alexandru looks at me he sees a woman, not just a mom. He makes me feel alive, Dorian.’

Dorian winced. ‘Stop.’ He pressed a finger to her lips. ‘Don’t ever mention that kid’s name to me again. Understand? Never.’ His eyes flashed with jealousy, the alpha male protecting his territory.

Chrissie responded instantly, her pupils dilating, her lips and thighs parting with naked, unconcealed lust. If she couldn’t have her teenage lover, her husband would have to do. ‘Show me you love me,’ she murmured.

At forty-four, Dorian Rasmirez might not have his nineteen-year-old rival’s Adonis-like body but, unlike Alexandru, he knew how to get his pants off in a hurry. Wriggling out of his jeans while Chrissie yanked his shirt off over his head, he was naked in seconds, thrusting himself inside her with the same passion, the same desperate, all-consuming longing he’d had for her since the first day they met. ‘You’re my woman,’ he moaned, running his hands proprietorially over every inch of her taut, boyish body. ‘I love you Chrissie. I fucking adore you.’

‘Show me,’ sighed Chrissie. She was already close to climax, eyes rolled back in her head, lost in some wild fantasy of her own. She’d been horny as hell for the hot little Romanian carpenter all morning. Being denied him, followed by the panic of discovery and the thrill of the fight with her husband (sparring with Dorian always turned her on) had propelled Chrissie’s already overworked libido into the stratosphere. Dorian always pulled out all the stops sexually when he was scared. When he wanted to, he could fuck like an Olympic champion, playing her body like Nigel Kennedy with a Stradivarius. Right now, stroking and teasing her, bringing her to the brink time and again and then pulling back, Chrissie knew she wanted him more than she’d ever wanted Alexandru, or any of her other lovers.

When he finally came, having brought her to orgasm twice, Dorian pulled her into his strong, bear-like arms and held her so tightly she could barely breathe.

‘I’ll do anything to keep you, Chrissie,’ he whispered. ‘Anything. You know that.’

‘Good,’ Chrissie purred, stroking his back. ‘Well, you can start by leaving me your Centurion card. I’ve decided to take a little trip to Paris while you’re away. Distract myself with a bit of culture. Lilly can take care of Saskia for a few days.’

Dorian’s heart sank. He fought back the urge to remind Chrissie that they lived surrounded by culture, and that she never showed the slightest interest in any of it. In this bedroom alone, apart from the Velásquez portrait above the bed and the exquisite Byzantine vase she’d just destroyed in a fit of temper, there were bookshelves stuffed with first-edition classics in English, Italian and French, a Dutch, hand-painted dresser that had once belonged to Marie Antoinette of France, and two framed folios of Handel’s Messiah, signed by the composer himself. The entire castle, this ‘prison’ that Dorian had ‘dragged’ Chrissie to, prising her away from her beloved LA, was a veritable Aladdin’s cave of treasures, with a collection of art and manuscripts to rival some of the greatest galleries and libraries in Europe. And it was all theirs. Not theirs to sell – the treasures could not legally leave Romania – but theirs to cherish, to appreciate, to pass down to the next generation. To Saskia, and perhaps one day – if Dorian could ever persuade Chrissie to try again – to a son, a little boy to carry on the family name.

The reality was that the only thing Chrissie Rasmirez was interested in in Paris were the overpriced clothes stores on the Avenue de Champs-Élysées. Last time she went to the flagship Louis Vuitton there she’d dropped over $100,000 in a single morning. If she tried that again this time, AmEx would demand Dorian’s cards back. But he was too scared to deny her, particularly after today’s close call.

‘Sure honey,’ he sighed, defeated. ‘I’ll leave the card. You go and enjoy yourself.’

Chrissie smiled triumphantly. ‘Don’t worry, darling. I intend to.’

Three hours later, as the Airbus A360 juddered and rattled its way up through the clouds, Dorian closed his eyes and tried to remember the relaxation techniques his therapist had taught him. Imagine yourself on a deserted, sandy beach. Waves are softly lapping at the shore. Listen to the rhythm of the tide. Let it soothe you. Feel the warm water caress your toes …

He opened his eyes. It wasn’t working. Reaching into his hand-luggage bag, he pulled out a Xanax and slipped it into his mouth, knocking it back with the dregs of his pre-takeoff champagne. The pill would take a while to kick in, but the alcohol was instantly soothing, as was the knowledge that he was leaving Chrissie and their problems behind him for five whole days. Not that this trip to LA was going to be some sort of vacation. On the contrary, the real battles would only start once he landed. But for the next ten hours at least, he had a chance to relax. If only he could remember how to do it.

A heavy-set man in his mid-forties, with dark hair greying at the temples and a warm, open face – not handsome exactly, but appealing in a rough-round-the-edges sort of way – Dorian Rasmirez was one of the most acclaimed film directors in the world. With his intelligent hazel eyes that narrowed into tiny slits when he laughed or got angry, his strong jaw and his off-kilter nose (he broke it in a football game in high school and had never got around to fixing it), Dorian was certainly no matinee idol. Yet there was something innately masculine about him that women found compelling – and had done long before he became successful.

Dorian had been born and raised in White Plains, New York, the only, much-beloved son of Romanian immigrant parents. Both his father, Radu Rasmirez, and his mother Anamarie had suffered unspeakable horrors under Ceausescu’s hardline communist dictatorship and had arrived in America with little more than the cash in their pockets. As members of two of Romania’s most prominent aristocratic families, the Rasmirezes and the Florescus, Radu and Anamarie had seen close family members arrested and shot. They had experienced first hand what it meant to lose everything: not just your wealth and privilege, but your home, your freedom, your right to live free from intimidation, imprisonment and torture. They came to America to escape the horrors of their pasts and to build a new life, and that’s exactly what they did.

Radu trained as a pharmacist, eventually opening a successful chain of small stores across Westchester County. His wife gave birth to their longed-for son, and devoted herself to the traditional role of homemaking, diving in to suburban American life with unexpected enthusiasm. It was largely thanks to Anamarie’s assimilation into New York culture and her love of all things American that Dorian grew up the way he did: preppy, hardworking, and blessed with a natural, quiet confidence that was the perfect complement to his impressive academic abilities. To any casual observer, Dorian Rasmirez came across as the epitome of American boyhood, from the tips of his loafers to the button-down collars of his Brooks Brothers shirts. He excelled at school, winning a place at Boston University where he majored in Dramatic Arts. By the time he graduated, he already knew he wanted to direct, and with his usual focus and determination, won a place at UCLA’s prestigious School of Theater, Film and Television. But beneath the glowing, all-American CV, Dorian was his father’s son as much as his mother’s. Radu Rasmirez had made a point of educating his son in their family history, painting a wildly romantic picture of their Transylvanian roots, and the fairytale castle that should by rights have been Dorian’s, if only the wicked communists hadn’t stolen it.

‘One day,’ Radu promised him, ‘the righteous will triumph in our homeland, and what is ours will be restored to us. When that day comes, Dorian, you will know what it is to live like a king. The honour and responsibility, the joy and the pain. We Rasmirezes will always owe a debt of gratitude to this country. But Romania remains forever in our hearts.’

Of course, to Dorian, ‘Romania’ was just a word, a mythical kingdom that his father had conjured up for him, from a past that the boy had never known and couldn’t understand. But he did understand how much their family heritage meant to Radu. In later years that sense of displacement, of homesickness and longing that he saw in his father, would heavily influence Dorian’s film-making.

There were other influences too. Most notably Chrissie Sanderson, the enigmatic, elfin actress whom Dorian met and fell in love with in his last year at UCLA, and whose mesmeric beauty (in Dorian’s eyes at least) had entranced him ever since. By Hollywood standards, the Rasmirez marriage was considered an epic achievement. Dorian and Chrissie had been together since before Dorian became famous – five whole years before the release of Love and Regrets, the searing emotional drama that was to catapult Dorian to global prominence as a director. In those early days, it had been Chrissie who was the star in the partnership, with a leading role as Ali, a kooky chef, in the popular network television sit-com Rumors. A natural actress with a wonderful sense of comic timing, by the age of twenty-three Chrissie Sanderson was recognized across America, with a loyal, at times even fanatical, teenage fan base. Before long she was earning serious money, fifty-grand-plus an episode: a fortune in those days. It was enough to buy her and Dorian a comfortable house in Beverly Hills as well as to fund some of his early movie projects. Chrissie revelled in the limelight but, spurred on by Dorian, she also yearned for more serious critical success. In the same year that the release of Love and Regrets changed Dorian’s life forever, Chrissie made her own debut on Broadway, as Sally Bowles in Jerry Zaks’s much-hyped revival of Chicago. It was a huge mistake. Nervous and under-rehearsed, she flubbed her opening night performance badly. If she’d expected her status as the nation’s TV sweetheart to protect her, she was rudely awakened by the next morning’s reviews. The critics did not so much pan her performance as eviscerate it.

‘Laughable,’ said the New York Times.

‘You didn’t know where to look,’ wrote The Post.

‘Embarrassingly wooden.’

‘About as much sex appeal as a cold bowl of soup.’

Dorian told her to forget it. ‘What do they know? So you made a couple of mistakes, flubbed a few lines. Big deal. They’re just jealous because you’re a huge TV star. You know how these critics get off on bringing people down.’

But Chrissie could not forget it. Mortified at such public humiliation, she lost her nerve completely, quitting the Broadway show as soon as her contract allowed, then promptly walking off the set of her NBC show as well. For months she holed up at home in LA, refusing to attend any auditions or give a single interview about her shock departure from Rumors. Meanwhile, of course, Dorian’s career was taking off in spectacular style, a success for which Chrissie could never quite forgive him.

After fifteen years, Dorian still spoke loyally in interviews about his ‘stunning, talented wife’, and was famously immune to the manifold temptations of Hollywood. His fidelity was considered all the more admirable in industry circles since for years it appeared that his wife refused to have his children. Most people viewed this as the height of selfishness on Chrissie’s part. In fact, her unwillingness to become a mother mirrored her refusal to go to auditions, or to take any of the leading roles that Dorian offered her gift-wrapped in all of his movies. She was afraid. Trapped by her own insecurities in the wildly luxurious life Dorian had built for her, she complained ceaselessly about LA, how shallow it was and how being a famous director’s wife made her feel empty and invisible.

Then, four years ago, three things happened. The first was that Dorian found out his wife was having an affair, with the leading man in one of his movies. The liaison was actually the latest in a string of extramarital adventures that Chrissie had used over the years to prop up her fragile self-esteem. But it was the first one that Dorian knew about, and he was utterly devastated by it. The second thing was that, at long last, Chrissie agreed to get pregnant and conceived Saskia, the Band-Aid baby that both she and Dorian hoped would repair their marriage. And the third thing was that the Romanian government contacted Dorian out of the blue, to tell him that they had begun the process of restoring pre-revolutionary property to its rightful owners. Would Dorian like to return ‘home’ to claim his inheritance, the Rasmirezes’ historic Transylvanian Schloss, complete with all its priceless treasures?

At the time, Romania had seemed like a lifeline, the fresh start that he and Chrissie so badly needed. Chrissie had cheated on him because she was unhappy in LA and felt like a failure there. Dorian believed in marriage. His parents had managed it for the better part of fifty years under far more difficult circumstances. He owed it to Chrissie and to himself to try to repair the damage. Here was a chance to take Chrissie and their newborn daughter as far from the Hollywood madness as it was possible to go. Dorian would sweep Chrissie up on his white charger and install her as queen in his fairytale castle. Little Saskia would grow up as a princess. And they would all live happily ever after.

Or not.

If he were completely honest with himself (not always Dorian’s strongest suit), becoming a father had not been the seismic, emotionally transformative event that he’d expected. The baby was sweet enough. But, after waiting so long for parenthood, Dorian began to realize that the idea of having a child was considerably more intoxicating than the exhausting, often deathly dull reality. He also realized, not without a sense of shame, that a part of him was disappointed that Saskia had not been born a boy.

For her part, Chrissie also revelled in the idea of motherhood or, more specifically, the idea of herself as the perfect mother: devoted, selfless, instinctively maternal. It was a self-image Chrissie clung to doggedly as Saskia grew older, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and one that she demanded her husband validate by praising her mothering skills at every possible opportunity. But the truth was that, like Dorian, Chrissie Rasmirez found young children boring and her own daughter was no exception. By now a semi-professional martyr in her marriage (Chrissie had long ago convinced herself she had sacrificed her career for Dorian, and not on an altar of her own fear), her new role as tireless carer to a demanding toddler added another arrow of resentment to her ever-growing armoury.

New parenthood wasn’t the Rasmirezes’ only problem. Despite yearning for a fresh start, Dorian had misgivings about the move back to his homeland. Romania had been his father’s dream, never his. And while he felt a sense of duty (and curiosity) about his ancestral home, unlike Chrissie, Dorian enjoyed his life in LA, and did not relish leaving it. If he was going to continue working, he’d have to get used to a gruelling transatlantic commute. The thought of having to spend time away from Chrissie made his chest tighten painfully with anxiety. But if it saved the marriage, it would all be worth it. He owed it to his father and Chrissie to go back.

Though she would rather die than admit it now, Chrissie had been very enthusiastic about the idea at first. Transylvania! Even the word sounded romantic. From what Dorian had told her, the house – castle! – was stuffed with wealth beyond even her wildest imagination: hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of antique crap. Apparently, the Romanian government had some ridiculous rules about all the treasures having to stay in the country, but a good American lawyer would find them a way around all that old-world baloney. If she could no longer enjoy fame in her own right, Chrissie could at least experience the thrill of being European royalty and joining the ranks of the super-rich. Plus, domestic help would be super-cheap over there, so she could have nannies and housekeepers up the wazoo. She would be Queen of the Castle, ordering around a fleet of servants, and go to bed at night draped in emeralds that had once belonged to Catherine the Great. Not bad for a little girl from the valley. Who knew, maybe she’d even think about trying for a second baby, and giving Dorian the son he so obviously still wanted.

Needless to say, it had not worked out like that. Almost from day one, Chrissie loathed Romania. The Schloss was as palatial as she could have wished it, the staff as slavishly obsequious, the emeralds as big and heavy as golf balls. But there was nothing to do. No one to see. Sure, the scenery was breathtaking, as lush and green and spectacular as a still from Shrek. Little Saskia was entranced by the Transylvanian landscape, with its wide, fast-flowing rivers, brooding pine forests and romantic, snow-topped mountains that ringed the castle like mythical, protective giants. ‘Polar Express!’ she would squeal excitedly every time they drove into town, pointing to the snow-tipped Carpathian Mountains with barely contained rapture. But her mother failed to share her enthusiasm. What use was it, ruling your own fantasy kingdom, if you couldn’t go out to Cecconi’s on a Friday night and boast about it to your friends?

Within weeks of their arrival, Chrissie’s boredom was fermenting into resentment. It was all Dorian’s fault, for dragging her here. He was punishing her for her affair by immuring her and Saskia in this gilded prison, while he jetted off to enjoy their old life back in LA, which from eight thousand miles away no longer seemed so terrible. She, Chrissie, had sacrificed her career for her husband, and what did she get in return? Neglect. Abandonment. Using the only weapon left available to her, she did a 180-degree about-face on a second baby, point-blank refusing to even contemplate another pregnancy until Dorian ‘sold this dump’ and moved them back home to spend the proceeds. No amount of explanation by Dorian would convince her that this was both a practical and legal impossibility; that the Schloss was theirs to enjoy, but not theirs to sell.

Moreover, unbeknownst to Chrissie, their finances back in the States were in fact in increasingly dire straits. Dorian’s last film, the exquisitely shot but hugely over-budget war movie, Sixteen Nights, had been a major critical success. But it was box-office receipts that paid the mortgage on Dorian and Chrissie’s Holmby Hills mansion and the upkeep on the Schloss, not to mention financed Chrissie’s couture habit, and those had been distinctly lacklustre. Two studios had offered to come on board with funding but, unable to bear the thought of ceding creative control, Dorian had turned them down, ploughing millions of dollars of his own money into the movie instead. He’d ended up massively in the red.

To make matters worse, since the news of Dorian’s inheritance, Chrissie’s spending had multiplied exponentially. Nothing could convince her that they were not now billionaires – they had Renoirs in their drawing room, for fuck’s sake! – and she laughed openly at Dorian’s claims that the castle’s upkeep was in fact bleeding them dry.

‘Don’t you see?’ he told her, exasperated. ‘That’s why the Romanian government were so keen to have us back here! They couldn’t afford to keep the place going themselves, and they figured we were rich enough to do it for them.’

Chrissie shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Well, we are.’

No we’re not! Dorian wanted to scream. But he was too frightened of Chrissie leaving him to force another confrontation, or to admit the full extent of their debts. He’d already seen her flirting with some of the younger, more attractive boys on their staff, and lived in constant dread of another affair. And Chrissie was right. He was the one who’d brought her here, brought them all here as a family. It was up to him to make it work, to dig them out of this financial hole he’d gotten them into, and to make her happy. Either that or give up the castle, which to Dorian would be tantamount to trampling on his dad’s grave.

‘More champagne, sir? Or something to eat, perhaps?’

The stewardess’s voice brought Dorian back to the present. They were at cruising altitude now, and his fellow passengers were reclining their flatbed seats or turning on their entertainment systems, scrolling down the list of movies. Dorian had already read the in-flight guide before takeoff. Three Harry Greene movies. None of his.

Dorian tried not to mind that Harry Greene’s truly terrible, derivative Fraternity franchise continued to go from strength to strength. But it was hard to be magnanimous when Greene seemed to have made it his life’s mission to destroy Dorian’s reputation, slagging him off not only in public, in the press, but also in private amongst Hollywood’s power brokers. Harry Greene was an immensely powerful man in Hollywood. He was also a recluse, prone to wild fits of paranoia, especially where women were concerned. Twice he had taken girls to court: having bedded them, in the morning he’d accused them of petty theft simply because he couldn’t remember where he’d left a certain coat, or a pair of cufflinks. Once he’d even tried to have his housekeeper arrested for attempted poisoning. A lamb stew had given him a stomach upset, apparently, and Harry was convinced the wholly innocent Mexican grandmother had laced the dish with arsenic.

His beef with Dorian had begun over a script. Harry had fallen out with a certain screenwriter, and the row had turned ugly. When the screenwriter came up with his next movie idea a few months later, he brought it to Dorian instead of Harry. The irony was, Dorian never came close to making the film. It was a bromance, commercial but far too vanilla for Dorian’s taste. Nonetheless, Harry Greene became convinced that Dorian and this screenwriter were ‘in league’ against him. Over time, thanks to some shift in Harry’s addled brain, the screenwriter faded from the picture, leaving Dorian as the sole target for his bizarre conspiracy theory.

It wasn’t long before his professional resentment began to turn personal. For all its international influence, Hollywood remained a small town at heart, and the paths of two major producer-directors like Dorian Rasmirez and Harry Greene were bound to cross socially. After the script incident, Dorian did his best to avoid Harry. But a few years ago, for reasons that to this day Dorian had never fully understood, Harry got the idea into his head that Dorian had badmouthed him to his then wife, Angelica. And that it was Dorian’s malicious intervention that had wrecked his (Harry’s) marriage.

In reality, Dorian barely knew Angelica Greene, then or now, and had said nothing to her about her husband’s womanizing, which was in any case an open secret in Hollywood. The only person responsible for the demise of Harry Greene’s marriage was Harry Greene. But, be that as it may, in the wake of his divorce, Harry gave numerous interviews blaming Dorian, and did his best to have him ostracized by Hollywood’s elite. As the Fraternity franchise went from strength to strength and Harry Greene’s influence grew, the more difficult Dorian’s life became.

He returned his attention to the stewardess, who was still hovering with her drinks tray.

‘No, thank you,’ he said politely. ‘I’m fine.’

‘OK. Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me. I did just want to say, I really enjoyed Sixteen Nights. I love your work.’ The stewardess blushed.

‘Thank you,’ said Dorian. ‘You’re very kind.’

She was a pretty girl, he noticed, not hard and over-made-up like so many of her profession. You could still see her creamy, natural complexion, and the tops of her full breasts jiggled invitingly beneath the white blouse of her uniform. Sexy. But not a patch on my Christina. ‘I hope you’ll go and see my new movie when it comes out.’

‘Oh, I will,’ she gushed. ‘I certainly will. What is it?’

‘Actually it’s a remake,’ said Dorian. ‘Wuthering Heights.’

The stewardess gasped. ‘Oh my God, I love that book. Such a romantic story.’

Dorian smiled. ‘You know it?’

‘Of course,’ she laughed. ‘Doesn’t everyone? Heathcliff and Cathy. They’re like Romeo and Juliet in the rain.’

For the first time all day, Dorian felt a fraction of the tension ease out of his body. One of his concerns about his new project had been that the story might be considered too highbrow, too much of a classic for ordinary moviegoers to be interested in. Dorian had first read the book in high school and had been instantly captivated by the plot. Heathcliff, a mysterious orphan boy, is adopted by the kindly Mr Earnshaw and brought to live at Wuthering Heights, a grand but lonely house in the Yorkshire moors. Tragedy ensues when Heathcliff falls in love with Earnshaw’s daughter Catherine, who also loves him, but decides to make a more socially acceptable marriage to a neighbour. The ramifications of Cathy’s rejection of Heathcliff: her regret, his madness, and an ongoing saga of death and revenge, of innocent children being forced to pay for the sins of their parents, made for uniquely compelling drama, not to mention one of the most enduring love stories in English literature. But, cinematically, Wuthering Heights was a challenge. Whoever played Heathcliff would have to age convincingly, while remaining attractive enough to work as a romantic lead. Should original Cathy and young Cathy, her daughter, be played by two actresses, or one? How to deal with Nelly, the book’s nurse narrator? And then of course there was the issue of location. In a plot where the house was as much of a character as any of the protagonists, finding the right location would be key.

A couple of the big studios had tried to warn Dorian off, as had his agent and friend, Don Richards.

‘You can’t follow Olivier and Merle Oberon, man. That 1939 movie is one of the all-time greats.’

‘They only shot half the book,’ said Dorian. ‘It’s half a story.’

‘That’s because the whole story’s unfilmable. It’s a fucking miniseries.’ Don frowned. ‘Did you see the seventies version? It blew.’

‘I know,’ Dorian smiled. ‘That’s why I’m doing a remake.’

‘If you do it, you’re gonna need two big names in the lead roles,’ Don warned him. ‘And I mean real bankable stars, none of your “respected character actor” bullshit. Oh, and Cathy’s gotta get naked. A lot.’

‘I see,’ said Dorian wryly. ‘Young Cathy or Old Cathy?’

‘All the Cathys have to be young,’ said Don firmly. ‘And hot.’

‘Right. So all I need is to find a major movie star who’s prepared to work for peanuts and get her panties off for some gratuitous nudity.’

‘It wouldn’t be gratuitous.’ Don looked offended. ‘There’d be a very important point to it.’

‘Uh-huh. And what might that be?’

‘Ticket sales,’ said Don.

Dorian had the good grace to laugh. ‘OK. Well if anyone springs to mind, you be sure to let me know.’

‘Actually, someone does. How about Sabrina Leon?’

At first, Dorian had assumed his agent was joking. When he realized he wasn’t, he dismissed the idea out of hand. Sabrina was toxic right now, a Hollywood untouchable. Plus she was known to be a majorly disruptive influence on set: demanding, diva-ish, unpredictable. Just associating Sabrina’s name with a project could be enough to kill it before they shot a single take.

‘All true,’ agreed Don. ‘But she’s still a huge star.’

Dorian held firm. ‘No way.’

‘Plus, everyone’s watching to see what her next move will be.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Plus, she loves getting naked, on and off set. The kid’s allergic to clothes.’

‘I know Don, but c’mon. I need a serious actress.’

‘She’ll work for free.’

And that was it. Jerry McGuire had Dorothy Boyd at ‘hello’. Don Richards had Dorian Rasmirez at ‘free’.

Stretching his long legs out in front of him, Dorian at last began to relax. If American Airline stewardesses were fans of the story, it clearly couldn’t be that highbrow. It’s gonna be all right, he told himself. Sabrina Leon had signed on the dotted line. Of course, casting her as Cathy – both Cathys – remained a dangerous, double-edged sword. Dorian would have to keep a tight grip on her behaviour. But Don Richards had convinced him she was a risk worth taking. He’d just have to do the sell of his life to convince distributors that, by the time the movie was due for release, the furore over Sabrina’s Tarik Tyler comments would have died down.

‘Even if it hasn’t, people’ll still come and see the movie,’ said Don.

‘You reckon?’

‘Sure. They like watching her. It’s like slowing down on the freeway to gawk at a car crash.’

Dorian hoped he was right. Because, if he wasn’t, it would be Dorian’s career, life and marriage that would be the car crash. Almost certainly a fatal one.

For Dorian Rasmirez, everything depended on the success of this movie.

Everything.

CHAPTER FOUR

As Dr Michel Henri lifted the child out of its crib, Letitia Crewe watched his beautifully defined biceps rippling beneath his grey T-shirt and thought: I have to get a grip. I’m here to play with the children, not ogle Michel like a love-struck puppy. But it was hard. What business did a paediatrician have being that attractive? There ought to be a law against it.

Tish Crewe had come out to Romania in her year off to spend six months working with orphans in the northern city of Oradea. Five years later and she was still here, visiting hospital wards like this one, rehousing as many abandoned children as she could. It was gruelling work, and distressing at times, but it was also addictive and rewarding. Dr Michel Henri felt the same way. It was one of the things that had first brought him and Tish together, their shared compassion and sense of purpose. That and the fact they both wanted to rip each other’s clothes off the moment they laid eyes on one another. Tish still felt the same way. It was Michel who’d moved on.

Watching him move purposefully from bed to bed, engaging each child with eye contact and talking to them in that deep, gentle voice of his before each examination, Tish calculated that she had been in love with him for a full year now.

Wow. A year of my life.

It felt like twenty.

Michel was so wise. So good. So capable. Tish Crewe was capable herself, very much head-girl material, and she admired this trait in others. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Michel also looked like a younger version of George Clooney, complete with sexy, two-day stubble growth and smouldering coffee-brown eyes. Nor that he was so good in bed, Tish had had to restrict the lovemaking during their brief, six-week affair to Michel’s apartment, afraid that she might make so much noise at home that she would wake up Abel, her adopted five-year-old son, and scare the living daylights out of him.

It wasn’t Michel’s fault. He’d been honest with her from the beginning. ‘I don’t do commitment,’ he told Tish bluntly, the night they first kissed on the bridge over the Crisul Repede in Oradea’s old town. ‘My work is my passion. If you’re looking for something serious, I’m not your man.’

Tish had assured him she was not looking for something serious. After four years of almost total celibacy, living in a city that still looked and felt as dour and grey and lifeless as it had under communism, the idea of some fun, especially the kind of fun that Dr Michel Henri was offering, sounded utterly perfect. Since founding her own children’s home three years earlier, and particularly since adopting her darling Abel, Tish barely had enough time in the days to eat and shower, never mind indulge in a sex life. I deserve some fun, she told herself. Why not?

But of course she’d had to go and spoil it all by falling in love with him. Fool, she told herself, but then how could one not? When Michel took up with a pretty orthopaedic surgeon from Médecins Sans Frontières a few weeks later, Tish’s heart was crushed like a bug. It had taken every ounce of her self-control to hide the worst of her anguish from Michel himself. But to everyone else who worked with her, it was painfully obvious.

‘He’s not worth it, you know.’ Pete Klein, the head of one of the American NGOs, had been watching Tish gaze longingly after Michel’s retreating back in the hospital car park a few weeks ago.

He is to me, thought Tish, but she forced a professional smile.

‘Hello, Pete. How are you?’

‘Better for seeing you, my dear.’

A kindly, born-again Christian in his early sixties, Pete Klein had decided to make it his personal mission to find the lovely Miss Crewe a suitable husband. She was, after all, a gorgeous girl. Not gorgeous in an obvious, long-legged, modelly sort of way. No, Tish’s beauty was of an altogether more wholesome variety. Slight and naturally blonde, with a long nose, strong, aristocratic bone structure and a glorious wide, pale pink mouth that Pete had seen express every emotion from compassion to courage to delight, Tish had a natural, make-up-free charm to her that a certain type of man would give his eyeteeth to come home to every night. As Tish’s schoolfriend Katie had once accurately, if tactlessly, put it: ‘You’re Jennifer Aniston, Tishy. Guys like Michel always go for the Angelinas in the end. You’re too nice.’

Pete Klein didn’t believe a person could be ‘too nice’. Nor could he see what on earth wonderful young women like Tish Crewe found attractive in good-for-nothing fly-by-nights like that slimy Frenchman Dr Henri. Forget Doctors Without Borders. Michel Henri was a Doctor Without Scruples, and he’d hurt poor Miss Crewe badly.

‘You should have dinner with my friend Gustav,’ Pete told Tish.

‘Oh, I don’t know, Pete …’

‘Yes, yes, you must,’ Pete insisted. ‘Lovely young man, from a very nice family in Munich. Just started working for us. Brilliant with computers,’ he added, with a wink that made Tish wonder if this was intended as some sort of double entendre. Except that Pete Klein didn’t do double entendres. He did earnest and avuncular and kind.

So, ‘too nice’ to say no, Tish dutifully had dinner with ‘lovely young Gustav’, who was indeed brilliant with computers; though not quite so brilliant at either conversation or romance, judging by his clumsily attempted lunge in the back of the taxi after dinner, reeking of garlic sausage and cheap aftershave.

‘What are you doing?’ said Tish, squirming away from him.

Gustav looked aggrieved. ‘I thought you were single?’ he accused her.

‘I am,’ stammered Tish.

‘Well, what’s the problem then?’ demanded Gustav. ‘Everyone knows the only reason singles come out on these voluntary do-gooder vacations is for the sex. I mean, come on! We’re not in Romania for the scenery, are we?’

That much, at least, was true. Tish was not in Romania for the scenery. But why was she still here, really? Tish was the most English person she knew and she missed home dreadfully. Not a day went by when she didn’t stare unseeingly out of her car window at the bleak Romanian landscape, daydreaming about hedgerows and Marmite and EastEnders. It didn’t get any easier. She told herself she was here for the children – both the sixteen she’d been able to permanently rescue from institutions and bring to the bright, cheerful, family-run home she’d built just outside Oradea; and for the hundreds of others she was forced to leave behind, but whom she and her staff visited regularly in their hospitals. But, gazing at Michel’s strong, warm hands now as he changed a little boy’s dressing, remembering the feel of them on her skin, part of her knew that she was also staying for him.

Tish was doing what all the books said you should never do. She was waiting. Hoping, praying that eventually Michel would see the light and realize that the two of them were meant to be together. He’d make a wonderful father for Abel. So noble. So dedicated …

‘Tish!’ Carl, one of her co-workers, was tapping Tish forcefully on the shoulder. ‘Did you hear me?’

‘Hmmm?’ She blushed. ‘Sorry. I was, erm … distracted.’

‘There’s a problem back at Curcubeu, Carl repeated patiently. Curcubeu was the name of Tish’s children’s home. It meant ‘rainbow’ in Romanian. ‘Child services just showed up on the doorstep. They’re saying Sile hasn’t got all his releases signed.’

‘But that’s ridiculous. Of course the releases are signed. I picked up his paperwork myself.’

‘Whatever, they reckon he needs something else. They tried to seize him on the spot.’

‘What?’ Tish placed the sleeping baby back in her crib. Sile was an adorable, curly-haired two-year-old boy, the latest addition to her happy brood at Curcubeu. He’d only been with them a week and already child services were kicking up a fuss, no doubt hoping for yet another backhander. ‘How dare they!’ she seethed. ‘They have no authority.’

‘Yes, well, don’t worry,’ said Carl. ‘Lucio didn’t let them in the door. But they’ll be back in the morning with a warrant. We need to get it sorted, today.’

Damn, thought Tish. She’d really wanted to talk to Michel today, to get his advice. Yesterday, she’d received a letter, rather a distressing letter, from home. The letter meant that she might need to leave Romania, at least for a while, an idea that filled her with such a conflicting mix of emotions that she’d barely been able to string a sentence together since she read it.

Michel will know what to do, she thought. He’s always so level-headed. But now there’d be no time to consult him. By the time she’d sorted out this bullshit with Sile and child services, she’d have to race home in time to put Abel to bed, and Michel would already have left for Paris. He was flying home for the weekend to attend his sister’s wedding. Maybe once he sees her in a white dress, making that commitment, sees how happy and glowing she is …

‘Tish?’

‘Yes. Sorry. I’m coming.’ Tish reluctantly switched off the fantasy. ‘Go down and start the car. I’ll explain what’s happened to the nurses and meet you downstairs in five.’

The rest of the day passed in a blur of frenetic activity and stress, with Tish and Carl breaking every speed limit in the book in Tish’s ancient Fiat Punto, tearing from one government agency to the next in an effort to prove their legal guardianship of little Sile. Two bribes, a phone call to the British Consulate and countless vicious screaming matches later – Romanian Child Services did not consider Letitia Crewe to be ‘too nice’; as far as they were concerned, she was a bolshy, strident, harridan who’d been a thorn in their side since the day she set foot in the country – the matter was at last resolved. ‘For now,’ the Child Protection Officer warned Tish sternly.

As if we’re any bloody threat to him, Tish thought furiously as she finally started the drive back to her flat in the city. As if anyone on God’s earth gave a crap about that little boy until we took him in. Sometimes, most of the time, her work was so frustrating it made her want to scream. The Romanian government were like dinosaurs, terrified of change, resentful of any ‘outsider’ who wanted to help. As if any of the foreign NGOs wanted to be there. Don’t you think we’d love it if you sorted out your own bloody country and took care of your own kids, so we could all go home?

Home.

The word had been turning over and over in Tish’s mind all day. She would have to make a decision soon, tomorrow probably, and start making some concrete plans. She’d wanted Michel’s advice today, but deep down she already knew what he would have told her. Go. Go home and do what you need to do. There was no other way.

Home for Tish was Loxley Hall, an idyllic Elizabethan pile in the heart of Derbyshire’s glorious Hope Valley. Much smaller than neighbouring Chatsworth, but widely considered more beautiful, Loxley had been the ancestral seat of the Crewe family for over eight generations. Growing up there as a little girl, Tish had never noticed the house’s grandeur, not least because behind the intricately carved, exterior with its stone mullioned windows and fairytale turrets, the family actually lived in a distinctly down-at-heel ‘apartment’ of seven, shabby rooms, and not in the immaculately preserved ballrooms and dining halls that the public saw. What Tish was aware of, however, was Loxley’s magic. The beauty of her grounds, with their ancient clipped yew hedges, endless expanses of lawn and deer-covered parkland beyond, punctuated by vast, four-hundred-year-old oaks. At the front of the house, beneath a crumbling medieval stone bridge, the river Derwent burbled sleepily, little more than a stream in the narrow part of the valley. As a child, Tish would sit on the bridge for hours, legs dangling, playing Poohsticks with herself or watching hopefully for an otter to make a thrilling, sleek-headed appearance. Her older brother Jago had never shared her fascination with the river, nor her romantic belief in Loxley Hall as some sort of magical kingdom. Mostly, Tish remembered him as rather distant and aloof (‘sensitive’, their mother called him), always playing inside with his computer games or his older, sophisticated friends from Thaxton House, the local boys’ prep school. Tish’s childhood playmates were her Jack Russell, Harrison, the family housekeeper Mrs Drummond, and on occasions her elderly but much beloved father, Henry.

Henry Crewe had died two years ago and Tish still missed him terribly. It was Henry’s death that had set off the chain of events leading to the current crisis. Amid much familial wailing and gnashing of teeth, Henry Crewe had broken Loxley’s four-hundred-year entailment and left the house lock, stock and barrel to his estranged wife Vivianna, Tish and Jago’s mother. This was partly a romantic gesture. Although Vivi had left him and their children the better part of two decades ago to start a new life in Italy, visiting England only rarely, she had never actually divorced Henry. To the bafflement of all his friends, not to mention his daughter, who felt Vivianna’s abandonment deeply, Henry maintained a nostalgic attachment to his wife that only seemed to intensify as the years passed. The Crewes remained on friendly terms, and Henry never gave up hope that one day Vivianna would see the light, tire of her stream of younger lovers, and return to the bosom of her family.

Needless to say, she never did. But changing the will had not solely been about Vivi. It had also been an attempt to mitigate Jago’s influence over Loxley’s future. The withdrawn, distant brother Tish remembered had grown up into a feckless, selfish and completely irresponsible young man. Blessed with good looks and a big enough trust fund never to have to earn a living, Jago Crewe partied away the years between eighteen and twenty-two in a narcotic-induced haze, eventually winding up depressed and seriously ill in a North London Hospital. It was after he had emerged from this self-styled breakdown that Jago had decided the time had come to change his life. He had shown no interest in ‘knuckling down’ at Loxley Hall, however. Pronouncing himself teetotal, Buddhist and a committed vegan, he had proceeded to disappear on a spiritual journey that had taken him around the world from Hawaii to Tahiti to Thailand (first class, naturally), spending family money like water as he tried out one spurious, navel-gazing cult after another.

Meanwhile, Henry’s health had been failing. Clearly, something had had to be done. And so it was that Henry had willed the house to Vivianna, intending that she would let it out for the remainder of her lifetime, perhaps to the National Trust, and leave it on her death to whichever of the children, or grandchildren, looked like the safest bet at the time.

Things had not worked out that way. Having failed to come home for his father’s funeral, or even send flowers, Jago showed up at Loxley two months later, announcing that he’d had a change of heart filial-duty-wise and had returned to claim his inheritance. Vivianna immediately made the house over to him (she never could say no to her darling boy) and retreated to her villa outside Rome, considering her duties to her former husband fully discharged and all well that had ended well.

Meanwhile, stuck out in Romania, Tish was concerned about the situation, but as a single mother with a full-time children’s home to run, had problems enough of her own. Besides, as the months passed and nothing disastrous happened at Loxley, she began to relax. Perhaps Jago really had grown out of his immature, selfish stage this time and was going to make a go of things on the estate? He was still only twenty-eight, after all. Plenty of time to turn over a new leaf.

Then she got the letter.

The letter was from Mrs Drummond, the Crewe family’s housekeeper of the last thirty-odd years and a surrogate mother to Tish and Jago. According to Mrs D, Jago had walked out of the house three weeks ago, announcing that he would not be returning as he intended to live out the remainder of his days as a contemplative hermit in the hills of Tibet. Mrs D, who’d heard it all countless times before, took this latest change of plans with her usual pinch of salt. But she’d been forced to view matters more seriously when Jago’s wastrel hippy friends, many of them drug addicts, had refused to leave Loxley after Jago’s departure. Worse, they had begun to cause serious damage.

‘I called the police,’ Mrs Drummond wrote to Tish, ‘but they say that as Jago invited them in, and has only been gone a matter of weeks, they have no power to evict them unless they hear from Jago directly. They won’t listen to me. But Letitia, they’ve been stealing. At least two of your father’s paintings are missing and I’m certain some of the silverware is gone. I’ve tried to reason with them, but they can actually be quite intimidating.’

That was the part that had really made up Tish’s mind. The thought of these drugged-out thugs scaring Mrs Drummond, the sweetest, most defenceless old woman in the world, brought out every protective instinct within her. She had to go back and sort out her brother’s mess. How could he have left Mrs D to cope with all of this alone? Whenever he deigned to return from his latest self-indulgent, soul-searching exercise, Tish was going to strangle him with her bare hands.

Parking her exhausted Fiat in front of the graffiti-covered tower block she called home, Tish bolted up the staircase two steps at a time. Her flat was on the sixth floor, but the lift had long since broken, so she and Abel got regular workouts dragging their groceries and schoolbags up and down the stairs. Tish was still fumbling in her bag for her keys, trying to catch her breath, when the front door opened. Lydia, Abel’s heavy-set Romanian nanny, glowered disapprovingly in the doorway.

‘You’re late.’

With her fat, butcher’s arms, old-fashioned striped apron, and steel-grey hair cut in a blunt, unforgiving fringe, Lydia had the body of an ex-shot-putter and the face of a Gestapo wardress. She had never liked her English boss, whom she considered flighty and appallingly laissez-faire as a mother. However, she was devoted to little Abel, who in turn was very fond of her, which was why Tish had never fired her. That and the fact that Lydia was prepared to work long, often erratic hours for laughably low pay.

‘I know, I’m sorry. There was a bit of a crisis at Curcubeu.’ Tish forced her way past the nanny’s giant frame into the hallway, dropping her bag on the floor. ‘Abel! Where are you, darling? Mummy’s home!’

‘He sleeping,’ said Lydia frostily. ‘He waited long time for you. Very upset in his bath time, but now is OK. Sleeping.’

Tish looked suitably guilty. She couldn’t have cared less what old iron-pants thought of her, but she hated letting Abel down. Had he really been unhappy at bath time, or was Lydia just twisting the knife?

The old woman pulled on her coat, a thick, frankly filthy sheepskin, and a pair of brightly coloured knitted gloves. ‘He need his sleep,’ she told Tish sternly. ‘Don’t waking him.’ And with this commandment she shuffled out of the flat, shaking her head and muttering darkly to herself in Romanian as the door closed behind her.

Silly cow, thought Tish, making a beeline for her son’s bedroom. Inside, the low glow from Abel’s Makka Pakka night-light helped her find her way to his bed. Pulling up a chair, Tish rested a hand on the warm, gently heaving Thomas the Tank Engine duvet and felt the pressures of the day evaporate. My life’s under there, she thought. I love him so much. Loxley and Mrs Drummond, the children’s home, even her terrible, unrequited love for Michel: they all faded into insignificance when Tish gazed down at her sleeping son. Gently peeling back the bedclothes, she stroked his soft mop of jet-black curls and bent to kiss the warm, silken skin of his rounded, still-baby-like cheek. It was hard to believe that this was the same malnourished, sore-covered baby she’d first laid eyes on in a maternity hospital outside Bucharest four years ago. Today, Abel was as healthy and chubby and rambunctious as any other little boy his age. Much more handsome of course, thought Tish proudly. It had been a long and arduous struggle to adopt him formally, even though Abel had lived with her since he was thirteen months old, and Tish was the only mother he’d ever known. Tish’s one regret was that her beloved father, Henry, had never got to meet his grandson. Abi’s paperwork had taken years to complete, and Henry had been too frail and sick to travel. Abel’s passport was finally granted a month after Henry’s funeral, a bitter irony for poor Tish.

Now, though, she’d have a chance to take Abel home. To show him England and Loxley and Mrs Drummond, and introduce him to his adopted culture and family. Better late than never.

Will he love it as much as I did? she wondered. If he does, will it be hard for him to come back?

This was something that hadn’t occurred to her before, and it worried her. Because, of course, she would have to come back. Her whole life was in Romania now. We’ll be gone a month or so at most, she told herself. Carl can hold the fort here while I throw these vandals out of Loxley and find some suitable tenants. Then it’ll be back to business as usual.

She would tell Abel it was a holiday. It would be a holiday for him. For her, it was more complicated. Part of her was longing to see Loxley again, although after Mrs D’s letter she dreaded the state she might find it in. But another part felt desolate at the prospect of leaving Michel, even for a few weeks. Before he died, Henry Crewe had implored his daughter to settle down and get married. ‘Find a good man,’ Henry told Tish. ‘A kind man. Someone who can make you truly happy.’

That’s the problem, Daddy, she thought sadly. I’ve already found him. All I have to do now is get him to love me back.

CHAPTER FIVE

Striding past the waiting paparazzi, ignoring the catcalls and boos from the gaggle of kids on the sidewalk, Sabrina Leon slipped into Il Pastaio on Beverly Drive feeling like a million dollars. In black skinny Balenciaga trousers and a figure-hugging black silk vest from Twenty8Twelve, accessorized with a vintage DVF leopard-print scarf and her trademark oversized Prada sunglasses, she looked every inch the star. After two long months climbing the walls at Revivals, it felt good to be back in the action. OK, so most of the attention she’d gotten had been negative. But at least it was attention. Given time – and another hit movie under her belt – Sabrina felt sure she could turn the tide. Just as long as I’m not forgotten. Hatred’s cool. It’s indifference that scares me.

Ed Steiner, her manager, waddled up to the maître d’. ‘We’re joining the Rasmirez party for lunch. Table eight, twelve thirty.’

‘Follow me, sir. You’re actually the first to arrive.’

He looks even fatter than usual, thought Sabrina, watching Ed attempt to weave between the other diners to get to the coveted table eight, the best in the house. Nervous too, she thought, clocking the rivers of sweat streaming down his forehead and the twitchy, rabbit-in-the-headlamps look in his beady agent’s eyes. He’d better not start fawning all over Rasmirez like we’re some kind of fucking charity case.

In fact, over the last two weeks, Ed Steiner had moved mountains trying to convince Dorian Rasmirez of his client’s softer side. ‘She’s edgy, I’ll grant you, and yes, she can be difficult. But you have to remember where she came from. Sabrina’s childhood was like a Hammer Horror. Seriously. Her mom tried to sell her when she was two. Actually sell her. For a drug debt.’

Rasmirez was sympathetic. He was a kind man. But he couldn’t afford to take on somebody else’s problems, or let them spill over onto the rest of his cast. Ed had sworn blind that Sabrina had changed, that she’d learned her lesson. He just prayed she didn’t undo all of his good work today.

Early signs weren’t good. Coiling her long legs beneath her seat, ignoring the No Smoking signs, Sabrina lit up a Marlboro red. ‘He’s late,’ she drawled, deliberately blowing smoke in the direction of the most disapproving-looking diners. ‘If he’s not here in five minutes, we’re leaving.’

Reaching across the table, Ed removed the cigarette from Sabrina’s mouth, stubbing it out in a plant pot by his side.

‘Stop being infantile. The man only flew in from Europe a couple of hours ago. With his schedule, you’re lucky he’s seeing you at all.’

Serena laughed bitterly. ‘Oh, yeah. I’m soooo lucky. When I’m giving him a year of my time, for free, the tightfisted son of a bitch. You watch. He’ll probably ask me to pay for lunch.’

She knew she was being childish. In part this was to try to hide her own nerves. Today’s meeting was important. Rasmirez had cast her, the contract was signed; but he could easily wriggle out of it if he met her and had a change of heart. On the other hand, Sabrina was savvy enough to know that Hollywood was all about bravado. The moment she started acting like a failure, like she was washed up and flailing and desperate for the lifeline Rasmirez was throwing her, was the moment she knew she would sink without trace. What was Jack Nicholson’s mantra? Never explain, never apologize. Ed had already apologized for her, so that ship had sailed. But Sabrina was determined to undo the damage by projecting nothing but A-list star quality to Rasmirez today. She did not appreciate being kept waiting.

Listening to Sabrina bitch about everything from the menu to the air-conditioning to the glare from the restaurant windows, Ed Steiner felt his self-control tanks running dangerously low. Just as he was about to lose his temper, a visibly tired and dishevelled Dorian Rasmirez walked in and was led over to join them.

‘Sorry I’m late.’ He addressed himself to Ed, who had stood up to greet him, and not to Sabrina, who hadn’t. ‘Complete craziness at my office. I’ve been out of town for three weeks, so I’m sure you can imagine. Have you ordered?’

Ed shook his head. ‘We only just got here ourselves.’

‘Oh, good,’ said Dorian, who couldn’t see Sabrina’s furious glare behind her enormous dark glasses. He glanced round for a waitress, who materialized instantly. ‘Hi there. We’ll have three green salads to start, please, and just bring us a selection of main dishes, whatever the chef recommends. Hope that’s OK with you.’ He turned back to Ed. ‘I’m on a really tight schedule today and we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.’

‘Of course,’ said Ed. ‘We’re grateful you could fit us in. Aren’t we Sabrina?’

Slowly, with a melodramatic flourish worthy of Zsa Zsa Gabor, or a young Joan Collins, Sabrina removed her sunglasses, folded them neatly and laid them down on the table. She looked at Dorian Rasmirez, her eyes crawling over his face with disdain. It was the sort of look an empress might give to an unkempt page boy. Who the hell did he think he was, showing up late then ordering food without even asking her what she’d like? Presumptuous jerk. She turned to a passing waiter. ‘I’ll have a sour apple martini please, not too much sugar. And the lobster. And I’d like to see the menu again, please. I haven’t quite made up my mind about an appetizer. You can cancel the earlier order.’

‘Of course, Ms Leon,’ muttered the waiter. ‘Right away.’

Dorian watched this little charade with a combination of irritation and amusement. So the stories are no exaggeration. She really is a little madam. So much for rehab having humbled her. No wonder her manager looked as if he was one Big Mac away from a fatal coronary. Working for Sabrina Leon had clearly driven him to the brink.

The rumours about Sabrina were true in other areas too. Dorian had worked with some of the most beautiful actresses in the world, but few of them could match the electricity that positively crackled out of this girl. Electricity was good. Attitude, on the other hand, was bad, and Dorian had no intention of standing for it.

Leaning forward over the table, so that his face was only inches from Sabrina’s, he said very quietly, ‘You have fifteen seconds to cancel that order.’

Sabrina refused to be intimidated. ‘Or what?’ she taunted.

‘Or you are off my movie,’ Dorian smiled sweetly. ‘Entirely your choice, of course. But I don’t work with prima donnas.’

‘Is that so?’ Sabrina stood up haughtily. ‘Well, it just so happens I don’t work with megalomaniacs. Goodbye, Mr Rasmirez.’

‘Goodbye, Miss Leon.’

Poor Ed Steiner was so panicked he looked as though he were about to spontaneously combust. ‘Hey, hey, come on now guys. Let’s cool things down, shall we? No need to get into the Cuban Missile Crisis before we’ve even been introduced.’ He put a restraining hand on Sabrina’s arm. ‘How about we start this again? Dorian Rasmirez, Sabrina Leon. Sabrina Leon, Dorian Rasmirez.’

Neither Sabrina nor Dorian moved a muscle. After a few, tense seconds, Sabrina caved first, grudgingly extending a hand. Dorian hesitated, then shook it.

‘Sit down please.’

Ed shot Sabrina a pleading look. She sat.

‘I’m a fair man, Miss Leon,’ said Dorian. ‘I have nothing against you personally. Nor do I have any interest whatsoever in your personal life.’

‘I should hope not,’ Sabrina bridled.

‘However, I should tell you that the moment your personal life intrudes on the set of my movie, or impacts my cast and crew in any way, you will be out of that door so fast you won’t know what hit you.’

Sabrina opened her mouth to speak but Dorian held up a hand for silence.

‘I’m not finished. You’re a good actress, Sabrina. You have potential to be a great actress. But you’re also spoiled, immature, and at times breathtakingly stupid.’

Sabrina bit her lower lip so hard she drew blood. Not since Sammy Levine the youth theatre director back in Fresno had anyone spoken to her like this. All around their table, diners were straining their ears to hear her being ticked off like a naughty schoolgirl. It was mortifying.

‘None of the major studios will touch you,’ said Dorian. ‘Nor will any of the independent producers worth their salt. You’re a liability.’

‘That’s bullshit,’ spat Sabrina, unable to contain herself any longer. ‘I got offers.’

Dorian laughed brutally. ‘Thank God you’re a better actress than you are a liar. You have nothing, Sabrina. You know it and I know it. As of today, you are nothing. Now, if you want to become something again in this town, in this business, in this life, you’d better start by learning some humility.’

Sabrina’s blood boiled, but she said nothing. Dorian continued.

‘I’ve taken a chance on you young lady, when nobody else would. That’s the reality. I don’t need you. You need me. Which means that for the next year, or as long as it takes to get this movie pitch perfect, you do exactly as I say. You get up when I tell you to get up. You work when I tell you to work. You speak when I tell you to speak, you shut up when I tell you to shut up, and you eat whatever I put on your fucking plate. Are we clear?’

Sabrina glared at him in silent rage. He was right. She did need him. But in that moment she hated him more than she had hated anybody since the stepbrother who’d abused her as a kid.

‘Are. We. Clear?’ Dorian repeated, raising his voice so the entire restaurant could hear him.

‘Yes.’ Sabrina nodded, her voice barely a whisper.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.’

‘Yes,’ she hissed. ‘We’re clear.’

‘Good.’ Dorian smiled broadly. ‘Now go ahead and cancel your order and we can get down to business.’

Nine hours later, Dorian pulled through the electric gates of his Holmby Hills mansion utterly exhausted. What a godawful day.

After lunch with Sabrina, he’d had back-to-back meetings with his manager, his accountant, and Milla Haines, his casting director on Wuthering Heights. He’d hoped that would be a short meeting, but Milla wanted to run through an agonizingly long list of possibles for the role of Hareton Earnshaw.

‘What about Sam Worthington?’ suggested Dorian.

Milla attempted an eyebrow raise, not easy with a forehead-full of Fraxel. ‘You can’t begin to afford him.’

Stick thin, perfectly groomed and of indeterminate age thanks to decades of surgical tinkering, Milla Haines was about as sexually alluring as a bag of nails. She was, however, a first-rate casting director, not to mention a straight talker. Dorian respected her.

‘Chris Pine?’ he asked hopefully.

‘If you wanted a solid second-tier-er, you shouldn’t have blown the budget on Hudson,’ said Milla.

‘That was money well spent,’ said Dorian firmly. ‘Viorel Hudson is Heathcliff. I couldn’t have done the film without him.’

‘You wouldn’t have had to,’ said Milla. ‘We’d have got him for half what you paid. Next time, let me do the negotiating.’

Dorian rubbed his eyes tiredly. ‘Let’s see the rest of the list.’

Years ago he used to find the early days of pre-production some of the most exciting, satisfying parts of his job, feeling his vision grow into reality beneath his hands, like a potter at the wheel. The screenwriter Thom Taylor once said that in Hollywood, ‘The deal is the sex; the movie is the cigarette.’ Dorian wouldn’t necessarily go that far, but it was true that the deals, plural – pulling together everything from funding to distribution to merchandising – was what made a movie real. Every waitress in town had an idea for a film, a dream that had brought them to this most brutal of towns. Being a producer as well as a director, you got to make your dreams come true.

This time, however, the excitement had been replaced by unadulterated anxiety. How the hell was Dorian – was anyone – supposed to be creative with so much financial pressure? He knew Milla Haines was right. He had overpaid for Viorel. What Milla didn’t know was that only two million of Hudson’s salary was being paid out of the official production budget. The other three million Dorian would have to find out of his own pocket. After the disastrous Sixteen Nights, he needed to blow the box-office roof off with Wuthering Heights. If he didn’t, he’d be ruined. It was that simple. He’d lose Chrissie. He’d lose the Schloss.

He tried not to think of how happy that would make Harry Greene. Twisted, delusional bastard. But it wasn’t going to happen. He’d been burned on Sixteen Nights, the movie Greene had helped bury, but with Wuthering Heights, Dorian had a new strategy.

Step one was to shroud the production in secrecy, to generate as much buzz and curiosity as possible. He was shooting the whole thing on location, far away from the Hollywood gossip machine. (Assuming they ever found a damn location. So far the expensive scouting firm he’d hired to find them somewhere in England had come up with sweet FA.) All the sets would be strictly closed. Everyone connected with the movie – cast, crew, even the accountancy staff – had been made to sign watertight confidentiality clauses and any actor or crew member who said so much as ‘good morning’ to a member of the press would be summarily fired.

Step two was to wait until all the creative work was done and shooting was almost wrapped, and then go looking for studio investment and a shit-hot distribution deal. By then, if the work was good, and it would be good, excitement about the film should be at its peak.

We’ll be fine, Dorian told himself. But his nerves persisted.

Parking his hired Prius out front (he’d had to sell the Bentley last year, a small contribution to the Schloss’s first winter heating bill), he staggered through the front door to the welcoming sound of a beeping burglar alarm. Dropping his bags he punched in the code to turn it off and almost went flying on the stack of unopened mail spilling all over the entryway floor like an oil slick.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he muttered, reaching for the light switch. Nothing happened. The bulb must have blown. A musty smell of dust and stale air assaulted his nostrils. No one had been here for almost a month and it showed. Dorian realized sadly that the tile-hung, Spanish-style estate no longer felt like home. He wondered if anywhere would ever feel like home again, then chided himself for being so maudlin. He was dog-tired, that was all. He needed to get into a hot shower, call Chrissie and collapse into bed.

The phone rang.

‘Rasmirez,’ he answered crossly. Who the fuck could be calling him at this time of night?

‘Wow, man, you sound like shit.’

Dorian grinned. ‘Thanks, Emil. I feel like it.’

Emil Santander, Dorian’s long-time friend and real-estate agent, sounded as upbeat and ebullient as ever. Emil and Dorian had been at film school together many moons ago, but their directorial careers had taken wildly different trajectories. Undaunted by his failure to become the new James Cameron, Emil had quit the business ten years ago, studied for his real-estate licence, and not looked back since, making a good, if unspectacular living selling the homes of his more successful classmates. He was just that kind of guy: upbeat, optimistic, uncomplicated. A dust-yourself-off-and-start-again-er. Dorian envied him.

‘It’s late, man,’ Dorian yawned. ‘I’m wiped out. Is this important or can I call you in the morning?’

‘It’s important,’ said Emil. ‘And, it’s good news.’

‘I could use some of that,’ said Dorian, wryly.

‘I got you a great offer!’

‘Oh.’ Dorian exhaled. This was unexpected. When he first left for Romania a year ago, he’d asked Emil to ‘keep his ear out’ for a potential buyer for the Holmby Hills house. But having heard nothing back, he’d forgotten all about that conversation. If Chrissie had the slightest suspicion he was even thinking of selling the place, she’d have sliced his balls off with a rusty penknife. As much as she had always bitched and moaned about LA, she adored their house, and had spent a not-so-small fortune renovating and decorating it to her exact specifications. But the reality was, if Dorian could achieve a good enough price for it, he would have to sell. At the rate the Schloss was eating money, not to mention his production debts, there was no way they could afford to run such a huge house in absentia.

‘Jeez,’ grumbled Emil. ‘Don’t overwhelm me with enthusiasm, will you?’

‘Sorry,’ said Dorian. ‘I’m just … how great, exactly?’

Part of him hoped the offer would be low enough to reject. Then he wouldn’t have to broach the subject of a sale with Chrissie, who was already spoiling for the next fight. But another, more rational part prayed it would be high enough to cover his debt on Viorel Hudson’s salary.

‘Pretty great actually,’ said Emil, unable to keep the triumph out of his voice. ‘About eight and half million bucks’ worth of great.’

Dorian quickly did the math. Eight five, minus four million mortgage, minus the lien he’d raised two years ago when Sixteen Days was going under, minus the excess on Hudson’s fee … he would break even, with a few hundred grand left over for a modest apartment in Santa Monica, somewhere to crash when he was working. Good news indeed.

‘That’s awesome, Emil. Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome. Now just to be clear, is that “Thank you, I accept the offer”? Because I’m bringing the paperwork round first thing tomorrow morning for you to sign. The buyers want to meet you.’

Dorian’s heart sank. ‘Tomorrow? Oh, jeez man, I’m flat out tomorrow. Can we do it later in the week?’

‘Helloo?’ said Emil. ‘Are you hearing me here, D? I just got you eight point five for a house that you and I both know is worth six on a good day. These guys are big fans of your work and they wanna meet you. Tomorrow.’

Dorian groaned. ‘OK.’

‘They’d also like to move in by the end of the week. I told them that shouldn’t be a problem.’

Fifteen minutes later, too tired to shower, Dorian lay back on his bed fully clothed. Feeling sleep start to creep over him, he quickly grabbed the phone and punched out his Romanian home number. He wouldn’t tell Chrissie about the house sale tonight. He couldn’t face the fireworks. He just wanted to hear her voice and to say good night. To tell her he loved her. And Saskia, of course.

The phone rang and rang … no answer.

That’s weird, thought Dorian. It was early morning over there, before six, but Chrissie was usually up at this time. She was fanatical about her sunrise yoga. He hung up and tried the line again, forcing images of Chrissie writhing naked in Alexandru’s arms out of his mind.

Still no answer. She must have gone out earlier than usual. Or maybe she’s in the shower already. Can’t hear the phone. I’ll try again in a few minutes.

He closed his eyes, just for a second. A movie reel of images danced through his brain.

Sabrina Leon, that beautiful, truculent child, her feline eyes glinting murderously at him across the table at Il Pastaio.

Chrissie, moaning with pleasure in some nameless lover’s bed.

Emil Santander handing him wodges of hundred-dollar bills, but as soon as the notes touched his hands they crumbled into dust, staining his fingertips ash-grey.

Harry Greene laughing.

At last the anxiety dreams faded and Dorian saw a house: grey, imposing, bleak, its shuttered windows being mercilessly lashed by rain. He recognized it instantly as the Wuthering Heights of his boyhood imagination. It was a forbidding building, cold and aloof, and yet to Dorian there was something wonderfully comforting about it, and about the lulling swoosh, swoosh sound of the rain as it fell, enveloping everything in a cool, grey shroud.

He was asleep, the phone still clasped in his hand.

CHAPTER SIX

‘Hey, Mum, guess what?’ It was the third time Abel Crewe had asked this question in the last minute. ‘If a dinosaur fell over, it would die.’

‘Would it?’ said his mother absently. ‘My goodness.’

Tish and Abel were in the back of a taxi, on their way home to Loxley from Manchester Airport. Tish’s eyes were glued to the familiar, craggy beauty of the landscape outside. She’d thought about it every day since she’d been away, but she realized now that she’d forgotten just how breathtaking the Peak District really was. This afternoon a light rain was falling, but a few pale sun rays fought their way bravely through the clouds, bathing the jutted tops of the Pennines in a soft, celestial light. With the exception of the odd crumbling farm-worker’s cottage, this stretch of the Hope Valley was devoid of buildings, and seemed barely touched by man. After the ugly urban sprawl of Oradea, it was a blessed relief for Tish’s senses, and she drank it in like a hummingbird gorging on nectar.

Abel, on the other hand, was far more interested in talking than sightseeing. If there were an Olympic team for not-drawing-breath, Tish’s five-year-old son would surely have been appointed captain.

‘Do you know why it would die?’ he asked, not bothering to wait for a reply. ‘Because dinosaurs are allergic to falling over. Like I’m allergic to mushrooms. What are you allergic to, Mum? Some people aren’t allergic to anything, also some animals aren’t, but some are, like monkeys. Not giraffes, though. Unless they ate a log. That would prob’ly get stuck in their necks and then … hey, look, another tractor! Seven! That’s seven, Mum! I’m gonna be seven, after I’ve been six. Where’s my birthday gonna be again? At home, or in In-ger-land? Can I have two parties?’

‘England,’ corrected Tish, who was only half listening. ‘Not Ing-er-land. Try to stop talking just for a few minutes Abi, OK? We’re almost there.’

The taxi took a left turn and the road narrowed sharply as it climbed and weaved its way around the hillside. Occasional farms gave way to grey stone houses, their walled front gardens bereft of flowers other than the occasional early snowdrop bravely rearing its flimsy white head above the muck. This was the outskirts of Loxley village. Tish felt her heart soar as they passed each familiar landmark: Bassets Mill, Mr Parks’s farm, the abandoned dovecote that the local children used as a makeshift climbing frame-cum-treehouse. A few moments later and they were in the village proper.

A five-times-winner of Britain’s Best Kept Village competition, Loxley was small but perfectly formed. It had a triangular green that was bisected by a tributary of the Derwent, which villagers had crossed for centuries by means of a Saxon stone footbridge. On one side of the green stood the post office and village shop. On the other was the perfectly preserved Norman church, St Agnes’s, and on the third, the focal point of all village life great and small: The Carpenter’s Arms pub.

‘What do you think, darling?’ Tish hugged her son excitedly.

‘It’s really pretty!’ Abel grinned. ‘It’s like a picture from my book.’ His sweet, snub nose was now glued to the window. Villages, apparently, were a lot more interesting than fells. ‘Is it a park? When does it close?’

Tish squeezed his hand. ‘It never closes.’

‘Never? Cool! Can we go in that shop? Do they have M & Ms? Do they have Lego?’

The taxi continued through the village and down a gentle escarpment, Abel chattering excitedly all the while. The lane narrowed to a single car’s width, hemmed in on either side by thick bushes of dog rose and briar, so it was almost like driving through a tunnel. Then suddenly, without warning, the valley opened up again to breathtaking views. A few hundred yards further and the road abruptly stopped in front of a pair of lichened wooden gates, propped open with two stone saddle stools. Through the gates, a wide, sweeping driveway wound its way into the distance, looking for all the world like the entrance to some enchanted land.

‘It’s a palace!’ gasped Abel, his eyes on stalks. ‘Who lives up there?’

‘We do.’ Tish laughed as the taxi pulled through the gates. ‘For a little while, anyway. The house actually belongs to your Uncle Jago –’ the words stuck in Tish’s craw–‘but he’s away at the moment. Mummy’s friend Mrs Drummond has been looking after it for him while he’s gone, and we’ve come to help her.’

This seemed to satisfy Abel, who was more interested in the oak trees in the park and which of them might be most suitable for his planned Tarzan treehouse than Loxley’s complex ownership structure. In-ger-land, he had already decided, was infinitely superior to Romania. He hoped his Uncle Jago’s holiday lasted a long, long time.

He hoped it even more when he saw the house, a turreted, Disney fairytale that was just crying out for someone to play knights in it. While Tish paid the cabbie and struggled to drag her suitcase across the gravel, Abel raced ahead of her, bounding up the stone steps through the open front door.

A plump, elderly woman, wearing a striped apron over her gardening trousers and sweater, appeared in the hallway.

‘Who are you?’ Abel asked bluntly.

‘I’m Mrs D,’ said the woman, smiling as she wiped her floury hands on her apron. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Abel Henry Gunning Crewe,’ said Abel. ‘Do you like dinosaurs?’

Before she had time to answer, Mrs Drummond saw Tish lugging an enormous suitcase into the hallway. ‘Darling! Let me help you.’ She relieved Tish of the case, plonking it down at the foot of the stairs, and threw her arms around her former charge, enveloping Tish in a bosomy, cinnamon-scented bear hug. ‘I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you.’

‘You too, Mrs D,’ said Tish with feeling. ‘You met Abel?’

‘I did indeed,’ Mrs Drummond grinned, turning to watch the little boy who was now mountaineering his way up the banisters. ‘He’s gorgeous.’

‘Isn’t he?’ Tish grinned back. ‘I thought he’d be tired after the flight and everything, but he hasn’t stopped talking since six o’clock this morning.’

‘Not to worry,’ said Mrs Drummond. ‘I’ve made some cinnamon pound cake. A couple of slices of that will take the wind out of his sails. Now, what would you like to do first, lovie? Eat? Have a bath? Unpack?’

‘No,’ said Tish resolutely. ‘I’d like to meet our house guests.’

A cloud of anxiety descended over Mrs Drummond’s kindly features. ‘I don’t think you should do that right away, Letitia. They’re not very nice people. Wait till this afternoon and I’ll get Bill and one of the other farm boys to go in there with you. They mostly keep to the East Wing, so they shouldn’t bother us here.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Tish. ‘I don’t need a bloody bodyguard in my own house. If you’d take Abel and get him something to eat, I’ll go and sort them out.’

‘I really don’t think you understand, darling …’ Mrs Drummond began. But Tish was already marching off down the hallway towards the East Wing. She always was a stubborn child, thought Mrs Drummond, watching her retreating back. Perhaps she should call Bill Connelly, just in case.

Walking down the East corridor, past Loxley’s grand, formal rooms, Tish gasped in horror as the extent of the damage wrought by Jago’s ‘friends’ unfolded. Every few feet, dark rectangles of wallpaper revealed the places where paintings had been removed and, according to Mrs Drummond, taken to London to be sold for drugs. In the library, antique bookcases stood with their doors hanging off the hinges and an array of beautifully bound first editions spilling out onto the floor. In the grate, Tish saw torn spines and singed pages: some Barbarian had used her father’s books as kindling! Everywhere there was dirt, Persian runners covered with the imprints of muddy boots, empty mugs and glasses littering every available surface, some of them growing livid green mould on the dregs of whatever vile, stagnant liquid they had once contained. The deeper Tish walked into the East Wing, once the most impressive part of the house, the more the place looked like a squat, littered with empty beer cans and overflowing ashtrays.

Finally, she approached the drawing room. There was music coming from inside – Jimi Hendrix, if I’m not mistaken – and raucous, male laughter. Her hand was on the door handle, but she hesitated.

Not yet, she thought. There’s something I have to do first.

In the kitchen, Mrs Drummond watched in awe as Letitia’s son inhaled his fourth, slab-sized slice of cinnamon pound cake. The child was an eating machine. And he was still talking.

‘If you could make dinosaurs un-extinct and have one for a pet, which one would you have?’ he mumbled through a fine spray of cake crumbs.

‘My goodness, Abel. I’ve never really thought about it. I don’t suppose I’d have any of them. Would dinosaurs make good pets, do you think?’

Abel looked at her pityingly. ‘Of course they would. A T-Rex would be the most excellentest pet you could ever have, and do you know why? Because it would kill all the baddies, and eat them, but it wouldn’t kill you because you’d be its owner. Pets’ owners are kind of like their mum or dad. So pets actually love them. Even a T-Rex would love its owner, but you’d have to help it not to fall over, because do you know what happens to dinosaurs when they fall over?’

Mrs Drummond shook her head.

‘They die!’

‘Do they really?’

‘Uh-huh. And do you know what else?’

Suddenly the clear, unmistakable crack of a shotgun being fired rang out.

‘Good heavens!’ said Mrs Drummond. A few seconds later there was another shot, then another, all of them from the direction of the East Wing.

‘Was that a bomb?’ asked Abel cheerfully. ‘Bombs are cool.’

‘You stay there my darling. Don’t move.’ Running into the hallway, Mrs Drummond picked up the telephone and dialled 999.

In the drawing room, a dreadlocked man in his mid-thirties stared at the petite, blonde woman in front of him in terrified astonishment.

‘What the fuck?’ he shouted, as his cowering companions scrambled to their feet. ‘You could have killed me!’

‘Indeed I could,’ said Tish. She pointed her father’s shotgun slowly and deliberately at the man’s crotch. ‘And if you and your mates aren’t out of this house in the next two minutes, I probably will.’

‘You wouldn’t bloody dare,’ said the man.

Tish cocked the gun’s hammer. ‘Try me.’

Henry’s gun cupboard was upstairs in what had been his dressing room. Deciding it was better to be safe than sorry, and that a loaded shotgun would provide a lot more effective protection than Bill Connelly, Loxley’s elderly farm manager, Tish had retrieved the key from its usual hiding place in the airing cupboard and armed herself for confrontation. When she reached the dressing room her heart was in her mouth. The squatters had evidently been here before her. Deep scratches on the thick oak closet doors documented their multiple, frustrated attempts to break it open. Tish shuddered to think what might have happened had they succeeded, high out of their minds and with poor dear Mrs Drummond in the house.

‘We’re guests here, you mad fucking cow,’ the man snarled, stepping out from behind the Knole sofa. ‘Your brother invited us to stay for as long as we liked.’ His fear seemed to be receding and his aggression returning. His patchwork trousers and CND shirt suggested a peaceful, hippyish, eco-campaigner type, but the bullying look in his eyes said otherwise. You’re a thug, thought Tish. I’ve seen your type in Romania countless times: pathetic little local government Hitlers trying to intimidate the weak and helpless. You don’t scare me.

‘Yes, well, unfortunately for you my brother isn’t here, is he? I am. And I’m telling you to get out.’

‘Fuck you. You’re not gonna shoot me.’ The man took two steps towards Tish, a look of cold hatred on his drug-ravaged face. For a moment, Tish experienced a stab of panic. Mrs Drummond was right. He was menacing. They all were. Sensing a shift in the room’s power dynamics, his previously comatose friends began to rally themselves, lining up behind him like backing singers in some sinister, junkie band.

‘Get her, Dan,’ one of them shouted.

‘Fucking posh bitch,’ hissed another.

In a couple of seconds the ringleader would have reached her. Twice her size, he would easily be able to overpower her and grab the gun. There was no time to think. Switching aim from his groin to his foot, Tish fired.

For a split second there was silence. Then came the screams. ‘Dan’ collapsed in a heap on the floor, clutching his leg. Blood poured from his foot, seeping through his soft moccasin shoes onto the carpet. The noise coming out of him was blood curdling. His friends rushed to his aid.

‘Fuck!’ said the smaller, rat-faced one. ‘We need to get him to hospital.’

‘That’s GBH, you cunt. You’re looking at ten years for that.’ Another of the men bared his yellowing teeth at Tish. ‘I’m calling the fucking police.’

‘Be my guest,’ said Tish, passing him the phone with a nonchalance she was far from feeling. ‘When you’re finished, I’ll fill them in on your thefts of my family property. I might ask them to bring over a few sniffer dogs while they’re at it. Although I doubt they’ll need them. They can just follow the trail of needles.’

Dan looked up, his face white as a sheet. ‘Leave it,’ he whispered, through gritted teeth. The pain was clearly excruciating. ‘Just get me to A and E. Get the others and let’s get the fuck out of here before she kills someone.’

Tish watched as his friends scooped him up off the floor, staggering under his weight as they carried him out of the room. Once they’d gone, she bolted the drawing-room door behind them and waited, Henry’s shotgun still in her hand. There were muffled noises of a commotion upstairs. After about ten minutes, Tish heard the last door slam. Looking out of the window, she saw a straggling group of eight men and women climb into their dilapidated camper van and drive off, spraying gravel noisily behind them in their eagerness to get away. It was only once they’d gone and the rumble of the van’s engine had faded into silence that Tish realized her hands were shaking violently.

Forcing herself to calm down, she unlocked the door and walked upstairs, checking each room to make sure that no one was left hiding or passed out on one of the beds. If it were possible, the squalor upstairs was even worse than it was in the rooms below. Drug-related detritus littered the beds and floors, along with filthy clothes and sheets, and plates covered in rotting food. Bastards. Only once she was convinced they had all gone did Tish carefully replace her father’s gun in the closet, lock it, and go back downstairs to check on Abel.

She found him in the kitchen, along with a visibly shaken Mrs D. And three policemen.

‘There she is!’ cried Mrs Drummond. ‘Oh, Letitia, thank goodness you’re safe! What happened? We heard the shots.’

‘Is everything all right, Miss Crewe?’ The senior policeman stepped forward. ‘Was anybody injured?’

‘Everything’s fine, officer,’ said Tish calmly, scooping Abel up into her arms and kissing him. ‘I’m sorry to have troubled you. There was an accident I’m afraid. One of our unwanted visitors managed to break into my father’s gun closet. I arrived in the drawing room to find him fiddling about with one of the shotguns. Damned fool. Before you knew it the thing went off and he’d managed to shoot himself in the foot. He’s on his way to A and E now. His friends took him in their camper van. I have a sneaking feeling they won’t be back.’

The policeman raised an eyebrow. He was no fool. ‘I see. And that’s the same story he’s going to be telling us, is it? The injured gentleman?’

‘Well, of course,’ said Tish, flashing him her best, butter-wouldn’t-melt smile. ‘Although I’m not sure gentleman’s the word I’d use.’

‘And where is the weapon now, miss?’

‘The gun? Oh, I put it back in the cupboard, officer, safely locked away. I didn’t want to leave it lying around for my son to find.’ Sensing this was his time to shine, Abel fluttered his eyelashes at the policeman and clung tightly to his mother, the picture of innocence.

‘Would you like to see it?’

The policeman sighed. He’d had a long day. Unless the squatter actually reported a crime, there was no official need for him to inspect the weapon.

‘Not for the moment, miss,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in touch if there’s anything else we need.’

Later that night, once Abel and Mrs Drummond were both in bed, Tish sank down into the Chesterfield chair in her father’s old office and poured herself a much-needed glass of single malt.

What a day.

Despite Mrs D’s flat-spin panic about the shooting, Tish had not been worried that Dan and his friends would spill the beans to hospital staff, or the police. They had too much to lose. If there was one thing wasters like them valued above all others, it was an easy life. As of today, Loxley Hall had become more trouble than it was worth to them. They wouldn’t be back.

The bad news was that the quid pro quo for their silence about her trigger-happy antics would be that Tish could not now report them for criminal damage. She would have to find the money to make the necessary repairs and replacements herself. But, after a cursory glance at the estate’s latest accounts, it was hard to see how that was going to happen. As a going concern, Loxley was losing money hand over fist. Most stately homes did. That was why you needed tenants, and/or a professional company to manage them. Had Tish’s mother Vivianna done what was expected of her and put such arrangements in place, instead of handing the place to Jago on a silver platter, they wouldn’t be in this mess.

It wasn’t just the practical and financial recklessness of her mother’s decision that had upset Tish. It also stung that Vivianna had deliberately cut her out of any possible inheritance. Secretly, Tish had hoped she might take over at Loxley one day, once her work in Romania was done. The estate meant far more to her than it ever had to Jago.

‘But darling,’ Vivianna told her at Henry’s funeral, ‘you’ve been so occupied with those waifs and strays of yours. I didn’t think you’d be interested. Besides, the house would always have passed to Jago if he and your father hadn’t fallen out. It’s not right that Henry should be able to spite the boy from beyond the grave.’

But it’s OK for you to spite me from this side of the grave? thought Tish furiously.

Behind Henry’s desk, on the largest expanse of wall in the room, hung an enormous, framed photograph of Vivianna, stark naked. It had been taken in the Sixties, at the height of her youthful beauty, and mercifully had been tastefully done (Vivi had her back half turned to the camera, so only her perfect, peach-shaped bottom and half of a breast were visible). But it still had to go.

You left us, Tish thought bitterly. You left all of us. What right do you have to be up on that wall, with your glossy black hair and your enchanting smile and your sultry black eyes, a female version of Jago?

Vivianna Crewe had abandoned both her children, but it was only Jago that she’d ever missed. At least, that was how Tish saw it. Maybe handing over Loxley was her way of trying to make amends to him?

Whatever her motives, there was nothing Tish could do about it now. Her job was clear: to repair the estate, rescue it from total financial ruin, and then walk away and leave it all to Jago, until the next time he fucked up. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but she had no choice. Unless of course Jago really did spend the rest of his life as a sworn celibate in a Tibetan cave. In which case perhaps, one day, Abel could inherit as the next male in line.

But she was getting ahead of herself. Right now it was by no means certain that there would be an estate to inherit, for her children or Jago’s. The squatters were gone, but the real work started now. They had to cut back. First thing in the morning, Tish would turn the heating off. They could all wear lots of sweaters.

On Henry’s desk, her BlackBerry buzzed into life. It was a BBM, from Michel. Involuntarily, Tish’s heart rate shot up.

‘How was it? As bad as you thought?’

‘Worse,’ she texted back. ‘You still in Paris?’

‘Yes. Miss you.’

Not as much as I miss you, thought Tish, her stomach lurching with hope. Did he really miss her? He’d never said anything like that before. Then another message came through. Reading it, Tish felt a skewer being pushed slowly through her heart.

‘Met someone-Tell you all about it when I see you. Xoxo’

Tish turned off her phone in a daze. Depression washed over her. Without even registering what she was doing, she unscrewed the top of the whisky bottle, poured herself another and drank it. Her throat burned, but she didn’t care.

Michel had met someone. Someone who wasn’t her. Someone who deserved him. Tish tried to picture such a woman.

She’s probably a supermodel. Or a brain surgeon. You’re nothing to him, she told herself cruelly. Just some silly girl with a crush.

Closing her eyes, she offered up a heartfelt prayer.

Please, God. Let me get over him.

In the cold, empty house, the silence was deafening.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Dorian Rasmirez’s production company, Dracula Pictures, had offices on the top floor of number 9000 Sunset Boulevard, an iconic tower block marking the borderline between Beverly Hills and West Hollywood.

Parking her silver Mercedes convertible on Doheny Drive, Sabrina Leon sauntered into the building, followed by her usual shoal of ratzies, like a whale trailing pilot fish.

‘Name?’ asked the surly clerk on the front desk.

‘You know who I am,’ Sabrina snapped back.

She was right, the clerk did know who she was. But, like most African Americans, he loathed her with a passion bordering on the murderous. ‘Name,’ he repeated, baldly.

‘Look, asshole, I don’t have time for this, I’m late. Now buzz me up to Dracula, there’s a good boy.’

If looks could kill, Sabrina would have dropped dead on the spot.

‘I am not your “boy”.’

Oh, shit. Wasn’t there a word left in the English language that didn’t have racial overtones? ‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘No? Well what I mean is you can either write your name on the visitors’ list, like eeeeeverybody else–’ the clerk spoke slowly, as if he were talking to a retarded child –, ‘or you do not step into that elevator. Next.’ And to Sabrina’s fury, he turned his attention to the man behind her.

Sabrina whipped out her cellphone. ‘Yeah, hi, this is Sabrina Leon. I’m downstairs. The moron on the desk won’t buzz me up. Would you send someone down here, please?’

She hung up, shooting the clerk a smug smile. With any luck, he’d be out of a job by morning.

It was now more than three months since Sabrina’s drunken slip of the tongue about Tarik Tyler being a slave driver, but no one seemed to want to let her move on. If they’re waiting for some kind of grovelling, Tiger Woods mea culpa, they’re gonna have a long wait, thought Sabrina defiantly. She was tired of apologizing for her existence to every black person she met in a store or on the street. I am not a goddamn racist.

A minute passed. Then five. Then twenty. Perched awkwardly on one of the leather banquettes in the lobby, Sabrina grew increasingly irritated. Where the hell was Rasmirez’s assistant?

A buzz on her phone distracted her. It was a text from Brad, the shit-hot Australian dancer she’d spent last night with. Brad was the reason she was late this morning. Sabrina prided herself on her own sexual stamina, but male dancers were always in a league of their own. She’d spotted her latest conquest on the dance floor at Les Deux last night, gyrating his perfect six-pack abs, grinding up against the identikit blonde model he’d come in with. A friend told her he was in LA on tour with Rihanna, not that Sabrina gave a fuck. He could have been White House Chief of Staff for all she cared, just as long as he ditched the blonde, took her home and fucked her till she could barely breathe.

Since getting out of rehab six weeks ago, Sabrina had only had sex once, and that was a lacklustre performance from an ex-boyfriend whom she would never have slept with if she hadn’t been drunk. Ed Steiner had pleaded with her not to go back to drinking. Sabrina had offered him a compromise – that she would only drink at home – but she was fast growing bored of her self-imposed house arrest. Playing the saint didn’t suit her. And besides, what was the point if no one was going to forgive her anyway? She only had a few more weeks left in LA, before that asshole Rasmirez shipped her off to some dreary, middle-of-nowhere location in rural England. If the press were intent on crucifying her, she was damn well going to enjoy her last supper. Brad had been a quite delicious first course.

Not even he could distract her for long though. The situation was getting ridiculous. Today was the first full cast read-through of the Wuthering Heights script, and she was now almost forty minutes late. Damned if she was going to give the jerk on the desk her name, her first instinct was to get up and leave, but a small voice of self-preservation made her hesitate. The humiliation of her lunch with Dorian Rasmirez at Il Pastaio last month still burned in her memory, and was not an experience she wanted to repeat in a hurry. Dorian, she rightly suspected, would go nuts if she pulled a no-show.

While she sat twitchily considering her options, there was a flurry of activity outside the revolving doors. The paparazzi, who’d been loitering quietly in front of the building ever since Sabrina disappeared out of shot, suddenly sprang to life again, climbing over one another like starving animals stampeding to be fed. As always when somebody else was the centre of attention rather than her, Sabrina felt a small stab of anxiety. It grew into a rather larger stab when she saw who it was.

‘Good morning.’ Viorel Hudson walked casually over to the reception desk. ‘I’m Viorel Hudson,’ he said politely. ‘I have a meeting up at Dracula Pictures. Where do I sign in?’

Dressed in a Spurr New York suit jacket over a faded grey James Perse T-shirt and dark-wash jeans, he looked relaxed and stylish. Though Sabrina was loath to admit it, he was even better looking in person than he was on screen, with his jet-black hair, strong jaw, and perfect mocha tan offsetting the deep blue of his eyes. Too pretty, she thought dismissively. No edge.

Picking up his temporary security pass, Vio turned to check his reflection in the large, lobby mirror – vain, thought Sabrina – and suddenly saw her sitting there.

‘Sabrina.’

They had never met, but Viorel recognized Sabrina instantly. She was, after all, one of the best-known faces in America, even if it was for all the wrong reasons. He extended a perfectly manicured hand. ‘Viorel Hudson. How do you do?’

Sabrina shook his hand unsmilingly. How do I do? Who does this guy think he is – Prince Charles?

She’d be sexy, thought Viorel, if only she’d wipe the sneer off her face.

‘I’m glad you’re late as well,’ he said, ignoring Sabrina’s frosty demeanour. ‘The traffic on the ten was bloody awful. Shall we head up together? Safety in numbers and all that?’

Sabrina considered the options. She could hardly stay where she was now and let him go up alone. Not without having to explain the situation with the desk clerk, which would only make her look petty.

‘Didn’t they give you a pass?’ asked Viorel, noticing she was empty handed. He turned to the desk clerk. ‘This is Sabrina Leon. She’s coming up to Dracula with me. Would you sign her in?’

The desk clerk positively beamed with satisfaction as he handed Sabrina the clipboard.

‘Certainly. Just as soon as she writes her name, like everyone else.’

Sabrina scribbled out a signature and passed it back to him, glaring.

‘You have a nice day now.’ The clerk grinned.

Sabrina did not have a nice day.

In fact, the next four hours were to be some of the longest in her life.

When the double doors to Dracula’s production office opened and she and Viorel Hudson walked in together, Dorian Rasmirez exploded. ‘What the fuck time do you call this?’ The rest of the cast, gathered around the large oval table, huddled together nervously. ‘You’re almost an hour late!’

Viorel at least had the decency to look embarrassed, apologizing profusely for keeping everyone waiting and assuring Dorian that it wouldn’t happen again.

‘Damn right it won’t,’ fumed Dorian, ‘Or I’ll want my fucking cheque back. And what the hell is your excuse?’

He turned on Sabrina, who’d quietly taken a seat at the far end of the table and appeared more interested in her cuticles than in pacifying her director. From the moment she walked into the room, Sabrina had unconsciously taken it over, shifting the centre of gravity from Dorian to herself. Even dressed down as she was today, in Love Story jeans and a plain white shirt, she dazzled. ‘I called your receptionist forty-five minutes ago,’ she said nonchalantly, not bothering to remove her sunglasses when she spoke to him. ‘No one came to get me.’

‘No one came to get you?’ Dorian stared at her contemptuously. ‘You’ve got legs, haven’t you? Walk to the fucking elevator like everyone else. You think my staff have nothing better to do than run after you like some spoiled child? Well? Do you?’

Sabrina dug her nails into her palm, forcing herself not to react, not to yell back at Dorian the way she wanted to. It was outrageously unfair. Viorel had arrived later than her, but he barely warranted a slap on the wrist. Clearly, Rasmirez was a sexist pig who got some sort of a sick kick out of publicly humiliating women. Asshole.

‘I expect people to do their jobs,’ she said calmly.

‘So do I.’ Dorian hurled Sabrina’s script across the table, narrowly missing whacking her in the face. ‘Read.’

For Dorian, Sabrina’s attitude this morning was the straw that had broken the camel’s back. The last few weeks had been breakdown-inducingly stressful.

Thanks to the location scouts’ dismal failure to find him a suitable Wuthering Heights or Thrushcross Grange in England, they were still stuck in LA and running six weeks behind schedule. His intention was to shoot as many of the interior scenes as possible at home in Romania. The Schloss was more than grand enough, it would save some money, and crucially it would allow him to spend at least part of the year under the same roof as the increasingly restless Chrissie. But most of the film had to be shot in England. They ought to have been doing today’s read-through on set, not crammed into his LA production office like a bunch of fucking sardines.

To add to his work stresses, things at home had gone from bad to worse in the last few weeks. Predictably, Chrissie had hit the roof when he told her about selling the Holmby Hills house. He’d made the mistake of doing it face to face, on a flying visit back to Romania last week.

‘You sold my home in LA, behind my back?’ Chrissie screeched, the sinews in her neck straining with rage, like a starving baby bird demanding food. Sprawled out on a chaise longue in one of the Schloss’s myriad palatial formal rooms, wearing a coffee-coloured silk La Perla negligee and matching lace-trimmed robe, she looked every inch the pampered chatelaine. ‘How dare you! I suppose now you think you can keep me and Saskia locked up here forever?’

‘No one’s trying to lock you up, honey,’ said Dorian exhaustedly. ‘I’m trying to make the best financial decisions for all of us as a family, that’s all.’

‘How?’ yelled Chrissie. ‘By selling our home to fund another one of your shitty, artistic movies? How many people actually saw Sixteen Nights? Five?’

Dorian winced. That hurt.

‘This one’ll be different,’ he said quietly. But Chrissie didn’t want to hear it. Another movie meant Dorian spending yet more time away from home, months on end in which she would be left to take care of Saskia alone in this dump while he gallivanted around the world enjoying himself.

‘I’m not going on vacation you know, honey,’ he tried to defend himself. ‘For the first months at least I’ll be stuck in LA, working my ass off, living in some shit-hole of a rented apartment.’

‘Well whose fault is that?’

‘I’ll be lonely as hell.’

‘Ha!’ Chrissie snorted viciously. ‘Lonely. You don’t know the meaning of lonely. It’s Saskia and I who’ll be lonely. You’ll be off banging your leading lady.’

‘For God’s sake!’ Dorian lost his temper. ‘You seriously think I’m interested in Sabrina Leon?’

‘Why wouldn’t you be?’ pouted Chrissie.

‘Because she’s a child,’ said Dorian, ‘an irresponsible child. I’ll be babysitting her, not sleeping with her. Besides, you know damn well you’re the only woman for me. How do you think I feel, having to leave you here, knowing every man on this estate wants you?’ Bending down over the chaise longue, he ran a hand along his wife’s taut, Pilates-toned thigh. Even after so many years together, just touching her made him feel ridiculously aroused.

Slowly, Chrissie parted her thighs, allowing him a glimpse of her newly waxed pussy. She’d deliberately had a Brazilian the day before Dorian was due to leave, knowing how anxious it would make him. ‘Don’t go then,’ she said, coyly.

‘I have to go,’ he whispered, his voice hoarse with longing. ‘I need to do this movie, Chrissie. We need it.’

Chrissie sat up, clamping her legs shut like a librarian slamming closed a book. ‘Fine,’ she snapped. ‘But don’t you dare complain to me about how hard this is for you.’

‘Come with me,’ Dorian pleaded.

‘And what, live in a hotel in my own home city? Schlep Saskia around some freezing-cold film set like a piece of excess baggage? No thanks. I’m not interested in following you round the world as your little woman.’

Dorian realized he couldn’t win. He’d offered her the part of Cathy months ago, but as usual she’d turned him down flat, a mask of anger and fear falling over her face like a security grille. ‘Our daughter needs at least one parent,’ she’d told him bitterly. It was almost as if she wanted to be unhappy, but still Dorian felt like a failure. Things had not improved between them before he left for LA. He’d been in town for five days now, and Chrissie had yet to return one of his calls.

Angry and anxious, he needed a vent for his frustration. When Sabrina Leon showed up late to this morning’s script read-through, he found one.

The rest of the day was not a rehearsal. It was a bullfight, a gladiatorial combat to the death, and Sabrina was the bull. While everybody else was allowed to get through their scenes, with Dorian commenting on their performance only at the end, Sabrina was picked up on every line. She was sloppy. Her delivery was too fast. She failed to react with enough emotion to Viorel’s lines. She was too emotional.

Over and over again, Dorian hit her with the same three words, words Sabrina came to loathe like poison:

‘Do it again.’

By the end of the day, even the most die-hard Sabrina-haters in the cast were beginning to feel sorry for her. Spoiled she may be, and attention-seeking and entitled. But you had to admire the stamina with which she ran back at each scene, over and over and over and over, determined to get it right, switching from her two parts as both the older and younger Catherine with consummate professionalism. As older Cathy, she’d be reading a passionate love scene with Viorel one minute, then jumping straight into a painful scene where, as the younger Catherine, she was being tormented by Heathcliff, forced to live as a common servant in her own childhood home. Even without Dorian’s bullying, the emotional rollercoaster was intense.

At five o’clock, Dorian finally called time on the battle.

‘All right everybody. We’re done for the day. Does anyone have any questions?’

I do, thought Sabrina. When are you going to drop dead?

No one spoke. They all wanted to go home. Just watching Dorian shred Sabrina’s performance had been exhausting.

‘I have a question.’ Viorel Hudson’s sexy British drawl rang out through the silence. ‘Do we know when filming’s actually going to start?’

Dorian’s eyes narrowed. ‘Soon. Anyone else?’

‘Is that really all you can tell us?’ Viorel pressed him. ‘I don’t mean to speak out of turn, but I don’t understand the need for all the secrecy. I mean, I haven’t even been told where the location’s going to be. Has anyone else?’

Everyone shook their heads.

‘Whether or not you understand it, you have all signed confidentiality agreements,’ snapped Dorian. ‘All details – all details – about the production of this movie remain confidential, and logistical information will be released to you on a need-to-know basis only.

‘In the meantime,’ he went on, ‘I hope I don’t have to remind any of you that you are all under contract. I can call you in to work at any time, for any reason, and I will be doing so in the near future. You should expect to be asked to travel at extremely short notice, so I suggest you all go home, pack your bags and wait.’ Dorian closed his script and stood up, a clear signal that the matter was now closed.

Sabrina was the first to leave – she couldn’t wait to get out of there. The rest of the cast swiftly followed her lead. Only Viorel remained behind.

‘Is there something I can do for you, Mr Hudson?’ Dorian’s tone was less than friendly. He was in no mood to be interrogated by his leading man. Considering what Viorel was being paid, he expected him to put up and shut up along with everybody else.

‘I know it’s not my place to say so …’ said Viorel.

‘Then don’t,’ muttered Dorian.

‘But don’t you think you were a little rough on Sabrina in there? Every time she opened her mouth, you practically ripped her throat out.’

‘I did nothing of the kind,’ said Dorian. ‘I directed her performance. Last time I checked, I believe that was considered a key part of my job description.’

Viorel looked troubled. Dorian softened slightly. It wouldn’t do to alienate all his cast before filming had even started. ‘Look. I wouldn’t cry too many crocodile tears over Miss Leon if I were you. The young lady can look after herself. She has a lot to learn, as an actress and in life. If my set is where she has to learn it –’ he shrugged –‘then so be it.’

‘What if she doesn’t learn?’ asked Viorel. ‘She might just end up hating you for it.’

Dorian smiled. ‘I rather suspect she hates me already. But I’m not in this business to make friends, Mr Hudson. Are you?’

‘No, sir,’ said Viorel with feeling. ‘I’m here to make movies.’

‘As am I. In future, show up on time to rehearsals, please.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Do your own job properly, Mr Hudson, and I assure you, I will do mine.’

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