the grimy taxi window at the…
Acknowledgements
Other Books by Tilly Bagshawe
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
