Divas (11 page)

That was the good part. The only one. Because the kitchen was an ancient gas cooker and an equally ancient fridge, standing next to an industrial steel sink, which was piled so high with
washing-up that Evie could barely see its outlines. Autumn was sitting at a huge Formica table which was so badly chipped and dented that it must have been salvaged from a skip. Looking around,
that went for the rest of the furniture: the kitchen chairs, the sofas, the coffee tables, were all the kind of scrap that people had put out on the street like trash. Salvation Army charity shops
would have split their sides at the suggestion that they take this crap. The coffee table was missing not one, but two legs, and was propped up on crates. The walls were bare brick, but not the
lovingly tended kind that was fashionable right now because trendy interior designers considered it authentic: this was the real deal, crumbling, ugly, and damp.

It was the standard artists-and-performers deal. Priced out of anywhere decent, they took over the places no one else wanted to live in and landlords couldn’t rent out to industry: the
cold-water flats, the rat-infested warehouses with barely basic plumbing. The landlords turned a blind eye to the fact that their tenants were actually living in their alleged work studios, which
of course meant that they could be evicted at any time.

‘Lawrence and I want to do this place up and make a yoga studio here, ’ Autumn informed Evie. ‘It’s our dream.’

‘Oh really?’ Evie countered. ‘That’s news to me. Lawrence never mentioned you at all.’

Evie knew this girl wasn’t Lawrence’s girlfriend. No way was Lawrence the type of guy to cheat on a steady, someone he was committed to. Even if Lawrence and Autumn hooked up
occasionally – and Evie figured that Lawrence was too sensible to do it with a roommate – Evie was sure he hadn’t ever agreed to be exclusive with her. Lawrence, bless him, was
honest to the core.

Autumn glared at her.

‘You can throw your bags in his room, ’ she said, nodding down the corridor.‘It’s the last one on the right. And the bathroom’s next to it.’

She smiled maliciously.

‘It won’t be much by your standards, ’ she added, picking up a copy of a yoga magazine and starting to flick through it. ‘Oh, and you might see the occasional rat.
Lawrence and I don’t believe in putting down poison for them. We’re very strict vegans.’

Dragging her bags down the corridor, such as it was – the residents had put up cheap partition walls, open at the top, to divide the vast space into separate rooms – Evie reached
Lawrence’s room. It was at least exquisitely neat, and someone, probably Lawrence, had built a big platform for a loft bed at the rear, plus long wooden shelves and a hanging rail for
clothes. Books were arranged on the shelves, and Lawrence’s clothes, mostly in shades of khaki, taupe and beige (i.e. colours that could be achieved without bleaching, using natural dyes)
were ranged in tidy piles further down. There was a desk and a chair, a sisal rug on the floor, and some Japanese scroll paintings hung on the walls.

That was it.

Not a single real creature comfort.

Slowly, she took off her coats, one after the other, and hung them over the chair. Then she sat down on one of the rungs of the wide ladder leading up to the sleeping platform, and stared ahead
of her blindly, barely even seeing the particle-board wall. Everything had happened so fast. She was still barely able to process the wreck of her life – how far and fast she had fallen since
she had woken up this morning in her beautiful penthouse, cosseted, beloved, wrapped in 400-count sheets, cashmere blankets and silk bedspreads, scented with expensive moisturiser.

She was busting for a pee, but she couldn’t face investigating the bathroom. From the way Autumn had smirked at her, she could tell it would be very bad.

Footsteps came down the hall. Could it be Lawrence? Had he picked up her message and rushed back to see her? Evie’s heart raced with anticipation. Lawrence was all she had left: she
hadn’t realised till this moment how eager she was to see him.

But it was Autumn who put her head round the door, Autumn who said, with the triumphant air of a woman who is just about to score a major point over her rival:

‘Oh, by the way, I noticed that’s a leather bag you were carrying. And those suitcases are leather too, aren’t they?’

Her gaze went to the chair over which Evie had carefully draped her coats, and her eyes widened in horror.

‘Oh my God, is that
real fur?
’ she breathed.

She walked into the room and bent over the chair for a closer look at Evie’s shaved mink, letting out a scream when she confirmed her suspicions. Turning to Evie, she put her hands on her
hips.

‘We’re a cruelty-free household, ’ she declared. ‘Every animal product you own will have to go by
tonight
. And that
includes
products tested on
animals!’

Turning on her heel, she stormed out, her red-tipped ponytail swinging in an effect that Evie had to admit was dramatic.

Evie almost felt like laughing. Her situation was so comically appalling. Stuck in a building that wasn’t fit for human habitation, probably with rats crawling over her in the night
– she had the horrible feeling that Autumn had been serious about that – and now about to have 90 per cent of her worldly goods confiscated on moral grounds. She put her head in her
hands.

And then, as her palms grew damp, she realised she was crying.

Evie never cried.

But she climbed up the ladder and buried her face in Lawrence’s pillows just the same, because the last thing she wanted to do was give that bitch Autumn the satisfaction of hearing her
cry her heart out.

‘T
his is the last straw, Dev! The last straw!’

Someone was shouting so loudly that Lola, carefully plucking a hair that threatened to unbalance the perfect symmetry of her eyebrows, put down the tweezers and tilted her head in the direction
of her bedroom door.

‘Not one more night! It’s gone beyond a joke!’

Worried now, Lola stood up and crossed the room, pushing open the door. Voices floated up from the marble hallway below, and, leaning slightly over the corridor balustrade, she could see the
golden heads of Devon and her husband Piers, Marquis of Claverford.

‘I simply won’t stand for it!’ Piers was bellowing. ‘She’ll have to leave! Today!’

Oh
no
. . . Lola’s heart sank to the floor. She might not have any A levels, but you didn’t need formal education to work out who Piers was referring to.

Devon’s softer voice was barely audible, but she was clearly pleading for Lola, because Piers’s response was a roar of anger.

‘Dev! Have you
seen
the papers? She’s all over the damn tabloids, shoving a straw up her nose!’

Leaning further over the balustrade now, Lola had a good view of the scene in the hallway. Piers, in the baby-blue sweater, stripy shirt and loose jeans of the Sloane at play, was pacing back
and forth on the checkerboard marble tiles, waving a newspaper at Devon, who looked tiny next to his large, beefy frame.

‘We can’t have it, Dev, ’ Piers insisted. ‘They’re surrounding the bloody house. I caught one of the blighters trying to climb over the garden wall. Gave him a good
spanking with a spade – he won’t be sitting down for a week.’ Piers chuckled. ‘But look!’ He waved the paper at Devon again, stabbing at the front page with a big pink
finger. Painstakingly – Piers didn’t have that many A levels either – he read out:

‘Oh
shit
, ’ Devon gasped.

‘Exactly! The crumblies are going to hit the roof! I wouldn’t be surprised if this gave the old man a coronary!’

From her awkward angle hanging over the banisters, Lola couldn’t make out Devon’s expression, but she was sure Dev had suddenly perked up at the thought of Piers’s father, the
duke, having a coronary, and Piers becoming the Duke of Claverford in his stead. Which would make Devon the Duchess.

‘She has to go, Dev!’ Piers was insisting. ‘I know she’s a friend of yours, fair enough, loyalty and all that, but it’s gone too far now. God knows what the other
papers are saying. We have our reputation to maintain!’

Lola seethed at the lofty tone Piers was taking. Everyone knew he was a horribly lecherous drunk – no woman, not even a friend of Devon’s, was safe after Piers’s second bottle.
He’d even cornered his sister Venetia once against the downstairs bar, too smashed on claret to realise who she was. She’d had to spray him with a soda siphon to get him to calm
down.

Still, if Piers was taking this line, she had lost her cosy berth here. Dully, absorbing one shock after another, Lola went back into what was now no longer her bedroom, and dialled George, her
father’s old lawyer.

Just as she was finishing the call, Devon tapped on the door, then stuck her head round it, pulling an apologetic face.

‘Come in, ’ Lola said, snapping her phone shut.

‘Lo, I’m so sorry, but—’ Devon started.

‘It’s OK, ’ Lola sighed. ‘I heard him already.’

‘His parents are such stuffy old things . . .’ Devon said helplessly. ‘They’re bound to get wind of this, and if they hear you’re still staying in the house, they
really will hit the roof . . .’

She tossed back her silky blonde curtain of hair, sitting down on the bed next to Lola and taking her hand.

‘We’ll ring round and see if we can find you somewhere else to go, ’ she offered.

Lola grimaced.

‘No one’s going to take me in, Dev, not after this, ’ she said. ‘The paps’ll follow me wherever I go, and no one wants this kind of publicity.’

She reached for the newspaper Devon was holding. The cover photo was a grainy, blurred snap of her, leaning over a black surface on which a series of white lines could clearly be distinguished,
angling the straw she was holding so she could hoover up one of the lines of coke. From the background, it had been taken in the Japanese restaurant: she could make out some details of the painted
screen behind her.

‘It must have been the stripper who took it, ’ Devon said, too quickly.

‘It wasn’t the stripper.’ Lola pointed out where, just visible at one corner of the photo, the main table could be seen. Cris was still lying there: if she squinted, she could
just make out some pieces of sashimi that remained on his leg.

‘One of the waiters, then.’

‘Oh, come on, Dev!’

Impatiently, Lola dropped the paper on the bed. Devon immediately snatched it up to stop the cheap ink staining the Porthault sheets.

‘We both know it was one of us!’ Lola said. ‘No way a waiter managed to bring out a camera, let alone one with a flash, without any of us noticing! I don’t care how
blasted we were, one of us would have spotted that!’

Devon hung her pretty head, hair tumbling forward, a silent acknowledgement that Lola was right.

‘One of the girls sold camera-phone photos and their story to the
Herald
, ’ Lola continued bitterly. ‘I bet they made a ton of money off dragging me down.’

‘Oh, Lo, you mustn’t say that—’ Devon mumbled.

‘Why would anyone
do
this to me?’ Lola said, jumping up and striding to the window. Opening the curtains a crack, she peered down at the waiting paparazzi outside, drinking
coffee from takeaway containers, talking on their mobiles, waiting for Lola to come out.

‘Jealousy, ’ Devon said simply.

‘Really?’ Lola let the curtain fall and turned back towards Devon, who was pulling a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of her slim-legged jeans.

‘God yes!’ Devon lit up and waved away the smoke.‘Lola, you’re getting married to the guy everyone was after! Or you
were
, who knows now . . . And your father has
more money than God! Everyone wanted your life! Well, everyone but me, ’ she added conscientiously, taking another drag. ‘Because I have the title. But let’s face it,
Jean-Marc’s a lot hotter than Piers. I mean, you can’t have it all.’

‘So you think—’

‘Of course! Someone was out to get you! To be fair, they probably sold the pics before all the scandal broke. Otherwise, that would be
too
awful.’ The hand that was holding
the cigarette sagged dangerously close to the expensive sheets.

‘I tell you, Dev, I don’t know anything any more, ’ Lola said bitterly
.
‘I thought I was getting married to the catch of the century. It turns out he’s a
drug-addicted tranny-lover. I thought my friends were 100 per cent reliable, and it turns out one of them’s sold me out to the tabloids. I thought I’d never have to worry about money,
and look at me now!’

Devon’s blue eyes went saucer-wide. ‘I thought your New York lawyer was sorting that out, ’ she breathed, reaching for the ashtray on the bedside table.

Lola heaved a deep sigh.

‘I just spoke to him, ’ she said, collapsing on the bed. ‘He says we can challenge the power of attorney, and the fact that Carin’s controlling my trust fund. But it
could take ages, and in the meantime, all I have is what’s in my bank accounts.’

‘How much is that?’ Devon asked.

‘About fifteen grand in the UK one.’

‘God.’ Devon pulled a face. ‘That won’t go far especially with lawyers’ fees to pay, and getting to the states – let alone staying there in a decent hotel . .
.’

‘I
know
! And the US bank account isn’t much better. I barely use them. I mostly just live on the credit cards.’

Devon stubbed out the cigarette and slumped back on the pillows.

‘I’m so sorry about kicking you out, ’ she said helplessly. ‘But you know what Piers is like when he gets an idea in his head.’