Divas (17 page)

‘Lola!
Chérie!
’ someone called as soon as she entered Cipriani’s.

‘Ciao, Lola!’

‘Hey, sweetie!’

The large table, their favourite, was packed with downtown society: international bankers, heirs to hotel empires,
Vogue
stylists cruising for a rich husband, and the inevitable gossip
columnist.

‘Welcome back to Eurotrash Central!’ said Thom, a bond trader from Strasbourg, pulling her out a chair.

Everyone laughed: the joke was on the Americans who, disliking the confidence of the already-rich Europeans who dropped into New York for a few years to make even more money, before heading back
to their home countries to crack superior jokes about the lack of sophistication of the American race, had dubbed this circle ‘Eurotrash’. The men were unashamed of looking what
Americans would consider homosexual: they sported tight cashmere sweaters, designer stubble, lavish watches and plenty of aftershave, all of which, blended with their sexual confidence, made
American straight men extremely insecure and hostile.

The table was laden with plates: carpaccio with rocket and truffle shavings, artichoke salad, grilled tiger prawn risotto. Light food, which barely anyone had touched.

‘Are we all still drinkorexics?’ Lola asked, sitting down and taking the glass of champagne proffered by Thom who, off-duty, was in his usual black polo neck and wire-framed glasses.
He wore suits and contact lenses to work, but preferred, away from his desk, to look like a fashionably minimalist architect.

‘Just sticking with what works, ’ smiled Mandana, an Iranian-English girl who preferred to be described as Persian, and had superb dark flashing eyes and a magnificently hawkish
profile.

‘I’m actually hungry, ’ Lola admitted shamefacedly, forking up a piece of rich scarlet carpaccio and allowing herself just a sliver of Parmesan with it, because she was
jet-lagged.

‘
Lola
, ’ breathed a gossip columnist, his beady eyes gleaming. ‘Honey, tell us
everything!
We’ve all seen the British papers online! Has Carin really cut
you off? How’s Big Daddy doing? Is he
really
in a coma?’

Lola looked around the table. Not only their circle, but most of the people at adjoining tables were leaning forward avidly, desperate for the latest gossip from the horse’s mouth. She
took a long sip of champagne, and Thom eagerly leaned forward to refill her glass.
At least as long as everyone wants to hear all about my scandals
, she suddenly realised,
I won’t
be picking up a single tab! Wonderful! As well as not taking limos round the corner, this is going to be another
great
way to economise
. . .

Lola was dreaming, a hectic, upsetting dream in which she was having to climb a huge stack of suitcases, which were wobbling dangerously underfoot. She was in her silver Miu
Miu slingbacks, but they weren’t that easy to walk in, let alone climb, and she asked Jean-Marc to help her, but he was too frail, and besides, some awful woman with huge fake melon breasts
and cheap dyed hair was pulling him down somewhere she couldn’t see. She tripped on the edge of a suitcase and nearly went flying, but someone caught her. It was Niels van der Veer, glowering
down at her, and she tried to shake him off, but he was very strong and they were all tangled up and they rolled around, Lola finding it harder and harder to move. For some reason he kept calling
her ‘Miss Fitzgerald, Miss Fitzgerald’, shouting in her ear, tapping on her head, which was all echoey, and then the noise got louder and louder till she gasped and woke up to realise
she was tangled in the bedsheets, actually a little sweaty from the nightmare, and someone was knocking on the door of the suite, calling, ‘Miss Fitzgerald? Miss Fitzgerald?’ in a
gently persistent tone of voice.

‘What is it?’ she called, unpeeling the silk sleep mask from her eyes. Eew, that was sweaty too. She’d have to get the maid to hand-wash it.

‘Miss Fitzgerald? It’s Tai, the day manager. May I come in?’

‘Give me twenty minutes, ’ Lola called back, irritated at being woken like this at the crack of dawn. ‘No, half an hour. And could you bring me a skim-milk cappuccino when you
come back?’

Wincing from a hangover, she climbed out of the deliciously soft bed and padded down from the mezzanine level to draw the floor-to-ceiling curtains. The living-room was two storeys high, and the
spring sunshine flooding in was blinding. You forgot how much sun there was in New York when you were used to grey old London. She pinned up her hair carefully, to avoid messing up her blow-out,
and took a long shower. By the time the rainforest shower head had done its business, Lola was feeling so revived that she was actually humming to herself as she massaged her BeauBronz tan extender
into her smooth skin, wrapped herself cosily in a big white robe and slipped her feet into her cashmere slippers.

The clock in the living-room said it was past noon. Lola’s eyes widened. And then she looked around the room, beginning to notice the number of empty glasses and overflowing ashtrays
stacked on every surface. Memories from the night before started to drip back into her consciousness, one drop at a time, like Chinese water torture. A whole group of them hanging out in the garden
at Barolo, which was just below 60 Thompson, wanting to move on, looking up at the roof terrace bar, deciding to go up there. On the terrace, everyone laughing and smoking up a storm, ordering more
cocktails, cocooned in a cosy nest of brick walls and lush plants, the New York skyline glittering in the dark velvet sky. Then, being kicked off the terrace, because some stupid neighbours had
complained about the noise and made them close the bar at midnight or something ridiculously early. Going down to the hotel bar, but not being able to smoke there, and everyone pretty drunk by this
time, not wanting to move too far, so a smaller group of people heading up to her room, where they
could
smoke . . .

‘Miss Fitzgerald?’ The knocking on the door started up again. ‘It’s Tai again, with your cappuccino? Skim milk?’

Lola crossed the room to open the door, wondering whether the coffee would be enough to cure the slight headache she was suffering, or whether she should go for some codeine.

‘Hi!’ Tai said, smiling brightly. She had a very American mixed-race beauty, with pale creamy-gold skin, dark almond eyes and a sprinkling of freckles over the bridge of her
tip-tilted nose. Her black outfit, a cheong-sam-inspired shirt over slim black trousers, hung loosely off her slender bones, and her dark chestnut hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail. The
archetypal New York career woman, she was extremely slim, dressed all in black, her make-up blending in so perfectly you could hardly tell she was wearing it, every hair smooth and in place.

‘I brought you coffee and some fruit, ’ she said, indicating the dark wood tray she was carrying. ‘And we’re just going to clear up a little bit for you.’

Behind her was a bus boy who slipped into the room, produced a large tray he had been holding discreetly under one arm, and loaded it up with most of the debris from last night, leaving the
coffee table free for Tai to deposit Lola’s breakfast upon. Lola sat down on the sofa, sipping her cappuccino, and waited until the bus boy had left, closing the door quietly behind him.
Grateful as she was for the coffee, she was beginning to have a bad feeling about this visit.

‘So, ’ Tai began, ‘I hope you don’t mind, Miss Fitzgerald, but we were wondering how long you were planning to stay with us.’ She flashed Lola another smile, her
teeth dazzlingly white. ‘Of course, we’re always very happy to have you with us – you’re welcome to stay as long as you want! We’ve had guests who settle in for months
on end!’

‘I don’t understand, ’ Lola said, reaching for a blueberry. ‘Can’t I just stay on and let you know when I’m leaving? I mean, I’m not sure now how long
I’ll be here.’

‘Of course you can!’ Tai’s teeth flashed again. ‘That’s exactly why
I’m
here! We just need to talk it over and decide how often you’re going to
settle your running expenses. Once a week is usual for our longer-stay guests.’

‘Running expenses?’ Lola had clearly not had enough coffee yet.

‘Your bill, ’ Tai clarified.

There was a long pause.

‘You said a week, ’ Lola said, feeling her way, ‘and I’ve only been here four days—’

‘Five days, actually, ’ Tai corrected her with a little smile.

‘Really? It’s been five days?’ Lola said, shocked.

Lola still hadn’t been to visit her father. Or George, the lawyer. Every morning (or noon) she’d woken up and told herself that today was the day: she wasn’t going to put
things off any more. She was going to ring Carin, arrange a time to go and see her father. But after making that brave resolution, her nerve dwindled. She was intimidated by Carin, to be honest.
She always had been. And since Carin had cut her off from her trust fund, she had become even more scary, because someone who had the nerve to do something that unpleasant to her stepdaughter was a
person who clearly didn’t care what anyone thought of her, and those people were very difficult to fight.

She didn’t want to see George, not really, because she knew that if he’d had good news he would have rung her with it immediately, and so when she went into his office he would tell
her a lot of things she didn’t want to hear. And she didn’t want to see her father, because the mere idea of seeing Daddy lying helpless in a bed, unconscious, hooked up to a lot of
tubes, was so awful that it brought tears to her eyes just thinking about it.

Lola had been living in a bubble for the past four –
five
– days, partying and shopping and clubbing and resolutely pushing aside any thoughts of the crisis she was in, all
the trouble that was brewing overhead for her. But now, as she looked at Tai the day manager, and the envelope that Tai had propped up on the tray, which Lola had vaguely thought before might
contain messages for her taken by the front desk, she realised that her bubble was about to burst.

‘It wouldn’t normally be hotel policy to have this conversation with a valued guest after only a few days, ’ Tai was saying, ‘so I do apologise for that. But there have
been, ahem, mentions in the papers about some difficulties you may be having with, ahem, funding issues. . . and then there was that party last night, which did run up quite a substantial tab to
your room account . . .’

Oh my God
, Lola thought in horror,
all of that got billed to
me
? I thought Thom was covering it! Shit! Drinks at the upstairs bar, all those little nibbles people had ordered to
pick at
. . .
the cocktails downstairs, the bottles of vodka they’d had brought into the room, even sending out for cigarettes
. . .

‘So we just thought, why not give you a statement of your account now, ’ Tai said, ‘and you can settle that at your convenience. Then we can just roll over to a weekly bill?
Does that work for you?’

Tai was as smiling and friendly as ever. But the last sentence was only there for politeness’ sake, as were the question marks. Lola might not have had enough coffee – and not nearly
enough codeine, as her headache was now raging – but she could tell that much.

‘I’ll drop off a cheque at the front desk when I come down, ’ she said bravely.

And then Lola could tell, by the slight widening of Tai’s eyes, that she had made a huge, and possibly fatal, mistake. Nobody paid with a cheque any more. Lola had had to get temporary
cheques from her bank, because none of her cards worked any more; but someone who could afford to stay for an indefinite time at 60 Thompson was the kind of person who had cards with a pretty much
unlimited line of credit. If Lola couldn’t manage that, if she had to pay by cheque either because she had cards with a low limit, or, even worse, no cards at all, she was
not
the kind
of person whom an expensive boutique hotel wanted as a long-term guest.

‘That would be great, ’ Tai said, professionalism enabling her to keep her composure. She pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘I’m so sorry to have bothered you like
this, Miss Fitzgerald.’

‘Oh, not at all, ’ Lola said brightly. ‘Could you get them to send me up another cup of coffee, by the way?’

‘Of course, ’ Tai said, smiling automatically. ‘Skim milk again?’

Lola nodded.

‘I’ll see myself out, ’ Tai said.

As the door closed behind her, Lola grabbed for the envelope and ripped it open. The three pages of closely printed items on the bill were an ominous detailing of charges that horrified her,
with a final sum that was so enormous it would take a huge chunk out of the bank balance that had looked relatively healthy when she arrived in New York and deposited horrible Niels’ cheque.
How
much was dry-cleaning nowadays? How could they charge that much for
laundry?
Had she really spent that much on
water?
And, oh God oh God oh God,
how
had they
possibly managed to run up a steep four-figure bar bill last night?

She did a quick calculation. Cocktails at eighteen dollars apiece, 20 per cent service, bottles of vodka for so much money it sent a shiver down her spine. . . God, it was all too possible. Then
her eye fell on the charges for her regular morning coffee, and she couldn’t believe it. She was paying that much for
coffee?
Surely you could get a cappuccino for much less than that
from Starbucks. Couldn’t you? Was it too late to ring down to room service and cancel that second cappuccino, save some money that way?

And as the horrible realisation slapped her in the face, that she had to get out of this hotel as soon as possible, that she was going to have to
economise on cappuccinos
from now on,
Lola stuffed one hand into her mouth to suppress a little scream of fear.

She had absolutely no idea how to economise. None at all. What was going to become of her?

‘I
want her out, Lawrence! She was never supposed to move in here!’