Divas (31 page)

Lola found herself caught up in the rush towards the stage, pushed forward by someone behind her. Set in motion. And once she was moving, she couldn’t stop.

It was all a blur after that, as she ducked and dodged round the men and women grabbing for the shells, as she found the steps at the side of the stage, as she scrambled up them and launched
herself at the girl on the pole, the girl who had been her father’s mistress, the girl who had dared to turn up at her father’s house and ask to see him, as if she had any rights at all
. . . Lola had thought that the silver stuff on her body would make the girl slippery, like a fish, but of course it couldn’t, because she would have slid right off the pole if it were. So
when she caught hold of the girl’s foot, and yanked it down, she had a good firm grip, and she jerked the girl half off the pole.

The girl was strong, of course, though Lola hadn’t anticipated just how strong she was. She clung on tightly to the pole and tried to kick at Lola, to make her let go. But as she twisted
round and aimed her other leg at Lola, she lost her grip and tumbled down, her hands slipping off the pole. Grabbing at Lola in an effort to break her fall, she caught Lola’s head with one
flailing hand.

Lola felt her wig slip, and frantically she tried to pull it back into place. But it was too late. She was tumbling, knocked off-balance by the girl’s body falling towards her, and she
couldn’t get her hands up in time. The girl’s grip dragged Lola’s wig off – not just the wig, but the wig cap too.

The audience, which was already screaming in shock and excitement at seeing Lola’s stage invasion, started yelling now. Through the kicks and struggle with the girl, Lola heard:

‘Oh my God! It’s a setup!’

‘Fuck, she’s part of the
act!
’

‘No way!’

‘Yo! Catfight! Awesome!’

As the wig cap came off, it dragged painfully down the back of Lola’s scalp, pulling at her hair, catching on the grips and pulling them out too. Her hair came loose, the wig falling away,
to gasps from the audience.

‘It
is
a setup! Look, she’s wearing a wig!’

‘Get naked! Come on baby, tear her clothes off!’

Despite it being strictly forbidden, hundreds of tiny flashes were going off in the audience as they held up their phones and frantically tried to snap or video the dramatic scene in front of
them. Lola and the girl tumbled to the floor of the stage, the wind knocked out of them with the fall. Close up, the girl looked unreal, like a heightened version of herself, an illustration come
to life, with her huge, heavily pencilled eyes, the inch-long lashes, the stage make-up, the thick silver and green glitter on her eyelids and the diamond shine of her pink glossed lips.

And she was almost naked, wearing only a tiny G-string. Lola could smell the girl’s sweat, fresh, from the hard work of her act, and hear her panting for breath, and the thought that she
was so close to a body that had been intimate with Lola’s own father made Lola suddenly so revolted that she pushed the girl away with a shove as violent as she could make it from her prone
position.

Catching her breath, the girl scrabbled away, getting up on her knees.

‘What the fuck are you
doing
?’ she yelled at Lola. ‘Who the hell
are
you? Some fucking morality police?’

‘Don’t you know who I am?’ Lola yelled back, getting up on all fours, shouting right back in the girl’s face. ‘Can’t you
see
who I am?’

The girl stared hard at Lola, and her eyes widened, huge and dark, the ridiculous stage eyelashes framing them, making them look so big they took over half of her face.

‘Oh my
God,
’ she breathed. ‘You’re Benny’s—’

‘
Don’t say his name!
’ Lola yelled.

She reached out to slap the girl, who caught her wrist. The girl’s grip was like iron. They wrestled awkwardly, twisting and turning on their knees. Lola managed to catch the girl with her
other hand, but she wrested it away. The audience were whooping and screaming so loudly now they were drowning out the music: all Lola could hear was the constant cries of encouragement, feet
stamping on the ground. It was like being in an arena, the spectators scenting blood, wanting someone to get hurt.

‘Cat
FIGHT
! Cat
FIGHT
!’ a group of men were shouting, stamping their feet on the ground, a throbbing, pounding rhythm that drummed around the walls of the small theatre
as if amplified through speakers.

The MC was running out onto the stage now, his top hat bouncing awkwardly on his head, calling in his high voice:

‘Break it up now, that’s enough fun!
Break it up!
’

But nothing anyone said could stop Lola from going after the girl. All her anger, all her frustration at the terrible things that had happened to her in the past fortnight, was directed squarely
at the little whore in front of her, the girl who had seduced Lola’s beloved father, who had done things with him that it made Lola sick to think about, this girl who looked
almost exactly
like his own daughter
—

Oof! Something hit Lola squarely in the face, knocking her sideways. For a split second, she had absolutely no idea what had happened to her. She was slipping, falling over – momentarily
blinded, she blinked again and again, trying to open her eyes, realising that she had just taken a bucketful of water full in the face.

Spluttering, spitting out water, she wiped her face with the wool of her sweater. The girl was drenched too, but the contortionist had come on stage now and was helping her get up. He pulled her
to her feet, and someone else was grabbing Lola now, strong hands closing round her arms and clamping them to her sides.

‘Stay away from me!’ the girl screamed from the other side of the stage. The contortionist had hold of her shoulders and was holding her back. Hair damp, water streaming down the
glitter on her face, the girl – Diamond – looked more naked than ever as the silver body paint dripped off her, baring the pale skin beneath.

‘Then you stay away from me, you
slut!’
Lola screamed back. ‘You dirty little
slut
!’

‘You bitch!’ the girl yelled furiously.‘You killed your own
father!
’

‘I did
not!’
Lola shrieked back. ‘I would
never!
It was that bitch he married!’

Lola wouldn’t have thought it was possible for the audience, already stoked up to absolute hysteria by seeing both her and Diamond dripping wet, to reach any further heights of frenzy. But
this revelation did it. They went wild. Literally.

‘Omi
god
! It’s
her!
’ screeched a woman at the top of her lungs. ‘It’s
Lola Fitzgerald!
’

The screams of excitement were deafening. Two huge bouncers thudded past the group around Lola, their tread so heavy it shook the boards of the stage. One threw himself against the wave of
people trying to get up the stairs, yelling at everyone to get back. The other lifted up a guy who was trying to climb onstage, dumping him back in the crowd. Phone cameras were everywhere now,
people jostling and pushing against each other to get a good view. Someone screamed in pain as a scuffle broke out right at the front of the stage, glass breaking as a table went over.

‘Ooh! This is the best thing ever to happen to Maud’s! You can’t
buy
this kind of publicity!’ giggled the little MC gleefully relishing the mayhem. ‘And
Diamond – your career is
made
now! We’re going to be packed every night from now to Labour Day – fuck slow summers in New York!’ His top hat tilted crazily back as he
craned to look up at Lola. ‘The only person who’s in trouble is this young lady right here. You gotta control your temper better, Miss Fitzgerald. Aren’t you out on
bail?
’

‘Don’t worry. I’m getting her out of here right now, ’ said the man holding Lola, in the grimmest of tones.

Lola’s heart skipped a beat as she twisted around madly, suddenly frantic to get a look at his face, sure that she recognised the voice – but how was that possible, how could he be
here
, of all places—

She should have recognised the feel of his hands on her, and the scent of his aftershave, dark and woody and musky, like apple brandy aged for years in oak barrels.

It was Niels van der Veer, glaring down at her, dirty-blond hair falling forward, silver-grey eyes glinting so angrily she thought he might burn right through her.

‘C
ome on, ’ Niels snapped, picking up Lola, turning her round, and frog-marching her off the stage. ‘You’ve overstayed your
welcome here, Princess.’

Three performers, all dressed in skintight leopard-skin catsuits, their hair dyed scarlet, piercings gleaming in their eyebrows, turned to stare at Lola as if she, not they, were the
curiosity.

‘What are you even
doing
here?’ she asked angrily over her shoulder. ‘This isn’t your kind of place!’

‘I’m an investor, ’ Niels said shortly. ‘Did you think it was funded by a bunch of hip bohemians, Princess?’

‘Stop
calling
me that!’ Lola twisted in an effort to get away from him. ‘You’re such a patronising bastard!’

Holding her with one hand, Niels reached out with the other to the fire door in front of her, dragging it open.

‘Out, ’ he said succinctly, pushing her through onto a metal fire escape one floor off the ground.

‘How
dare
you push me around!’

Lola finally twisted free. Hands on hips, she stood glaring at him, the smoggy New York night breeze chilly on her wet hair. Niels folded his arms over his broad chest and glared right back at
her. She gulped when she met his eyes; seeing him again was so confusing, because he stirred up so many feelings in her that she was almost paralysed with conflict. Of course she was furious at him
for picking her up and hauling her round; but to be honest, she was also grateful that he’d whisked her away from that scene onstage before it got any worse. And then, as soon as she’d
realised it was Niels holding her like that, she couldn’t help but flash back all too vividly to that time last week where he’d put her down on the desk and dragged up the skirt of her
nightdress and fucked her so thoroughly she’d seen stars.

Thinking of it now, even for the brief second that was all she allowed herself, she felt her entire lower body churn and start to melt with heat, liquefying deliciously, her legs going weak. She
reached out and grabbed the rail of the fire escape for support.

‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at!’ Niels barked at her. ‘Your father’s dead, you’ve been arrested for his
murder
, for God’s sake
– you’re out on bail, and you can’t find anything better to do than come out with your society-trash friends, get drunk and attack some burlesque dancer? What the hell is
wrong
with you?’

‘I didn’t mean to come, ’ Lola said weakly. ‘They talked me into it – they said it would take my mind off things—’

‘Your
mind?
’ Niels yelled. ‘You haven’t got a mind! You’re just a collection of primitive impulses! If you ever stopped to think for more than a second,
you’d realise that your entire life is just a pitiful, pathetic—’

‘I don’t have to listen to you insulting me!’ Lola shouted furiously. ‘I
know
I shouldn’t be out, OK? I get it! And believe me, I know how terrible this
looks! I don’t need you to tell me how badly I fucked up!’ She let go of the fire escape, her anger giving her enough strength to stand on her own two feet.

‘I’m going back inside to find my friends, ’ she announced, trying to push past him. ‘And then I’m going back to the Plaza and never leaving the damn apartment
again—’

Niels caught her arm with one big hand.

‘Oh no you don’t, ’ he said, shaking his head. ‘If you go back inside, there really will be a riot. I’m taking you back to the Plaza right now. You can call them
from there if you want.’

‘But I need to get my bag! And tell them I’m OK!’ she insisted, bringing up both hands to shove against his chest.

She didn’t move him an inch, of course. But as she pushed at him, she felt it happen, that spark of electricity between them, just as it had happened before, in the sitting-room at the
Plaza.

And she realised that she had done it deliberately. She had pushed him, knowing that it would provoke him, hoping that he would grab her and kiss her just as he had kissed her before. For some
inexplicable reason, as far as Niels van der Veer was concerned, Lola had no shame. He could have ripped off her clothes and shoved her up against the dirty, peeling wall of the building and had
sex with her right here and all she would do would be cling to him and moan encouragement.

He was the only man she had ever met who had this effect on her. And she had absolutely no idea why.

His jaw tightened. He let go of her arm, and suddenly she was terrified, afraid that he would turn on his heel and go back inside, slamming the fire door behind him, and that would be the last
she would ever see of him.

The night breeze felt as cold as an Arctic wind. He despised her. He thought she was just a spoilt, hysterical drama addict who made scenes wherever she went. He thought she had murdered her
father and come out on the town to celebrate. He was washing his hands of her completely . . .

But then he stooped down, and the next thing Lola knew was his shoulder slamming into her stomach, his arms gripping her legs, and she was shooting up into the air, her upper body sliding down
Niels’s back so that she squealed in fear until her hips caught over his shoulder. She realised that he had picked her up in a fireman’s lift and was striding down the stairs with her
body inelegantly draped over him.

‘What are you
doing?
’ she screamed, pounding at his back. ‘Put me
down!
’

Relieved as she was that he hadn’t abandoned her, this was so humiliating that she couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t help but be grateful that he was carrying her as easily as if
she weighed nothing at all; but it was so dismissive that it made her writhe with fury. Carrying her in his arms would at least have given her some dignity, rather than have her head bouncing
around at the level of his jacket hem, as if she were a sack of potatoes he were hauling to a truck.