Vanity (34 page)

‘Oh, my God, it's Josh!' whispered Sienna. He had clearly tried to rock up his image a bit, but his jeans were too clean, his leather jacket too expensive-looking and the gel in his light brown hair just plain laughable. He had a Sloaney-looking girl with him he was trying to impress, and they looked woefully out of place.

‘Sienna?' Josh turned around at the sound of her voice, relieved to have found an ally (or so he thought). ‘God, you look great! Maybe you can explain to this oaf who I am …'

‘That's it,' said the bouncer. ‘You are not coming in, you little twerp, however much you try to bribe me … Anyway, make way for these girls, please – they're with the band.'

‘What? Sienna? And … And … Sam? … Sammi-Jo? With the
band
?'

The open-mouthed look of astonishment on his arrogant, pink-cheeked face as they sauntered past the velvet rope was worth savouring, so Sam turned and gave him her sweetest smile, with a little wave for good measure.

It was one of those moments that made life worth living.

Barfly was grungy and grotty and grimy and gritty and even still seemed smoky, years after the smoking ban coming in. Drinks were served in plastic glasses, and by the end of the night the floor would be a slimy black mess liable to leave its mark on anybody drunk enough to fall over onto it. There were generally plenty of candidates.

In the upstairs gig area the atmosphere was electric as the 200-odd crowd of loyal fans, random drunks and the odd music-business professional waited excitedly for the band to come on stage. Sam and Sienna, who had chosen not to go backstage to see the boys beforehand, not wanting to distract them, were propping up the bar at the back of the room, trying to look cool but both churning inwardly at what they were about to witness.

‘However many times I've seen Mikey perform, it's always the same,' Sienna whispered to Sam. ‘Proper, shit-scared fear just before he comes on.'

‘Aaah. I think that means you
lurve
him,' Sam teased her. As the words came out of her mouth, she wondered if the abject terror she was currently feeling said the same about her and Dan. This was going to be the first time she'd seen the boys strutting their stuff on stage (though she'd watched them in rehearsal plenty of times) and her nervousness on Dan's behalf was, at this precise moment, bordering on the maternal – not an adjective she would usually employ to describe her feelings for him.

But now the already dim lights were dimming still further, until the room was in complete darkness. And suddenly –
kerrash!
The spotlight was on Olly and his new, state-of-the-art drum kit.

As soon as he started, Sam and Sienna looked at each other and smiled, squeezing one another's hands, just knowing that it was all going to be OK. Then the spotlight was on Ross, teasing the crowd with the bass line for a good minute or two, which soon had everybody dancing around, spilling their plastic pints on the increasingly slippery floor.

The spotlight turned to Dan, playing the extraordinary melody he had composed in twenty-four hours on his lead guitar, and all the drunken fans were startled into silence. Sam felt the hairs on her arms stand on end. She turned to look at Sienna, who was looking equally gobsmacked.

‘Fucking hell,' she mouthed.

But then the spotlight was on Mikey, the lead singer, the pretty boy – the Damon Albarn of the group.

‘Awwwright, Camden!' he shouted, and everyone shouted back, ‘Awwwright, Mikey!'

‘Right. That was just a taster of one of our new ones. This shit-for-brains does have his uses!' He gestured at Dan, back in the spotlight once more, and there was a ripple of laughter through the crowd.

‘Love you, Dan!'

‘Love you, Mikey!'

‘Love you, Ross!'

People were shouting, hollering. Sam could see girls at the front of the stage actually reaching up to try to touch the boys.

‘OK, OK, calm down. It's not like we're the Beatles,' Dan drawled, and the crowd erupted in laughter again.

‘Yeah, yeah, he thinks he's so funny,' responded Mikey. ‘But I'm the singer. I'm the one that everyone fancies …' He gave his cheeky grin, and Sienna sighed, ‘God, yeah, darling.'

‘I fancy all of you! Even Olly!' shouted some girl in the crowd.

‘Booo!' There was definitely an Olly contingent here tonight. ‘We all fancy Olly!'

‘More fool you,' drawled Dan from the back again. ‘I have it on good authority that he's a crap shag.'

More laughter.

‘Yeah, yeah, these guitarists always have ideas above their station,' was Olly's good-natured riposte.

‘And
I
, as the one that everyone fancies, think I should warm you up with an oldie …' added Mikey.

As he said it, the other three started, right on cue, to play their greatest hit to date. By the time it got to the chorus, everybody was singing along.

Sam just couldn't stop staring at Dan. He looked so cool, so sexy and, great as the whole band was together, he was by far the most talented musician. God, she'd been stupid. He'd tried it on with her –
twice
– and she'd turned him down. And he'd been so kind to her, he was clever, he was her
friend.
Sienna was right – if she wanted anything to happen, she had to make it happen herself. She was starting to feel exceptionally excited. She'd do it tonight.

The song came to an end, to rapturous applause. After a bit, Mikey hushed it.

‘Thanks, Camden. Thanks. We appreciate it. And now, one of our new ones. It's called “Pawn”.'

‘Filthy bastards!' shouted one of their male fans.

‘No, you're the filthy bastard,' Dan shouted back, walking to the front of the stage. ‘It's “Pawn”, spelt P-A-W-N, like in the chess game, not the stuff that you have to resort to when you don't get the real thing … When you're not a rock star!'

More cheers. God, he was so arrogant, so cocksure. But ‘pawn' as in chess? Sam looked at Sienna, who was shaking her head at her in bemusement. Neither of them had heard them rehearse this one.

Olly started the song on one drumbeat, and then Dan was off, taking them all to another planet with his exquisite solo guitar riff.

Sam was utterly transfixed. Had he actually written a song about her? Surely it had to be. She was the only person he'd been playing chess with recently, she was sure of it. When Mikey started to sing, though, nothing was any clearer. The lyrics were deliberately obscure, although there were references to being a ‘pawn in your game'.

Well, all she had to do was ask. They'd both waited long enough. Dan had wanted her twice before, and she was sure he still did. She couldn't have imagined the chemistry between them the other day. As she gazed at him, so cool and talented up there on the stage, her heart was beating so fast she was surprised it hadn't burst out of her chest.

It was absolute mayhem backstage, and impossible to get close enough to the boys to speak to them properly; although Sienna, by virtue of her long legs, had managed to squeeze her way through the mob, and was now clinging onto Mikey like a limpet.

Sam was grinning wildly at Dan and giving him double thumbs-up over the heads of the adoring fans. He grinned back, mouthing ‘Later' at her and miming swigging from a can of lager. As she watched, a middle-aged man in a black polo-neck sweater appeared out of nowhere at Dan's side. He was speaking urgently into his ear and handing him a business card.

Oh, God! It had to be the man from Pistol Records. It had to be!

And from the delighted smile slowly creeping across Dan's handsome face, it was. Sam watched as he shouted over to the other members of the band. One by one they managed to extricate themselves from the mob and get their arses over to where Dan was still talking to the A&R man.

And then Sam saw somebody else approaching the band. Somebody for whom the crowds were parting like the Red Sea, who stood at least a foot above the rest of the female fans. Sam recognized her immediately, of course – and it looked as though everybody else did, too.

With her wild mop of tangled black curls, slanting green eyes and scarlet-painted, bee-stung lips, Carlota da Silva was the coolest new model in London. Fresh off the plane from Brazil, she'd featured on the cover of nearly every glossy magazine in the last few months, as well as in all the gossip pages, as star guest at all the celeb parties. And she was making a beeline for Dan.

Her heart slowly sinking, Sam watched as Carlota da Silva, bold as brass, took Dan's face in her hands and started to kiss him, pushing her phenomenal body, in its skin-tight black leather minidress, up against his. After a second or two of confused hesitation, Dan put his arms around her and started to kiss her back.

When Sam woke up the following morning, she was feeling a little stupid. Maybe she had overreacted, running off the way she had, but she simply hadn't been able to bear to watch Dan running his hands all over that bloody supermodel. She should have stayed on to celebrate the band's success, and find out about the man from Pistol Records, though. She realized that now.

Oh, well, she'd just have to go and apologize, pretend she'd suddenly been taken ill or something, and ask them all about it this morning.

She pulled on her dressing gown and padded down the wooden stairs to the bathroom.

The bathroom door opened and Carlota da Silva, her long black hair snaking around her smooth brown shoulders, the tiny towel wrapped around her body, barely covering her arse, walked out. She gave Sam a friendly smile and Sam tried her best to smile back.

Dan's bedroom door opened and Sam started babbling, ‘Morning, Dan. Congratulations on last night. You were all
brilliant! Was that the man from Pistol Records? What's …?' Her words were falling over themselves, so hard was she trying to prove she wasn't fazed by Carlota's presence.

‘Thanks for staying to celebrate with us, Sam,' said Dan coldly. ‘Much appreciated.'

He turned his back on her and smiled at Carlota. ‘Morning, sexy. Come back here and help me celebrate some more.'

He grabbed her by the hand and dragged her, giggling, into his bedroom. As the door slammed behind them, Sam found herself shivering violently, her bare feet freezing cold against the wooden floorboards.

Listlessly, she turned on her heel and stumbled back upstairs to bed. She wished she could sleep forever.

‘And so I told him that he's just like sooo lame not to want to see the rest of the world? I mean, he thought that Bangkok was in Europe?'

The large group of students milling around the departure lounge at LAX was irritating the crap out of Ben.

‘When everybody knows it's, like, Africa?'

‘Brooke,' said one of the boys, ‘we are flying to Thailand, which was, last time I looked, in South East Asia.'

‘Oh, you think you're so cool with your world geography,
map-boy
. Man you are such a geek.'

Ben walked over to a newsstand and pretended to browse through a gaming magazine. He wasn't globally famous – yet – but knew that he had to disguise himself to a certain extent in order to get to Natalia without being noticed. He hadn't been able to grow his hair, let alone a beard, for the sake of continuity in the last takes, but he had about a week's worth of stubble, and had asked Eloise to weave in some fake shoulder-length, mouse-brown dreadlocks.

‘Method acting for a really exciting new project,' he had told her, smiling his charming smile. ‘I want to look like a classic LA stoner going off travelling to find myself.'

Eloise had laughed, and relished all the time she had spent with him, touching his head way more than was necessary, massaging his scalp as she gazed at his beautiful face in the mirror.

So now Ben sported fairly impressive (if disconcertingly ginger) stubble, unpleasantly matted dreads and a pair of aviator shades. He was wearing knee-length combat shorts, a faded black T-shirt, a leather thong around his neck, friendship bracelets all up one arm, and Birkenstocks. He carried an army-issue rucksack, and had even gone to the trouble of getting a fake tattoo inked around one of his biceps.

Plugged into his iPod, from time to time he nodded his head about and swayed a bit, tapping his foot for good measure, even though there was no music actually playing. He thought he was doing the LA stoner thing pretty well.

‘Jeez, look at that dude over there,' he now heard the moronic Brooke ‘Bangkok is in Africa' say, assuming he couldn't hear her because of the headphones. ‘Like, what a loser?'

Excellent. The disguise was working.

On board the plane, ensconced in his hideously uncomfortable economy-class seat, Ben thought back over the events of the past few days. The studio spies had told him that, yes, there was a woman who not only fitted Natalia's description, but also called herself Natalia, on Bottle Beach.
Yes!
He had called Poppy to tell her the exciting news and thank her, and she had been thrilled that she'd been right. She had sounded fairly subdued though, and when Ben had asked her why, she'd told him about Damian's melodramatic departure.

‘Let me know if there's anything I can do once you find him, Pops,' he'd said, feeling awful that he had been partly to blame. He had no doubts at all that she
would
find him, just as he had no doubts at all that he'd find Natalia. It struck him as quite funny that while Poppy was heading out west across the States in search of Damian, he was heading even further west in search of Natalia (though it did seem strange to be flying west to get to the Far East).

Ben was incredibly excited that he'd be seeing Natalia in less than twenty-four hours. He had been dreaming about her, night after night, her beautiful long back, her beautiful long legs, the way she looked at him when she said, ‘I love you, Mr Movie Star.' But it was her shy smile, which revealed the little gap in her teeth, that stayed in his head always, even when he was awake.