Fame. Tilly Bagshawe

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      Tilly Bagshawe

      Fame

      For Viorel Rezmives

       and in loving memory of Abel Teglas.

      Heathcliff shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

      Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

      You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer’s heart.

      Fred Allen

      Contents

      Epigraph

      Part One

      Prologue

      At the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, the Eighty-Fifth Academy Awards…

      Chapter One

      ‘I’m not asking you, Sabrina, I’m telling you. You have…

      Chapter Two

      ‘Oh my God, Vio! Don’t stop! Please don’t stop. Oh…

      Chapter Three

      ‘I hate you! I fucking HATE YOU, you selfish bastard,…

      Chapter Four

      As Dr Michel Henri lifted the child out of its crib…

      Chapter Five

      Striding past the waiting paparazzi, ignoring the catcalls and boos…

      Chapter Six

      ‘Hey, Mum, guess what?’ It was the third time Abel…

      Chapter Seven

      Dorian Rasmirez’s production company, Dracula Pictures, had offices on the…

      Chapter Eight

      Tish Crewe gasped for breath as the cold water from…

      Part Two

      Chapter Nine

      ‘I’m not asking for directions again, OK? I am not…

      Chapter Ten

      Sabrina Leon adjusted her new Prada aviators and arranged her…

      Chapter Eleven

      Harry Greene lay back against his purple velvet pillows and…

      Chapter Twelve

      Sabrina awoke gripped with fear. A familiar fear: her bedroom…

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chrissie Rasmirez stretched out her lithe legs on the sun-lounger…

      Chapter Fourteen

      Two days after Chrissie Rasmirez’s arrival on the Wuthering Heights…

      Chapter Fifteen

      For the next three days, until Chrissie left for Romania,…

      Chapter Sixteen

      For the next ten days, Sabrina and Jago were inseparable.

      Chapter Seventeen

      ‘Viorel, over here!’

      Part Three

      Chapter Eighteen

      Chrissie Rasmirez arched her back and thrust her hips forward,…

      Chapter Nineteen

      Saskia Rasmirez rearranged the plastic Little Mermaid tea set on…

      Chapter Twenty

      Tish stood in the hallway at Loxley, not sure whether…

      Chapter Twenty-One

      The final weeks of shooting at Dorian Rasmirez’s Romanian Schloss…

      Chapter Twenty-Two

      ‘No.’ Chrissie Rasmirez’s angular face hardened, her lips drew tighter…

      Chapter Twenty-Three

      Dorian Rasmirez gazed sadly out of the restaurant window and…

      Chapter Twenty-Four

      ‘We had a deal, Mike. You shook my hand, in…

      Chapter Twenty-Five

      ‘Give me twenty more bicycle crunches. Go!’

      Chapter Twenty-Six

      Sabrina sat down at the corner table at Mastro’s, aware…

      Chapter Twenty-Seven

      St John’s Hospital on Santa Monica and Twentieth was comprised of…

      Chapter Twenty-Eight

      Tish knelt down and held out her arms as the…

      Chapter Twenty-Nine

      For three hundred and sixty four days a year, the…

      Chapter Thirty

      Three thousand people gasped as one.

      Chapter Thirty-One

      All over Los Angeles, people were throwing lavish, glitzy parties…

      Chapter Thirty-Two

      Viorel stared out of the grimy taxi window at the…

      Acknowledgements

      Other Books by Tilly Bagshawe

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

PART ONE

      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