 
UNFAMOUS

by

Emma Morgan

SMASHWORDS EDITION

*****

PUBLISHED BY

Emma Morgan on Smashwords

Unfamous

Copyright 2011 by Emma Morgan

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

*****

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 – Suicide Meant Sanctuary

Chapter 2 – Posh Prison Break

Chapter 3 – Suicide? Sanctuary? Bullshit

Chapter 4- Loss In Translation

Chapter 5 – Loosely Translated As...

Chapter 6 – Dear Me, Beloved

Chapter 7 – Fancy-dress Fantasy

Chapter 8 – Unmask-erade

Chapter 9 – Charade Unmasked

Chapter 10 – All I Want Is To Tell My Story

Chapter 11 – Water Star Was My Ma

Chapter 12 – Water Load Of...

Chapter 13 – Shop 'Til You Shock

Chapter 14 – Shop Tactics

Chapter 15 – Save The Bait

Chapter 16 – Alluring Louise

Chapter 17 – Kismet Make-up

Chapter 18 – Kismet? Hardly...

Chapter 19 – The Secret Guessed

Chapter 20 – You Might Have Guest The Rest

Chapter 21 – As Duluc Would Have It...

*****

_Daily Mirror_ , MONDAY 04.01.2010

_SHH!_ Sympathy seems to be out of stock on the King's Road. A certain soggy socializer has earned the nickname 'Narcissa' – ex-friends have taken to mocking her so-called suicide attempt, saying she only fell because she wanted a better look at her reflection...

Monday, October 4, 2010 _THE SUN_

_Celebrity sidekick_ Stacey Blyth _admits to Thames death attempt, after revelations about her tragic past left her depressed. In her autobiography,_ Entitled _, exclusively serialised only in_ The Sun _, she reveals how the battle to claim her inheritance began in rehab..._

'SUICIDE MEANT SANCTUARY'

'When I look back to nine months ago, it's like that January night happened to someone else. Sort of like I'm a different person now, or I was different then, or I was always the person I am now but didn't realise at the time and it took jumping in the Thames to realise. One of those three options, I think. I'm pretty sure it's the last one. _Pretty sure_.

So, it's January and I'm depressed. Not just 'a bit sad', like I've split up with someone or the weather's crap or I've put on weight (I _haven't_ , Christmas is no excuse to not count calories as far as I'm concerned; I always try to remember 'mince pies = fat thighs' when I fancy one). I'm properly, brain-chemically depressed. Of course, I don't know exactly _how_ depressed I am until I try to kill myself in the river. That's the giveaway.

I'm obviously not in my right mind, otherwise I'd do it indoors, where it's warm; an overdose, for example. (I mean, what's an extra pill here or there, right?) But no – I'm already addled so I go for a walk in the middle of winter and jump in the Thames.

I haven't even put on a coat!

I'm wearing this little dress – pretty, but better for garden parties and bank-holiday barbeques, really – and a pair of strappy heels, and that's it. Oh, and knickers. (I only mention them because certain skanky people I _could_ name don't bother. _I_ do.)

At some point, I set off walking.

And I hate walking.

I've probably not walked more than the distance from car to red carpet in years but for some reason, I decide to go hiking. _In heels_.

So I find myself in Sloane Square, and I'm just doing these circuits, round and round and round the trees with the Christmas lights still strung up, like I've lost something and I'm looking for it – _my sanity, maybe!_ – then I wander off down a side road and it just goes on for _ever_. For ever and ever and ever, like it's not a road, it's this massive hamster wheel. Or something out of _Inception_ , only it's not come out yet. So I'm walking and walking and walking and not getting anywhere. (Not that I know where I'm going, but.)

Afterwards, I see a piece in a paper about it, and all these people are like, 'Oh, she looked really distressed and wasn't appropriately dressed, blah blah blah,' and I think, _Why didn't you do something then?_ Me, if I saw someone looking really sad, and cold, I'd help them, I'd go, 'You alright?' and maybe give them a scarf, if it wasn't too new, but no-one says or does anything. Maybe they're saving it up to tell reporters? _Pathetic_.

So another weird thing; no-one recognises me. Like, I'm used to being stared at, that's part of my job, I don't necessarily like it but I live with it – I'm a professional. So when I see people looking at me, I don't even think 'I must look like a crazy lady', I think, _I hope they don't want an autograph, I haven't got a pen._ But that's me: always on.

If they knew who I was I'm sure they'd do something, like call the Police or a paper, but they just ignore me. So my advice to anyone not famous who's thinking of maybe killing themselves is – Don't. No-one cares.

Anyway, I'm walking and ignoring the gawkers and finally, like, hours and hours and hours later, it seems like, I get to the river. And I'm like, _Now what?_ I've walked all this way and it's like I've reached a wall. I mean, it's not a wall, it's a river. It's like the opposite of a wall, but still – I'm not thinking straight, am I?

_What now?_ I say to myself.

And then I think, _What would Gwyneth Paltrow do?_ Sometimes, when I'm getting ready to go out, I do that – she's very good with accessories, you see. And I'm by this bridge and I remember her in _Sliding Doors_ , where she's all, _Boo hoo I'm having a baby but my boyfriend's married_ , and she stands on a bridge and has a think and everything's alright in the end. (Except she's two people and one of them dies but maybe it was the other one... I can't remember right now. Which one had short hair?)

So I decide to go and stand on the bridge and have a think.

Now, I don't want you to think I typically use public transport, but I have been on the Underground, like in _Sliding Doors_ , and sometimes, when the trains are coming, there's a moment where you think, _I could jump now_. (It's not just me, is it?) Anyway, I'm on the bridge, thinking, and then I look out at the river and get the same feeling, that I could jump if I wanted to. So... I do.

Simple as that. I think, _I could jump_ , so I jump.

And I don't remember any falling or anything, just being on the bridge then being in the river, like I was stepping into a swimming pool. It's like time-travel... or gravity.

So from bridge to Thames in no seconds and guess what: it's _f***ing freezing_.

Like, I'm cold already, because I'm just wearing this flimsy but flattering dress, but on account of my mental turmoil I didn't notice, right? In the river – _different story_. It's as cold as boiling water is hot. Like, I can't work out how it's not ice, it's so cold.

So once I'm in the river, I'm like, _I need to get out_. I'm not an Olympic swimmer or anything but I paddle about on holiday so I'm kicking and trying to keep breathing and not die because it really is too, too cold, and then – _ta-dah!_ – I have this vision.

I'm somewhere bright and sunny and dusty and noisy and amazing, and I think, _Is this Heaven?_ It's not cloudy but people _are_ wearing robes. And I'm thinking, _I could live here, it looks nice_ , and then I get all this water splattered in my face – _like I'm not wet enough_ – and hear this ripping noise and someone's grabbed my dress and next thing I know I'm being yanked onboard a Lifeboat and blinded by all the neon-orange overalls.

And I go, 'You're paying for that dress – I didn't peel it off the floor at Primark.'

No response. _So_ rude.

Instead, someone gives me a scratchy blanket then wraps me up in tin foil like I've just run the Marathon (it feels like it) and tries to make me drink something out of a flask, only I'm like, 'I'm not drinking that, you might have drugged it for all I know.' I've just had a near-death experience, I'm not about to let myself get spiked, am I? I'm not stupid.

Then we go to their harbour or HQ or whatever you call it and it's right by the London Eye and I'm annoyed because this is totally the wrong end of town for me. _What am I, an MP?_ And I'm all ready to just go home and have a shower and sort my head out, like, _I can take it from here, cheers,_ and they start going, 'Oh, you have to go to hospital now.'

Why? I'm alive. If I was dead, OK, but – _hello!_ – I'm breathing. It's so cold you can actually see my breath, so what more proof do they need?

So of course I kick off – I know my rights, this isn't Iraq – and they just nod and go 'Oh, she's hysterical' and then the Police turn up and I'm thinking, _Shouldn't you have stopped me in the first place, if you were doing your job properly?_ Bit late now.

Then it gets really weird. This chubby policewoman in polyester and too much blusher is being all over-friendly and I see she's got a pad and pen and I think, _Here we go, she's recognised me, I knew someone would..._ only – get this – she goes, 'What's your name?'

_What's my name?_ Is this a joke?

And then I realise – _I don't know_. I've totally forgotten my own name. Can you imagine that? Like, if you _weren't_ famous, I can see how that could happen; no-one else would really know who you were so it might be quite easy, but not for me.

I'm in magazines.

I'm on guest lists.

I've met Elton John.

And then I think, _What if I've got amnesia, like in films?_ I might have totally forgotten who I am and what I do and where I live. And everyone in the world will know who I am but me. How weird would _that_ be?

_Well_ weird.

So I shake my head – not that I can stop shaking right now, I'm still freezing – and the fat policewoman smiles so I can see the lipstick on her teeth and she says I'm in shock and they're going to send me to hospital for observation and she's sure my memory will come back soon. And I think, _Well I'm very glad I didn't drink that Rohypnol, then._

This whole time, I'm thinking, _They_ do _know who I am, they're just pretending, I'm sure my friends will be waiting at the hospital, like it's a surprise party or maybe a hidden-camera show or something._ (They're always asking me on _I'm A Celebrity..._ but I keep turning them down, I don't think the calibre of the other contestants is high enough. And I don't like rice.) But I'm in this hospital bed for ages and no-one shows up and it's not even a private room and the noises are – Christ, I can't even begin to describe them. It's like if people aren't swearing or being sick they're hacking up furballs, non-stop.

So it's like, two, three in the morning now, no-one's shown up and worst of all I've got this tacky plastic wristband with 'Jane Bloggs' scrawled on it: the lumpiest, frumpiest made-up name in the whole wide world. (In America, they say 'Jane Doe', I saw it on _Law & Order_. At least then, you think of a lady deer, all graceful with nice eye make-up.)

And I still can't remember my name.

Who could forget _me_?

Then, out of nowhere, I remember this phone number. And I don't know whose it is; maybe it's mine, in which case it's no use because I'm here so who's going to answer? It's not like I'm going to leave myself a voicemail, is it? And then I think, _Wait – if it_ is _my number, I might say my name on the voicemail message._ CSI!

So I pretend I need the loo, only really I go looking for a phone. I pass a mirror at one point and I don't realise it's me immediately because I'm wearing these horrible green pyjama things and don't look my best, so that explains why no-one recognises me. _Relief!_

Anyway, I find a phone and call the number and it rings a few times and I'm waiting for the voicemail message – _only it gets answered_.

Who answers a phone at this time of night?

Someone very bored, by the sounds of it.

'Hello, The Sanctuary,' mumbles this monotone woman. 'Do you have an ID number?'

So I _still_ can't remember my name at this point but, just like with the phone number, a code pops into my head, like a cash-card PIN code, and I hear myself saying it.

I hear typing then the woman drones, 'Thank you Miss Blythe. How may we help you?'

Blythe? My name is _Blythe_?

It does sound familiar... It just doesn't sound very _me_.

_Fine_. I'm Blythe. Anything but 'Jane Bloggs'.

I can hear clomping great footsteps coming, like the night shift is staffed exclusively by giants, so I quickly whisper the name of the hospital and ask for an immediate pick-up.

'Very good, Miss Blythe – a car will be with you shortly,' says this robo-receptionist.

So I hide from Hagrid and friends then head to reception and maybe ten minutes later, if that, a private car pulls up and I'm off. _And people say there's a downside to fame!_

Blythe, Blythe, Blythe... I try and imagine the name in a caption on a picture of me – not one from tonight, obviously, a premiere or opening or whatever – but no, nothing.

It's like I remember my life, but not me in it!

Anyway the car takes ages so I start nodding off in the back seat, but eventually we end up outside this big old mansion and I think, Ooh, lovely, a country-house hotel – _I hope there's a spa_ , but once you get inside, past the pillars and that, it's just another hospital. And there are papers all ready for me to sign, and that's when I see my real name.

_Stacey_ Blyth.

Everything makes sense now. I'm Stacey. I look like a Stacey. I'm fun and young and blonde and bubbly and, yes, _racy_. I imagine that's my tabloid nickname: _Racy Stacey_.

So I sign the papers, happy to 'reconnect to my self', as they say here, but that same bored receptionist from when I phoned up earlier is giving me a funny look the whole time, like she's suspicious or something.

How would _she_ look after a dip in the Thames? Even worse than she does now, the stout old sow. I know it's the night shift, but I also know straighteners work at all hours. As do toothbrushes, for that. Would a breath mint go amiss, in her line of work?

Anyway, they show me into this room with an offensive fruit-salad duvet cover and what looks to be a negative thread-count, and I'm about to ask if they've got a spare double when I realise how tired I am so I just collapse into bed and – _bang_ – lights out.

_Heaven_.

That's what I dream of. Not big beardy God heaven, the sunny one I saw when I was in the river, with the people in robes and the noise and the having a good time. _Maybe it's Greece?_ I think in my dream. Maybe I'm telling myself I need a Mediterranean holiday?

_But I'm not imagining my_ future.

I might have forgotten my name but I'm remembering my past – _at last_!'

_IN TOMORROW'S PAPER_ : 'I could grass her up, there's no evidence I was involved...'

*****

_Daily Mirror_ , TUESDAY 05.10.2010

_SHH!_ Editors at several top publishing houses are bemused by the so-called celebrity memoirs being 'exclusively serialised' in a downmarket rival. They rejected the scrappy manuscript months ago and can't imagine who's bothered to polish it all up – or why...

Tuesday, October 5, 2010 _THE SUN_

_In today's exciting extract from socialite_ Stacey Blyth _'s new autobiography, she reveals how a good gossip helped to clear her head in rehab, and work out who she really was..._

'POSH PRISON BREAK'

'So I wake up, and it's the morning after the night before. Only it was morning when I went to bed, really – although I always think it's Night until you go to sleep, whatever time it is, and then it's Morning when you get up, even if it's the afternoon? Which it was. So, ok, it's the afternoon after the night I fell in the Thames, then.

And I get up, and I'm in what looks like a Travelodge room, really tiny, with rubbish curtains that let all the light in, no bath, no toiletries, just a chair and a red cord by the loo like old people pull when they fall over.

So I'm like, _Where am I?_ And I think about last night and notice I'm not wearing my own clothes, I've got these scrubs on still, so then I remember the hospital, and ringing up and getting the car and arriving at rehab, and here I still am.

And I can still remember my name, Stacey, I must have yanked that 'Jane Bloggs' wristband off in the car, so I know I'm OK and decide to go home. Fine.

Only – _brilliant_ – I can't remember where I live yet. I mean, I know it's somewhere classy, it has to be, but do I know my actual address? No. So when this pretend-friendly nurse knocks on my door and says it's group-therapy time, I figure, _Might as well go along, while I'm waiting to remember my post code._

I'm not expecting anything, I'm just planning on sitting and thinking until everything pops back into place or my brain dries out or warms up or whatever it has to do. So I sit down on this plastic chair, in a circle, and try to retrace my steps to Sloane Square.

Anyway, someone starts talking, I don't know who, I'm not paying attention, I'm trying to imagine a map in my head and that's not working, so I accidentally tune in to what's being said and it's like I've found this radio station of _pure gossip_.

And here's the most amazing thing – it's not people talking about _other people_ , it's people talking about what _they've_ done _themselves_ , all the awful things. And no-one's making them say it, _they're volunteering_! Unbelievable. _They can't stop!_

There's supposed to be this 'Code Of Silence' thing going on, like in libraries – you're meant to nod like you care and look all shocked and say things like, 'And how did you feel, when you'd eaten _the entire turkey_ before your guests had arrived?' and not laugh – but people are only being quiet because they're making mental notes about everything.

Not for blackmail. For bitching.

Rehab's basically just a posh prison you pay to go to. Like, you have to go to sessions and talk to doctors but after that there's not much to do – there are maybe some books to read, and they're all boring or really long or both, and even though it's dead expensive here, we don't have Sky – so we have to make our own entertainment.

_Gossip_.

(Like, don't think I'm being disrespectful – I'm sure rehab's really awful if you're in for something serious, like drugs or obesity or being Russell Brand-randy, but I'm not, am I? Because as well as my address, I've forgotten I'm depressed. _Success!)_

The only thing is, you have to be careful who you talk to, because there are these weird alliance things going on you don't know about at first, so it takes a while to suss out who you can slag off to who, so they don't turn around and tell them, all two-faced.

Anyway, there's this other girl in my group – Chiara, she's called – who doesn't seem friendly with anyone else, so I keep an eye on her. You know how burlesque dancers are just too fat to be normal strippers? Well she's like that, only without the tassels. _As far as I can tell!_ You know – if she was doing online dating she'd say she was "curvy", _that_ kind of size. Shotputter type. Brown hair.

Anyway, she does this big laugh-cough during a session one day so I follow her to the loos and say something about Turkey Girl and she goes ' _Ha!_ ' and that's that.

So we hang out in the Ladies after sessions and come up with codenames for everyone – like Sex Pesto (a pervy chef), Snow Joke (a cokehead comic), Flashpants (a pole-dance addict) – and it's like _their_ mental behaviour keeps _us_ sane.

Anyway, one day Chiara says she's done a deal with a nurse to get gossip mags smuggled in and hidden behind a sanitary bin, and she'll let me read them too. And I go, 'Oh, great, thanks', but then I think, _Hang on, this means life has been going on without me – how did that happen?_ When I fell, out of _respect_ , everyone should have waited 'til they heard I was OK... only it's like no-one's even tried to find me. I mean, I'm signed in under my real name, I'm not even trying to hide. Then I think, _Wait – maybe I'm big news, maybe they know I'm in here and it's a massive scandal but I've been protected from it all and now I'll find out_. So I'm well nervous to see what's been written about me, obviously.

_Nothing_.

Not a word. Everyone's still going to parties and premieres and wearing horrible borrowed dresses and no-one looks even remotely worried. I mean, maybe they're putting on brave faces but they're so not that good actresses. Although, Botox might explain it.

Anyway, I'm gutted. So I sit and seethe for a bit, on top of the cistern, and I think, _If they're not there for_ me _, why should_ I _keep_ their _secrets?_ And I've got plenty, me.

So there's a picture of this singer – a right mess, even after a few stints in here – with some bloke supposed to be her boyfriend, even though he's clearly just helping to hold her up in front of the paps. And I go, 'Him, yeah? _Gay_. Gay as...'

And it's like I've not said it loudly enough or something, because Chiara just goes, 'Oh? He doesn't look gay.'

So I say, 'You wouldn't say that if you'd seen him get off with as many men as _I_ have,' and she goes, 'He's got off with as many men as you have?' like she's trying to catch me out or be clever or something and I'm not having that. This is _my_ moment.

Then she's reading an interview with this talent-show judge who's a right cow, so I go, 'You know how everyone says she'd be so much prettier if she wore less make-up?'

'Mmmmmm?' Still not interested.

'Not true. Acne Central. Can't find a cure. Everyone calls her the Pepperoni Princess and she can't understand it because she doesn't even eat meat.' _All true._

And Chiara looks really closely at her photo and goes, 'You might be right'.

'She's shitting herself about the show going HD,' I say. 'She'll have to quit.'

Then Chiara goes, 'So what about _her_? Did she really exercise off all that weight?'

On the cover, there's this proper fishwife soap actress, who's shopping some sob-story about how a) her husband left her and b) she's done an exercise DVD.

' _Her?_ ' I go. 'She didn't lose weight because he _left_ , he _left_ because she was doing so much _coke_ she was losing weight – he thought she'd stop and she didn't. She almost had a heart attack last month. He's a nice guy but she can't stop because she has to pay all the DVD money back if she gets fat again.'

I feel bad for about a second, then Chiara raises her eyebrow and smiles so I know she believes me and it's like I've got my power back so sod them all for ignoring me.

We hear someone coming so we have to hide the magazines but as I'm closing mine I see this picture on a travel page – it's not somewhere I've been but something about the tower and the sunset look really familiar anyway.

Next day, I'm in this one-to-one session – which apparently is 'obligatory' or I totally wouldn't have bothered to go, it's not like I'm going to get any gossip from myself, is it? – and the therapist's messy little office is absolutely boiling. The radiator won't turn down and it's so hot we have to force the window open – _in January_.

And I'm going through the motions about how, yes, I'm having a nice stay and, yes, I feel much better, and so on, and then this noise starts and I go, ' _What_ is _that_?'

It's a loudspeaker blaring out, only you can't understand what it's supposed to be saying, it's like something out of the war – an air-raid warning or something.

Are we at war? Like a proper war, actually in England?

I'm sh*tting a brick but the therapist is totally not bothered, he just stops doodling on my folder for a moment to point at the clock with his pen and goes 'It's the adhan', wearily, like I'm supposed to know what _that_ means.

So I go, 'Does 'adhan' mean bomb in your language?', because he's got an accent.

And he looks at me like _I'm_ the one speaking a foreign language and says – a bit angrily and unprofessionally, if you ask me – 'No, it's the call to prayer. For the mosque.'

Then I remember that picture in the magazine and my 'vision' from the river and I think 'Mosque?' and it's like my mind is finishing a jigsaw. _As if I'd do a jigsaw._

I go a bit quiet so he goes, 'I see from your file that...' and I think, _Of course, I've been here before, so maybe he can explain what I'm seeing, like I knew it all before but I've forgotten I knew it, only now I'm remembering again._

So I interrupt him and go, 'Does it say anything in my file about mosques?'

And he looks all angry, like the session isn't supposed to be about me when it _is_ , and sighs – _I don't know how he keeps his job_ – and goes, 'Let me check'.

And I try to listen out for the noise again but it's finished, it didn't last long, and then he goes, 'Well, you grew up in Morocco, it says here. Which is a Muslim country... '

And I obviously look like it's the first I've heard about it, because he goes, 'Have you had a CAT scan, did you sustain a head injury? Amnesia is very serious, you know...' but all I can think about is the dream I had: _That's not Heaven – that's Marrakech!_

So I say, 'I'm fine, I've just been a bit forgetful,' and he goes, 'What led you to come here, in this instance?' so I look sad and say 'It's too soon...' like it's a painful memory but really I can't be bothered to go over it and just want to know what else my file says.

I'm about to ask him to tell me what it all says, then I have this brilliant idea. Open window, ground-floor office – adventure! So I waffle on for the rest of the session then, afterwards, once I'm back down to my normal body temperature, I find Chiara.

'Fancy a fag?' We don't smoke – although I think a pipe might suit Chiara, give her big hands something to do – so she's knows it's code for something. So we wander outside to the Smokers' Zone, wait until it's just us huddled there, and then I run around the corner.

Chiara catches me up and I go, 'My file, it's in the room with the dreamcatcher!' and she flattens herself against the side wall and sort of shimmies along it, heavily.

She points up at this stupid twig'n'feather hanging and mouths 'This one?'

I nod, so Chiara peers in, and the therapist must be taking a break – _skiving, more like_ – because she just goes for it, leans right through the open window for a minute or so, then pops out and croaks 'This one?', waving a folder with a doodle on the cover.

So I beckon her back and she crawls along the ground like she's at boot-camp, then we rush back to the Smokers' Zone, pretend to grind out some butts and go inside.

I'm already feeling a bit sick from the excitement of being outside for the first time in, what, _weeks_?, when I see the folder starting to poke out from under Chiara's muddy jumper, so I go, 'You should change, you look cold – maybe another _jumper_?' And she looks at me like _What are you on?_ then looks down and sees what I mean and goes 'Oh'.

So I'm waiting for her in the common room, still het up and sweaty, if I'm honest, and Chiara takes _ages_. All she has to do is change for show and put the file under her pillow or mattress, so I start getting well annoyed that she's reading my file and knows things about me I don't. _What right does she have? If I wanted to, I could grass her up, there's no evidence I was involved and the file's in her room..._ And so on.

When she gets back I'm thisclose to starting a fight, but she's shaking her head and doing this 'thumbs down' gesture, like she's in _Gladiator_.

'Bad news...'

So I'm thinking, she must have been caught – _sh*t_. What now, will they throw her out? Will they throw _me_ out, did she say I was there too? _Some friend she is. Nice one. I'll blame her, they can't prove I had anything to do with it._

Bu then she goes, 'Wrong file'.

We watched _Porridge_ the other day, where everyone's in prison only it's funny, and in it, Kate Beckinsale's dad goes to do an exam and Ronnie Whatsit steals the wrong answers for him, so now I'm thinking, _Great, my life is officially a sitcom..._

Then Chiara looks all apologetic and goes, 'It only said "Stacey" on the cover, sorry. Your notes must be inside another file – the ones we've got are all someone else's.'

She _obviously_ knows I think it's her fault, which I do, that she switched the folders or something, so she goes, 'Maybe we could get into the computers? Everything's probably on there now...' like she's Little Miss Dragon Tattoo. _I think not._

All that effort – _mainly on Chiara's part, true, but it was my idea_ – and nothing to show for it. Although, and I can _actually feel my brain working_ when I come up with this, if they're not my files, there might be some juicy info in there. As compensation.

'So, whose files are they, then? What _did_ they say?' I ask, trying to sound like I'm not really bothered, what with them not being about me after all.

And Chiara's eyes light right up.

' _Well_ ,' she goes, glowing with gossip glee, 'I think we're living with an _heiress_...''

_IN TOMORROW'S PAPER_ : 'What better revenge than being filthy rich?'

*****

http://callmechiara.blogspot.com/

Suicide? Sanctuary? Bullshit!

Posted by Chiara on October 05, 2010

Stacey Blyth, you stupid bitch...

We had a deal. An understanding. A 'mutually beneficial arrangement' – maybe it's those awkward four-syllable words that have confused her. Or maybe it's her 'amnesia', conveniently back again come biography season... who knows.

Anyway, for what it's worth, the agreement was both sides would keep schtum (again, perhaps the language barrier is to blame here) so reputations remained unscathed and we needn't recourse to expensive, shaming legal proceedings. But here we are – Day Two of The Great Revelations...

Day One, I didn't mind so much. Stacey's entitled to make herself look as stupid as she likes, that's her call. That's her job, really. And for all I know, there's a bit of truth in there, I wasn't with her the whole time – maybe everything up to the point she makes a phone call in the hospital is exactly as it happened, summoning up the spectre of St Gwyneth of Paltrow and all. I doubt it.

But what I know for certain is that no chauffeur-driven car came and whisked her to rehab any more than a mouse-drawn pumpkin carriage spirited her off to a ball, complete with glass slippers and ugly sisters. And my flat can be described as many things, but look like a Travelodge it does not. There's an Eames chair in there (OK, a copy, but it's the same effect) and loads of lovely Heal's stuff (sale-bought though it may be), and a mate of mine on an interiors mag is always saying she might like to do a shoot there, if I didn't mind painting one wall olive.

But these flourishes I can handle, all the same. Who doesn't elaborate their lives a little? In our own minds and anecdotes, we're all taller and wittier and quicker and thinner. But I'm nowhere near as thin in my head as I'm fat in Stacey's. Seriously – a shotputter!? If I didn't know how self-absorbed she is, how she's only remotely interested in things relating to her, I'd think she was deliberately trying to incite my ire. I'll say only this – my Joan Holloway costume was very well-received at the last fancy-dress party I went to. End of.

So, yes, in case you hadn't already gathered from the blog title and my login, I am 'Chiara', insofar as any Chiara actually exists. It's not my real name, but in a way I'm amazed Stacey has deigned to share space in her life story with anyone else, so I suppose I'm a tiny bit honoured her ego's left any room for my alter.

What else do you need to know right now? 'You'. As if anyone's reading this. I might as well just be shouting into a void or writing it longhand and shredding it, really; with a billion blogs online what are the chances anyone will find this one? But my version of events, of her story, deserves as much space as Stacey's, so I'll bang it out for peace of mind, and when I'm done I'll delete it and no-one will even have noticed but I'll feel better and that's what it's all about after all, isn't it? Now that I'm not getting paid. Now that the deal is off. Now that I have to make some calls and call in favours, by way of damage limitation...

Shame it's all turned up in The Sun. If she'd offered it to us, I might have been able to get them to buy and spike it, or at least wrest back some of the money for myself, for expenses, effort and reparations, if not the final copy – I'm guessing she just vomited all that into some other poor sap's recorder and left them to ghost it into something approximating another Jordan instalment. But I should at least get a kill-fee for what I wrote first. I know she's got all that somewhere, and if any of my writing ends up in her extracts, I'll be the first on the phone to the Accounts Department over at News International. Nothing would thrill me more.

There's another thing – what have they paid for it? She's not that well known and even though I know what they've fallen for, the same big secret that hooked me, they can't have bothered to check it out yet or they'd know what I know... It's also odd that Entitled (!) isn't listed on Amazon, and they haven't named the publisher in the paper – maybe she's sticking it out herself, or hoping for a deal off the back of the extracts? (Would they really print extracts on spec?)

Well, two can play that game, can't they?

Let's see who gets their book out first, shall we, Stacey?

Where to start, where to start?

We met first in rehab, that's part's true enough. Not in rehab, sort of at rehab – adjacent to... I'll get back to that. But we didn't bond while reading gossip in the bogs, or anything trite like that – we wrote it.

I was – am still, alas – a showbiz columnist, and she was (but is no longer, for reasons that will shortly become clear) the one-woman entourage of one of west London's most high-profile party girls. Stacey and I had one of those obnoxious nodding acquaintances – as established in VIP areas and at aftershow parties, the nod denoting acknowledgement and one-of-us acceptance – but we didn't actually speak to one another until the day we sat opposite one another in the reception of London's best-known treatment facility. Adjacent to rehab, see?

(It's possible to attend rehab under the radar, of course, but the one unifying thing all celebrities bar none are, by definition, addicted to is attention, which is ideal for people in my line of work. All we need do, if required, is check in for a short stay, keep our ears open and then head back to work with weeks of front-page splashes, like holiday souvenirs other people are actually interested in.)

So I was all set for a stint, on the orders of my editor (let's just say magnetic north on moral compasses doesn't point to Canary Wharf...), but in the end I didn't even need to feign 'nervous exhaustion', the euphemistic catch-all that covers everything from heartache to chemical excess. I was bare-faced – always a sign of impending insanity in the unforgivingly flash-happy land of Paparazzi – and prepared to sob to the admissions nurse, but the centre was overrun.

I thought I'd be checked in and oversharing before lunchtime but no, so I'm trying not to break cover by getting out my phone and checking headlines, when I semi-recognise this fidgety girl sitting opposite me in the waiting area. I knew I 'knew' her but she could have been anyone – a stylist's assistant, a junior PR, a lowly record-company intern. She was distinctive without being obviously pretty – 'striking', kinder people might call it – but still not so uniquely odd that she could make a living modelling, even part-time out in east London.

She had cheap, brittle blonde hair, like she'd done it herself and left the solution on too long – rookie error, a brutal-looking concave nosejob (a cheap overseas operation, I decided; you get what you pay for with rhinoplasty) and a last-season outfit, instantly marking her out as sub-celebrity. Even the trashiest soap stars keep up with key trends, even if they're high-street imitations. Wearing visibly old clothes means only thing: A-list hand-me-downs too gorgeous to pass to charity.

A little sister? Unlikely she'd have slipped my attention for this long – she was past 30, even if her body language was embarrassed and adolescent, so where had she been hiding all this time, if she had a sibling's coattails to clamber up?

It was easier to start with her generous benefactor, and work backwards. The clothes were high-end boho, ruling out typically tacky WAGs and TV actresses. Trophy wives usually favour a more polished look, due to all their hostess duties, so I was thinking maybe a singer... until I saw the boots. Vintage and showing the stains of festival mudbaths past, they'd been papped extensively at last year's Glastonbury, with copies rushed into shops before the end of the summer.

But these were the real deal, hooked out of an exclusive second-hand boutique beloved by fashionistas whose greatest fear was wearing the same clothes as another boldface name, lest they come off worst in a side-by-side comparison in the weeklies. (You can't spin that kind of shame.)

This girl hadn't bought them, of course. Her bad bleaching was proof of that – you only gain admission to certain shops when your coiffure reflects your credit rating; if it isn't a delicious-looking mix of honey and caramel highlights, they haven't heard the bell and you'd better keep on walking. (There are exceptions; edgy crops also gain admission, but only because they'll likely have seen your face on the right front covers.)

So call me Sherlock: she'd somehow acquired the boots from omnipresent ex Cady Stone, whose three marriages to date – her first in her teens – had left her independently wealthy. Cady had the foresight/fortune to inspire her musician spouses' most creative periods, sans pre-nup, conveniently leaving them when follow-up albums stiffed and tour dates stopped instantly selling out. Everyone was highly surprised when the settlements were reported; without children Cady wasn't expected to get much, but each time it was GDP generous. Stories started that she must have incriminating pictures or videos, but nothing ever surfaced.

I was still waiting to access the inner-sanctum of suffering (the receptionist had started ignoring new arrivals, she was so swamped) but I had something better: a potential in with a Stone acolyte who might know where bodies were buried – or rather, where memory cards were hidden...

Of course, etiquette's required in every social situation and the reception at a rehab centre is no different. Here, everything's implicit; staff and patients alike must pretend they don't know who anyone is – the opposite of Celebrity Big Brother, despite having a similar cast list.

So I used a guaranteed icebreaker, a beguiling mix of ego boost and ignorance.

"Your blouse is absolutely beautiful – is it Dior?"

(It wasn't, it was Chloé.)

Stacey seemed startled to be spoken to, then blushed a little, smiling as she shook her head. "Thank you, but it's Cacharel, actually."

(It wasn't, it was Chloé.)

I made a point of not changing my work look much – brown bob, red lipstick – so I was a) recognisable when I needed to be and b) could also disguise myself easily if avoiding anyone I'd angered with a snippy aside in that day's paper. Being incognito today (no lippy, headscarf) meant Stacey couldn't identify me straight away – not that she'd dare to admit as much, of course.

So I smalltalked about the weather (freezing), the wallpaper (friezing – ha!) and whatever else I could think of until she shyly suggested we might have met.

"Yeah, maybe..." I demurred, doing my best 'I am thinking hard' shrivel-face, wanting her to be certain and assured before I had to show my hand.

While describing in minute detail a hideous Hawaiian-themed function I remembered we'd both attended – something to do with a tanning spray, being pimped that night by an almost-albino athlete who'd been custom-creosoted for the occasion – I assessed her again for suitability. Was she fit for my purpose?

We (I don't do the column single-handedly, I'd die of obsequiousness within a week) often get approached at the arse-end of an evening out by hard-up 'pals' and 'source' with lucrative leads; once they've proven their provenance is pukka, we add them to our ring-around list. But we'd never yet had anyone with anything we could verify about someone as upper-echelon as Cady Stone.

Now, aside from her clothing, Stacey didn't have the pampered glow of wealth; her skin was dull, bumpy and clumped with concealer, her posture didn't suggest either regular massages or private yoga sessions and the way her eyes flicked to the mints on the reception desk every other minute implied she was rather peckish. So she could probably do with my money, grubby as it may be.

The coup de grâce was obscenely simple. While pretending to be enthralled by her perfunctory recall of a reality-show winner-turned-DJ returning from the toilets at one mutually attended function, the miniskirt caught in her thong proving a poor distraction from the white powder rimming her reddened nostrils, I said, "You're so expressive... are you an actress?"

She wasn't but, like everyone else eking out a living on the fringe of fame, she wanted to be. I was in. She beamed, then looked up through the thatch of her black-spackled lashes like a cut-price Princess Di: "How did you know?"

I simply shrugged.

Then she said – and it meant nothing to me at the time, it was just one of those awful actressy things that awful actresses say – "It's in my blood." And she flashed her eyes at me, like she was highlighting the words in my mind:

'Ms Blyth, I'm so sorry to have to tell you this, but you've tested positive for ACT. There's no known cure, but we're doing amazing things with stem cells...'

Indulge me going all Vanity Fair for a moment, but one of JFK's biographers said of meeting his grieving widow that he felt he was "in the presence of a very great tragic actress." Stacey's no Jackie O but, as long as she believed I thought she was an Oscar nominee-in-waiting, we had an understanding.

With a whole new topic on offer, and not before time – I was just about to start sniping about the state of the skirting boards – our chat turned to leading roles she'd wanted (but presumably not even auditioned for).

As she reeled them off – plucky paraplegics, Austen heroines, Machiavellian mistresses, nothing minor – I dutifully dismissed each of the actual actresses who'd played them:

"God, no, far too fat, didn't you think?"

"All wrong – she should have been a blonde, for starters..."

"So tacky! She'd have been better as a stripper than a Bennett."

And on we went, denigrating every last BAFTA winner, until I realised ours were now the only voices in the room, and the admissions backlog had gone.

It was time to close the deal and head home. (I hadn't seen anyone interesting arriving and I wasn't sacrificing my weekend for real people with real problems – fluffy stuff only for me, please. Take A Break is not my beat.)

"I'd love to be able to act," I lied, "but I'm not creative at all..."

Stacey almost looked sorry for me as she said, "Oh... so what do you do?"

NB – getting anyone even half famous to ask this of you is a miracle.

"Me?" Little old me? Why, thank you kindly for askin', ma'am!

"I'm a writer... [a soft opener] ...on a newspaper."

She didn't flinch, and usually people do, so I continued. Carefully.

"I write the social diary. You know, who went where, who did what – with who! – and so on." Which was not technically untrue but also not how my editor would have described it. "So... if you ever hear of anything you think would make a fun story – like our DJ friend with the wardrobe malfunction, for example – maybe let me know? If we can print it... [it's important to imply that we have standards] ... then you'd get paid for it."

I scrabbled around in my bag theatrically, as if I couldn't immediately find my details, to give her time to consider and accept my offer. When she seemed to have made up her mind, I slipped a business card out of the small mobile-phone pocket where I always kept plenty and handed it to her, as if embarrassedly asking her out on a date, and not scouting for a new source at all.

"If you fancy meeting up for a drink, maybe – or dinner?"

Her acting ability didn't extend to 'hard to get'.

"I'd like that," she grinned, hungrily.

The card was bland enough to look like it could have come from anyone; thick-stock with a floral embossed motif, my real name in bold with the non-committal 'Diarist' below, and my mobile number. Well, one of my mobile numbers. I had another business card for official work purposes, with the masthead of the paper taking up two-thirds and my name, direct line, email and work mobile crammed down the bottom. For contacts I wanted to keep to myself, I had another phone, always on vibrate, which no-one at work had the number to; if asked, I pretended it was for friends and family – as if I had the time (or inclination) for either.

Then she was beckoned to the desk and I made my exit; if she ever wondered why I'd been there and disappeared into thin air, she never said.

She didn't call before we saw into each other again but I hadn't expected her to. Out of loyalty to Cady – who she didn't know I knew she knew, at this point – and fear for her social standing, she didn't want to blurt out everything at once, like a slut on a one-night stand. She had to be wooed.

So it was a month or so later, at Fashion Week, before we were face to face for a second time. It was an unseasonably squally September, so we were taking refuge inside a tent between shows when we exchanged The Nod. This time, I took it as a green light to edge towards her, slowly, so when the next show finally started – hours late, as is only to be expected – we were standing together.

Cady, of course, had been given a prominent VIP seat for all her 'friends'' collections, leaving me plenty of space to ensnare Stacey at the back. I talked about anything but the column, starting the conversation off on goodie bags and unlikely front-row friendships. When, after much prompting, she eventually came out with a stale aside, I did an elaborate mime of stifling a belly-laugh then said, "That would have been perfect for the diary pages – shame you didn't call me."

I changed the subject, as if work was the last thing I wanted to talk about (what else is there?), but Stacey was already on the hook, ready to be reeled in.

"So would that have been worth anything?" she whispered.

"Oh, maybe £50 or so?" I said, eyes fixed on the catwalk cadavers. "Not much, really, but they add up over the course of a month or so, if you're out a lot..."

Rather than hang around and risk being introduced/outed to Cady (who would have known exactly what was afoot), I made excuses and left as the designer's undeserved ovation began, confident Stacey would ring within the week.

She did.

The stories were only passable to begin with – a too-hot-to-drop Ukrainian model who gained a dress size within a week (presumably pregnant), meaning some hasty haberdashery to accommodate her; a light-fingered friend of a stylist who made off with uninsured jewellery; a blind-siding hook-up between an openly gay designer and a girl. We ran a few of them, got the usual furious phone calls from flacks – mostly angry at hearing about clients' antics secondhand – and I paid Stacey slightly over the odds, expensing the figures under 'Entertaining'.

Are you not entertained?

What I really wanted was A-grade A-list dirt and I knew she had it. And, as I was soon to find out, there was only one way to get her to give it up. Flattery kept her sweet and the cash meant she would come back, but the crucial catalyst was jealousy.

Whenever Cady was snapped next to some newfound confidante, Stacey became a solo smear campaign, ringing me with audible glee to reveal how appallingly her rival treated her children, partner or The Help, how she was fonder of the scalpel than the scales, and how friends daren't leave her alone with their husbands.

Stacey's source? Cady, of course.

Ms Stone was very sociable of late, table-hopping at ceremonies and darting across the aisle to chat at concerts, so each week's engagements brought new acquaintances for Stacey to defame. I held back some items so their provenance wouldn't be too obvious but I needn't have bothered. Not then, anyway.

Most of us, if we saw a string of stories about people we knew, recycling rumours we ourselves had spread, would get suspicious and suspect a mole in their midst. But most of us aren't as self-obsessed as your average celebrity. It isn't merely a matter of looking out for Number One, it is a single-minded mission to blinker out everything else. Even the most paranoid of big names, who employ professional clippings services to make sure they don't miss a single mention – in addition to having as-it-happens Google Alerts sent to their always-on BlackBerrys and/or iPhones – don't read around the subject of themselves. If they aren't mentioned, they aren't interested.

Careful to keep Cady's name out of the ensuing articles, we entered a purple period on the column and our super-connected source remained oblivious. Sales grew, online traffic to our section tripled, our URLs were re-tweeted hundreds of times and we were scooping rival dailies on, well, a daily basis.

Like the flower revived by ET, shrivelled little Stacey began to blossom as the column gained notoriety. She was making far more than £50 per tip by now, and was funnelling the money back into her self-image. She made an appointment – under Cady's name – with the best colourist in London, apologising profusely when she arrived at the salon without her and offering to take the slot herself rather than be penalised. It took hours to restore lustre to her over-processed locks, but the bouncy, buttery curls that resulted were transformative. Facials followed, and a session with the city's most in-demand eyebrow shaper, and she even began to jog around the blocks by Cady's mews house of a morning.

The downside was, Stacey was getting noticed herself now. Snappers would include her in their shots as Cady arrived at clubs and parties, and the addition of well-chosen accessories to old Stone clothes got favourable nods from influential stylists.

Great for Stacey – dreadful for myself and Cady.

The last thing I needed was for her to ascend to actual celebrity herself, and stop calling because she was so inundated with TV offers, freebies and invites that she no longer needed my backhanders. For Cady, seeing her lapdog become a butterfly, so to speak, was surely as devastating as it would be for her to have a pretty daughter.

Worse still, Stacey could acquire a famous boyfriend, at which point she would become a kept woman and never need to work again – the dream of 90 per cent of starlets and a nightmare for writers like myself... until the breakups, when they can't tell the juicy details fast enough, suddenly needing some disposable income of their own again.

Then the rows started. Knowing Stacey was still single, Cady could see no possible way she was funding her newly beautiful lifestyle without stealing from her. She immediately stopped the second-hand clothes supply, demanding back pieces that still fit her; she had gained weight of late, due to her 'therapist' (dealer) being on an extended holiday – he was stuck in some foreign prison, Stacey said, but we couldn't confirm it.

For the first time in their relationship, Stacey refused. She had realised – because I had told her – that her being considered hip was useful to Cady, who wasn't at her best, and told the stony-faced Ms Stone just that. After all, she had an invite to a premiere that night and Cady hadn't – did she want to skip it, "...or be my guest?"

Their entente was cordial for cameras. Cady was apparently still incapable of discretion, so the stories kept coming, but they had an air of the tragic to them. Then one of her exes became embroiled in a copyright case with his old bandmates, and her un-sinkable star rose once more.

It was another dull wrangle about royalties; he was the songwriter but they wanted more money for their input into the hits. It dragged on for a few weeks, but it wasn't until Cady's name came up that things got interesting.

One of the contentious songs was written for the new bride during the honeymoon in the south of France, at some '80s muso's mansion. Surrounded by instruments, the second Mr Stone, as he was now effectively known, had composed a ballad, 'Crazy (About Darling You)', that had become the band's biggest hit, helped by its inclusion in a hit romcom the next summer. The acronym was obvious; during divorce proceedings he had even tattooed the song title down his arm as a last-ditch attempt to change his estranged wife's mind.

Radio stations began to play the song again and Cady was back in demand once more. She secluded herself until she'd starved off her excess weight (or found a new connection), making her reappearance on to the scene at the High Court one morning.

Called to the witness box, she testified that while the rest of the band might have added flourishes to the music, the demo she still owned proved that it had been completed at the château, and that song at least should be exempt from the case. She played an old C60 cassette – which had audible news-channel noise at the end, conveniently setting the date – and the court accepted her version of events.

The case continued but the story had changed as far as the media was concerned – was reconciliation on the cards? Cady said nothing, just glancing shyly at her shoes when pressed; her ex was currently remarried but that had never stopped her before. At Home With... articles began, and cover stories followed – her social crown was back from the cleaners, buffed to a brighter shine than ever before.

The unexpected upside was she either forgave Stacey or thought she must have imagined a time when they were vying for supremacy; it certainly seemed unlikely, now she was juggling offers from the glossies for their Christmas covers. And so the stories restarted, and the celebrity status quo was reached.

So what went wrong? We got sloppy. The grace period I usually left between hearing tales from Stacey and dropping them into the paper shortened, and we used information that was probably too intimate. Still ignorant of anyone other than her, Cady didn't notice or care – but her ex-ex did.

Unfortunately for us, he was a decent sort. He didn't pore over gossip columns or obsessively search for himself online, but he did keep his ears open. So when friends started congratulating him on a new publishing deal, he became wary; nothing had been signed, it was early days and he had only played new tracks to a handful of people.

Leaked details of his new workout regime also enraged him, and his trainer was swiftly sacked for "trading on [his] name". But when we hinted – and it really was only a hint – that "a certain retro rocker has renewed his love for an ex, so his wife would do well to check her stocking for divorce papers this Christmas," he went ballistic.

We hadn't named names but given his renaissance no-one else fit the description, as vague as it was. And Cady had certainly amped up the intrigue, by implying she and her replacement were "great friends" and that she hoped they'd manage to see each other over the festive period – code for "she's a bitch and I'll see her in hell."

By now, I had given Stacey a phone that had a recording function, in case she ever needed to make memos of stories when she couldn't get reception and call me directly. She was in the kitchen when the ex-ex arrived, enraged, and, sensing the tension in the air, set her phone recording in the corridor, and hid.

Playing it back the next day, we knew the jig was up at this point:

"Fuck's sake calm down, I haven't told anyone anything. There's nothing to tell!"

"Is this a test? Have you planted this as a test? I will leave her when I'm ready. She's already paranoid about you, if I go now she'll clean me out. She's probably compiling a dossier already – there's probably someone outside tailing me!"

"She's not that smart! And I haven't planted anything, I don't plant things, I don't need to. They come to me! I don't need to beg for blind items, I'm turning down covers. And I hardly need their help to get you to come back... you never wanted me to leave."

"Well someone's said something, because that bit about the stocking was exactly what you said to me."

"What bit about the stocking – what are you talking about?"

"It said I'd leave the divorce papers in her Christmas stocking – you said I should do that. Those exact words. How could they have known that? It can't be coincidence."

"They made it up. [Laughs] I can't imagine bountiful Bella in stockings..."

"This isn't funny – it's on the page, verbatim. Who did you tell?"

"No-one. I didn't tell anyone. I don't talk to tabloid journalists."

"Not just a journalist, anyone – who have you talked to about this?"

"No-one! Unless..."

And so ended our working relationship.

The row soon petered out; the ex-ex thinking Stacey too sweet to spill the beans, he apologised and left, needing to be back home before midnight to not arouse suspicion. Stacey stayed hidden – there was a utility room off the kitchen that Cady literally didn't know was there, having never in her life laundered her own clothes, incredibly enough – only creeping out when she could hear her de-facto boss snoring off a bottle of wee-hours Chablis on the vintage Liberty-print chaise longue.

Stacey caught a cab to my office later that morning, which I paid for, and handed over the phone, looking rather stricken as she did. I don't think she ever meant to hurt Cady, she wasn't malicious, just broke and embittered by privileged idiots whose behaviour was an affront to their fans, if not humanity as a whole. She had seen her stories as a sort of public service, really – like she was part of the Morality Police.

She was still wearing her clothes from the product-launch party we had attended early the previous evening: just strappy heels and a skimpy dress, not even one of Cady's old (and therefore somehow socially acceptable) fur coats. For the first time since we had met in reception, she looked like a little girl playing dress-up in her mother's cast-offs.

She left her phone and sniffed at my offer of an old parka against the cold, then left, headed for a showdown at Cady's house. It was possible she would wake up having forgotten everything, she had blacked out before at opportune moments, but Stacey tottered off with the air of someone approaching the gallows.

I hadn't expected to hear from her again, certainly not so soon, envisaging a brief period in Siberia, then a thaw if Cady's remarriage didn't happen. Instead, on accepting a reverse-charges call from a payphone in the Chelsea & Westminster hospital around 2am, I could only identify Stacey from the estuary accent to her incessant hysterics.

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*****

_Daily Mirror_ , WEDNESDAY 06.10.2010

_SHH!_ Stars _say_ they never believe what they read but they've taken certain recent reports to heart, despite mounting doubts about their reliability – two blabbermouth best friends have just found themselves uninvited from every upcoming A-list event in town...

Wednesday, October 6, 2010 _THE SUN_

_In the latest exclusive instalment from starlet_ Stacey Blyth _'s forthcoming autobiography, she gets some answers in a language she can't understand, and overstays her welcome..._

'LOSS IN TRANSLATION'

'I'm _by far_ the most famous person in rehab – and overnight there's this heiress?

When did this happen?

(I clocked everyone when I arrived, to see if I recognised anyone, even without make-up or extensions or unfrumpy clothes. But no, it's definitely just me. Not that anyone says anything, or hassles me for an autograph – _manners_ , that is.)

So now I have to step aside for some rich kid? _Well unfair_.

'Oh yeah, an heiress?' I say, all blasé.

(That would be a good name for a fragrance – I should write that down. _Oh, I have_!)

Chiara nods and goes, 'I can't work out what it all says, but "inherit" or "inheritance" is definitely in there, in the will. And maybe "adopt" too, but I'd have to look that up..."

I'm like, _Will_? so I go, 'Is this all in the files? What have you got there?'

And she goes, 'Just that file I showed you. But it's got all this extra stuff in it too.'

I totally don't want to know who the heiress is, I well don't want her to know I know and think she's won and is Top Dog or Cock of the Clinic or whatever, but I can't get my head around what Chiara's saying.

Also, I'm a bit bored.

'Fine, show me, then...' I go, all annoyed, and nip back to where the bedrooms are.

Chiara's all pleased with herself and ready to show off, so she overtakes me in the corridor and is already pulling the file out from under her pillow when I walk in.

_Like, brilliant place to hide, that's not the first place they'd look or anything. We might as well invite the nurses in to see what we've got._ Div.

Then, like _I'm_ the idiot, she hisses, 'Close the bloody door!' And I do, but only because I don't want to get caught – and anyway _my_ fingerprints aren't on the file, are they?

_I wonder if there's a celebrity database, of DNA and that? There should be, then they could build the perfect famous person using all our information. Like in_ Jurassic Park _, but with models and actors and pop stars instead of dinosaurs. I bet she'd be blonde._

So Chiara's got this paper-folder file thing on her lap now and I can see the doodle from my session, like a coloured-in spider's web design, it's definitely the same one, so I can't work out how it isn't my file when the therapist read from it just, like, an hour ago.

Then I see the name written on the top of some of the poking-put pages, and it's isn't 'Stacey Blyth', no, Chiara was right about that, but now everything makes sense and I know what's happened, only I don't tell Chiara because of doctor-patient confidentiality.

And I have to laugh, because I realise what I've done and it's dead clever.

So, I've checked in as myself, as Stacey, it's on record that Stacey's staying here, but – and this is the brilliant bit – all my notes are under an alias, like they're someone else's. And Chiara thinks they are, but they're not. Because I know the name.

I'm sort of surprised she doesn't know the name, to be honest, but I'm not going to point it out, am I? ' _Oh you must know who So-and-So is? Married to You-Know_?' And anyway, she's excited enough just thinking she's found some heiress...

And then I think, _Wait_ , heiress? _So, I'm the heiress, then_?

More amnesia, must be – who'd forget something like that about themself?

So it starts to sink and I hear myself go, 'This is amazing...' but obviously Chiara doesn't know why I think it's amazing, that's for me to know and her to not.

She says, 'I know, right? She's walking around and we don't know who she is. I don't know the name, do you? It could be an old patient, I suppose, and the file got left out...'

So I say 'Maybe...' but mean 'No'. Then I prompt her: 'What does it all say, then?'

And Chiara opens the file and there's all these pages of printing and they look like exam papers, where you have to fill in answers in the blank bits, _ugh_ , only someone's already done it all, thank god.

'This top one's just session notes, typed up' she goes, and I think, _I don't want you reading that, what with it being about me, nosey_ , but she must have already had a look so I wonder what she's seen and I have a glance and see "mother" – _which is about right, ha ha_ – but then she turns it over, like she's not arsed. So maybe she's not read it. _Relief_.

Obviously _I_ want to know what it says, what _I've_ said, but I keep cool so I don't give her any clues about who I am. That's need to know, and she doesn't need to know.

(When you're famous, everyone wants to know everything about you, so it's quite nice, actually, to have something secret. I mean, I'm telling you now, _obviously_ , but only because I want to. Because I'm getting paid for it. Otherwise, nothing. Lips sealed.)

Chiara's all interested in other papers. 'This one I think is a will,' she goes, 'this one seems to be a birth certificate, and that one's an adoption form.'

Only all I'm seeing is squiggles, like I've forgotten how words work.

So I go, 'I don't understand what you're reading,' and Chiara looks all apologetic and goes, 'Oh, no, it's in Arabic. I know a bit of Arabic, that's why I only know bits of what it says. But I'm pretty sure about those bits.'

Why would they be in Arabic?

Then I think: _Marrakech_!

Only I must have said it while I thought it, without meaning to – like when someone's snide and you go 'Bitch' in your head and you think out loud, accidentally.

So Chiara gives me this odd look and says, 'How did you know about Marrakech?'

And I'm like, _Shit – how_ do _I know?_

Then she goes, 'Oh, you saw the "Maroc" bit.'

And I don't know what she means but I nod anyway and she stops looking suspicious, and says, 'I think the papers were all filed in Marrakech. They're all from 1976. So our heiress would be at least...'

_Fine_ , I'm 34. Whatever, I look good for it. Everyone thinks I'm loads younger. I'm sure Chiara thinks so, so I let her keep thinking that, so she doesn't work out I'm the heiress.

'...34. She's born, her mother makes a will, and then she's adopted – all in 1976.'

And I forget it's me we're on about, so I go, 'She must have been an ugly baby, eh?'

And Chiara laughs, the cow. I'll remember that, I think. And I have.

I pretend I'm not bothered, and go, 'Why put her in the will if she's not keeping her?'

Chiara does this big frown, like from before Botox was invented, old school, and looks at the papers again, doing the translate-y thing, and says, 'Oh, it's not a birth certificate...'

So I'm not really rich?

'...It's a _death_ certificate. The mother died. So maybe that's why she made the will and her daughter was adopted. That makes sense.'

Do I cry? No. Why? Someone I've never met's dead – why cry? I might as well cry all the time if I did that. Actually, I'm happy, because now I know for real I'm adopted.

I've always _known_ I was adopted. I never said anything, because I didn't want to upset anyone, but I knew. I just _knew_. I've got thismuch in common with my parents. So none of this is a surprise to me. It's just – what's the word they use in there? – _validation_.

So for me, it's all falling into place. I'm adopted, like I always thought, and I was adopted because my real mother died. But she was rich, so that would help me cope.

Wait – she _was_ rich, right? I mean, you don't say 'heiress' unless there's money.

'So how much do... does _she_ inherit?' I go, almost slipping up.

Chiara looks a bit guilty and says, 'Er, well, I don't know. I think _that_ word means "everything" but what everything the dead woman had amounted to, I don't know.'

Maybe nothing at all.

Cheers, Mum.

Then Chiara goes, 'There's loads here I don't know, bits of Arabic are coming back to me a bit but slowly, so I might work on it tonight – you don't mind, do you?'

Basically, she's the only person I speak to and she knows it, but I want to know what it means as much as, well, no, _more than_ she does, so I say, 'That's fine', and leave her to it without having a strop or anything. Very mature of me, actually.

So I get back to my room, to have a lie down before tea, because doing nothing all day gets quite tiring, and there's a letter on my bed. And first I'm all like, _Who's been in here_? but I haven't got anything worth nicking, have I, and then I see it's from the clinic so I suppose the cleaners left it or something.

I open it and, basically, they're throwing me out. Something about "reported irregularities on your credit card" and did I have "another method of payment"? And of course I don't, or at least I don't know the numbers if I do.

Do I?

I wait and see if any more magic numbers pop into my head... but nothing happens.

So someone can report my credit card as stolen – but not _me_ as _missing_?

The rest of the letter is all "We trust you have enjoyed your stay" and that sort of crap and then it says I have to leave tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

Where am I supposed to go?

I forget about dinner, I just lie on my bed trying to think of someone I can call – _no numbers_ – and somewhere I can go – _can't remember any addresses_ – and finally drop off with the exhaustion of it all. And then it's morning and I'm starving and have to go.

And I haven't told Chiara.

And Chiara's got my file.

So I rush to breakfast but when I get there I'm so hungry I just eat and eat and forget to say anything. Then Chiara's about to go back to her room and I remember and hiss at her to stay because I've got something to say.

And she says 'What?'

And I say, 'I'm off.'

And she's not happy, understandably. As if I _am_?!

'Why are you going? Are you... _better_?' She says it like no-one ever gets better because no-one was ever really that ill and, of course, in my case, that's true.

I try to be all dignified about it, so I say, 'They're throwing me out because of a problem with my credit card or some sh*t.'

Chiara's eyes go massive. ' _You_?'

She can probably see I'm wealthy, _genetically_.

'Do you want to stay?'

Do I? I like the security but I _am_ a bit bored. So I just shrug a bit, say 'Bye then' and walk off and leave her. Which is rude but I don't want _her_ to walk off and leave _me_ , that would be humiliating – it's like finishing with someone before they can chuck you.

I've got nothing to pack so I just have an extra-long shower and wait in reception.

And again, I'm thinking, _This is all a set-up, I'll be met by my friends in a limo and taken home to a party, it's all been like a bad-ish dream._

Wrong.

I think of all the things I've done for them... _And this is how they repay me_? So I spend my final few minutes plotting revenge until I remember the inheritance and think, _What better revenge than being filthy rich and blanking them all forever?_

Then this taxi arrives and I think, _Maybe I've misjudged them_?

Only no-one gets out and I ask the receptionist and she says it's not for me.

So I sign my papers, finally, and hang about a bit hoping she'll give me a Travelcard and some cash, maybe, but nothing happens, does it.

'Do I just go, then?' I ask.

She nods. Once, like that costs money too.

'Out the front door?'

She doesn't nod this time, just presses a button and the door buzzes open.

Out of habit, like with jewellers and boutiques that don't let everyone in, I rush for the door before it locks again, only then I'm outside on my own with nothing, literally nothing, not even a penny or some fluff in my pockets, for f***'s sake.

I try to make eye contact with the taxi driver but he's reading a paper. Then I just stand around for ages trying to think where to go, because I can't remember where anyone lives and I don't know where I am anyway, so how would I work out how to get anywhere?

So I start walking again and it's like with the river, I'm on this road that never ends – I can't even see the end of the drive. I just plod on, feeling like I'm getting depressed all over again, back where I bloody well started, and then the taxi _beeps me out of the way_.

I'm furious, and already freezing, so I shout 'I can walk where I like!'

And someone shouts back, 'Wouldn't you rather have a lift, though?'

So I turn round, still angry, mind, and Chiara's head is sticking out of the taxi window.

'Got bored!' she says. 'Come on, it's too cold to fart about.'

So I get in and she gives this Docklands address to the taxi driver then says to me, 'I've got an Arabic-English dictionary at home, so... I thought I'd check out too.'

And she's all upbeat and I'm not, so she goes, 'You can come to mine, if you like – unless you've got a better offer?'

Of course I haven't, I haven't even got a _worse_ offer, have I, but I pretend I'm thinking about it first, then say 'OK, then' like I'm doing her a favour.

She grins and passes me the file, 'to keep it safe'.

'Maybe you can be my secretary while I'm translating it?' she says.

And I pretend I'm not insulted – that's practically treason, that is – and just smile and look forward to watching Sky tonight.

_IN TOMORROW'S PAPER_ : 'Don't you see... I think they might have murdered her!'

*****

http://callmechiara.blogspot.com/

Loosely Translated As...

Posted by Chiara on October 06, 2010

I accepted the reverse-charges call – so quaint! – and waited. Coaxing is an important part of my job, waiting for the right time to ask the killer question, laughing and smiling and beguiling gossip out of media-trained celebrity sphinxes. So I checked email on my other phone as I waited for the caller to insert words between the sobs.

"H-h-h-hello?"

"Yes, hello? Who's that?" I asked in my softest, sweetest voice.

"It'sss m-m-me," Stacey gasped. Or shuddered. Or shivered. I can't tell, and I've played it back 20 times. (I record every call, just in case.)

"Oh... hi, how are you?" We parted under awkward circumstances, so I thought I'd be the last person she wanted to speak to now. Or maybe the second-to-last...

She forced out a "Not good" I could barely hear. She wasn't happy when she left the office but she didn't seem ill or pained, just fearful for the Cady Stone showdown.

"Where are you?"

I had taken enough calls from A&E – 'concerned pals' bursting to tell me about B-list suicide bids, for the right price – to know a hospital soundtrack when I heard one, but I wanted her to confide in me.

"I'm... in... Chelsea Hospital," she huffed, as if fighting for every breath. "I fell."

Caffeine and Class-As have nothing on an exclusive to revive a weary writer; I knew there was more but didn't want her to exhaust herself before she could tell me.

"Do you want me to come and get you? I can be there in... 40 minutes? Half an hour!" I didn't want to put her off, and at 2am I was sure I could shave some time off.

"I have nowhere to go... " I could hear the wobble and knew a sob would follow.

"You can stay with me, I have a spare room. It's not a problem. Get your things and be waiting downstairs in about half an hour – can you do that, are you allowed to discharge yourself? You've not been... sectioned?"

Had she lost it in the space of 17 hours? It could happen. What had Cady said?

"No, no... that's fine. But hurry."

We hung up and I scrabbled for my car keys, pulling on trainers and a coat long enough to hide my pyjamas – I didn't want anyone thinking I was insane – and left.

I know people think, 'How do you sleep, how do you live with yourself?' given my job is writing about people's private affairs, but consider this – how well do you sleep, how do you live with yourself when you've bought and read the papers and magazines we fill? It's like thinking horror writers must be psychos; if you read their books and watch the movies, what does that make you?

Somehow, I got myself along the north circular and down Western Avenue, arriving at the hospital before 3am. At first, I thought the shivering figure was an orderly on a cigarette break, but as I got closer I recognised the arched eyebrows and highlights.

I pulled in and opened the passenger door, hissing "Come on, it's too cold to stand around" as if I was breaking her out of prison and we had to scarper before wardens set the searchlights on us. She took a second to recognise me, then slipped into the seat, slamming the door.

"Go," she croaked, pulling her knees to her seatbelted chest and resting her head.

Once back at the flat, I settled Stacey on the sofa and went to make drinks.

"No tea," she rasped, "no more sweet tea."

Would brandy be better?

"Yes please."

She looked bedraggled and exhausted, as though she had walked out of my office and into thunderstorms and Biblical plagues. Her skin was blotchy and chapped, her lips cracked and her hair so harshly scraped off her face she almost looked bald by lamp light. Cocooned in a throw, with a heater on full, she was still trembling but slowly sipping at the brandy seemed to calm her.

"How about a bath, a really hot bath, would that help?"

I am with Sylvia Plath on this one: 'There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them.'

Wait; Stacey wasn't suicidal, was she?

"No, no bath, I just need some rest and I'll be alright..." she mumbled, sadly.

I lifted her legs onto the sofa and she obediently lay down, nestling her head on my sample-sale cushions as I rearranged the throw over her. When I heard her breathing get heavy and slow, I went to sleep myself. Or rather I lay in bed until my alarm went off, wondering what I had done.

At the office, I found out.

It was a slow day, so even local-paper titbits were being bandied about for big splashes. Some PC-gone-mad ruling about care homes not being allowed to put up Christmas decorations for Health & Safety purposes was one option, as was the latest pre-teen father to surface. But "biddies don't sell", according to one senior editor, and no-one wanted to go big on the boy without DNA confirmation – "not after the last time."

"What about this: the Lifeboat team dragged a girl out of the Thames last night, didn't get her name, and she had disappeared by the morning when the Police came back to question her..."

I was too tired to make the connection straight away.

"Is that all we've got, isn't there a picture?"

"No, but apparently she was pretty and only wearing her underwear and heels..."

"So there's no picture, we don't know anything about her and she didn't die, is that what you are telling me?"

"Well, yeah, but we can..."

"Put it on page seven with a hotline call-to-action, that's it. What else?"

Who cares? 'Drunk Slapper Takes A Dip'. She would have to be famous first for anyone to want to read that...

"What hospital was she at?" I asked, horribly conscious of having the attention of the entire newsroom on me. "I... have some contacts in some A&E departments, I might be able to get... CCTV footage?" I lied.

Don't say Chelsea, don't say Chelsea...

The reporter scanned his notes; "Chelsea & Westminster, I think."

"Ohhh," I said, with theatrical emphasis, "sorry – no-one I know there."

Not since about 3am this morning.

Being on the Entertainment desk, there was no chance I would get to write the story up, but I could read it off the server before it went to press:

MYSTERY OF RIVER RESCUE WOMAN

Police are appealing for help from the public to identify a woman who fell 50 feet from Chelsea Bridge yesterday.

Emergency services were summoned to SW1 when onlookers saw the woman – described as young, distressed and inappropriately dressed for winter – climb over the steel railings on the west-side footpath and fall into the Thames.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "We were called at 11.15pm with reports of a woman having fallen from Chelsea Bridge. Working in conjunction with the RNLI and London Fire Brigade's marine unit, we were able to carry out a successful rescue."

The woman, who was treated at nearby Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, was breathalysed but not found to be intoxicated. She was carrying no identification.

The blonde-haired woman is aged between 25 and 35, is of slim build and is around five feet nine inches in height, police said. Anyone with any information about her identity is asked to contact the Metropolitan Police in confidence on 0300 123 1212.

The age, height and colouring fit; as for being "inappropriately dressed" in "a slip and heels", the black dress Stacey had on yesterday might have looked like a slip when she was pulled out of the water, and she was certainly wearing stilettos.

I went back to the hospital at lunchtime, to appeal to the mercy of nurses.

"Hi," I smiled, shyly, "my friend was brought in last night and I think she left her keys behind with some clothes – has anything been handed in?"

I was shuttled around a few floors until I found a lost-property box, under the control of a suspicious sister.

"Was it the suicide, in the river?" she asked, interrogation-style.

Wide-eyed: "Suicide? Gosh, no, I think she passed out and was brought in for observation, she has got a bit of a drink problem."

I shook my head and tutted at the invented alcoholism.

The ward was busy, so I was directed to the box with a terse "Good luck".

If the shoes had ever been in the box they weren't now (any brand identifiable to Sex And The City fans is hot property, saturated with stinking river water or not) but the black rag of a dress was still there, swimming in a plastic sack.

I grabbed it then locked myself into the nearest disabled loo. Dumped into a sink of running water, the dress floated like an inky jellyfish. I swirled it around until I could see the label; a friend of Cady's had made it, a year or so ago. Another designer hand-me-down confirmed the story, but I wouldn't be printing in the paper just yet.

With the Thames rinsed away, I scrunched the dress up in paper towels and shoved it into my bag. Checking the sister wasn't in the vicinity I fled, making one more stop before returning to my desk. You don't have a social calendar like mine without getting to know a dry cleaner who can return a battered borrowed dress to its former glory in time to be returned to the PR.

Until I knew more about the skeletons in Stacey's closet, I would make do with an incriminating LBD. It worked for Monica Lewinsky.

My attendance wasn't required at any parties that night so, after making up for my extended lunch hour, I went straight back to the flat. At first it seemed like Stacey hadn't moved from the sofa, but there were empty plates and mugs surrounding it, and the TV was on. One bony hand poked out from under the throw, clutching the remote so hard the knuckles were white. No wonder; local news was leading on the disappearing jumper.

When she heard me, Stacey changed the channel, so I pretended I didn't know what she had been watching and went into brassily oblivious carer mode.

"How are you feeling now, have you warmed up?"

I hoped so; it was stiflingly hot in there and I feared for my gas bill.

She nodded, feebly.

"Have you managed to eat anything?" I said, trying not to look at the rockery of crockery decorating the rug.

"A little," she volunteered. "Thanks."

I took the empties to the kitchen and wondered how long I would have to pussyfoot about until she a) told me what happened and – hope, hope – let me off the hook b) dished some revenge dirt on Cady? A few hours, days, weeks? I couldn't write off a lodger on expenses, or keep her going on vol-au-vents smuggled back from junkets.

When I rejoined her, prepared to disconnect my brain and watch TV until I fell asleep – my ideal wind-down routine on a night off – Stacey seemed eager to speak but somehow too shy to start. It wasn't until I stood up to go to bed that she came to life.

"There is s-s-something I need to ask you," she stammered.

Ask me? I was hoping she would tell me something.

"A favour. Could you collect some stuff for me? I would go myself but... It's stuff I really need..."

There was no way I was knocking on Cady Stone's door in the middle of the night to ask for a bag of knickers. She knew who I was and what I wanted and if she realised I was behind Stacey's surreptitious storytelling I would be hobbling to my next premiere and liquidizing appetizers.

"I don't know, it's really late and I am tired and she will probably be asleep by the time I get there and..."

Stacey looked puzzled – the most expressive I had seen her all day.

"It's open 24 hours a day, you just need the code for the front gate."

Really? Was that Cady's door policy?

"Where do you want me to go?"

"A storage locker in Chalk Farm, it isn't far from..."

Cady's. But she didn't say it and I didn't finish the sentence for her.

I didn't have to go and I certainly didn't want to, but although Stacey didn't seem to be holding me responsible for whatever made her jump in the river, I still felt terrible about it all. So I donned the PJs and overcoat once more. (Secretly, I enjoyed pretending to be Indiana Jones when ducking under the massive roller door, having looked around furtively before tapping in the four-digit code.)

The locker was a disappointment; just an A4 envelope and a shoebox of old C60s. My car stereo had been liberated over the last bank-holiday weekend but even that hadn't played tapes. I was fairly sure I didn't even have a tape deck in the flat – I switched to solid-state Dictaphones you can plug directly into computers years ago, meaning you can easily dump and duplicate recordings: audio insurance policies.

Predictably, Stacey was asleep when I got back, so I dumped her stuff by the side of the sofa, and went to bed myself. I didn't disturb her in the morning or call her during the day, so we didn't speak until I got home, having forsaken the usual Friday-night drinks for once. So, like a dog wanting a walk, she was more than ready for my return.

The contents of the envelope were now neatly laid out on the coffee table, like I had walked into a surprise presentation.

"Should I take notes?" I asked, as I dumped my bag and undid my shoes.

"No, not notes." She sounded self-assured, like her old self. "I just want you to record what I am going to tell you."

Under the pretence of finding AAA batteries, I faffed about in the kitchen as long as I could – this was supposed to be the weekend, not overtime – returning to the lounge with a bottle and, begrudgingly, two glasses.

Stacey took a whistle-wetting sip, then held out a hand for the recorder, a silver voice-activated one not much bigger than a cigarette lighter that could record for up to eight hours – dear lord, no!

When the red recording light was lit, she began.

"I know everyone thinks I am a nobody..."

My wine went down the wrong way.

"...And maybe I was, for a while. I just knew somebodies. But I have proof that I am actually very important indeed."

I worried I had taken her from hospital too soon – was this a head-injury talking?

"My adoptive parents had a child that died."

Adoptive? Stacey started to make sense. Like many of the celebrities I have met, pursued or been pestered by, she had a vast emotional vacuum inside that nothing could fill, not even fame. And I could see how she and Cady could have bonded over being adopted – an unofficial part of Ms Stone's biography.

"I don't think they ever got over it, really – certainly not my mum. I think that is why she was never very loving; she didn't want to get all attached and hurt if anything happened to me, so she sent me to boarding school instead. Why adopt me, then, right?"

Why indeed?

"Dad was a diplomat, or something like that, and so they were abroad when she gave birth. I don't know if it was stillborn or premature or what, but it died."

'It'. Such empathy!

"And rather than go home to London and have to tell everyone what had happened, they stayed in Marrakech, in Morocco..."

Did she think I was an idiot?

"...because no-one knew them there. Only my mum made friends with this American girl. She lived near the Medina – the ancient part of the city..."

'I'VE BEEN!' I wanted to scream.

"My mum didn't have any other local friends and it cost a lot to call the UK and letters took forever, so they started to hang out together. And that is how she met me."

"You were... the American girl's daughter?"

She nodded, regally, as if I could now see her lineage, stretching back into the past like a bejewelled Bayeux tapestry, then rattled on, as if she was pitching her biopic.

"So when my American mum died, it gave my dad an idea: The Omen."

"He wrote The Omen? He is, what is his name? David something?"

Stacey looked at me with what would be pity, if her paralysed brows allowed it.

"No, of course not. He had seen the film and it got him thinking..."

That you were the Devil's child?

"...That they could pass me off as their daughter."

As one does. Sorry, I meant to say: What?

"If anyone asked, they said everything was fine. They hadn't got around to telling anyone what had happened, and they weren't due back in London for ages, so no worries if I looked too young or small."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing – I hoped the recorder was working.

"So I am brought up thinking they're my parents, not knowing or remembering any different, then one day I find this."

She passes me an official-looking form in Arabic, with an English translation paperclipped to it, headed 'CORONER'S REPORT'.

It said a white female in her early 20s had been found dead in August 1976. Her body showed signs of long-term drug use but it was impossible to tell whether drugs had directly contributed to her demise. Cause of death was an inconclusive 'heart attack'.

"This is your birth mother?"

Stacey nodded. "Read the bit at the bottom."

In the 'Additional Notes' section, it said the pelvis had "parturition pits, indicating the deceased woman had given birth."

"So the authorities knew she had a baby but didn't investigate where it, where you were? How strange."

"Very strange – and that's not all."

The handwriting on the original document was odd, presumably an Arabic hand not used to writing in English, but, somehow, someone had deciphered the name scrawl.

I have developed a pretty impenetrable poker face through my line of work. If you betray your interest when someone lets slip a confidence during a casual chat, you will never get the whole story, so I remain impassive even when infidelities, abortions and procedures crop up. But remaining stoic after Stacey's revelation was like trying to pretend you've not won the Lottery.

"So you're a..."

That regal nod returned. "I'm the last living heir."

"Only..."

"No-one knows I am alive."

The ill-fated heiress in question had dropped off the map in the mid-'70s and everyone assumed she had 'gone Getty' and ended up drug-deranged in an expensive, discrete asylum somewhere.

"This is huge," I said, tapping the coroner's report. "They still do anniversary shows about her disappearance, so to find proof that she died..."

"She disappeared? In Morocco?"

"No, LA. You know all this?" How could she not? It's like being aware JFK existed but remaining oblivious to his assassination.

Stacey shook her head.

I pointed out the vast laptop lying under the sofa and stopped the recording while Stacey Googled her long-lost/dead mother – how had she not done all this before? I idly imagined walking into the newsroom meeting on Monday morning, passing round copies of the coroner's report and asking how many pages they would give it, or did they think I should go straight to Vanity Fair? They would sneer at first, as was tradition, then look closely and realise what it meant. 'There is more where that came from – living proof, you might say...' I would add as they clamoured for more information. 'All in good time,' I would tease, 'there might be a book in this for me...'

Of course – the best way to do this was a book. I could get an article into the paper straight away, but then everyone would be onto it. Sure, I might get an award out of it, but awards don't buy two-bedroom flats, they are just bookends in bedsits. A book meant we could do the whole story, Stacey and her parents and the fortune and all, and sell excerpts. No-one else could jump on the story then because the work would all be done, they couldn't find out anything I wouldn't already have, the book would be a bestseller – and I would be out of the grimy 'Diary' ghetto for good.

"A book," I announced to Stacey. "We have to do this as a book. It's the best way, it means we, you remain the author of your own story. It will do amazingly well in America and we can find out everything we need to without anyone else getting a sniff."

Without looking up from the laptop, she said, "I can't write. You are a writer. If I could write, I would do it myself."

"You don't have to write. No-one famous writes anything themselves. All those 'autobiographies' and columns, they are dictated. All you have to do is sit here and talk and I'll... transcribe it." Ugh, I shuddered at the thought – worst part of the job.

I mean, what could be easier? 'You know how you like talking about yourself? Well keep doing it and people will pay to see it all written down and spelt right.'

"How long will that take?"

"How quickly can you talk? It just needs to be juicy. You need to tell me everything. About you, your mother..." – I lowered my voice – "...Cady..."

She scrunched up her backlight-blue face for a few seconds' thinking time.

"Fine."

"Good. But look – you have had a bad week. If we are going to do this, and make a good job of it, we need to be fighting fit. So how about I take some holiday – I've got loads owing – and we go away somewhere quiet for a week and really go for it, get it all recorded, then I'll bash it into shape and we will start shopping it around?"

"I am okay, I can carry on now."

"You're not okay. You look dreadful..."

Some people will only slow down if they think it's affecting their looks.

"...And if you're not at your best when we start, you might burn out before we have got it all down and we will never finish it. I don't want you having a breakdown."

Stacey either knew I was right or really was too tired to protest. So we had a well-earned lazy weekend of R&R (mainly Ribena and Revels) and while I didn't waltz into the Monday-morning meeting with an exclusive, I did walk out with a week's holiday signed off. I booked a cheap cottage in the Lakes and train tickets, and the next day we were off, sitting in First Class, and sneering at bikini pictures in the weeklies.

(0 comments)

*****

_Daily Mirror_ , THURSDAY 07.10.2010

_SHH!_ Uh oh – have our downmarket rival's 'exclusive extracts' been scooped? So far, the must-read online exposé hasn't named names, but we hear it's just a matter of time until a certain outspoken starlet finds she has nothing more to say, no more ace to play...

Thursday, October 7, 2010 _THE SUN_

_The book everyone's talking about is back, and it's more explosive than ever! In today's exclusive extract,_ Stacey Blyth _discovers her 'real' name, and plans a trip back in time..._

'DEAR ME, BELOVED'

Chiara's flat is _well_ flash – I wouldn't waste time in rehab if I could hang out here instead, no way.

She _must_ be mental.

So she wanders off to find this dictionary and I flick channels and order pizza and get comfy. And when the pizza comes I've almost forgotten all about the papers and my inheritance and everything until Chiara finally comes back, all animated.

'So, you know we've got a will, an adoption form and a death certificate, yeah?'

My mouth's busy eating so I don't answer.

'And the same name is on all three: one woman made the will and died and had her daughter adopted. Well, that isn't the only name that comes up again and again.'

I swallow and reply this time: 'No, the daughter too.' Don't miss _me_ out!

Chiara shakes her head – 'Apart from her, _obviously_ she's mentioned.'

I don't know, do I?

Then Chiara looks like she's about to do a Poirot.

'The couple who adopted the daughter' – my parents – 'also witnessed the will.'

_So_? I shrug and reach for another piece of pizza.

'Don't you see what this maybe means?'

I shake my head.

'I think they might have _murdered her_!'

I totally start to choke on the mozzarella.

'What are you on? Did you leave the clinic too soon?'

Chiara looks insulted. 'I think it's a possibility...'

Like I said, I'm not close to my parents, we've got nothing in common, but no way am I letting anyone call them murderers. Not that Chiara knows my connection, so I tone it down a bit – and don't hit her.

'That's a pretty extreme explanation, isn't it? Like, maybe, they were just good friends? They witnessed the will as a favour, and looked after her kid when she died?'

Chiara slumps down, like she's solved some ancient mystery only she hasn't.

'Maybe' she says, all grumpy.

So we both calm down and eat and watch TV and, when she's wiped all the orange grease off her fingers, Chiara starts going over the papers again.

And when she's reading them, sitting opposite me, I see there's something on the back of one of the sheets.

'What's that,' I go, 'on the back?'

And she turns the paper over and I see it's the will she'd been reading and she doesn't say anything but her eyes light up again like when she was first telling me what they said and I know I've found something she'd missed and I feel pretty smart.

'So, what is it?'

'It's an invite', says Chiara, 'to a party.'

Is that all? Big whoop.

'Oh well.'

'No, no,' she goes, 'a party in Marrakech. At the Mamounia.'

'What's that,' I go, 'like, a mountain?'

And Chiara doesn't laugh, she looks a bit annoyed.

'It's a hotel. This old luxury hotel in Marrakech.'

And as she says it, I start to picture it. Like, gardens and pink walls and pools and tiles and it's like I've _been_ , only I'd never even _heard_ of it before, _had_ I?

I know, I just _know_ , that it's important somehow, so I change seats and sit down next to Chiara on the L-shaped sofa combination.

'What does it say, then? Translate it for me.'

And she goes, 'Read it yourself – it's in English.'

So I do; it's an invite to a 1975 Halloween party, all printed apart from down the bottom, where someone's scrawled 'Suki from the Souk' a few times in crap writing.

'What does _that_ mean?' I ask.

Chiara does a f***-knows face. 'Maybe it's who the invite was sent to? Someone called Suki who lived in the Souk – the market in Marrakech.'

I don't think so. 'You'd write that on the envelope, wouldn't you? Not inside.'

Another bit of brilliant deduction from me, there.

'Yeah, you would. Odd. Like it's odd they've typed the will on the back.'

Recycling?

I vaguely gesture at the pizza box, then take the last slice as Chiara thinks.

Then she goes, all assertive, 'I think it's symbolic.'

'Of?' I manage to say, mouth full.

'Of... of... I don't know, of some significant event. Maybe... the baby was conceived after the party? So the mother typed the will on the back?'

So I'm about to go, 'No, my birthday's not in July, _genius_ ,' then I remember _she doesn't know I'm the heiress, does she_ , so I think about telling her for a minute then think, _No, I'm going to pick my moment_ , so instead I just go, 'Or...?'

'Or? Or, that's the night she met the father, although if she's given birth and died by the next summer then they'd have had to work fast, so that's basically the same thing.'

'Any other theories?' I ask.

She looks at the ceiling and I study her nostrils and wonder if she's had work done and decide not, then she says, 'Or maybe it's just when she met the people who'd adopt her daughter? That works too. The witnesses. What do you think?'

I've eaten so much I can't think about anything but being sick, quickly, before I burst – I'm sweating cheese grease – so I just nod very gently.

So now, Chiara thinks she's solved another puzzle and she's all excited again. And the more she moves, the ill-er I feel, so I have to go to the loo and relieve myself of some of the pizza and then I feel much better so I come back and gee her on when she says, 'We should do a timeline, don't you think?'

Definitely.

She's given up on the idea of me being her secretary, lucky for her, so I just watch while she writes it all down.

'So', she goes, 'the earliest date we have is Halloween, yes? So we start there, Halloween 1975, October 31. And these other documents, the latest one, the adoption form, are from August. They've written that in English – the Islamic calendar is different.'

Like, _This isn't school_. Get on with it.

'So we've got a... ten-month window. So the mother could have got pregnant at the party, but if she died as a result of some childbirth complication her will wouldn't really be valid, being "of infirm body"' – I'm yawning at this point – 'so I think she probably gave birth earlier and then made the will, maybe because she didn't think she was well? Then died. Then her daughter was adopted.'

I don't see how writing things down makes anything any clearer – or more interesting – but Chiara seems pleased with it all. Bor-ing.

So then she goes, 'Shame we can't read the names, or I'd add them in.'

And I think, _Well I know three of them, pass it here_ , only obviously I don't say anything.

'The only one I can make out is the baby's name, look.'

She hands me the adoption paper and I recognise the parents' names straight away, but they're written in really shabby handwriting so fair enough she can't read them. And then I see 'my' name and it's easy because it's written in capitals and it's only three letters long: AMY.

('Stacey' is really my _stage name_ , you see. There's already one famous Amy around, so I swapped it for something else – don't want to be confused with Wino, do I? So anyway, there's no need to go, 'Oh what a coincidence, she's called Stacey too!' yet. Relief.)

And Chiara goes all sad and says 'Poor baby Amy...' and I try not to laugh. I mean, I'm fine. I've got the best of both worlds – living parents and an inheritance.

Then she gets this look and pulls a laptop out from under the sofa and goes online and types in 'baby names'. And I think, _Is this making her broody? Weirdo_.

But she types in 'Amy' instead, and it says it's Latin and it means 'beloved'. Someone told me your name turns you into a certain sort of person, like if you've got a common name you'll be common and so on, so I'm thinking my name meant I'd be popular and famous and maybe there _is_ some truth to the theory.

Then Chiara searches for other names that mean beloved and I don't know why but I suppose she's just bored or something, then guess what comes up?

Suki.

Suki means the same thing as Amy.

She's grinning when she goes, 'Do you realise what this means?'

No. I go, 'What do _you_ think it means?', turning it around on her.

'I think the mother was trying out baby names on that invite, she was already pregnant. And maybe she told the couple that night and they bonded and that's why they adopted the baby and the father didn't keep it and... '

_Father_? I hadn't even thought about the father, my father. Where was he?

Maybe my mum didn't know... _what a tart_! Better nip this in the bud.

'Brilliant!' I shout. 'I think you're right. She's pregnant at this party, she tells her new friends, they're all close so when she dies they adopt the baby. Brilliant.'

No mention of the babydaddy. Whoever he may be.

Chiara seems to suddenly realise that a) it's late now and b) I've finished the pizza, so she puts the papers away and goes to get herself something else from the freezer while I channel-hop. Only I've not got very far when I get to this entertainment-news channel where all these actresses are lining up on a red carpet outside a very familiar-looking building. It's not in London, I'd know it immediately, and it doesn't look like it's in Hollywood either. For some reason, I can't flick past it.

Then Chiara walks in with some oven chips and goes ' _No way_!'

I go 'What?' and eye up her plate; she goes 'That's an incredible coincidence...'

Is it?

'Do you know where that is?' she asks me.

And I have a proper look, but it's hard to make out much with all the flashes going off – welcome to my world – apart from the potted plants and tiles and pink walls...

'It's the Mamounia hotel,' Chiara says just as I'm thinking/remembering it.

So we sit and watch as the shipped-in A-listers float about in floor-length dresses, because of custom, and it looks well nice. Really luxurious.

Chiara's not eating, so I go to nick a chip then she says, 'We should go.'

_Out_? I love a party, me, but it's been a long day and I can't be arsed to go Up West now, not without a good long grooming session – and she's only got one bathroom.

But she points at the TV and goes, 'To the _Mamounia_. We should go. Like we're detectives. _Inheritance_ detectives!'

_We_? I haven't got bus fare, have I, let alone a passport, but she gives me this look that says she can sort things like that out, no worries, and looking at her soft furnishings I believe her. She obviously doesn't want for much.

So she puts her plate down and picks up a phone and calls someone who answers quickly – when you're rich and/or famous, your calls always get answered, see? – and she's booking flights and making arrangements for someone to take me to Victoria first thing 'as a special favour' and sorting out a room at the Mamounia and in minutes, literally just a couple of minutes, we're all sorted. Pretty efficient – I need hours to get ready to go clubbing, she's sorted us out with a holiday in no time.

So she's a bit smug when she rings off but I let it pass, then she sees I've eaten all her chips and I think she's mainly angry because I can eat what I like and not put on any weight while she's on the heavy side, if I'm being kind.

But she doesn't say anything, just 'Best pack'.

So she goes off to her room and I wonder how many days I can realistically last in the season-before-last Juicy Couture tracksuit they gave me at the clinic, when she shouts, 'Want to pick out some stuff?'

And of course it's all too big... but I'm not a bitch so I say 'Yes'.

_IN TOMORROW'S PAPER_ : 'The last thing I want to see is those bloody awful masks...'

*****

http://callmechiara.blogspot.com/

Fancy-dress Fantasy

Posted by Chiara on October 07, 2010

Predictably, our first session didn't go well. Stacey had cotton-wool 'memories' at best, insisting her mother was a saintly apparition rather than a real woman with a most-likely fatal drug addiction. So we agreed to try again after lunch; in the meantime, Stacey would retire to her room and scrutinize the papers she brought with her for clues, and I would do some background research on the mother that never was.

What I managed to learn before lunch was this: Stacey's mother had a barebones Wikipedia page – and terrible timing.

In mid-September 1975, she 'disappeared'. Her apartment was left in disarray, the door kicked in, and an unmarked van was seen squealing away from the scene; onlookers aware of her lineage feared the worst. When reporters managed to contact her well-guarded mother, the grand dame quipped, "My god, the Gettys did this years ago – how gauche!" in reference to John Paul III's 1973 kidnap. Perhaps believing her daughter was crying out for attention, or cash, rather than weeping for mercy from mercenaries, she refused to pose for pictures or supply any snaps of her only child to aid rescue efforts. And then, before ransom demands were issued, the unimaginable happened.

Patty Hearst was arrested.

As presses prepared to roll on the story, news of the FBI's successful raid on a San Francisco apartment filtered through. After 20 months on the run, Patty Hearst – who was now calling herself Tania – had been apprehended, and faced bank-robbery charges.

So Stacey's mother's absence/abduction became but a bitchy blind item in that day's gossip columns – "Which aging Oscar nominee's daughter seems to be auditioning for a part in the Patty Hearst biopic? She's gone AWOL but her mother is not worried, dismissing the disappearance as 'gauche'..."

She was never seen in the US again and, with Hearst's upcoming trial all anyone could talk about, no-one really noticed. Her social profile was so low she might as well have been born poor, and the LAPD didn't deem her disappearance a criminal matter, so the investigation ended before anyone realised it had even been opened. A day earlier and she might have at least been a sidebar to Patty Hearst's capture but, on September 18th, she was instantly obsolete.

The fascinating thing was, none of the news reports I read knew she wasn't alive. Every ten years, someone, somewhere would fill a page about her disappearance and wonder about her whereabouts, but no-one ever considered that she had died. Instead, they hypothesized that she had eloped with someone rich and was the head of an obscure European family now, riding polo ponies and entertaining visiting heads of state. Not that she had wheezed her last in Marrakech within a year.

While wondering whether Stacey's mother was pregnant before her 'kidnap', I noisily prepared pasta and pesto, the clanking a sign to Stacey to join me at the table. We ate in silence and I started the recorder going before she'd finished her last mouthful.

"So, what do you know about your mother now, what have you read?" I asked.

"Not much," she said, her mouth full of fusilli.

"There must be something?"

She thought as she masticated: out loud.

"There was something from a hotel, the Mountain or Mamounia or something like that, in Marrakech, an invite to an event."

"When, do you remember?"

"1975, I think. It was for a Halloween party."

"An invite sent to your mother, that's a good start."

"And my dad."

Her father? She knew who her father was? Why had she been holding all this back from me – what was she playing at?

"I didn't think you knew who your father was?"

"What? My adoptive dad. And my adoptive mum. The invite was sent to them. But they might have met my birth mother there, right?"

At some point between September 1975 and August 1976, Stacey's mother had been pregnant and given birth. She might have given birth prematurely – not unlikely if she was malnourished and addicted – so that could shorten the gestation period but she couldn't have been more than three or four months along when she disappeared, otherwise people would have noticed. If she was four months along, she could have given birth in January, a month or so early, and Stacey would have been six or seven months when her mother died.

Too young to remember anything about her; no wonder we were getting nowhere.

"Your mother would have been missing for about six weeks by Halloween 1975, so if she attended that party, it was the first sighting of her since her disappearance," I said, "but if the dress code was fancy dress, I suppose no-one realised."

"So..." Stacey started to speak before she had fully formed the sentence in her mind, like she was hoping the right words fell out, "we have got an exclusive, then? No-one has seen my American mum since September 1975 but we know she was in Marrakech at Halloween. That's pretty big news, right?"

I nodded. "It would be massive if we had photos to prove it..."

Through work, I had logins to a good few online picture agencies, so I pried my laptop open once more and ran a search for 'Mamounia'.

On the first site alone, around 500 images were instantly listed – but there was nothing when 'Halloween' or 'Hallowe'en' was added, or the date-range of October 1975 to August 1976. Pages and pages of beautiful deep blue pools, illuminated deco arches and handcrafted mosaics, yes, but smoking-gun images linking a diplomat and his wife to the disappearing daughter, no.

I tried 'Mamounia' on all the other sites I had access to, Google images too, and was just about to search for Stacey's mother by name, when an email alert popped up in the corner of the screen, painfully slowly.

The subject matter said, 'Mamounia, eh?'

My heart stopped.

It was from the paper's Picture Editor.

'I don't mind you using the logins,' she wrote, 'but you do know everything you search for comes up in my account window, right? Don't go looking for anything you don't want me – or anyone else here – to know about.'

Shit.

'But if it's vintage Mamounia pics you're after,' she continued, 'I might be able to help. Dad was a society snapper for a bit in the '70s, between movies,' – he was a director, I think, TV mainly – 'so he might have something stashed away. Let me know what you are looking for and I'll see what I can do. Am seeing the Olds tonight, so...'

Could I trust her? Did I have a choice?

'You rumbled me!' I wrote back. 'A friend is working on a photobook about the most decadent parties of all time, and she has heard the Mamounia in Marrakech held some pretty amazing fancy-dress parties for Halloween in the '70s. She is especially interested a Halloween one in 1975...' – why, why? – '...because she thinks it might be when she was conceived!'

Surely that was enough to pique interest?

I sent the email and logged out of all the picture library sites. I didn't want to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to my exclusive, and let idle pub chat scupper the book. I had to go off-radar and rely on what Stacey could remember, what I could scurry up online for free and whatever my picture editor pal could find in her Dad's filing cabinets.

Another email: 'Her and me both – I wonder if she is my half-sister ;) ' read the response. 'Will send scans of anything interesting. Happy Swallows & Amazons xx'

It seemed the story was convincing enough and while I might be rapped on the knuckles for using a company login, it wouldn't see me sacked. They might expect first dibs on the party book, in case we uncovered anything interesting, and if so I would give them an old mobile number I knew wouldn't be answered in work hours and shrug it off. "Well, you know how French publishers are..." As if we did.

So I was back to bog-standard search engines. Everything I could find was just a slightly reworded version of the Wikipedia entry, or the same text entirely. No sightings since September '75, only a few photos beforehand. Stacey's mother had been at university at the time but, in an era before Facebook, she had managed to keep a low profile. Few people in her tutorials remembered her, she was so quiet, and none of them knew whose daughter she was. Before closing the enquiry, the police had done some cursory questioning of her campus contemporaries; everyone said it would be highly unlikely she would just take off, being so bookish, and could think of no reason for her to be kidnapped. When one was provided, the response was a universal: "What, her?"

With nothing new to go on, I could hardly complain when Stacey went and sat in front of the TV rather than watch me tap idly at the laptop. She flicked through Freeview until a movie channel met with approval. A Technicolor Doris Day and James Stewart were playing happy families, sitting on the back seat of a bus, back-projected scenery not adding to the realism. But perhaps escapism was what we needed – we weren't getting very far with the facts.

Maybe Stacey had the right idea. I made myself a drink and sat down next to her just as the shot changed, to the outside of the bus. 'CASABLANCA – MARRAKECH' was handpainted down the side in block-capital English, followed by the Arabic version.

If this struck Stacey as strange, it didn't show.

I pointed at the screen.

"The Man Who Knew Too Much," she said, with the authority of someone who has just read it off the EPG.

Maybe I was seeing signs everywhere – it probably wasn't even filmed in Morocco (the on-board sequence certainly wasn't). But when the coach broached the city walls, honking its way through a crowd of locals like a big imperialist bully, it all looked very authentic.

"Do you recognise it?" I asked Stacey.

"Er, as I haven't seen it before, no," she snapped.

"Not the movie – Marrakech!"

She frowned. "It's not really Marrakech, you know, it's a studio, stupid."

But as the scene changed to the marketplace of Djemaa el Fna, with the minaret of the Koutoubia Mosque rising in the background, she shut up. Either the movie had a budget as big as Cleopatra, or...

"It's Marrakech!"

Stacey was now rapt, her eyes scanning the screen.

We watched in silence as the bus skirted the square, sharing the disappointment as Doris and Jimmy disembarked in front of more back projections.

"Maybe the Marrakech stuff is second-unit footage, you know, they get another crew to shoot it and edit it in around the action for the right feel," I suggested, sadly.

Then the three-strong McKenna clan got into a carriage that was actually standing in Djemaa el Fna before making its way down real roads, out of the Medina and up to...

"The Mamounia!"

I knew it even before the camera watching the carriage pivoted around to the front of the building, the bland frontage with the French flag flying above it, the words 'HOTEL DE LA MAMOUNIA' picked out in individual white metal letters against the pink stucco wall. (I had stayed there to do some travel puff-piece a year or two back.)

Stacey seemed to be straining to remember something.

"There was a story," she started, "about how my dad saw this woman at a party and thought she was dressed as Marlene Dietrich?" – she said the name like a question, as if checking that such a person ever existed – "but really it was someone else."

I watched realisation slowly ripple across her face.

"The party was in Marrakech! And yes, he thought this woman he met was dressed as Marlene Dietrich."

Hang on...

"Dressed as? She was 'dressed as' someone, not just dressed like someone?"

The film went to an ad break and Stacey looked straight at me.

"It must have been a fancy-dress party."

"So, your father went to a party and met a woman he thought was dressed as Marlene Dietrich... there must be more, it's not much of an anecdote otherwise – think!"

"What did she say, what did she say?" Stacey asked herself, squeezing her cheeks like stress toys.

Her mother must have told her the story, then; she would have been there too.

"I remember... He called her 'the lady in the lake'.

"Is that some sort of Camelot reference?" I pondered. "Maybe she had some sort of medieval costume on – didn't Dietrich play Joan of Arc? Or was that Garbo?"

Stacey gave me an easily deciphered 'How the fuck should I know?' look.

And then something clicked.

"What if she was dressed as your grandmother?"

"My grandmother?"

"The Lady in the Lake."

Stacey's face lost all expression.

"She was an actress, in the '30s and '40s. She was younger than Dietrich but they styled her the same way, so your father might have thought it was intentional."

"Wouldn't I have heard of her?"

"I think she was big at the time but she married money and retired... Strange behaviour, though, to dress up as the mother who was so blasé about her disappearance."

"Not if it's a Halloween party," snorted Stacey. "Maybe she was going as the ghost of her mum's career!"

I had to laugh.

"And your father was the only person who got the reference, that was how they became friends and did the noble thing..." – When she died, I said in my head. "Well, we know enough to get started now. We can write what we like so long as it's not libellous and no-one knows it's not wholly true."

"Knock yourself out," said Stacey, turning back to the TV as the ads ended.

So I sat down with the laptop and started to write her possible life story:

'In the weeks since she had left America, she had changed a great deal. Her awkward relationship with her mother had ended, giving her a new-found sense of independence. Within her, a baby gestated – an heir to the oil millions her mother had married into three decades earlier. She had first thought the morning sickness was simple anxiety, at being snatched from her home, her plight ignored by her mother, and taken abroad against her will. But as she settled into her new surroundings, the sun of North Africa somehow familiar after a childhood spent in southern California, she felt calm, perhaps for the first time. There were no rows waiting to happen, she wasn't blamed for every minor misfortune that occurred; she simply existed. Finally, as a symbol of her new life – and the new life growing within her, she changed her hair. That centre-parted brown mane was chopped off to a jaw-length pageboy style, lightening a little each day as she basked in the Moroccan sun. If she realised it was a homage to her mother's heyday, she would have been shocked; she felt no affinity to that faded star, whose only companions were dust-encrusted reels of her forgotten performances and tattered posters with her name low on the cast list. But as she pondered a costume for the Halloween party at Marrakech's most luxurious hotel, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and laughed. Revenge was revenge, even if the intended recipient was 6,000 miles away and oblivious to everyone but herself.

She was still in her first trimester, and barely showing, but she would take attention off her dress (and the bump beneath) with her hair and make-up – waves in her blonde-ing bob and pitch-black eyeliner to match starkly outlined red lips. She powdered down her sun-kissed skin – the plan was to look positively ghoulish. She wanted everyone's abiding memory of her mother to be as a spectre of her former self, a Christmas Past of a once-glittering career. Little did she know, as she sat before the vintage foxed mirror in her riad, she was also determining the appearance of her own epitaph that evening.

As stated on the invitations, hand-delivered to a select group of local dignitaries and esteemed ex-pats, the party began with a drinks reception at 7pm in the ballroom of the Mamounia, the exclusive Moorish hotel then celebrating 50 years in existence, set in exquisite gardens several hundred years old. In keeping with Islamic law, the artwork adorning the Art Deco walls was non-figurative but the geometric designs were as beautiful as any depiction of a handsome human: stars perforating doors, finely wrought wooden screens, exactingly laid tiled floors and walls, it was a hymn to local craftsmen.

Her costume harked back to the early days of the establishment, when stars such as Marlene Dietrich stayed at the hotel's luxurious suites whilst filming in Marrakech itself and beyond. Indeed, it was Dietrich's performance in long-term collaborator Josef von Sternberg's Morocco that would lead to an important, essential meeting that evening. A meeting that would ensure the continuation of her bloodline – even though no-one would realise for decades to come.

Dietrich and von Sternberg had filmed part of their 1930 romantic drama at the hotel itself, so to any vintage-movie enthusiasts present, her appearance would surely bring the film to mind. And indeed it did, for one young diplomat, in attendance with his wife. The ballroom could accommodate as many as 400 people but that evening the capacity was intentionally kept to an intimate 80, not counting the discrete but ever-present phalanx of attentive staff. It meant everyone invited could meet and spend time with all the guests, but after she caught his eye, the diplomat had eyes for no-one else.

He and his wife made their way around the perimeter of the room, trying to find seats where they could sit out the socialising. Their attendance at the function was an obligation of his job, but neither felt festive. It was only weeks since they'd experienced the heartbreaking loss of their first child, and they were yet to break the news to family and friends back in London, using unreliable local post and telephone operators as an excuse to keep quiet. Did they think everyone would eventually forget, if they stayed away long enough? Would they, if they kept moving from country to country? If indeed they agonised over their options, they would soon be relieved, as fate was to hand them an answer, of sorts.

Somehow, they saw a kindred spirit and surrendered the intention of keeping only their own company. "Marlene Dietrich?" he offered, as they both reached for drinks from the same platter at the same time; champagne for himself, freshly squeezed orange juice for the women. Her reaction would determine the destiny of all three, indeed all four of them. Had she reacted to the mistaken identity with a withering sigh and turned on her heel, their story would likely end there. But as fate smiled on the trio/quartet, she followed suit. "Close," she replied, indulgently. "Same sort of era but a much lesser star." The young diplomat looked to his wife, who smiled shyly but shared none of his enthusiasm for old movies, and scrunched up his face comically in thought. He glanced at the costume but could not attribute it to a specific movie. It was when his eyes moved to her face the answer became obvious. That lipline, those dark eyes, that hair... all could be crafted on any white woman of the right age, his wife even. But the dimples, the aquiline curve of the nose, the slightest suggestion of a cleft in the chin, these were the trademarks of only one actress he knew.

"The Lady in the Lake?" he asked, to the bemusement of his wife, who knew the garb was all wrong for anything from the Middle Ages – what was he thinking? And yet the girl smiled and nodded. "How did you know?" she asked, genuinely surprised. "I just knew," he replied. And in that moment, she did too.'

(7 comments)

*****

_Daily Mirror_ , FRIDAY 08.10.2010

_SHH!_ It looks like someone's after our jobs – the latest online exclusive-spoiler is one big blind item, leaving the naming'n'shaming game to everyone's favourite celebrity tattle-tale, but we still hear lawyers are trying to break the contract for the extracts...

Friday, October 8, 2010 _THE SUN_

_Accept no imitations! This is the only place to read about Stacey's Blyth's life, in extracts from her autobiography,_ Entitled _. Today, Marrakech brings back some painful memories._

'UNMASK-ERADE'

Someone has done some _major_ alterations to Marrakech since I left.

There's a McDonald's!

The whole way from the airport, it just looks like anywhere, only warmer. So shops, restaurants, palm trees, _maybe_ , but otherwise dead normal. _Not_ exotic.

All the stuff I dreamt about, or remembered or whatever, doesn't match. It's like I made it all up, or someone told me about it and missed out loads of important stuff.

So I'm in a bad mood, all slumped down in the back seat of the car, then Chiara goes, 'Koutoubia mosque!'

And I think, _Big deal, there are mosques in London_ , but I look towards where she's pointing and – _bang_! – it's the tower I imagined, it's real! And we get closer to the old part of the city and it's exactly what I remembered, this run-down walled town.

I'm sitting up now and all excited and then the car turns away and I'm like, _Where are we going – it was that way_ , so I'm looking back towards the market square but then we go round a corner and I'm about to lose my sh*t when I see the big pink walls and I shut up.

'This is the Mamounia,' says Chiara, opening her door.

And again, it's exactly what I imagined, all tiled with fancy wooden screens and things and finally I think, _Here I am. Home at last_. And I wonder if they'll recognise me but, to be fair, I've changed a bit over the past thirty-odd years, ha ha.

So Chiara goes to sign us in, only there's been some problem with the rooms and they're not ready. And she's all pathetic, like, 'Oh, don't worry, we can wait,' and I think, _No way am I having this_ , so I go 'That's not good enough.'

And Chiara glares at me but the man behind the desk apologises and goes on his computer for a bit and then says the suites are all booked but we can have a riad if we like. For all I know, that means "tent", and I'm not camping out, even though the gardens are well nice, if I remember rightly, but Chiara says, 'That would be wonderful' like he's granted her a wish or something, so we take that. And it turns out a riad is like a cottage with its own pool, so actually it's pretty amazing and not a tent, thank f***.

So we're taken to the riad across the gardens, and they're just like I remembered, it's amazing. Really green and lush and I want to run around them like I'm a... well, not a baby. Or a toddler. What comes after that, a _waddler_? Whatever that is.

Then – _get this_ – we get to the riad and _again_ , it's all like I remembered. All tiles and wood and cool and white and everything. And I really want to tell Chiara finally, to go, 'I grew up here – sorry I didn't mention it before but I wanted to check my facts,' but she's looking a bit knackered out from the early start and says she's going for a siesta before dinner. And I think, _They're not called "siestas" here,_ but I don't know what the Moroccan word for them is so I leave it.

So Chiara crashes out for a few hours and I flick channels and it's like, _This is one of the most exclusive hotels in the world and they've only got three English-language channels and two of them are business news – who wants that?_

So, later, we head off for dinner, via the library, me wearing some old wrap dress of Chiara's that I've tied as tight as I can but is still baggy, and she's in a bit of a strop and I think it's about me looking better in the dress than she ever did.

We get to the library and order drinks and when we're alone she goes, 'I can't believe how rude you were!'

Totally out of the blue.

'To who?'

'To _Hamid_!'

And I have no idea who she's talking about – maybe _she's_ having funny dreams.

But she goes, 'On reception, the _manager_.'

And it turns out she's stayed here a few times and he knows her and she's all embarrassed and I think, _He should be embarrassed if he couldn't get you a good room until_ I _said something, shouldn't he?_

I say, 'I'm not apologising for demanding good service – for what you're probably paying, you should be getting a palace, not wasting time waiting for them to polish up a poxy twin-bed.'

Then I worry that I've brought up money when I still haven't got any, and that this is the point when Chiara goes, 'How will you be paying me back, by the way?' but instead, she laughs and goes, 'You might be right. I should be more assertive. How very American of you. And the riad _is_ amazing. Fine.'

Phew.

So our drinks come but 'it'll be a while yet' for the table – what are they doing, building it? – so Chiara starts to look at the books on the shelves. She's _that_ bored. And I'm comparing my memories to the reality, aren't I, then Chiara goes, 'Look at this!'

And I'm about to go, 'Read it to me, I don't do books' when she goes, 'Party pictures – from _1975_!'

She had me at 'party pictures', really, I love anything like that, it's like homework for me, seeing how people stand and link arms and angle their faces and so on, but they're old so I imagine we do stuff better these days. Our teeth are nicer, for starters.

Then I remember the Halloween invite.

'No way, let's see!'

So we sit at this desk and go through the pages together, and it's all women in wafty clothes and men in suits – and even though all the pictures are in black and white you can tell they're all a bit hot and pink.

We get towards the last few pages and suddenly the style of the clothes totally changes – everyone's wearing costumes and masks and looking ridiculous.

My parents must be in here somewhere.

But we get called to dinner before we can find them.

'Can we take it with us?' I whisper to Chiara, who does bug eyes at me and goes 'It's not a _lending_ library. We'll have to come back.'

So we get to the restaurant, which is in another riad – which basically just means 'house with a pool' – and I order the first three courses I read but Chiara really umms and ahhs about it all, like it's not going to end up the same way.

And she's as bad when the food arrives, savouring every mouthful like she's a judge on a cooking programme. _I don't care what you_ think _, just_ eat _it._

I mean, seriously, every mouthful. She has this rubbish-looking couscous thing with tangerines in it or something, and it's so dull but she's all 'Oh, you have to taste this, it's so great'. So I do, I chomp down everything she offers me to help clear her plates quicker, but still she draws the whole meal out like she's about to be executed.

Don't tempt me.

Finally, _finally_ , she finishes her dessert and I'm all, 'Can we go now, back to the library?' and she looks at me like I'm insane and goes, 'Now? It's late, we'll go tomorrow', like, why do I care so much?

And maybe now is the time to confess... only the bill comes and they hand it to me to sign off and it's so huge – for what was basically some vegetables and mousse – that I can't speak and I push it to Chiara, and she signs it like it's nothing.

Is that how I'll be, if my mum was rich? We'll see.

So we're cutting across the gardens to our riad and I try one last time – _we can see the Library from here and the light's on and it's obviously empty so why not?_

And Chiara's too tired to refuse me, so we take a detour and dig the book out again and skip to where we were.

I almost don't want to turn the pages, in case we've already reached the last picture and they're just empty pages after that or, worse still, there are pictures but my parents aren't in them. But Chiara's yawning so I get a wriggle on.

'Such funny costumes,' she says, blinking to stay awake as she turns the page. 'Like this one, she looks like a '30s film star or something...'

Oh. My. God.

That's my mother.

Not the one dressed as an actress or whatever, the one _next_ to her. And on the other side was my father.

Only no-one but me would ever know – because of the masks.

I f***ing hated those horrible wooden goblin heads that hung in the hall.

But here they are and – _voila_! – so are my parents.

Then Chiara goes, 'Do you know who that is?'

And I think, _This is it, now's the time to tell her._

So I start to go, 'Well, yes, they're my...' only Chiara interrupts my big moment.

'That's Estella Dulac!' she squeaks. _Actually squeaks_ , she's that excited.

Estella Dulac?

Chiara keeps repeating the name to herself, like it's a question.

I go 'Who?' and she snaps out of it and looks at me like _I'm_ an idiot.

'The daughter of... she went _missing_? Around... around the time _this_ was...'

_Oh_ , thanks, _that's explained everything_.

'You must have seen a documentary about it?'

I shake my head and it turns into a yawn and then Chiara yawns and it's like a competition about whose jaw can open widest. (I win.)

I don't fancy dragging her back to the riad asleep so I quickly flick through the rest of the pages but that's it, that one pic. So... I _borrow_ it. Just for a while. Like, who else ever looks in those albums? No-one, I bet.

Chiara's literally nodding off, so I unpeel the photo and slip it inside my dress, then put the album back on the shelf and go ' _Bedtime_?' loudly.

Chiara talks all chewy, like she's drunk, 'Shorry – long day, yessh, bedtime.'

So we get back to the riad and Chiara's snoring before she's even through her bedroom door, so I see if any so-called documentaries about this Estella are magically on right now. But they're not. Just more boring business news. Who cares about oil?

So I go to bed too, and prop the picture of my parents and Estella Dulac up on the dressing table, only just as I'm getting into bed I think 'The last thing I want to see when I wake up is those bloody awful masks,' so instead I flop it face down and put a bottle of complementary body lotion on top but that doesn't stop them getting out, and all I dream about that night is being chased by the wooden goblins and Marrakech is long gone.

_IN MONDAY'S PAPER_ : 'So my mum is African? Maybe my dad was an albino...'

*****

http://callmechiara.blogspot.com/

Charade Unmasked

Posted by Chiara on October 08, 2010

"How do you know all this?"

Stacey turned from the laptop to me, her forehead straining to look confused.

"How do you know what they did, what they said? We've only just found out that they were even there – have you found something online?"

"Think of it as a 'non-fiction novel'," I suggested, "like Truman Capote. You have seen Breakfast At Tiffany's, yes?"

She nodded, though I suspected her expertise ended with a cheap repro poster.

"Well, Truman Capote wrote that, and then a few years later he wrote In Cold Blood, which was a novelisation of a real-life mass murder."

"What – and you think my mother was murdered now?"

"No, I don't, I'm just saying it's a legitimate way of writing about something that happened where we don't have a lot of information. Historians do it all the time."

"So none of this happened?"

"Who knows? Maybe it did. We know they went to a fancy-dress Halloween party and your mother was probably pregnant. The rest of it's just context, really. It's nothing we could get sued over, we're not making any allegations, just filling in blanks."

Stacey gurned, thinking physically, like a cartoon character.

"And the whole book is going to be like this, is it?"

"Not the whole book – we will just imagine the circumstances of your parents meeting, then move on to your actual life story."

She looked unhappy at having to share the billing.

"This needs to be a one-fell-swoop sort of thing," I went on, trying to convince her. "We need to own your mother's story as much as your own. Anything we leave out, some other writer will grab hold of and research and report and reap benefits from. This is your story and you deserve to be the person to tell it."

Via myself, of course.

"So?"

I didn't need her approval, if I was writing the book I would do so how I wanted; if she could write she would have scrawled it down herself. But having her blessing would make the whole process a lot easier. I could let her potter around, do the odd bit of research, watch some old movies in the hope something leapt out at her, and she could leave me in peace to hit my daily wordcount.

"Fine," said Stacey, her eyes glaring on the 'i' sound. "Get on with it then."

'Estella had not consciously been looking for a father for her child, but she also knew she could not raise it alone. The money she made from pawning her meagre jewellery would only last so long, and to get her child into an English school would cost a lot. She had fought with herself over contacting her mother, allowing her to know a grandchild was imminent (and would need feeding), but pride prevented her from picking up a pen or making the trip to the telegram office. She would fend for herself, for themselves, as long as she drew breath. But this man, this friendly, kind-faced man with his sad-eyed wife, he seemed to know her already, perhaps in a way no-one ever had. If he had correctly named her mother, did he know she was her daughter? And could he see her burgeoning belly?

"Not many people know Louise Dulac these days," Estella said. "No, I suppose they don't," replied the diplomat, "but old movies are a real passion for me. I... I shouldn't really admit this, but I have used my influence before to get hold of old reels, on the pretext that I am screening the movies for people much more important than myself." His wife looked surprised at the admission, but all three of them laughed, more at the idea such a cultural end could be considered an abuse of power than because it was daring.

"How did you come to know her work, did someone mention the resemblance?" he asked, innocently. "Do you really think we look alike?" teased Estella. "Oh yes, very much so. I think it's the dimples..." He cleared his throat and clutched his wife's hand, feeling himself to have crossed a line of impropriety. "Oh, people often say that," she replied, trying to reduce the colour in his cheeks through kindness.

"Is the dress original, vintage?" asked the wife, speaking – quietly – for the first time. Estella smiled indulgently; "I do hope it looks that way but, no, it was made for me by a woman in the Medina. She is a genius." The wife's eyes widened, inspecting the detail and the finish like someone who had worn couture enough times to know the signs. "It's amazing work, I had no idea there were such talented dressmakers so close by." She looked like she longed to say more, but did not quite know how. "I would be happy to introduce you, she loves to make western designs but doesn't often get the chance," said Estella. "If you turn up with a page from Vogue she can usually have a copy done by the end of the week." The wife's face shone, like a mirror suddenly tilted towards a well-lit window. And yet there was still a sadness, like something had taken a chunk of her happiness out and not only was it conspicuous by its absence, but the hole left behind could not be concealed from prying eyes. She was evidently bereft.

Now was not the time for Estella to ask about the source of such sadness, now was a time to consolidate a new friendship, to sow seed for future meetings, to make acquaintances with people her own age, who knew something of her world, to create a network that could support her when the baby came. Should she share her joyous news?

She didn't have to. She and the wife, who she had now learnt was called Hilary, took a break from the party to inspect (and use) the loos. "You can always tell the quality of a hotel by its toilets," Estella confided in a whisper en route. "If they have skimped on the stalls, don't book a suite!" As it happened, the bathrooms were immaculate marble, the fixtures highly polished and all in working order. "Book away!" giggled Hilary, as the two women placed their orange-filled flutes on the counter, before disappearing into cubicles for a minute or two. They continued their chat back at the counter, restraining stray hairs and wiping away tiny smears of liner and gloss from their eyes and lips. All was laughter as they made to return to the party – until Estella took a sip of her drink.

It wasn't her drink. The light and life was gone from her face as surely as if the liquid had been thrown forcefully at her. "This isn't... what is in this?" Hilary's shock became guilt as she took an exploratory swig from her glass. "I am so sorry, we must have picked up the wrong glasses," she fussed, taking Estella's glass from her. "What was in that?" asked the frightened girl. "Nothing," insisted Hilary. "It's just a screwdriver. Orange juice... and a little vodka. That's all." An inky black tear started to roll from the corner of one of Estella's eyes, discoloured by the kohl and mascara. Hilary took a linen hand-towel and stopped it from reaching and ruining the dress. "Are you allergic to alcohol?" she asked, confused by the extreme reaction to a cheeky measure or two of secret vodka. Estella shook her head, then smoothed down the front of her dress, pressing the fabric tightly against her stomach. "I am pregnant."

Hilary felt a confused rush of emotions, like several people all shouting different things at the same time inside her mind. Joy, for her new friend. Guilt, at having made her drink. Relief, that such a small amount could have done no harm. And sadness. Most of all sadness.

"That is wonderful news, congratulations! Here, have a seat." Hilary dragged an inlaid stool from the corner of the room up to the counter and helped Estella down on to it, as if she were full-term and about to give birth. "Don't worry; in England, pregnant women are advised that a couple of drinks a week don't do any harm. A mouthful won't make any difference, I am sure you'll be fine." Estella smiled back, weakly. "I am sure you're right, it's just that I haven't drunk a drop since I found out and it was so unexpected, it might as well have been poison..."

"This makes no sense," said Stacey, rudely reading over my shoulder.

"It's only a first draft," I explained. "It's a bit rough but I will polish it up."

"No, I mean it makes no sense that Estella would have that reaction to drink."

"Why not?" I replied. "Pregnant women are very sensitive to these things. Some, like my mum, refuse to take any sort of medication at all, just in case."

"That is exactly the point I am making," said Stacey. "My American mum took lots of 'medication', right? She was an addict. I can't see how a mouthful of vodka is going to upset her if she is shooting up on a daily basis."

I saw her point. That is the problem with making up someone's story, of course – actual facts tend to spoil things. But I liked the scene, it felt believable, and I didn't want to have to add in nasty track marks to my vision of the glowing-with-health Estella.

"Have you had a lot of health problems?" I asked Stacey.

"What has that got to do with anything?"

"Have you?"

"It's none of your business."

"Actually, it is. If your mother was addicted to heroin during her pregnancy, it would have affected you. Obviously you were a live birth and we can't know if you were premature; you don't look especially small to me, either. But if you have any birth marks or defects, any severe allergies, they could be a sign."

Stacey looked thoughtful, as if picturing herself rather than remembering.

"Nothing like that, no."

"Then maybe your mother wasn't addicted until afterwards. Maybe this" – I tapped the screen – "could have happened and could explain how your parents found out about the baby. It is possible, yes? That's all we are after. Possible."

"I suppose so," she conceded, sulkily. "So why did she get into drugs when she had a baby to look after – especially if, the way you tell it, she was so paranoid about harming it, me, that she wouldn't even drink alcohol?"

"I don't know," I said, turning back to my work. "I've not written that bit yet."

"I think I should get more input into all this – I mean, it's my story, not yours."

Stacey leant over the table, like a storm cloud threatening to rain on my parade.

"Sure, I think that is a great idea. But you couldn't remember much of your early childhood when we tried last time."

"I couldn't remember it? You've never been there! You're making it all up!"

I had been there, to Marrakech at least, I wanted to remind her, and it was all still pretty fresh in my mind, but now wasn't the time.

"I am expanding on what we know," I replied, as calmly as I could, "I'm not making things up. Your parents are real people, I haven't created them. The Mamounia is a real place, too. I am just helping them all make sense together. Feel free to try and do it yourself – it's harder than it looks. I don't just bang my hands on the keyboard and words come out in the right order, you know, there is some skill involved. But if you think you can do better, I can pack up and go home right now. Good luck to you."

I didn't get up from the table, I just waited for a response. And waited.

"I didn't say I want to write it myself," she said, as if trying to contain her anger, "I just want more input. I want it to read like I remember it, not how you imagine it."

"Fine. How do you remember it, then?"

"Obviously I wasn't born yet, so when you get to describing where they lived..."

Stacey was of the breed of people who desperately want to be involved in everything until they find out the work required, like a child begging to be picked for a team who then scuffs their shoes on the sidelines until the final whistle; 'I want to write it, I do... in a bit. Give me a shout, I am off for a snooze.'

"OK," I said, glad the kerfuffle had finished. "I will plough on and then, when we are at home with Estella and her newborn, you can come and add some colour."

So Stacey slunk back to the sofa, to catch the end of the Hitchcock, and I went back to the sumptuous Ladies' toilets at the Mamounia.

'Hilary's maternal instinct, recently awakened then so cruelly made redundant, returned to her in full force. She stroked Estella's forehead, careful not to disturb the painstakingly set waves framing her face. "If you are worried, I could arrange for you to see our doctor. He is excellent, ex-Harley Street. He attended to me when..." She wished she could suck those last five words back inside herself but Estella was far away, cradling her stomach and inhaling deeply. "How far along are you?" asked Hilary, having realised Estella was thinking only of the life within her at that moment. "Three months," she replied. "But I have only known for a week or two." Such ignorance was unimaginable to Hilary. "You've only just found out? But were there not signs? I mean, I have heard of women who have given birth on the toilet, not even knowing they were pregnant, but I have always thought they must be idiots. You are clearly very bright." Estella laughed. "Not bright enough to not be single and pregnant, 6,000 miles from home."

Hilary was used to meeting a mélange of accents at almost every social event she attended so she had not been surprised to hear Estella's American intonation. On first glance, she assumed she too was someone's wife – women were a rarity in this line of work, they tended to be appendages – so to hear she was single... why was she here? And now the surprise pregnancy... so many questions came to mind but she thought of only one she could ask and not sound either intrusive or judgmental.

"Have you thought of any names yet?" It was a question that looked ahead only to a healthy baby, thriving in the care of a doting mother, not to a wretched infant born to a drunkard – or worse, not born breathing at all. A pang almost winded her, but Estella had begun to speak and the gasp went unheard.

"Well... it's silly really, but in my mind it's definitely a girl. I can't imagine having a boy, I just can't. I'm not an especially girly girl myself – I used to have long hair but I have never been one for make-up and skirts – but I feel such an affinity with her, like she already understands me and I her, that I can't imagine I am carrying a boy. I just can't. So I haven't come up with any boys' names." Still shocked by the power of her memory to leave her reeling, Hilary forced out, "But you do have a girl's name?" Estella laughed again. "You will hate it, I am sure. But I think it fits." Hilary longed to grab back her adulterated glass and gulp down the vodka to steady herself, but it was out of reach and the action would be too telling; "Try me."

"I wander around the Medina a lot, window shopping without the windows. And the shopkeepers know me now so they don't hassle me to buy any more, they just let me look at the merchandise and people-watch instead. And I am down there so much now that it occurred to me that I might even end up giving birth there. So I thought... Suki. As in, born in the Souk. As in the market. It's ridiculous, I know, but..."

"I like it. I really do. It's thoughtful, it's fun, and 'Suki' is so unusual. Is it Japanese?" Hilary tried to keep speaking so there was no room for remembrance to fill the air around her. "I don't know... I suppose it does sound Oriental," replied Estella, who was herself again, insofar as Hilary knew her, anyway. "I should probably look it up before she is born, in case it means something dreadful!" She laughed and Hilary joined in, a little too late and a little too heartily. "Suki from the Souk!" she sang. "I don't like it, I love it. You must call her that. Suki from the Souk!" It became a mantra to her; as long as she said it, she drowned out all other noises, all other newborns.

The women linked arms and left the bathroom together. The diplomat was surprised they had taken so long, but they looked so merry and friendly when they returned that he did not give their conversation a second thought, simply providing them with fresh glasses of orange as they returned to his side. "I think I will have champagne this time," said Hilary, whispering to her husband, "we have something to celebrate." Estella nodded ever so slightly, and flattened out the front of her dress once more before raising a finger to her lips to denote secrecy.'

I looked up, to invite Stacey to read this latest section, to involve her in the process as she had requested, but she was asleep, as Doris Day's on-screen piano recital ended badly. For someone so intent on uncovering her ancestors and claiming her inheritance, spiritual and financial, she was going about it slowly. The family tree could have grown new branches by the time she woke up and got moving.

'The rest of the evening involved only smalltalk but Hilary knew she and Estella were linked now; they had shared a moment of great terror together, and come through it unscathed, stronger. Although she was sure the baby was fine, she insisted she would arrange a visit to Doctor Harris anyway, "to be on the safe side." "It's my gift to you... two," she said, as she staggered unsteadily towards the horse and trap laid on to take her and her husband back to their flat in the new town. "You are too kind," said Estella, "too kind." She was staying at the hotel, so she waved off the couple and returned to her room.

The journey home was short for the young couple, yet still scenic. At Hilary's intoxicated insistence, they took the road to the marketplace and circled, before turning up Avenue Mohammed V. Satisfied, she slumped back into the seat, murmuring "Suki from the Souk" for the remainder of the journey, to her husband's puzzlement. He tipped the driver excessively by way of apology, then helped his wife down the steps and into their apartment building where, as luck would have it, the lift was operational for once.

He would ask about it all tomorrow: Suki, Estella and the excessive alcohol – Hilary only ever drank socially, and then she sipped. Attempting to keep up with the intake of other full-time wives and their state-subsidised husbands led only to cirrhosis. Perhaps it was a delayed reaction to their loss, in which case he could hardly admonish her; he had immersed himself in overtime over the past couple of months, and his absence was probably as harmful and hurtful to Hilary as her becoming a drunk would be to him.

But come the next morning, he simply did not have the words. He knew what to say in every social situation, how to extricate a foolhardy citizen from a foreign foul-up, but had not the first idea how to ask his wife if she was drinking because of the very premature baby they'd lost. They had not named it, although the sympathetic staff at the hospital had suggested it would help with the grieving process, nor had they held any kind of ceremony to mark the passing of a life. They had simply gone on as before. Hilary had stopped eating for a while, so her pre-pregnancy clothes now fit again, and they had taken advantage of poor telecommunication links back to Britain to not alert their families to what had happened. For now, only they knew that the baby they had so longed for had been stillborn. Come the due date, they would have to tell everyone but, as Hilary lay dishevelled on the bed, he knew it wasn't today. They would move on, keep taking assignments further and further from home until everyone maybe forgot that they had ever been expecting, or assumed the worst and it was never mentioned. A conspiracy of silence; a child that had never been.

Although Hilary had enthused about Estella expecting, he was wary. Another man in his office had recently become a father, and he had kept the news from Hilary, not mentioning the drinks party to celebrate that he had declined, binning the invitation to the Christening. He had spent time the previous evening avoiding speaking to him but fortunately he had left early – to spend more time with his wife and child, no doubt.

It wasn't that he himself was not pained but he was, by nature, a coper. He had boarded then spent time in the Army before entering the diplomatic corps; bottling things up and putting on a brave face was the first and most important thing he had ever learnt. But his wife was softer, less able to internalise her troubles. She hadn't wept outside of their home and seldom in front of him, but he feared finding a trigger that would unleash weeping even he could not staunch. And a pregnant friend was surely a trigger that would only get bigger over the coming months. Perhaps now was the time for them to move on?

"She is considering calling it Suki," croaked Hilary from the bed, not moving. "She's not with the father any more and I don't think her family knows about it." He said nothing; perhaps she was still drunk and he could pretend this had never happened when she sobered up. Whenever that would be. "She is American... Are you listening?"

At this, Hilary lurched to prop herself up on her elbows. Uncharacteristically askew – even in sleep, she was typically neat, her hair tied back, her face washed clean – her light brown hair was clumped on one side of her head like a handful of windswept straw, her make-up from the previous evening an inch or so lower down her face than when she had gone to bed. But she seemed alert, attuned. "We should help her out. She is all alone. She needs people around her."

He reluctantly responded, clearly unable to wish it away. "What should we do, what can we do?" "I want you to arrange a full check-up with Doctor Harris" – her voice wavered a little around the 'r's – "and when the baby is born, we will help her out." "You mean, financially? I am sure she can support herself." His wife's eyes had a passion to them he hadn't seen for months. "Emotionally. We will be her family."

Of course, what she really meant, as he saw at once, was that Estella and her offspring would be their family, their proxy baby and new best friend. But he simply said, "Yes. If you think that would help her, help her baby" – he subtly emphasized the 'her' each time – "then I think that would be a wonderful thing for you to do." 'You need a hobby', he thought to himself, 'and I think grief is too demanding.'

(15) comments

*****

_The Mail On Sunday_ , Sunday 10th October 2010

_Self-proclaimed celebrity_ Stacey Blyth _was struggling with depression before a stint in rehab and the chance to write an autobiography,_ Entitled _, saved her. But as she meets with_ Beth Smith _, legal injunctions threaten to end her claims to Hollywood wealth..._

'All I want is to tell my story': Alleged heiress explains telling – and selling – tales

I almost don't spot Stacey Blyth when I arrive at our pre-arranged meeting place. Most people who pass themselves off as celebrities are forever 'on', playing the part of a famous person. If they're in a room, you know, not necessarily because they're the most beautiful or charismatic characters imaginable but because they demand attention – sometimes literally. But Stacey Blyth is not making a nuisance of herself with waiters or wearing inappropriate, eye-catching clothes; she's sitting quietly, almost apologetically in a corner booth of this West End restaurant, nursing an aperitif.

Her first words to me are, "It's non-alcoholic!", as she spots me eyeing her glass. It _is_ barely midday – not that this would have stopped Stacey in her party-girl pre-rehab heyday, but that's not the part of her life she dwells on in her autobiography, _Entitled_.

When the book – originally set for publication at the end of next week but currently embargoed due to legal issues, more of which later – was first excerpted, it caused great consternation: Who is this woman, and why should we care? All she revealed in last Monday's extract was the identity of a blonde who fell from Chelsea Bridge in January– herself – and that a stint in rehab followed.

It seemed inconceivable that so much space should be given over to a nobody, especially one who hadn't lost several stone in six weeks or born a footballer's baby.

Was she surprised to get so much coverage?

"No, not really... but then I know what's to come."

Such as?

Stacey smiles, for the first time, and draws lines in the condensation on the sides of her glass, as if to distract herself from answering. "I'm under contract, so I really can't talk about anything that hasn't been in print yet."

_Yet_. Although legally vetted extracts are set to continue all next week, solicitors are said to be fine-toothed combing the book galleys, not just for the lazy libels biographies tend to contain but also for evidence of plagiarism.

Which brings us to the issue of the aggrieved writer behind a blog that claims to tell the truth about Stacey's life since falling in the river. 'Chiara', as the author calls herself – after the sidekick character in Stacey's extracts – says she wrote an authorised book about Stacey, and that what's since made its way onto tabloid pages is just a fantasy.

Who is she – _does_ Stacey know her? And if so, is anything she's claiming true?

As if reciting a script, Stacey replies, "I've been advised I can't talk about all that, but I will say that anyone can write an anonymous blog. There's no reason to believe this person is who they say they are and I'm confident their 'case'" – she restrains herself from making quote-mark gestures but her tone suffices – "has no legal merit."

Statement ends.

Beyond tweaks to appease the paper's legal team, has the manuscript been altered? Was this woman involved in an earlier version of Stacey's life story?

"My life story is my life story, whoever writes it," she says, defiantly. "Whoever this person is, they have no right to say they own my story – how could they? It didn't happen to them, it's isn't about them..."

But if what she says is true, that she's the person you call 'Chiara' in your version, then it is about her too, to some extent.

Anger flashes in Stacey's eyes. "If you took the Chiara character out, the story would be the same and it would be about me."

But it wouldn't, would it? According to you, Chiara steals your file, Chiara gives you a place to stay, Chiara takes you to Marrakech – she's the catalyst... and the cash register.

After some uncomfortable-looking thought, Stacey says "That's just artistic license," again with the inferred speech marks, as if she's not sure what the phrase means but believes it to be a verbal Get Out Of Jail Free card in situations like this.

So as far as you're concerned, even if this Chiara wrote a book about you, _you_ own it, _you_ own all the rights to it, and you can do whatever you want to it?

"Explain to me why I can't?" she says, as if it's a threat.

It's her intellectual property, I reply, noting that 'intellectual' makes her eyes glaze.

Stacey rebuffs me with a shrug. If she doesn't understand, it doesn't matter, it seems.

So you _have_ changed the book, then?

Stacey returns to the script. "What book isn't changed? I handed over the manuscript and was given some notes, which I chose to make myself. The version in the paper, and the book, is more personal and accurate about my life and experiences."

So the book will come out?

"Of course it will," she says, assertively. "She can't stop me."

She being Chiara – so she's the one who's launched the legal bid?

"I can't talk about it, can I?"

Apparently not. But you can talk about the events of the first week's extracts. (We meet at Friday lunchtime, by when I've hungrily read that day's instalment, having stayed at the Mamounia myself – but experienced no Proustian flashbacks.)

So, did you really jump into the Thames to get away from Cady Stone?

"Cady Stone has nothing to do with any of this," says Stacey. "If you're going to ask my questions about the blog, I can't help you. I'm here to talk about my book."

So you were really just depressed?

"Really."

And you couldn't just have seen a doctor, taken some medication, you went straight for suicide, despite having been out on the town just hours earlier – with Ms Stone?

A deep inhalation precedes her response.

"I'm not denying I know Cady Stone – that would be stupid. I've stayed at her home, I've been photographed with loads, we're dear friends..."

I wonder whether her contraction means 'we are' or 'we were'.

"...but the idea that I would sell stories to tabloids is despicable."

But you have sold stories to a tabloid – your own life story.

"That's different."

Is it? You're not the only person in your story, we've already seen that with the Chiara character. Everyone else you write about, by your own reckoning, deserves ownership of that part of the story, so everyone you mention – your parents, Chiara, the man at the hotel – all have the right to stop you saying what you want, or to correct what you write.

"That's not gossip, that's real life," she says.

Gossip is about real life, though. Sometimes it's skewed but it's always about real people, otherwise it wouldn't be gossip, would it, it would just be stories.

"I didn't do what the blog says I did. I _wouldn't_."

And Cady Stone believes you, does she?

"She doesn't believe a word of it, no. And she doesn't read the internet, anyway."

So you're still friends, then? You haven't been pictured together recently...

"We're both very busy, that's all. I've been working on the book, obviously."

You've been too busy to go out, I can understand that, but what's Cady up to? Since the 'Chiara' blog got mentioned on Twitter, she's been MIA, declining to attend a shop penning by another "dear friend" on Bond Street last night and bowing out of presenting an award at this weekend's fashion gala. Why else would she be in hiding?

"If I knew, and maybe I do, I wouldn't tell you," she smirks, as if she's won this round.

Back to the river – the woman the RNLI pulled out refused to give her name to the Police and left the hospital before she could be identified. So anyone could claim it was them. A lot of people doubt it was you.

"Why would I lie? Who'd pretend to have tried to die? That's mental," she mutters.

People do that sort of thing all the time, I point out. Every murder enquiry fields hundreds of calls from crackpots claiming to be the killer – and there's a mental condition called Munchausen's syndrome, where healthy people feign illness for sympathy and attention. Perhaps you're just another elaborate attention-seeker?

"I did it, it happened. I'm not proud of it. My dress was still at the hospital, wasn't it? The dress I'd been wearing the night before. Or did I plant that?"

Oh – so now you're corroborating the blog? How odd.

Stacey stares at me open-mouthed, unsure how best to respond, until our food arrives.

As the blog mentioned, she's well kempt with arching eye-brows and an odd, almost broken-looking nose (I'm terrible at spotting plastic surgery, forgive me if it's obviously a botch-job), but nervous energy is her key characteristic. She fizzes with insecurity.

We eat in silence, Stacey racing through her sole, and our plates are cleared away as cleanly as if they'd never even been there –the portions were so small, that's how it feels.

When she declines the dessert menu, I sense it's time for a final question.

So, Stacey Blyth – assuming what you say is true, can you prove any of it? I mean, I could say I'm really the adopted daughter of someone who's been missing since the '70s, anyone could, without proof. What makes you special, what makes it true for you?

"You'll have to wait for the rest of the story to come out," she smiles without sincerity.

But if the book remains embargoed, and the lawyers trim out contentious revelations?

"It will all come out, somehow," she says with steeliness, as she shuffles clumsily along the banquette, towards the front door. "All I want is to tell my story."

But not today?

"No, not today. Sorry."

With that, she hooks her wrist into the strap of her sack-sized handbag – knock-off or boutique, it was hard to tell – and leaves, without shaking my hand.

I guess we're not destined to become "dear friends" – but with friends like that...

*****

_Daily Mirror_ , MONDAY 11.10.2010

_SHH!_ Which chatty lass has earned herself a brand-new nickname, before we'd even worn the old one out? Seems she's now known as 'Damienne' to her one-time nearest and dearest – an _Omen_ of the success of her forthcoming (not-so) autobiography?

Monday, October 11, 2010 _THE SUN_

_It's the most talked-about book of the year, and you can only read it here! Today,_ Stacey Blyth _finds the proof she needs that she's the sole – if unknown – heir to billions..._

'WATER STAR WAS MY MA'

I'm in my third strange bed in three days – I can see how the all the wannabes must feel.

Only this is a lush four-poster with great big crisp pillows, not some skanky swirl of satin sheets shared with a boy-band man slag.

Anyway, I can hear Chiara helping herself off the breakfast trolley so I leap out of bed. I'm not letting her wolf everything – and she would, if I let her.

She looks well rough.

'Alright?' I go. She looks up and she's all manic.

Without offering me any food, greedy git, she goes, 'Guess what?'

_Can I guess after breakfast_? I think. _My stomach's making jungle noises._

'I woke up the middle of the night, thinking about the picture' – I told you, _the masks_! – 'and I went back to the papers, knowing what we know now, that Estella Dulac was at the party, and I found something _incredible_ , absolutely _incredible_.'

I can see pastry things going cold and oily while I don't eat them.

'Which is?'

'Wait here... '

Chiara dashes back to her room so I cram as much food into my mouth as I can before she gets back, which turns out to be quite a lot, as it happens.

She puts the papers on the table and, on each, points out the name of the woman who made the will, died and had her daughter adopted.

'I've been really scrutinising the writing, and this is what I think it says.'

She holds up a piece of letterheaded hotel paper – the same logo as on the old invite the will's typed on the back of, well done – and it says: 'Suhana Tanginika'.

So that's my mother's name? More exotic than I was expecting.

'Do you see?'

Chiara's nodding with her eyes wide open, like she's being strangled.

I can see the piece of paper, is that what you mean?

I must be shrugging because she starts to explain.

'You know we looked up Amy and it means the same as Suki: beloved?'

Nod.

'Well I looked up Suhana. And guess what it means?'

I try and think but the pastries are taking their sweet time to pass down my throat so I'm more preoccupied with not choking at the moment...

'Suhana means star! And Tanginika, well it's not really a person's name, it's a Swahili place name.'

Am I really supposed to work out what she's on about from that?

'Tanginika is a lake. In Tanzania.'

So my mum is African? ( _Tanzania's in Africa, right_?) I mean, I don't look it but maybe my dad was an albino or something.

Chiara's smug I-know-everything look vanishes and she gets angry.

'You _must_ see it _now_? Suhana Tanginika... _Star Lake_...'

Has my brain died? I still don't know what she's getting at.

'...Estella Dulac! Don't you see? The woman who had the baby is the woman in the photo. Maybe the people in the picture are the adoptive parents.'

I see. The woman in the picture is... my real mum. _Really_? So I'm _not_ African? That makes more sense.

Chiara sits back down at the table, pours herself some tea and holds the little glass cup aloft, like she's toasting herself.

'Of course, you know what this means?'

She takes a celebratory sip.

'The daughter, if she's still alive, is a billionaire.'

The effort of keeping down the pastries is so massive, I feel like they're going to bounce back off my stomach if they ever even get that far, but when she says that everything inside my skin turns into liquid. I grab onto the table.

' _Billionaire?'_

Chiara finishes her tea and tops the glass back up.

'Of course, because Estella was heir to... do you really not know who she was?'

No, I don't know, _tell me_! I just wobble negatively at her.

Chiara notices I'm not well and says, 'You should eat something.' At which point I know I've lost the pastry battle, so I run off and vomit.

When I come back, she's looking sympathetic and patronising, all at once.

'You haven't been drinking the tap water, have you? Stick to bottled.'

Ta for the tip.

'So, who's Estella, then? Why's she so rich?'

I make myself a really, really sugary tea.

'Well!' says Chiara, like she's doing Shakespeare and I'm deaf, 'Estella Dulac was the daughter of this old '30s film star, Louise Dulac, and some oil man. And she had this very sheltered life and no-one saw her until she went to college and then, one day, she was kidnapped and no-one ever heard from her ever again."

So... 'Everyone thinks she was killed by the kidnappers?'

'No, she just disappeared. I mean, I don't think there was ever even a ransom note. But she never turned up. I saw a documentary about her, I told you.'

'And the documentary said she got kidnapped and that was it for Estella?'

'Right.'

'And when did all this happen?'

Chiara chews the inside of her mouth and thinks. 'Mid-'70s some time. Let me check.' So she goes and gets her laptop and looks it up.

'September 1975...'

_My_ Poirot moment.

'But the picture was taken at Halloween 1975. _After_ she went missing!'

Chiara's all excited but I'm _more_ excited because _I_ worked it out and without a pen or paper or anything, just my brain. _Well done, me._

'So it's the last known picture of Estella alive, then...' says Chiara.

Gotta be worth a fortune, right? Exclusive first worldwide rights and all that.

I know a few things about selling pictures, don't I?

'...And we've also got the proof that she's dead.'

I forgot about that. Bummer. Although – _inheritance_!

'So,' Chiara taps the screen of the laptop – I hate that, it smears and you can't see yourself properly, 'Estella Dulac goes missing in 1975, ends up pregnant in Marrakech a couple of months later, gives birth to Suki/Amy, dies and her daughter's adopted.'

'And she made a will.' _Don't forget the will_!

'So sad.'

Easy come, easy go. I had parents, then they weren't really my parents, then I found out my real mum was dead, then I found out she was rich. You learn to cope.

' _So_ sad,' I agree, for show. 'So what do we do now? Shouldn't we tell someone, the papers, maybe? This is a big story, isn't it?'

Chiara's looking all wistful, like it's _her_ long-lost, not-known-about mum who's died and left her a fortune. Get a grip, _I'm fine_!

'Well, I think it's obvious what we need to do first, isn't it?'

Weirdly, she _closes_ her laptop as she said this, and I think, _Are you going to email the news using the power of your mind?_

Then she goes, 'We need to work out who the couple are, who adopted Amy.'

Whoa, _what_? Slow down. No need to bring _them_ into it.

'I mean, is this them in the picture?'

'What are the odds of _that_?' I go, all flustered. 'There must have been _loads_ of people at the party, right?'

'But there was only this one picture of Estella Dulac, so...'
I can hear myself going all shrill: 'You're jumping to conclusions again!'

And then, thank f***, Chiara calms down and goes, 'You're probably right.'

We finish the tea and then, sounding all sweet but really being bitchy, she goes, 'You _are_ allowed to use the shower, you know, help yourself.'

And I think, _How dare you – have you not looked in the mirror today, then_? but I say, 'Looking forward to it, it looks much more powerful than the one in your flat' so I go and lock myself in the bathroom and spend ages using up all the toiletries.

Thing is, I finally get out, and it's all been a trick. _Bitch_!

Somehow, Chiara knows I've taken the picture – maybe she's seen it sticking out of my, _her_ , dress or whatever – so she just wants to distract me and nick it back.

But she's not just going to put it back in the album, oh no. She's way more devious than that! She puts it back in the album, then goes and asks Hamid about the people in the picture.

She tells me this when I'm lounging outside in a gown, drying off by the pool.

'You were taking so long in the shower, I had to amuse myself somehow.'

I don't want to give her the satisfaction of asking what Hamid said, so I just go, 'That's nice'.

But she just goes 'Very revealing,' and I think she means the gown at first so I tie it tighter around my waist, then she says, 'more in what he _didn't_ say, of course.'

I close my eyes and pretend I'm snoozing.

'And of course he explained the costume – here's me thinking it's just some revival thing – like after _Cabaret_ – but that makes much more sense...'

And then I really drop off and I don't know how long I sleep for but at some point Chiara throws cold water over my face and says, 'You're going red.' I mean, she could have said something, an hour or so earlier when I wasn't red yet, and I'd have been fine, but whatever. I suppose she _could_ have left me so I _suppose_ I'm grateful.

She must be feeling guilty so she lends me some La Prairie face cream to take the redness down, so I scoop out as much as I can because I know what it costs. And I think, ' _I can always buy her some when my money comes through, can't I?_ ' Only I won't.

Then she goes, 'Do you want the good or the bad news?' and I think, _Well I might be a bit sunburnt for now, but I won the stand-off so I'll be gracious._

'Bad news, first,' I say, because that's how they always do it in films, isn't it?

'We still don't know who the parents are.'

That's _great_ news – how good was the _good_ news going to be?

'They're a British diplomat and his wife, in the picture, but Hamid can't remember their names so we can't compare them to the papers.'

_Excellent_!

'Oh well,' I act, 'never mind. And the good news?'

'The _good_ news,' says Chiara, over-enunciating for the Hard Of Hearing again, 'is that's _definitely_ Estella Dulac in the middle.'

'Hamid confirmed it, then?'

'No. He _denied_ it.'

At which point I think, _I've got sunstroke. Or maybe Chiara has_?

But she goes, 'I showed him the picture – back in the album' – _house points to Head Girl_ – 'and I said, "I know that's Estella Dulac in the middle, but who are the couple?" And he goes, "Such a pretty, pretty girl..." then stops himself and goes, "Oh, no, you mean _Louise_ Dulac, she's dressed as Louise Dulac, whoever she is, this girl".'

Doesn't sound like proof, does it?

'If you'd seen his face, you'd have known he was lying,' Chiara goes, 'he looked _really_ guilty. Like, he'd told a secret or broken a promise or something.'

I just go 'Maybe... '

So Chiara gets out her laptop again and shows me this picture of Louise Dulac from her heyday and she's totally wearing the same sort of clothes as Estella in the photo.

'Could be the same woman,' I admit.

'Exactly! It's too similar to be a coincidence. And also, who's heard of Louise Dulac these days, or even back in the '70s? Why would you go as her if you could go as...' and she reels off this list of names that mean absolutely nothing to me so I don't remember them, sorry about that.

'So what _isn't_ Hamid saying?' says Chiara. 'How can we get him to tell us?'

I have an idea...

_IN TOMORROW'S PAPER_ : 'Estella was being wheeled out... under a blanket'

*****

http://callmechiara.blogspot.com/

Water Load Of...

Posted by Chiara on October 11, 2010

Stacey was snoring in front of the Frat Pack comedy that followed The Man Who Knew Too Much. I could wake her up, and she could tell me what was wrong with what I had written, even though she didn't know a) what was right or b) how to write.

I let her lie.

The more I had written, the less she could be bothered to change, I reasoned. If at the end of the week I handed her a stack of printed pages and asked for alterations, I knew I would get it back with the first few pages smothered in red pen and the rest barely touched, if even read.

So I returned to Marrakech.

'The diplomat left the master bedroom and withdrew to his study, his solace away from work. It was abnormally dark for a room in this city, but he had wanted to replicate the wood-panelled feel of his offices and club back home, so had fixed dark shutters to the windows and used only lamps, not the main light. 'Dingy' was how Hilary referred to it, privately thinking of it as his 'hovel', but he felt as calm in the dark as he felt startled in the noon-day sun. Here, he could be almost anywhere civilised (by which he meant 'British'), were it not for the calls to prayer and honking street noise; it was too hot to close the windows and the shutters barely blocked out any sounds – his salary didn't stretch to an air-conditioning unit that met with Hilary's health-and-safety approval.

He sat in his armchair for as long as it took to mentally file away the information his wife had given him about the pregnant American, and to assess the benefits and negatives of an ongoing friendship with her. He could not imagine anything but agony when the baby was eventually born. Although neither of them had made an outward show of their grief, he knew how appalling he felt, and multiplied it in his head for how Hilary must feel, based on having actually carried the child for nine months. How could being on-hand for another birth do any good? Any joy Estella felt, and exhibited, would just create the inverse emotion in Hilary and, to a slightly lesser extent, himself. Imagine being invited to hold the baby – and then having to give it back. Always be giving it back. Perhaps they could babysit but then, at the end of the evening, they would go home alone as mother and baby gurgled at one another, ignorant of the angst of absence.

Hilary could change her mind, of course. She had never been enamoured of the Americans she had previously met through his work, so it could be that in a few weeks the in-built confidence and broken volume control would rankle, and they would be but nodding acquaintances come the due date. The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed; Fourth of July parties had always been her least favourite events on the social calendar, closely followed by Thanksgiving dinners. She would blame the food, usually, burnt barbeque meat and dry turkey both being indigestible to her delicate constitution, but he knew it was really the effort of making nice with the braying wives, decked out in their finery and letting everyone know the bottom line of such a display.

And another thing – to deny healthcare to a pregnant woman would be criminal. He too doubted a mouthful of orange and vodka could harm anyone (even fed directly to a baby, it would only have short-term effects, surely? He didn't want to know if anyone knew the answer) but it was best to check it out. The last thing he needed was for Hilary to feel culpable for anything happening to another newborn.

Their baby's death was not her fault, or his, or anyone's. Something had gone wrong at some point and it had just stopped growing. The doctors assured them there was nothing anyone could have done, and even if they had been in a better-equipped city they would only have found out sooner, they wouldn't have been able to solve anything.

"I know this is no consolation," Doctor Harris had told them both, "but in situations like this there is none. We don't know what went wrong, but we do know it wasn't your fault."

That last sentence troubled him still; how could they know they weren't responsible if they didn't know what had/had not been done? It seemed like a philosophical riddle.

But Doctor Harris had at least been honest with them, he hadn't subjected them to tests to try and find a cause that would no more bring back their baby than a miracle would occur, so he trusted he would do the same with Estella. And if it helped to set Hilary's mind at rest, that could only be for the good. He had watched her, hawk-like, for the past few months, convinced she was on the brink of a breakdown, but she had held it together. Just. And he didn't need to uncover a catalyst in the form of Estella's baby being born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, which he had read about in a science journal once and been horrified by. Some babies of drunk mothers were actually born smelling of booze, like the amniotic fluid had become more alcoholic with every passing day. The physical signs were visible and would become ever more apparent through ongoing behavioural and mental issues... but at least they were alive. He thought again how unfair it all was. They had done everything advised by experts and authors but had still lost their child, yet a chronic alcoholic can go full term and give birth to a breathing baby. He felt his eyes grow sore inside and, fearing tears would follow, reached for the phone.

It was a Saturday but Doctor Harris gave out a special contact number for fellow ex-pats, in emergencies. He knew it wasn't an emergency really, but if he implied Hilary was worryingly anxious about Estella (rather than sleeping off a hangover), he knew that would be enough for the doctor. The phone was answered on its second ring – was Dr Harris sitting somewhere similar, just wondering his life away on a beautifully sunny day? – and they chatted amiably for a few minutes, as if both were glad of the chance to talk about anything other than what had just been occupying their minds. What could a doctor worry about, thought the diplomat, surely he knows the solution to anything that ails you? But he also sees the signs we medical mortals would miss; he recalled a man with a slight discolouration in one eye who had explained it away, unembarrassed, when he saw anyone notice, until one day a doctor at a party insisted it be checked out – it was indicative of liver cancer but, thankfully, they caught it in time. Imagine seeing the tiny signs of ill heath and even death in the face of happy people – how horrible to have to break their hearts with quiet asides about cancerous moles over canapés.

Their smalltalk soon evaporated and an appointment was made, the diplomat outlining the circumstances as best he could without implying Hilary was now self-medicating with drink. They shared a small, contained laugh at the neuroses of women and agreed to meet on Monday morning at 10am. "I look forward to it," said the diplomat as he hung up, both he and the doctor knowing he meant no such thing.

He lingered a little while longer in his sanctuary, allowing the roar of the motorbikes and the car horns lull him. He knew parts of London must sound just like this, but when one worked in the diplomat corps one's offices tended to be down side roads away from the main tourist thoroughfares, in rooms with feet-thick walls to protect from bomb blasts. He was more likely to hear the clip-clop of horses turning out of Horseguards' Parade than an open-topped tourbus passing by. Even protest marches tended to skip their street; he had to lean out of the window to even see the passing disenfranchised, and could never hear their message. So much for mass action – when it is out of earshot, it looks like fun.

He filled his lungs with the warm air wafting in through the plantation shutters and headed back to the bedroom, making a cup of weak tea en route. "Here you go!" he said, the faux joviality surprising even himself, as he put it down beside his gently snoring wife. She coughed herself awake by way of thanks. "How are you feeling?"

Hilary looked at him from below scrunched-up eyelids smeared with black liner. "Fine..." she began, as if their earlier conversation had been a dream. He was tempted to see how long it would take her to recall it all, but thought it best not to toy with his wife's emotions. But what if she had now forgotten and he would be bringing a baby into her empty mind? He watched her focus on the cup, frowning as she pieced together events growing foggy as she awoke fully. Her forehead smoothed itself out and her eyes brightened in a way they had ceased to do ever since... and he knew Estella's baby was here to stay, that she could think of little else.

"I have spoken to Doctor Harris and he can see us, see Estella, first thing on Monday morning, 10am. So why not give the Mamounia a call and leave a message? Probably best not to wake her, she will need her rest, but let her know we will collect her at quarter-to. OK?" He spoke fast, not wanting her to find gaps to burrow and brood in.

Hilary sipped at the tea, its sweetness startling her dehydrated tongue. She forced the rest down, in between 'Ugh's, as if it were medicine rather than imported Twining's. "Yes," she said, draining the china cup, "of course, I will call right now. Do you have the number?" Last night, she had made a show of 'remembering' it; "I have a wonderful memory for numbers," she boasted in reception as they awaited their ride home. "I don't need to write it down, just tell me and I will commit it to my mind forever more!" Now, not only could she not remember it, she forgot claiming she could, as he had expected, taking a card from the front desk and slipping it into his jacket pocket.

He went over to the chair and reached inside the jacket again, reading out the numbers as Hilary cranked the rotary dial: "Three – eight – eight – six-hundred." His wife fell back against the pillow, the heavy handset cooling against her face. And yet, when the phone was answered, she instantly became the diplomat's wife again with a hearty "Good morning!"

"I was wondering," she enunciated clearly and too loudly, "could I leave a message for one of your guests? Her name is Estella..." She suddenly looked at her husband for a prompt; covering the mouthpiece, she hissed, "What is her surname?" He shook his head and shrugged. Hilary almost looked furious but fortunately the receptionist needed no further information. "Wonderful, thank you, if you could just tell her we will meet her in reception at 9.45am on Monday, that would be, er, wonderful. Again. Ha ha!" The façade was crumbling as the exhaustion conquered Hilary's etiquette. She managed to force out a 'Goodbye' before her hand slammed the receiver back down and she rolled over to sleep some more.

"Good-o, glad that is all sorted then," he said. "Want any breakfast?" She did not; she wanted only quiet and darkness and for the sensation of being badly sunburnt to leave her – but she had one thing to tell her husband before he pottered off to make himself poached eggs.

"She is staying in one of the riads," she croaked.

He was confused; "So she's not staying at the hotel after all? I must say, she didn't strike me as a liar..."

"No, there are riads within the hotel, in the gardens. Did you not see them? Three of them. They are supposed to be amazing – and they're very expensive. Very expensive..."

'Well', he thought as he headed for the kitchen, 'if that is the case she can probably pay Doctor Harris' bill without any help from us.'

Raucous laughter from the living room alerted me to the fact Stacey was now awake. I saved everything and emailed myself a copy, as I always did, having once lost a dissertation 12 hours before the hand-in date due to a power cut. We didn't have the internet in my student house at the time, that was a few years away, but I had a floppy I could have counted on. As it was, I drank several litres of Diet Coke and just typed until I had run out of things to waffle on about and hit my word count – amazing training for my day job, as it turned out.

I shut the laptop and headed next door, finding a tiny space on the sofa that somehow wasn't occupied by Stacey's spread-eagled body. For a scrawny woman, she seemed to have an enormous surface area, like a human pancake.

"Anything good on?" I asked, not caring what she might say, just wanting to insinuate myself into the room without having to deliver the latest chapter in her life story or justify my artistic licence.

Fat chance.

She ignored me for the time it took for the pizza she had just ordered to arrive, sniggering at the screen instead, then, midway through her first slice, spoke.

"Have I been born yet?"

"Not yet, no," I replied, picking pepperoni off my half and wondering whether she had deliberately ignored me when I told her I was vegetarian. I dabbed at the almost neon meat grease left behind with the solitary napkin provided by the delivery man.

"So what are you writing about, then?"

"I am still setting the scene," I insisted, trying to find a section of molten mozzarella untouched by rendered animal fat.

"How much setting does it need? A rich woman got pregnant and died and I was her daughter and I want my money."

"You don't mean that," I said, my mouth full. If she was going to be so crude, I wasn't going to be on my best behaviour.

"No, of course not, but that's the gist, isn't it?"

"That you want your money?"

"That I want my birthright recognised."

I wondered whether she had known that word a week earlier.

"Well, I have to establish what your birthright is. I have to draw the reader in, let them know who your mother is, why she's important and hence why you are important."

But how important is an heiress no-one remembers and a daughter no-one even knew she had, really? Stacey had been right the first time: she wanted her inheritance. I suspected if I told her there was a way to just get the money without having to go through the time-consuming hoo-haw of actually writing a book and have people read it, or at least the most interesting extracts, Stacey might take it. Maybe it wasn't even about the money, maybe that was a handy distraction. Maybe it was all about the fame?

"I cannot believe it is taking you so long."

In other words: 'I am bored. Play with me. Write about me.'

"Look, films aren't shot on empty stages, they have to build scenery and dress the set, and that is what I am doing. I am taking the reader to Marrakech, introducing your parents, all of them, establishing their relationship, and then you will come into the picture and you can take over the storytelling. If no-one knows that stuff up front, it's just a story about a baby girl being adopted, nothing special. Telling readers your mother was rich is not as effective as showing it. And the more they like your mother, the more awful her death and your separation will be. We're not bashing out bullet points, we're trying to persuade them of the heartache you have endured and the battle you face."

Stacey had glazed over for much of my monologue but was suddenly sharp.

"What battle?"

"To claim your inheritance."

"Why would there be a battle? It's mine."

"Is it?"

"Do you not believe me now?"

"I don't have to believe you, I'm not an executor of your mother's estate."

"And what makes you think they won't believe me?"

"Why should they?"

"Because of the book, for starters..."

I slapped my pizza back in the box: "Anyone could write it."

"But no-one else knows..."

"It's not what you know, it's what you can prove. The burden of proof is on us."

"The certificates, they prove it!"

"How? They show that your parents adopted a girl and a woman died. They don't show an indelible link between the two events. We are creating a story that makes that link obvious, and therefore makes you her heir, but there is no actual proof."

"So we could write this book and it could all be waste of time?" Stacey looked like I'd assaulted her. "I can't believe you've not mentioned any of this before..."

"I can't believe it's not occurred to you before. Did you think you would rock up to the lawyers, hand them a signed copy of the book and get a cheque in return?"

"Well, no, but I just thought..."

"Assumed."

"...That it would be obvious to people who knew her. If I am making it up..."

"I'm not saying you are."

"...Then why has no-one else made it up first? If my mother has been missing for 35 years, why am I the first? People remember her, they make TV shows about her, you said, so why has no-one else done this? Because I know I am her daughter and people will see that I am telling the truth."

"Lie detectors are not admissible as evidence in most US states, so even if you manage to convince people you are telling the truth, it's still not proof. You would need something like a DNA test to prove you were from that family."

Stacey still looked stricken. "But they are all dead now. I am the only one left..."

"Estella was the only offspring of the marriage, as far as I know."

"...So how can I have a DNA test? They will just have to take my word for it."

It was an exhausting argument. "Wills don't work that way. Even when people are named and their bloodlines are tested and accepted, wills can still be debated for years. Like in Bleak House – they debated a will for so long that when it was resolved all the money had been spent on the case and there was nothing left. The trustees, whoever they are, will not part with it quickly."

"Well all this seems pretty pointless then... I mean, what is in it for you?

Good question. Assuaging my guilt, initially. But Stacey seemed totally over the whole Cady Stone incident. It was as if nothing had ever happened. Maybe, by the time we got back to London, Cady would have forgotten too and they would all live together again and we would go back to our old roles. So why was I doing it?

"I believe you."

Did I? I wanted to, as they used to say in The X-Files. But the more I looked into the story, the less Stacey seemed to want to find out. It was like she knew she was the heroine of the story and that was all she needed to know. Others could struggle.

"What if other people think I am a liar, that I have made it all up?"

"That won't happen. We are not hacking out a trashy autobiography, we are crafting the tragic tale of the richest girl in the world who never knew her mother..."

"The richest girl in the world?"

The merest mention of money seemed to stem Stacey's self-pity.

"Something like that. Who knows what money is even left?"

"Left? Why would there not be anything left? I thought there were billions?"

"Who knows? Some people say Louise hired private investigators to find her daughter, and that would have cost a lot. And she probably lived well, until she..."

She is dead, isn't she?

I was suddenly unsure. Louise Dulac had become a recluse after Estella's disappearance, like Dietrich and Garbo. But that didn't mean she was actually dead. There must be plenty of rich old women too vain to let the world see their withered faces and frames by leaving the comfort of their homes. Was Louise Dulac one of them?

Of course, if she was still alive, that sorted the issue of proving Stacey's claim. How we would get her to agree to a DNA comparison test I didn't know, but surely the prospect of seeing her only grandchild could get her to entertain a doctor for a moment or two for a quick swab of her gums?

Infuriated at the thought her inheritance had already been spent, Stacey left the table and cranked the TV up, giving little thought to her grandmother's mortality. Shouldn't she be begging me to find out about her, to see if there was someone out there who shared enough chromosomes for her to cash in?

Just meaning to check that the back-up email had arrived safely, I opened the laptop again to find a message from my picture editor:

'Found something – scans to follow, but here are some snaps from my phone.'

Attached were five black-and-white party pictures, just big enough to make out faces – or rather masks. It was a fancy-dress party, as we had hoped, but many guests weren't in full-on costumes, just formal outfits with their faces covered.

I didn't recognise anyone unmasked but one woman caught my eye immediately. I didn't know who she was but I knew who she looked like. And, like Stacey's father, my first thought was Marlene Dietrich.

"Stacey!" I shouted. "Come and look at this!"

She trudged wearily back to the table, like an insolent teenager.

"What." She said the word as flatly as if reading it off an idiot board.

"We need to confirm dates with the photographer but I think this is a picture from that Halloween party at..."

Before I could finish, she had lifted the laptop off the table, yanking the power cable out of the side, and was holding it in front of her face, bathing herself in blue light as her eyes pinged around the screen.

"This is her?" She was asking rather than asserting.

"It fits with your father's story, about thinking the girl was dressed as Marlene Dietrich? That is who she looks like, to the untrained eye."

"It is..." she murmured, scanning the picture into her memory. "I think it is."

"I don't know who the other people in the picture are with her but..."

"Them?" She almost laughed. "Don't worry about them."

"Why not?"

"They're just my parents."

"Are you sure? Absolutely sure? I mean, you can't see their faces, so..."

"I know those masks. Those horrible hand-carved African masks. They are one-of-a-kind. It's not very clear on these pictures but there's a scrape down the side of the one she's wearing and the bit on his that looks like sun rays is this feather pattern."

She seemed to have solved her own problem.

"If these people in the picture are your parents and if you can produce the masks as proof, it might help make your case stronger. Sometimes circumstantial evidence is all that is available, and this is pretty strong. A picture of your parents with, well, your birth mother, the masks – it's pretty compelling. It certainly indicates a relationship."

Stacey looked triumphant.

"Good," she grinned. "I know exactly where they are."

(24) comments

*****

_Daily Mirror_ , TUESDAY 12.10.2010

_SHH!_ Could it be that there's a truce between a certain tell-all socializer and her blogger rival? The two have been at odds over the starlet's supposed life story but they seem to have started backing up each other's tall tales. Could the claims actually have credibility?

Tuesday, October 12, 2010 _THE SUN_

_In the latest instalment from her amazing autobiography,_ Entitled _,_ Stacey Blyth _explains how her talent for customising clothes helped bring her late mother back from the dead..._

'SHOP 'TIL YOU SHOCK'

This is my idea: 'We should throw a party for Hamid.'

Chiara's jealous she didn't think of it: 'What kind of party? He doesn't drink.'

I point at the empty tea glasses.

'A _tea_ party. No alcohol in that, is there?'

They do 'tea ceremonies', whatever they are, here at the hotel – I read it in a leaflet while I was on the loo.

Chiara tries to think of a good reason to shoot me down but can't. _Ha_!

'That's not a bad idea, actually. And if we do it in the Library, we can get the pictures out and reminisce and Hamid might open up a bit more... '

_Obviously_ we'll get the albums out again but I have a plan I'm going to keep quiet for now, for 'reasons that will become clear', that might jog Hamid's memory even more.

So I go, 'What should we _wear_ to a tea ceremony, do you think?'

And Chiara has a little think and says, 'Really, it should be something ethnic and modest' – I'm thinking tie-dye halterneck maxi dress – 'and I don't think I've brought anything like that, really...'

'Oh dear,' I act, 'so, what should we do?'

She thinks again – no Mastermind, her – then goes, 'I suppose we could go to the Souk, it's not far.'

Just call me Suki!

'Good idea,' I say, 'let's do it.'

A maid comes to take away the breakfast stuff and Chiara somehow sorts out hiring the Library and tea ceremony and all that in sign language, then we go shopping.

I _say_ shopping.

'We should walk there and back,' says Chiara, 'it's not far.'

It's not – on a map. In reality it takes for-e-vah, because you spend every second jumping out of the way of these filthy little mopeds and going 'NO!' loudly at local kids who want to guide you everywhere – for money, of course – and I'm starting to have a bit of a panic attack about it all when suddenly the shouting starts.

It's like it was at the clinic, only there's not just the one mosque here, there are... I don't know how many. You can see loads of towers, and they're all blasting out these prayers or whatever at top whack but they don't all start at once so it's like they're singing in a round, like I did at Brownies once, and it doesn't sound holy _at all_.

But it _does_ remind me why I'm here, so I pull it together and finally we get to the market. Only you get hassled there too, if you even glance at anything on a stall the shopkeeper comes for you and tries to make you buy, so I pull my pockets inside-out and walk around like that until Chiara sees and pushes me down a side street, all angry.

' _Please_ try and show some _respect_ ,' she hisses, like I'm wearing a bikini and giving men the glad eye.

_It's like being on a field trip_ : "You are a representative of your school" blah blah blah.

Anyway, she yanks me along until we're in some middle-of-a-maze bit where it's all workshops and no-one's doing the hard sell so we sit and wait for a man to serve us.

Chiara asks for suitable traditional dresses to be brought out, then immediately selects the brightest, prettiest one for herself.

I hope they don't have it in her size – _what are the odds_? – but they _do_ , so whatever I get won't be as good, although obviously I'll look better in it.

But this is where my plan comes in.

'If you're being all colourful, I should have something plain, don't you think?'

Chiara nods, but with a suspicious look, like, _What's the catch_?

The shopkeeper brings out a load of plain dresses but they're still bright colours, so I shake my head and just say 'White?'

The next lot he brings are all pale, with two white ones. One's got this woven-in flower design, like a chintzy old sofa, the other's like a Goodyear blimp with sleeves.

'I'll try that one,' I say, pointing at the blander one, to Chiara's surprise.

In the dressing room mirror, I work out what easy alterations I can make and decide it's not ideal but it's the best I'm likely to get. Also, it's cheap – _I'm guessing; who knows what the exchange rate is?_ – so Chiara won't mind what I do to it, right?

She pays – ' _So_ kind, thank you _so_ much' I creep – then we go back to the hotel, shouting down the boys who approach and leaping out of the way of the scooters like we're playing Frogger for real. It's almost fun when you get the hang of it. _Almost_.

Back in the riad, we model for each other, and I see Chiara thinks I'm an idiot because she looks princess-y and I look like her servant girl.

Little does she know.

The tea party's not until later, so Chiara has another Moroccan siesta and I put my masterplan into action. I get some notepaper and a pen from the desk, nip to the Library and copy some stuff down, and I'm back before she's even started snoring.

Then I lock myself back in the bathroom with the dress and Chiara's nail clippers, and start snipping away at the stitches. Finally I've got what I want, sort of, so I nab some eyeliner and hair pins for later, and hide it all.

Chiara wakes up, her face all creased like it's been drawn on an old piece of paper, and I'm ready for her.

I go, 'I've been thinking – you know Hamid well, don't you? Maybe it should just be the two of you, to start with? He'll open up more to you than me, won't he?'

And she yawns and goes, 'But this is all _your_ idea, I bought you that... dress.'

And I go, 'Oh, I'll _totally_ go, don't worry about that, I was just thinking I'd come along a little later...' And make my big entrance.

' _Tis I, the daughter of Estella Dulac, here to claim my birthright!_

'Fine, OK, do that. Give me half an hour then show up,' says Chiara.

So she gets dressed up and floats out and I go, 'See you soon,' run back to my bedroom and put on my costume – not "dress", yes?

I've drawn how the make-up should be, and the dress, so I match it as best I can. The eyeliner's easy – just lots of it – and I can make the dress work if I detach the sleeves and re-pin some of the braiding, using the free sewing kit. Up close, it's not much of a match but from a distance, it'll do. Good.

It feels like the clock's going backwards, so I give up waiting and walk slowly through the gardens to the library steps. The French doors – _are they called 'French' in Morocco? They're called 'French' in England, I suppose_ – are closed so I can get quite close without being noticed; I see Chiara and Hamid looking at the album together.

She's nodding and he's, well, looking sad. Is he _crying_?

I move up onto the bottom step, to see better.

Hamid's gesturing now – _maybe rocking an invisible baby in his arms_? – then wringing his hands and looking all anxious.

What's he saying?

I can't hear anything, so I move up another step.

Just Charlie Brown voices: _Wah-wah-wah, wah-wah-_ wah _-wah-wah?_

One more step...

Hamid screams.

He's looking right at me, horrified, shouting like he's been shot.

And it's scary, so I run away – _what would you have done_? I run all the way back to the riad, panicking, take off the dress, wash my face and brush out my hair and try to think what to do. Only I've gone blank, like the screaming blew all my ideas out of my ears and my head's empty.

What will I say to Chiara? Why didn't I show up?

I can hear her coming, so I slump on the sofa in front of the TV, hoping she'll believe I showered then dropped off. That's believable, right?

It seems not.

'Where were you? Where the _f***_ were you?' she shouts.

I do my best woken-from-a-deep-sleep routine. ' _What_?'

'Hamid's tea party – why didn't you... did you fall asleep?'

'What time is it?' I say, not even convincing myself.

Chiara looks furious and freaked out, all at the same time.

'You're not even dressed!'

'I had a shower and... er...'

She stomps about for a bit, looking very un-regal despite the dress, then sits down heavily next to me. 'You missed... _everything_.'

I can't be arsed to keep up the sleepy act. 'So what happened?'

Chiara lets out a massive sigh, like she's a punctured human balloon, then goes, 'Hamid _lost_ it. Totally lost it. He was telling me all about Estella then he just went crazy.'

And then she says: 'It was like he'd seen a ghost.'

Confession time.

My plan was just to dress like Estella and for it to be obvious I was her daughter. Not to look, through a window, like I'm my own dead mum.

Oh s***.

Have I ruined everything?

'So did he say anything before... _before_?'

Another big huff.

'He said _plenty_.'

Then silence.

'I suppose it's better out than in, with some stuff, isn't it? I prompted.

Isn't it?

Chiara looks me in the eye and says, 'Estella Dulac died here.'

_Here_? 'At the hotel?'

' _Here_.'

'In this riad?'

'In this _room_.'

I shudder, and not for show, imagining a dead body by our feet.

'Right here? How?'

Chiara has that sparkle in her eye now, like when you've got amazing gossip.

' _Drugs.'_

This I hadn't expected. My mum – on drugs? That doesn't sound right. Wait – was I a crack baby, is that why I'm always so slim? I suppose there's an up-side.

'She was on heroin, it turns out.'

'Really, with a newborn baby?'

'Hamid was as surprised as anyone,' says Chiara, relaxing back into the sofa. 'He checked up on her every day and said he'd never seen any sign of it, she'd always looked OK, just a bit tired and stressed out at times. But never like she was out of it, never.'

'So... did he find her?'

Another sparkle from Chiara.

'No – and that's the thing he feels most guilty about. He _should_ have, it was on his roster to call in mid-afternoon and do his checks, but his wife was ill so he had to nip home and sort some stuff out, and when he got back, there was an ambulance and Estella was being wheeled out on a trolley, under a blanket.'

'So, of course, he blames himself. He thinks if he'd been there somehow it would never have happened and she'd be alive today.'

Doubtful. 'It's not his fault, is it?'

'Well... that's not all.'

No?

'Her mother rang, the night before.'

'The actress?'

'Louise, yes. She called, sounding all drunk or something, and Hamid said Estella was out, because he thought her mother sounded like she wanted a fight and that Estella was too tired to cope with it.'

Come on! 'Missing a call couldn't have killed her, could it?'

Chiara shakes her head. ' _I_ don't think so, but Hamid thinks if she'd just spoken to her mother, Estella might not have overdosed. He thinks she's dead because of him.'

I hope that doesn't mean he'll want a cut of my money...

_IN TOMORROW'S PAPER_ : 'Facts aren't fun, are they? But rumours are delicious!'

*****

http://callmechiara.blogspot.com/

Shop Tactics

Posted by Chiara on October 12, 2010

Wherever the masks were, they were not in the cottage. All Stacey had brought with her, besides that tacky tracksuit she occasionally stood up in, were the paper... and that shoebox. Speaking of which, what was on those old cassettes?

"We should head out tomorrow," I suggested. "See a bit of the scenery. We will go stir crazy if we just stay here for the rest of the week. We should fill our lungs with country air and see if we can't flush out a few more memories."

Kendal is hardly Kensington but I am sure Stacey could amuse herself for long enough to allow me to raid the local charity shops.

"Fine," she said, dismissively. "If you insist."

I wasn't insisting and, to be honest, I would have been happy for her to stay home while I went off searching, but I didn't entirely trust her home alone with the laptop, and it was too cumbersome to cart around town.

We agreed to wake up whenever, eat and leave. I dragged the laptop into my room and re-read what I had dreamt up so far. I was already rather fond of Estella and Hilary, and felt rather sorry for them that their daughter had turned out to be a brat.

I was tempted to write more of their story, to see what happened next, seeing as how it kind of came to me as I typed. After all, the only beats I had to hit were Estella dying and Hilary adopting Stacey-to-be; everything in between was mine for the writing.

'Whenever' turned out to be around eleven for Stacey, so breakfast became brunch and it was lunchtime by the time we made it into the town.

I had misremembered the pencil museum as being here (it is actually in Keswick) but this aside failed to engage Stacey, as did the premise of mint cake.

"So it is a block of mint-flavoured sugar?" she asked, incredulous. "Why?"

"It is like an old-fashioned energy bar, for hikers," I tried to explain. "One Guide camp I went to, it was the only thing keeping us going. The leaders fed us tinned burgers and kept all the cakes we had brought for themselves." Two decades on, I was still bitter.

"Fascinating."

Kendal, the Lakes, were, of course, as far removed from the West End as was imaginable to someone as self-centred and blinkered as Stacey, who, despite being born in North Africa, clearly had no global perspective. We were still in England, still in a middle-class enclave of the well-to-do, but we may as well have been visiting a herd of nomadic tribesmen with bones through their noses as peering at cakes with OAPs.

She looked narcoleptically bored – I was expecting an extravagant swoon to the pavement any minute. But finally she saw signs for a mall and thawed.

"I could do with new clothes, of my own," she reasoned, like I was a weekend dad taking my ungrateful daughter out for the day.

I saw my moment. "Why not go on ahead, pick out some stuff you like, and I'll check my balance and see what I can stretch to? There's a branch of my bank over there. I'll come and find you in – half an hour? An hour?"

This seemed to appease Stacey, so I stood and tinkered with my phone for as long as it took for her to wander off out of view, then assessed the high street. There were three charity shops within a stretch of maybe 15 storefronts: British Heart Foundation, Oxfam and Scope. All three had food steamers to spare, alongside old waxed jackets and shelves full of Dan Brown books, but only one had what I wanted.

"Are you sure?" asked the aging volunteer at the till. "Sometimes we get in MP3 players. Not iPods, but other brands. They are very popular now..."

"This is fine," I assured her, popping the change from a tenner into the donation box. "It's exactly what I was after."

"Well, maybe they're due a comeback?" she suggested, with pity in her reply

I doubted it, but needs must where tapes gather dust.

I met Stacey earlier than expected but she had already amassed an armful of awful, garish jersey tops with gaping necklines and metallic flashes. That reputation for being a high-street boho princess was obviously hard work – away from the King's Road she had the same magpie tendencies of any woman trying to shop at speed: pick up the most eye-catching items, regret at leisure when you try them on again at home.

"I can afford... £50." I couldn't but I was starting to care less about my current bank balance and more about an upcoming advance. I hoped my paperback sales would cover a cheapo sailor-suit top. And if the books ended up in Oxfam, well, everyone wins.

Stacey looked at me in disbelief, as if £50 would barely buy a thong.

"That's not very much."

"I haven't got much money right now. You can have £50-worth, max, or not get anything. But I think you should treat yourself." Don't stint to spend my money!

"Fine, I'll have this one" – the sailor top, bingo! – "and this one" – a floaty wingback number worthy of an amateur ice dancer.

We joined the queue, like refugees carrying rags and, after one joyless exchange with a shop assistant, apparently offended by our faux pas of standing at her till and expecting her to serve us, headed back to the cottage via the supermarket.

"I thought you had no more money," snapped Stacey.

"Can you eat clothes, then?" I retorted. "Which top shall we have for tea?"

She sneered. "Ha ha."

We filled the basket with the least nutritious foodstuffs on offer in Cumbria and I snuck in a pack of AA batteries, hoping Stacey wouldn't notice. And, as she would no more offer to help pack than pay, I succeeded.

"It's a shame I couldn't afford to get you some new trousers," I lied, on the walk back to the cottage. "There was a pair on a mannequin that would have gone really well with your sailor top." You could have walked straight into the Navy recruitment office and all they would have to do would be give you a cap and a call sign!

She sniffed at my attempts to be her stylist, but seemed to believe me.

"Imagine the kind of clothes I will be able to buy..."

She didn't say when, but we both knew. My financial fantasies only extended to buying a bigger, better flat that didn't require anything doing to it (including cleaning) but I knew Stacey imagined a world of locked boutique doors being flung open as she approached, personal shoppers jostling to dress her, and not needing to ask the price as handbags and other costly accessories were presented to her by bowed-head assistants on commission; Pretty Woman on Bond Street. Oh to wield wealth!

Stacey never mentioned Cady Stone but I knew there was also an element of revenge in this entire endeavour. I had flicked through the tabloids in the supermarket but there was no mention of her. If the reunion with her ex was happening, there was no mention made of ousted second wives and elopements. Perhaps fights like theirs were commonplace and Stacey misinterpreted it all, got overwrought and threw herself into the river for no good reason?

The cottage was freezing when we returned, so, after Stacey's half-arsed fashion show, in which her disappointment in her purchases was as obvious as their garishness, we wore everything we had and huddled over nachos and dips in the sitting room.

There were no aide memoire movies showing that night, just dour local news reports about floods and episodes of sitcoms we had both seen enough times to quote. Were they enough to occupy Stacey while I snuck into her room? Probably not.

"Fancy a bath?" I asked. "You know, to warm up?"

Stacey looked utterly horrified. What had I said? Was it water, was she aquaphobic now? Was that even the word, or was it 'hydrophobia', like with rabies?

"W-w-with you?" she stammered.

Seriously? Did she think I had been grooming her, that this entire adventure had been an elaborate way to get her naked and gaze in awe upon her scrawny limbs? I wouldn't spend £50 for the privilege. I wasn't after her body, I wanted her life story.

"Don't be ridiculous! I was just offering to run one for you. There is a knack to it, you have to just open the tap a tiny bit to get the water to come out hot. We would have to be pygmies to both fit in – and anyway, you're not my type."

She agreed, apologetically, which suited me fine. There was probably mileage in pretending to be offended but I would save that for later. So, ten minutes later, I had the rest of the cottage to myself. Stacey locked herself in the bathroom, in case the mere suggestion had awakened a Sapphic urge within me, but had left her bedroom door ajar.

Aside from the duvet, curled into a flowery turd atop the mattress, the room looked untouched, so I knew the shoebox must be under the bed. And it was. I lay flat on the floor to reach and remove it, then left the room as I found it, fighting the urge to make the bed as I left. I am as slovenly a housekeeper as is possible without living in my own waste, but even I could air out a duvet.

Having hidden my charity buy and batteries behind the Gideon's Bible in the unit by my bed, I retrieved them then dug my headphones out from my coat pocket. But as I slipped the battery-compartment cover off to slot in the AAs, a thought struck me – it might not work. It might have been given to charity because it was broken. That sweet old dear who was trying to get me to upgrade probably knew that, that was why she was trying to sell me something else, the wily old...

It worked. Or at least the things that turned the spools turned the spools. It didn't mean the head still worked, of course, and it might not amplify sound any more... but I could sit and worry myself sick or I could give it a go.

The tapes were numbered, so I picked the first one out of the shoebox. The inlay card had nothing written on it but was clearly vintage, going by the design. I flipped the case open and slid out the tape, blowing dust off before putting into the charity Walkman.

And then I pressed Play.

I don't know what I had expected to hear – music, mainly. Demos, maybe. It crossed my mind for a moment that these were early recordings of tracks by Cady Stone's ex/future husband, such as she had presented at his trial. But it was just voices.

Whose they were, I wasn't sure.

One was a sprightly old woman; the other was barely audible, a mumble in the background – male or female I couldn't tell, age unknown.

This first tape began with the clattering familiar to anyone transcribing an interview, of a recorder being activated and positioned close enough to the subject to capture every utterance, however quiet and seemingly insignificant at the time. So was it an interview? I couldn't hear questions, just murmurs in the gaps between answers.

It began with pleasantries. "Oh thank you!" trilled the old lady, "I'm so glad you like it. I picked out the colours myself but I got a man in to do the actual work. But yes, I think he did a good job. I said to him, 'I want the feel of a meadow in springtime, inside' and this is what he came up with. It's so rejuvenating, don't you think? Darling."

So I knew what the room they were in looked like, but not who they were.

"No, not long," she responded to an incomprehensible question. "About... five years? Which I suppose sounds long to you but to me it's nothing, nothing at all. I was in Los Angeles for, what... six decades? And that felt like no time at all. Not enough time."

That gave me an age range, at least. Whoever was speaking was at least 65, but sounded much older.

"Well, I had no reason to stay. Really, I left it too late. I wanted to see Charles, you see, but I never dared. He'd been gone so long but I always thought he'd come back for me one day, and then he died. I mean, I'd seen him in '72, we all had, and just knowing he was in town was wonderful, just wonderful, but it was a flying visit and we didn't get to see each other face to face. I considered turning up, of course, but Oona was with him and we'd never got on. I didn't dislike her, I didn't dislike anyone, but I knew she thought she'd won and she hadn't. I'd had the best of him. She was just the younger model. And my god, Switzerland, can you imagine spending all that time in Switzerland? I'm with Orson on that one. Cuckoo clocks? Cuckoo is right – crazy. Switzerland!"

'Oona' is a pretty unusual name. And if by Los Angeles she had meant Hollywood, then I might be on to something. Oona and Charles, formerly of Los Angeles/Hollywood, then Switzerland.

I dragged the laptop from the lounge. What reporters had done before Google, I do not know. All that information, instantly. Amazing. "Er, reporting?" some say, but, honestly, I just think a lot more mistakes got into print. I cringe when I think of some of the stuff we had run in the past, in the dark ages before email and web access for all.

In this instance, I got what I was after in one quick search.

Oona, Charles, Hollywood, Switzerland.

Third from the top of the results was a Wikipedia page on Oona O'Neill, daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill, fourth and final wife of... Charlie Chaplin. Who exiled himself in Switzerland after his visa was revoked on suspicion of his being a Communist.

Mystery solved – right?

Wrong.

That left me with three other wives, all younger than Oona by a decade or more. There were nine other serious relationships listed online, aside from his wives (who gave birth to eleven children – poor Oona had eight alone), and who knows how many young starlets who caught his eye and stirred his Lolita-loving loins in between (or during).

It might have been easier if she had said she had never loved Chaplin.

But hang on – if she was older than Oona, who was born in 1925, then she was at least 85. She had been in her new home for five years when the tapes were made... but if I didn't know the date the tapes were made, then that's useless information. Square One.

Of course, the tapes themselves could have been utterly worthless. They could have been some school-project thing Stacey's been carting around for years for sentimental reasons, some old dear she befriended and can't bear to bin, even though she can't (couldn't) play the tapes any more. But I didn't think they were. I thought they were important.

So I pressed Play again.

"It's not very modern to admit it, but I followed him out there. I was lovesick! And we'd never met at the time. So silly, but you have to follow your heart, don't you agree? So I did... I saw him on the screen, you see. At the picturehouse. Films were very short in those days, not like today – so long, don't you think? Too long – so you would get a whole load of them all bunched together. And my favourites were always Charles'."

Was she a stalker?

"I'd begun performing by then and my mother mentioned one day she'd known Charles' poor mother, Hannah – Lily, as she used to be known – and how Charles took care of her even from all that way away, in America, making sure she was always in the very best asylums and so forth. My mother wasn't mentally unwell herself but I think she liked the idea of being kept by me, as young as I was. So, first opportunity, she shipped me off to America. 'Tell everyone you're 18,' she said as she pushed me up the gang plank, 'except Charles. Younger the better with him.' That was the last time I saw her."

So she's not a stalker now, she was a honey trap – as endorsed by her own avaricious mother? Is there a statute of limitations on child endangerment?

"Well, the boat took forever, as you can imagine. Days and days. When they launched Concorde, I couldn't believe it – all that distance in three hours, when it took us a week at high sea! Not everyone made it. I was always more sturdy than I seemed, for such a slight young thing, a stripling, so all day long I would see grown men vomiting and I'd be fine, like a mountain goat, tripping merrily around the deck without once being green around the gills. Some families were in a terrible state, but not me. I loved it all."

I still couldn't catch a single word spoken by the interviewer, but I got the gist.

"I went straight to Broadway – where else? I had letters of recommendation from all the music halls, most of which were written by my mother and other friends of hers who were literate enough. And of course it would be such an enormous effort to call and confirm the contents of each letter, and so expensive to the penny-pinching producers, that they all just offered me auditions there and then. And of course, they all loved me. Ever since Charles had wowed 'em with Fred Karno's troupe they'd all wanted a little British starlet of their own – and here I was."

More mumbling.

"A bidding war? Possibly. I just know that they all wanted me and I could only pick one, if I was to be the star of the show. So I accepted the offer that came with the nicest dressing room and costumes. I didn't really care about the money, I just wanted the lifestyle. Which of course my mother would be furious about, if she realised I'd passed up on money that should rightfully have been hers, but who'd tell her? Not me."

I started making up questions of my own in the gaps, silently awarding myself points when they tallied with the answer given.

"The showgirls and the pony-ballet kids were all terribly jealous, of course, but I couldn't care less. I was up on stage every night, twice on matinee days, and all I could hear was adoration, not envy. I didn't care for any pettiness. I was en route to the arms of Charles, that was all I cared about. I'd make my name and he'd want to meet me and we'd marry and... well if he made me a film star too then so be it but it wasn't my one aim in life. I really just wanted to be his wife. Is that awful?"

Before I could get all enraged about her non-existent feminist principles, the bathroom door clicked open and I heard Stacey scuttle to her room – my home-time bell.

(27) comments

*****

_Daily Mirror_ , WEDNESDAY 13.10.2010

_SHH!_ Staff at an exotic luxury hotel are in damage-limitation mode after more unreliable memoirs from a starry-eyed source. They claim there are no recorded drug deaths on the premises, or evidence the storyteller ever stayed there. Spin – or a statement of fact?

Wednesday, October 13, 2010 _THE SUN_

Stacey Blyth _'s must-read autobiography continues, only in_ The Sun _. Today, the socialite learns all about her mother's tragic overdose, and heads home to plan a birthday party..._

'SAVE THE BAIT'

'How did he know it was heroin?'

Chiara gawps at me like a thick fish.

'If Hamid never saw Estella with drugs, and didn't find the body?'

Chiara _hmmms_ and goes for the papers. 'I've not really looked at the Cause Of Death bit,' she admits. 'OK, that word might mean "toxic", I think I've seen it on warning labels before...'

'But that could just mean she was poisoned,' I say, 'not that she was a junkie.'

Another brilliant idea pings into my mind.

' _Room service_ – hungry?'

We'd missed eating for the tea party, so I order some Mamounia Happy Meals – club sandwiches with fries and Cokes – and when they come and Chiara's signing off the cost, I poke the death certificate under the maid's nose and ask her to translate.

She can't speak English, of course – _you can't get the staff_ – so she mimes. Smoking first – does she mean lung cancer? – then she pretends to inject herself.

I go 'Ahhh!' – understood in every language – and she curtseys and leaves.

' _Definitely_ heroin.'

'Oh, that's expert testimony, alright,' snorts Chiara, fries poking out of her face like deep-fried fangs.

We eat in silence until a sick-kind-of-funny thought strikes me.

'Imagine when Hamid phoned Estella's mum back... "Sorry I didn't put you through the other night but your daughter's dead now, so no need to call again".'

Chiara gets on her high horse: 'What are you smiling for? It's an awful thought. And he _didn't_ call her back, he didn't have her number. He feels bad about that, too.'

I'm only making conversation... _Wait_!

'So, I'm not kidding around this time – he _didn't_ call Estella's mother? And the death certificate doesn't even say "Estella", it says something else?"

'It says "Suhana", yes...' says Chiara.

'So...'

'So?'

'So maybe she didn't know. Estella's mother didn't know she'd died.'

Chiara puts down her sandwich – a first.

'God, imagine that... Your daughter disappears, you finally track her down, to this hotel, put in a call she doesn't take – for whatever reason – and that's the last you hear of her. You never even find out she died... '

I pull fries out of the pile like it's a potato Kerplunk.

'Maybe they met up in Heaven,' I say. 'That would be a nice surprise.'

They do have Heaven in Marrakech, don't they?

'Assuming she's dead,' says Chiara, like an idiot.

I waggled the death certificate at her... only she didn't mean Estella, did she?

'Why are we assuming Louise Dulac is dead?'

She must be, mustn't she?

Chiara looks up Louise on her laptop.

'No date of death,' she says, smiling like she's caught me out.

'That might be wrong,' I say. 'She's obscure, you said so yourself.'

'I bet she's still got fans who'd update her page, though. I think she's alive.'

I move to read the screen. Supposedly, she's 94 now, and she lives...

'In London?' _Really_?

Chiara skims the important bits: ' " _Home for many years was an extravagant mansion on the Californian coast, midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco... in the late '70s, she moved to Europe to be close to friend and ex-lover Charles Chaplin_ ".'

Chaplin? _Ugh_. That moustache!

'He's been dead forever.'

'He was older than her,' says Chiara. 'but _Lolita_ was based on one of his marriages, so... you never know.'

If I knew what _Lolita_ was, I might have been impressed.

'And now she's in London. Small world.'

Isn't it? I wonder if she knows who I am... I mean, not who I _really_ am, no-one knows that yet, just me, but knows of me as I _used_ to be. How weird would _that_ be?

'So?'

'So... we go home. And try to find Louise, I guess... and the granddaughter. But she could be anywhere, couldn't she, and we really don't know anything about her.'

Is now the right time to say, 'But _I'm_ her granddaughter'?

Nah. I'm saying nothing. What's the point, unless we find Louise first?

The yawning contest is re-starting so we go to bed, and when I get up Chiara's already booked us flights back and is all ready to check out. A car comes half an hour later and, after Chiara signs the bill and gives Hamid an awkward hug that I swear is against his religion, we head to the airport.

So we get on the plane and they give us free papers, serious ones with hardly any showbiz stuff, of course, and I flick through looking at the pictures but Chiara's just staring at the front page. And it's _such_ a boring story, about tax or something.

'Did you notice the date?' she asks.

'It's Tuesday,' I say.

'No, the _date_!'

Means nothing to me. Just numbers.

Chiara pokes at the top of the page.

'It means next week is...?'

She leaves me to finish the sentence, like I'm in Nursery.

All annoyed, she does it herself;

'Next week is Louise Dulac's birthday.'

Oh.

So?

'I think you left your brain behind,' she snaps, as the drinks trolley rattles by.

'So... she might die soon?'

'So she might be having a party...'

I don't really respond because I've found a really bad snap of someone I used to know and am enjoying how uncomfortable she looked, _posing outside an opera house_!

'...And if she's not, we could throw her one.'

An old-folks' home hoe-down? Count me out.

But as soon as we land, Chiara's on her mobile, asking if anyone's heard about anything happening next week, like a proper press-in-attendance kind of party. _This whole time, she's kept quiet that she's a socialite?_ One of the old-fashioned kind, the ones who look frumpy and don't get pissed (or papped), but still.

'Doesn't sound like anything's happening... yet, but they'll all be talking about it now, so we should sort something soon, don't you think?'

That side of celebrity is alien to me. I just turn up and look good, I don't have to hire venues and chefs and sweat the small stuff.

By the time we get back to her flat, Chiara's booked a Kensington restaurant – 'With good disabled access, that's very important'– and is on to some party planner to get the food and drink and guests sorted.

She finally rings off. 'Petra's the least discrete planner in London. I've told her bits but pretended to swear her to secrecy, so it'll be everywhere tomorrow.'

I doubt this very much – I mean, it's not a nipple-slip picture, is it? 'Old Lady Even Older' scoop – but there it is, in the next day's _Standard_ :

Save-the-date cards are being handprinted for a hush-hush function next Friday. But don't bother buying a hat – this isn't a notice about nuptials. The event in question is a birthday party for the last British siren of the '30s silver screen. Forget the likes of Liz Taylor – we're told this lady was the true love of local boy Charlie Chaplin's life, so expect an impressive turnout in her honour. Her name? The organiser is playing a guessing game, but if you've any ideas, drop us a line at diary@standard.co.uk.

Chiara practically whacks me in the face with the paper.

'See?!'

Yes I can.

'But it doesn't say her name, and anyway, you haven't actually invited her, have you, you don't know where she is or anything... '

Chiara's shiny with smugness.

'That's the brilliant bit – I don't have to. I've put out just enough information to get people interested, and they'll do the legwork now, of working out who she is and putting in calls and so on. So she'll find out and be flattered and turn up. You'll see...'

I'll see an empty restaurant with people waiting for someone famous to arrive and all it'll be is you and...

Me.

_Of course,_ I think _, this is my moment!_ Louise won't show up, why would she? If she's that old and still alive she's probably hooked up to a machine, she's not all mobile and sociable. So they'll all be waiting but instead of _her_ it'll be _me_ , I'll arrive, looking like her – like my mum did, at the Mamounia – and I'll reveal all.

So to speak. (Although that reminds me, I need to do a flash test of whatever dress I end up wearing, don't want to ruin the moment with an accidental underwear shoot...)

So I'm planning my own private coming-out party and Chiara makes a big show of phoning Petra the planner and pretending to b*****k her.

'Look,' she goes, 'I understand that people talk and there'll be a lot of interest but I really want to keep this discrete, yes? I mean, she's going to be 95, you know... yes, on the day' – Chiara does an exaggerated wink at me, like she's a panto dame – 'so I really want it to be a quiet, respectful affair, just close friends and life-long fans... I'm so glad you understand – _ciao_!'

'How many actresses will turn 95 next Friday?' she asks me, as if I can answer.

'Why not just tell her the name, if you're going to give such big clues?'

'Because Petra needs to believe me about being discrete, otherwise it's not gossip to her and she won't pass it on. Facts aren't fun, are they? But rumours are delicious!'

True. It's more exciting to know that someone's pregnant when the dad doesn't.

I'm playing along with Chiara but I still don't think she'll smoke out Louise just by dropping hints to rich idiots, so I keep my plan in action.

All I need is the right outfit – not some cheapo smock, this time.

So I say, 'You know what we should wear? Proper '30s vintage.'

Chiara looks thrilled at the thought, and I feel a bit sad/bad for her. Because the thing with vintage is, the reason it's only really top models that wear it, is only certain sizes have survived, because they were too small for most people to wear, and wear out.

I'm pretty confident there'll be something glittery and close-fitting for me to wear, something Louise or Estella themselves could have worn, back in the day, but I think Chiara might just have to put on a brave face in the changing rooms, poor thing.

Oh well, she can't have it all, can she?

That's my job.

_IN TOMORROW'S PAPER_ : 'I don't want Chiara to uninvite me out of jealousy...'

*****

http://callmechiara.blogspot.com/

Alluring Louise

Posted by Chiara on October 13, 2010

"So, we should probably think about heading back soon."

Stacey murmured a non-committal 'Uh-huh' beside me.

"I think I have enough to go on to write the first part of the book, and I don't see why we can't do the rest back in London. You're probably aching to get back to... work, aren't not? See friends? I can do more research down there, it will be easier. Bit more hectic, maybe, but easier in other ways. Eh?"

Stacey made another noise, if just to dutifully plug the gaps between my words.

"So I suppose I should ask, is there anything you've not told me, anything I should know about before we leave? Anything integral to the book?"

Like...

"The tapes?"

No noise this time, just a shrug.

"At my flat, you asked me to collect stuff for you, from storage – the adoption papers, death certificate and will... and a box of tapes. In the shoebox?"

Stacey looked into the middle-distance, as if replaying that night in her mind.

"I never listened to them," she said, finally. "I never had a tape player."

"So you have no idea what is on them, who is on them?"

"Who? No. No idea at all..."

The microclimate in the room altered.

"...Why are you asking me?"

"Because we need to go home and... "

"But what makes you think the tapes are important? They could be old recordings of the charts off the radio, anything."

"I just want to be sure."

Stacey's eyes narrowed.

"You have listened to them. This place is ancient, it might have a tape player lying around somewhere."

"It didn't, I looked."

She didn't miss my slip.

"Didn't?"

It was quicker to come clean. "I saw a Walkman in a charity shop this afternoon, so I bought it."

"And?"

I couldn't magic the tapes back under her bed, so...

"And, when you were in the bath, I had a listen to one."

"They're not yours to listen to!"

"No, they're yours, but you didn't listen to them!"

"That's my choice!"

"Well, you made a stupid choice. What if they explain everything?"

"Do they?"

"I don't know."

"How can you not know, if you've listened to them?"

"I've listened to a few minutes of one of them, that's all. You weren't in the bath that long."

"And what was it?"

"An interview. With an old woman. Who was in love with Charlie Chaplin. So she could be anybody. It is like, in 80-odd years, finding a recording of a woman who was gag for George Clooney and trying to work out her identity from that."

"Nothing else?"

"She came from London, went to America, and that is as far as I have got. It might just be some school-project thing."

"Or, it might be Estella's mum – my grandma."

"It might be."

"So we should find out, listen to more of the tapes."

Relieved the row had run aground, I sheepishly retrieved the shoebox and Walkman and we shared a pair of earbuds.

I zoned out for the first minute or two, just trying to catch a word the interviewer said, then, after "Concorde... Karno... Charles..." I started to pay attention again.

"If I'm honest, and I should be – if I can't be at my age, then when? In Heaven? – I actually got my job while I was still on the boat, although I didn't realise at the time. As I said, most everyone onboard was dreadfully ill for the entire week's voyage, but I was bright as a button throughout. When you've been brought up poor, you're like a Spartan if you make it through your childhood. Not all my brothers did... but I was tough, although you wouldn't have known it to look at me, I looked so frail and angelic.

So all these people, rich and poor alike, were sitting out on deck, for the proximity to the ocean should they need to be sick. And being just about the only not-ill person on the ship, aside from the crew, I was rather bored. I wasn't a big reader at the time, that came a little later, and I had no-one robust my age to play with, so I started to dance and sing to raise the spirits. I didn't put on a formal show, you understand, I was really just making up a running order as I went along, and repeating the same stuff further around the deck to a fresh, if green-gilled, audience. Anyway I'd been doing this for a few hours, raised a few smiles, when I noticed that one man in particular seemed very taken with me. I'd do my bit – a couple of songs, some tap-dancing, a little monologue – and then move on, and wouldn't you know, he'd come with me. He wouldn't follow me immediately, he'd wait a while then appear at the edge of the new group I was entertaining, and it happened several times. I had heard about men like that. Mother always kept me safe from the predatory sorts at the theatres but I knew the stories and was on my guard – not that I had a clue what they'd do if they caught me! – doubly so, as I was travelling alone. So at the end of every day, when I got tired, I'd run off, faster than he could catch me if that was his plan, find my bunk and hide myself away.

When we came ashore in New York, I doubted I'd ever see him again – hoped I wouldn't, I suppose – and I didn't, until the first night of the revue. I was halfway through my song when I looked down and saw him in the middle of the front row. I almost wavered but managed to hold my note, and I carried on as if nothing had happened, although I knew he'd seen me recognise him.

The thing was, he looked different. I mean, no-one travels in their very best clothes but he'd looked amongst the poorest people on deck at the time, quite scruffy and dishevelled, not at all gentleman-like. Of course, I didn't know at the time that he was a terrible alcoholic, that he'd only been on the boat because he'd been blind drunk and ended up in Southampton after drinking with sailors, so had hopped on the ship on a whim, rather than make his way back to London and fly home to New York. I mean, can you imagine it – being so drunk you thought a week on a boat would be as good as flight? Although flying was still very new, I suspect he was as fearful as he was intoxicated – or maybe he was intoxicated because he was fearful, so really he'd wanted to get the boat all along? I never thought about that before, how funny...

Where was I? Oh yes, so he'd looked quite the tramp onboard ship, but in the front row he was all shiny and smart, with a glittery watch chain and diamond tie pin and slicked-back hair. He looked a bit like the Monopoly man, only without the top hat. It wasn't done to wear a top hat in the theatre, of course, or indeed indoors at all. We had standards in those days. So I'd seen him and was a little worried, even seeing him in his best bib and tucker, so I ran straight to see the producer who'd hired me, to see if he would do anything to keep him away from my dressing room. Only when I burst into his office, who's there but Mr Monopoly himself? The two of them were beaming and shaking hands like old friends, so I could hardly say anything, could I? Then we were formally introduced, and it turned out Mr Monopoly was the son of an oil family. I mean, that's not how he was introduced, that would have been crude... did you hear that? Crude – oil, it was a pun! What fun. No, the producer told me his name and I put two and two together. He was certainly dressed well enough to be wealthy, and his appearance on the ship fitted with the stories about him sometimes written up in the papers. Gossip columns were new in those days, thank goodness, but he was already a fixture, having more money than sense and lots of fun. So I had the measure of him, even if he thought I was some fresh-faced, know-nothing import from England. I knew enough to steer clear, not least because I was still a month or so off my 16th birthday, and I wasn't going to make any exception to my morality. I would even make Charles wait, I told myself.

Anyway, he took great interest in me and would be in the front row most nights, unless he had a prior engagement at a ball or was too hungover to attend. But I always refused his offers of dinner after the final curtain call, insisting I needed to get an early night to stay fresh for the next-day performance. Which appeased my producer, who'd lost countless girls to predatory playboys, only to have to replace them then deal with the sobbing wretches looking for work to raise the bastard children they'd ended up with. I wasn't going to be one of those girls, once pretty, now timeworn and pudgy, given shifts in the laundry if they were lucky. I was always going to be centre stage; that was my plan. How else would I catch Charles' eye? I wouldn't settle for less than Chaplin.

The problem was, Mr Monopoly was ever so generous. He started by sending me shoes, new pairs of shoes to dance in when he could see from his front-row seat that mine we getting worn. I sent back the first few pairs, but then he sent a box containing the most beautiful pink pair, with my name embroidered on them. Well, I could hardly send them back, as the shop could never resell them, could they? What were the odds that another customer would want a pair with 'Agatha' sewn into them? So I kept them."

Stacey snapped Stop.

"Agatha. She is called Agatha. Not Louise. There is, like, one famous Agatha and she is not my grandma."

"So if we found a tape of someone called Norma-Jean talking about her childhood in and out of foster homes, we should throw it away because who is she?"

Even Stacey has to have heard 'Candle In The Wind'. The original version.

"Oh. So you don't think Agatha is her real name?"

"No, I do think Agatha is her real name – Louise Dulac is not. It is a bit breathy and European for someone from the south London slums. No, I think precocious little Agatha grew up to be Louise."

If insignificant little Stacey had a pseudonym, then it's likely a starlet fleeing London poverty might polish up her moniker before making an assault on Hollywood.

Stacey pressed Play again.

"Well, you can imagine how jealous the other girls were when I wore the shoes. If looks could kill I'd have been assassinated by firing squad before the curtain rose. But I didn't care – they really were beautiful shoes and the best part was, no-one could steal them, as often went on. I mean, everyone always denied it, but it was no better than a prison backstage – if something wasn't locked away or guarded, it became communal property, however unhygienic that might have been. But the shoes were mine and mine alone – there wasn't another Agatha for miles, as far as I knew. It was the first time I'd ever been glad of that ghastly name. So unbecoming for a movie actress, don't you think?

When I wasn't tap-dancing on deck, I'd spent much of my Atlantic trip thinking up a new name. Something exotic and sophisticated. I'd thought of Georgina as a first name, in honour of the king, but I'd never come up with a suitable surname. Then, because I was en route to stardom, I toyed with Estella; a Spanish-speaking girl in the chorus told me it meant 'star', but later I saw her pointing and laughing at my shoes so I skipped that, in case she was setting me up. You would think, in a week, that I'd have come up with something good, but no. I suppose I just wasn't inspired enough, by the piles of puking people hogging the handrails. The smell!

Anyway, I decided to be more friendly with Mr Monopoly, in return for the beautiful shoes, but I still never agreed to go to dinner with him. And he kept bringing me presents, most of which I sent straight back. It wasn't consciously a mating ritual for me, far from it – I literally didn't think romantically of any man but Charles – but it seemed to keep Mr Monopoly entertained. He started to vary the gifts he sent; rather than clothes he started to send me books. Now, I could read, and I was very proud of that. Very proud. Most of the girls my age in the show were largely illiterate but not me, and I read almost everything I could get my hands on, to keep up my schooling. Charles was a clever man, not just some clown, and I wanted to impress him with my brain as well as my beauty when we finally met, as you can imagine.

So, when Mr Monopoly realised I could read, he deluged me with books. Again, I sent a lot back – the big thick novels I knew I'd never read. I regret that now, very much – they would have been first editions. A Farewell To Arms, I think that was one of them, and The Seven Dials Mystery – that one I should have kept, what with it having my name on it too, don't you think? Ha ha! But the first one I kept was this beautiful picture book of The Arabian Nights, with its magical illustrations. I didn't even bother to read it, I just gazed at the pictures for hours and hours on end, it was better than the movies for me, because it was all in colour. You see, feature films wouldn't be colour for another, what, decade or so? Was Oz the first? So these books were like looking into the future, only they were historical looking too. Like time-travel. I think he bought me The Time Machine too, actually, but I don't think I ever read it.

So I would dance all afternoon and evening, and spend all day looking at the picture book. And after a while, I noticed the name of the artist. Dulac. Edmund Dulac. I didn't know anything about him other than that he'd painted these pictures, but his name spoke to me of mystery, a bygone age, wisdom and continental refinement. It was what I'd been looking for. So immediately I started thinking of myself as 'Miss Dulac'. I decided I would tell everyone once that this was my new name, then never answer to 'Agatha' again. Well I was terribly pretentious in those days. I mean, I was a teenager, not that teenagers were officially around until the '50s or so. I was ahead of my time.

I told Mr Monopoly of my plans, and he said "They can't just put 'Miss Dulac' up in lights, you'll need a first name'. And of course he was right. 'What about Lulu?' he suggested, 'Lulu Dulac?' Now that's a pretty name, but I happened to know that one of the girls who used to be in the show now danced elsewhere, to a very different type of audience, and she went by the name of Lulu, so to me it was cheap. Immoral, almost. So I said no, I wouldn't be Lulu Dulac. Although as I speak it out loud now, it does sound wonderful, doesn't it? Very lyrical. But no, I wanted something classier.

I still hadn't accepted a lunch date with Mr Monopoly and had no intention of doing so, so instead he'd tried to entice me out to the cinema with him, as if I didn't know what might happen when the lights went down. Again, I refused every offer, until one night he presented me with the chance to attend a premiere, right there in New York City. I was no closer to Hollywood for all the time I'd now spent in America but if I went, well, Hollywood would come to me! So I couldn't refuse. I let him buy me a new dress for the occasion, and he met me from the theatre in a limousine to take me straight there, even though we could easily have walked, it was only a few blocks down Broadway. But all the stars were turning up in limousines and so we looked liked stars too as we pulled up.

I don't remember anything about the event now, not a thing, other than that I got out of the car, started to read the marquee: 'LOUISE BR... ' and a flashbulb went off and I fainted. I'm told I was scooped up by Mr Monopoly and rushed inside, where smelling salts were administered, but that by the time I came round the film had begun and we'd missed the stars arriving. So much for my big Hollywood moment! So instead I was taken back to the limousine, which had been driven around to the back exit by now, and returned alone to my boarding house. I was right as rain, really, I'd just been startled and I think I'd been so excited I perhaps hadn't eaten enough that day, nothing to worry about. But of course the most appalling rumours had already begun.

When I arrived at the theatre for the next performance, there were flowers on my dressing table, and one of the bolder chorines asked me, 'When's it due?' to peals of laughter from the pony ballet. I laughed it off, but had begun to worry. What if I was pregnant? Now, please don't get the wrong idea. I was very chaste. I hadn't so much as let Mr Monopoly kiss me on the cheek, but sex education was very different in those days. In some ways, it was a more permissive time – the Hays Code had only just come in, so movies had been full of innuendo until then – but as streetwise as I was in some ways, I was terribly innocent in others. I'd briefly held hands with Mr Monopoly before we'd first left the limousine the night before, and in my ignorance I feared this was enough to become impregnated.

I was quite inconsolable by the time it was my entrance and couldn't be found, giving my understudy the thrill of trotting out onstage in my stead – lest you think this was the beginning of some All About Eve ascent to stardom, I'm happy to report she was awful. Well, not happy, but, you know. Relieved, at least. So the producer barged through my door to find me in floods, and sent word to Mr Monopoly, who arrived at the stage door looking stricken, as if my fainting was the onset of some fatal disease. I'd been removed to the producer's office by then, and was hysterically heaving out my confession between sobs and gasps for air. When I finally managed to string together a sentence containing the words 'gloves', 'limousine' and 'pregnant', the two men fell silent, before laughing so loudly they said it could be heard in the Upper Circle.

Then they couldn't speak, as they choked on their own guffaws. Their merriment had calmed me down to the point of fury – there was nothing funny about being a fallen woman! Simply through exhaustion, I think, they eventually stopped laughing, and sat in facing armchairs to compose themselves. The producer spoke first. 'I'm happy to tell you you're not pregnant," he said. "But you are naïve." Now, to me, who had never before heard such a word, this was no consolation. Was it fatal? My crisscrossed brow obviously translated as much to the men. "You're ill informed," said Mr Monopoly. "You can't fall pregnant by holding hands, far from it. And anyway, we were both wearing gloves, so we were..." The producer shouted, "Protected!" and they both fell about again. Well I didn't know what to think, apart from that they thought I was an ignoramus. I didn't care to be laughed at, so I made for my dressing room. The other girls were in the wings, so I spent that show blocking out the roars of residual laughter from the office, instead sketching the marquee from the previous night. It was far bigger than our theatre, jutting out across the pavement and almost into the street, it had seemed to me. And it was illuminated, making the signage letters look all the more bold and effective in the night light. 'L-O-U-I-S-E B-R' I pencilled in. I was about to add the 'O-O-K-S' when a thought occurred to me. I erased the 'B' and the 'R', carefully, and wrote in 'D-U-L-A-C' instead. 'Louise Dulac'. It sounded so perfect to me then, and it still does. So I suppose you could say that although I wasn't pregnant I did give birth that day, to my screen persona. If I'd never been to that premiere, if I hadn't been blinded by the flashbulb, Louise Dulac might never have been born. And you wouldn't be speaking to me now. Isn't life funny? Now, shall we have some tea?"

Side One ended.

"Do you think she is telling the truth?" asked Stacey.

"I think she thinks she is," I said. "At her age – looking back, what, 70 years? – this is probably what she remembers as happening. Like, I doubt she tap-danced off the Atlantic crossing and into a starring role. That is highly unlikely. And I doubt she was really as naive as she says. But if that's what she remembers to be the truth, then that is the truth. History is written by the victors, and she has won by virtue of still being alive."

"Alive then, anyway," said Stacey.

So when was then?

"How long have you had the tapes?" I asked.

Stacey shook her head as if to say she didn't know. "I just found the box one day and put them somewhere for safe keeping."

"So you knew they were important, but you didn't know what was on them?"

"Yes..." she said, in a tone that hoped I wouldn't ask her any more about it.

(41) comments

*****

_Daily Mirror_ , THURSDAY 14.10.2010

_SHH!_ Oops – someone forgot to change names to protect the innocent... One of West London's premier party planners is up in arms about being mentioned unfavourably in print, claiming her business will suffer from claims of indiscretion. Our lips are sealed.

Thursday, October 14, 2010 _THE SUN_

_In the penultimate instalment of starlet_ Stacey Blyth's _incredible life story,_ Entitled _, she awaits her date with destiny and rehearses what to say to her only remaining relative..._

'KISMET MAKE-UP'

'You _bitch_!'

Chiara hurls something soft at my head.

'Trying to make some money, were you? Pathetic. You... thief!'

Thief?

I'm still wearing the same old Juicy Couture tracksuit (washed and tumble-dried every night, I'll have you know) and haven't even dipped into Chiara's make-up since we got back from Marrakech, let alone borrowed any jewellery or anything.

If no-one's going to see me, why make any effort to look nice, right?

'Can't _believe_ you stole that photo... It wasn't yours to sell!'

What photo?

I look at what she smashed at me, today's paper, and find my mums and dad smiling back at me, from the Mamounia ballroom.

_The_ photo.

'How did they get this?'

'Oh, I don't know,' Chiara rants, 'but I suppose you _giving_ it to them helped!'

'How do I know it wasn't _you_?' I said. _Answer that_!

' _I_ don't need the money, _do_ I?' she spits. Classy.

_I need the money less than_ you _do, actually_ , I thought.

So I tell the truth: 'I didn't take it and I didn't sell it.'

Chiara's too angry to believe me.

'If _you_ didn't' – _if_ , like it's the only possible explanation – 'then who _did_?'

Hamid? Unlikely. And I don't think anyone else at the hotel knows or remembers who Estella was – and only I know who the couple are, still.

I read the caption out loud, for clues.

'"Recognise her? No, that's not British-born screen star Louise Dulac, it's her look-alike daughter, missing heiress Estella, snapped in costume at the Mamounia Hotel in Marrakech in 1975, in this never-before-seen shot from the archives."'

Chiara calms down.

'Of course! They've just linked it to Louise. They must have worked out who the party's for and come across this picture, somehow...'

_Somehow_? By magic, maybe?

'I mean, the photographer must still have the negative, right? It's his to sell.'

Opportunistic bastard, I'll sue him – when my money comes through.

'But do you see what they've missed?'

Chiara snatches the paper back from me and re-reads the caption.

'It just says it's Marrakech in 1975...'

Which it was, so?

'...It doesn't mention Halloween, so it doesn't mention it was taken _after_ Estella disappeared, does it? They've got the last picture of her – and they don't even know.'

Also, the _first_ picture of me, if my mum's pregnant in that snap!

'Yes, that must be it,' Chiara says to herself, 'they've worked it out and they're raiding the archives so when they do the story on the party, on Louise's big birthday do, there'll be more interest.'

If they're interested in my grandma, think how they'll feel about me!

'Hang on,' I go, 'what do we do if Louise _does_ show up?'

'What do you mean?' says Chiara.

'Well, so far, it's all been about organising this party and dropping hints and all that but if it all works and she really does show up – what then?'

Chiara looks stumped.

'I don't know. I mean, we can say we're fans and we want to show our appreciation for the last great British film star, but beyond that... I suppose we could tell her that she's got a granddaughter and...'

I go, 'I'll tell her the grandchild bit, you tell her that her daughter's dead.'

Chiara gives me a withering look.

"Unless we're going to unveil Suki or Amy or whatever she's called' – _it's Stacey, now, thanks_ – 'that's probably not a great idea, is it?'

'You're probably right,' I lie.

Because I've totally worked it all out already.

I've seen a few scripts in my time – no parts I really wanted, to be honest, not very well-written, too much t*t, and so on – so I wrote a little scene for myself:

INT. RESTAURANT – EVENING

LOUISE DULAC sits alone at a table, having eaten her meal and thanked all her guests. She's overwhelmed by the adoration that's come her way this evening, years after she'd left behind the social whirl of celebrity, but she's glad to have had this one last hurrah with the people to whom she means the most.

FAN

Ms Dulac?

LOUISE

Oh, my dear, I'm sorry, I'm a little too tired now for another autograph. I really need to get home to bed. It's been an emotional evening and I'm quite drained. I'm usually in bed by now – _asleep_ , even! I'll be feeling the effects of this evening for _weeks_.

FAN

No, no, I understand. I don't want an autograph. I don't need one. Well, I don't need one right _now_ – maybe in a few days...

LOUISE

I _beg_ your pardon? I'm not going on tour, dear, this was a One Night Only thing. As I said, I'm going home – as soon as my driver arrives; _where is Andy_? – and I'm going to bed and I'm going to sleep for a week. There will be no repeat performances.

FAN

Sorry, I've confused you. I mean, I'm not a _fan_.

LOUISE

' _Not a fan_ '? What a thing to say! Why are you here if you're not a fan? Do you know how many people wanted to come, how many _fans_ were begging to get in? Why, I could hardly get through the door for all the well-wishers. And now you're telling me you're 'Not a fan' of my work? Such impertinence. _Andy_!

FAN

I meant, I'm not _just_ a fan. I'm also... I'm also a relative.

LOUISE squints at the FAN, trying to place her.

LOUISE

You _are_? My eyes aren't so good. I haven't heard from any of my nieces or nephews in years, so it's pretty cheap to come along and try and get on my good side now, you know. I bet you all thought I was dead, didn't you? Well I'm not. I'll outlast the lot of you!

FAN

Ms Dulac, I'm not related to your brothers and sisters. Well, not directly.

LOUISE

_Andy_!

FAN

Ms Dulac, _Louise_ , I'm related to _you_.

LOUISE

Not possible. _Andy_! Where is he?

FAN

I'm your granddaughter.

LOUISE

_ANDY_! I don't have any... my _granddaughter_?

FAN

I'm Estella's daughter. My name is Stacey. Well, that's what I call myself, she called me Suki. I was adopted, you see.

LOUISE

What are you telling me – my daughter had a baby?

FAN/STACEY

She did. In Marrakech.

ANDY arrives, having readied the car for LOUISE's exit. LOUISE shoos him away.

LOUISE

And for some reason you were adopted? Why? Couldn't she cope? She should have got in touch with me, I'd have helped – that stupid, proud girl, so headstrong...

STACEY

My mother died. When I was only a few weeks old. And I've only just found out about it. I was adopted but didn't find out until recently. So now, I have no-one...

LOUISE

No, child, you do have someone. You have _me_.

THEY EMBRACE.

Too much? I think I'm allowed a happy ending, don't you?

So I practise my lines in my head and Chiara answers phone calls, because all the weeklies have worked it out now and decided there'll be enough of an A-list turn-out for it to be worth their while to show up and take pictures for the social pages.

Which suits me – quickest way to reintroduce myself on the scene, after all.

Chiara acts all dumb on the phone – 'I don't know what you've heard... this is really just a private function, I can't identify my client... I'm sure you understand' – until the weeklies agree to a certain amount of coverage.

I think, _she's trying to make a name for herself_. The cheek of it!

Anyway, Chiara arranges for a stylist friend of hers to show up with some vintage dresses later on, but she gets stuck in traffic or some b*****ks. While we're waiting I have an idea. Another one. _I am full of them_!

'Now we've got the picture,' I say, 'we should probably use it. If we're going to dress up like Louise, like Estella did, we can copy the make-up, can't we?'

Not in a million years is Chiara going to look like Louise or Estella or anyone slim, blonde and beautiful, she's a right big brown-haired bruiser, but she agrees.

So we sit in front of her biggest mirror – for someone who wasn't much to look at, she certainly had a lot hanging around – prop up the paper and copy Estella's look.

Obviously, I have an advantage – my face is so similar, it doesn't take much for me to look exactly like Estella. (Also, I had that dry-run at the riad, didn't I?)

So anyway, Chiara looks at the paper then sees me in the mirror, and does a double-take, like she can't believe her eyes.

'That's... that's really good. How have you done that?'

'I just copied the photo, like you,' I go, all innocent.

'Well you've done a really good job. Maybe you should be...'

Suki for the night?

'...A make-up artist. I think you've got a talent for it.'

Like that's saying much. _Ooh, I'm a professional face-painter_! Whatever.

I don't kick off, because I know the look will work for me on the night, and then the stylist arrives, all stinking of fags and looking like a skeleton – _Too thin_ , I think; I'm skinny but it just gets ugly, after a point – and we try on dresses.

And I see right away which the right one is for me, but I leave it 'til last because I know it won't fit Chiara so she can't have that one, and I want it to be my big finish.

There are only two dresses Chiara can actually do up, so she picks the less garish and unflattering of them and I pretend she looks amazing in it.

Then she goes, 'Which one are you wearing?' and I go, 'Oh, they're all so gorgeous, I don't know which to choose...' and pretend I haven't seen the white one until right that second. So I change into that one, then walk back in and do a pose like the one Estella was doing in the picture, smiling sweetly.

And I see from Chiara's face she totally 'recognises' me, only she won't say, and – get this! – the stylist goes, 'You look really familiar in that... where have I seen it?' And I give Chiara this _Should we say anything_? look, and she glares back a _No_.

So I just shrug and say, 'I'd like this one, I think it's just right' and Chiara changes the subject and shoos the stylist out of the door, only the fag smell lingers. Ugh.

Then – clever, this – I slip out of the dress and hang it up and wash my make-up off, because I don't want to freak Chiara out and have her uninvite me out of jealousy or anything, because it would be more difficult to make my entrance at the restaurant.

Smoky left behind an evening paper, so I have a look while Chiara's hanging her poncho up. Still nothing much, celeb-wise, but there _is_ something about our party.

'Look at this!' I shout, being all Best Buds again. 'In the _Standard_...'

The word in certain circles is Friday's secret dinner is to celebrate the life and career of Sullivan's Travels beauty Veronica Lake – but those 'in the know' might want to check their facts. The Brooklyn-born beauty died in 1973, after a brief British marriage. But we see what they're getting at and know how close they are. Let's just say, there won't be any need to oil the social wheels to get this party started – the lady in question is no grease monkey, and neither is she crude, but she does cause those around her to gush. We've said too much – watch this space for the first report from the party of the year!

'Party of the _decade_ , more like!' said Chiara. 'Or century. Or millennium...'

Or _billionaire_!

_IN TOMORROW'S PAPER_ : 'This is my Oscars, and there aren't any other nominees...'

*****

http://callmechiara.blogspot.com/

Kismet? Hardly...

Posted by Chiara on October 14, 2010

"Two lumps for me dear? Thank you. Now, where were we? ...Ah yes. So, oh, that's a lovely cup, delicious, so, yes, I was on Broadway. And... yes, I'd come up with my stage name. Very important, that. You can't be a star if people don't know who you are. I mean, I remember hearing about amazing girls on Broadway, singers and dancers and great beauties, and people would rave about them but never remember their names. So they never came to anything. You need a name. A memorable name.

Mr Monopoly was the first person I told my new name to, or rather he was the first to find out. When he and the producer had finished laughing at my innocence, he checked in on me before leaving. Usually, he'd drop a dinner-date invitation at this point in the evening, but I think he knew I was in no fit state. So he just stuck his head around the door to make sure I was fully recovered, and found me sketching. 'Another string to your bow? Show me!' he insisted, so I did. I suspect he was hoping for a bit of backstage life drawing, as the chorines changed between routines, but, no, it was just the front of the movie theatre. He understood the significance of the sign right away – he was terribly bright really, underneath all the drink and gadding about. 'Louise Dulac... I like it! It sounds Arthurian and European. Stylish." Now I didn't know what 'Arthurian' meant, but 'stylish' and 'European' were what I'd wanted to hear, so I was happy. He studied my face while murmuring my new name; 'Yes,' he said, 'it suits you very well. I will call you that from now on.' And so the next day, when I arrived in my dressing room, wearing a belt buckled as tightly as I could bear, to prove I was no more pregnant than anyone else – although, that didn't count for much, not in that production – I found a new shoebox. And even before I opened it I knew what it contained. A new pair of shoes, embroidered with the name 'Louise Dulac'. How he found someone able to do such work so quickly I don't know, but money is an amazing catalyst and we were on the borders of the Garment District, so I suppose it wasn't so hard for him.

I've never been so proud as when I stepped out on stage that night in those shoes, never. Everything that came afterwards was, to me, just as an after-effect of becoming Louise Dulac – the shoes were the only proof I needed of my new identity. I danced as never before and sang with such gusto that I truly felt I'd earned every second of that night's applause. I did encore after encore, and every one received an ovation. The other girls looked daggers at me but I didn't care because I knew I wasn't long for that theatre – I'd be the star of my own revue soon, at least, if indeed the call didn't come from California first. And it was also that night, during that 'epic' – not my word, dear – performance that I saw Mr Monopoly as he really was. He didn't look all predatory, like I was a pretty little scalp for his trophy room, an anecdote to be shared at his club and forgotten as he moved onto another nubile newcomer, I was something special to him. Or rather, that my talent was now what attracted him. I mean, I was exquisite, you can tell that even now, I'm sure, bone structure doesn't lie. But I could see his chest swell as I sang, and his eyes shine as I twirled and tap-danced. He was in awe of me, and so, at last, I found something attractive about him too. I loved that he loved my talent. And so, when that night he asked me to dinner, I accepted. He hadn't expected a 'yes' and so was already walking out of the room having extended the invitation. He had to pivot on his heel and pretend he was copying one of the steps from the show, but I knew I'd caught him off guard. You see, he was used to always getting what he wanted, and I'd worn him down with my refusals. I was probably the only woman who ever turned him down, so I'd earned respect, and I never squandered it. There was a sizeable age gap between us, but mentally I was the more adult, and from that night on I made the decisions as to where we dined, what he wore and where we'd live.

Well, as I'm sure you could have guessed, he'd fallen madly in love with me the first time he saw me, as drunk as he was on deck, and so had bought an engagement ring the minute he arrived back in America. And when the desserts were delivered to our table at the Stork Club that night, the ring came with them. Shoes and tickets to premieres were one thing, but jewellery was another, so I had no idea what size of ring or rock to expect when I opened it. And I was petite, so to me prising open this big velvet box was like opening an entire treasure chest. All I need say is that our waitress gasped. The rock was enormous – egg-sized, almost. If the Dutch had bought Manhattan with it, the Indians would have got a good deal, you know? So, of course, I refused it."

Stacey's face fell. She splayed her left hand, wiggled the ring finger and sighed.

"No, really I did. It was tactical. If Mr Monopoly thought I was really only after his money, that this whole dance had been an elaborate way of getting at his millions, I'd be no better than any other girl. And believe me, I'd had to have earned that stone somehow, eventually. Also – and it's up to you whether you believe this or not – t was ugly. I know some women love any diamond, the bigger the better, but I've always felt that style doesn't come in large sizes. Less is more, and that applies to jewellery too. I've seen some women wearing as many necklaces as their spines can support, and been better impressed by the girl with the single solitaire pendant. Style is everything. And this ring simply had no style. The band was chunky, to support the stone, and the diamond wasn't even well cut, it didn't have the sparkle one would expect, so I said no. So the waitress gasped again, but Mr Monopoly smiled. It had been a test of my mettle, and I'd passed. And I'd admired him for trying. Every other girl in the revue would have traded an eyeball for that sparkler, but not me. Which meant two things to him: one, he had been right to favour me from the off and two, I had star potential. As we drove home that night, he said, 'A true star would know not to accept the first offer she gets, because she knows her worth. You'll be so big you'll be able to buy rings like that for yourself before too long. You don't have to rely on me. You know your worth and you're not prepared to settle for anything less than great success. And so it will come.' And he was right, although I'd be lying if I said it happened overnight. It took a few weeks."

"She is unbelievable," said Stacey as the first tape finished. "How much would a ring like that be worth – and she said no? She's mental. I don't want to be her heir."

"She' building her mythology, don't you see that?" I said. "No celebrity biographies read: 'I was a good performer so I went to London or Hollywood or Bollywood or wherever and got lots of good jobs and now I am rich and happy.' They're all about the struggle, otherwise they're not interesting. We don't really want to read about success, we want to read about the obstacles to it. Movies aren't about people falling in love and defeating evil, they're about setbacks and disappointments. Otherwise they would all be shorts. Adversity is interesting, success is just the punchline."

"I would have taken it."

"After that night, although I hadn't actually accepted the engagement ring, Mr Monopoly and I were an item. And everyone knew about it. We'd been seen at the Stork Club together – that was really the only reason anyone went, the steaks were very tough – and word soon reached the dressing rooms. Of course, this didn't put paid to the rumours that I was expecting but, as they say, it's better to be talked about than not. I was a hot topic even then, and I hadn't even stepped before a camera yet. Of course, no-one else knew about my name change, they hadn't seen the subtle change to my shoes, so when a gossip column reported that a certain star of stage was in the family way, it didn't hurt my career one bit. Whatever they said about Agatha was water off my back; I was now Louise Dulac and they didn't have any dirt on her.

Anyway, being friends with the producer meant Mr Monopoly could ask favours, so he managed to finagle a short break for me, to go out west with him for a week, saying he had a family function to attend. He was friends with Lindbergh, so we flew. I was fine, it was no worse than the boat-crossing to me, so I stared out of the window at the cornfields and mountains – an amazing way to see America, so untouched in those days – and read some of the books he'd given me that I'd kept, the more compact ones. But poor Mr Monopoly, he was so ill! Well, I knew then why he'd got the boat from England, not that he fared much better at sea. He clutched the armrests all the way and didn't drink a drop, which was how I knew he was suffering, poor thing. Again, because I was so composed and took care of him, I showed I was devoted to him, not to his wealth. I read aloud to distract him and when we finally landed he was so grateful you'd think I'd cured him of some dreadful disease!

We were in a limousine for the rest of the journey. It was dark and I didn't really know where we were going so I rolled down one of the windows – and do you know what the first thing I saw was? The Hollywood sign! Can you imagine? Of course, in those days it said 'HOLLYWOODLAND', it was an advertising sign, actually, but it meant everything to me. It meant I'd arrived, literally – as you all seem to say these days – where I was always meant to be. So I stayed. The producer was terribly cross and sent all sorts of threatening telegrams to the hotel, but Mr Monopoly talked him round. He pointed out that he had Agatha under contract but that Agatha no longer existed. And so that was the end of my Broadway career, and the beginning of Louise Dulac's Hollywood career. And it all began, in my mind, when I saw the sign."

"This is all so well," huffed Stacey, "but what about Estella? Can't we speed through it a bit, to get to the more relevant bits? It would be great if you went back later and listened to the other stuff, for the book, but right now, we just want facts, don't we?"

We did. It was getting late and I was sure I could hear an intermittent buzz from my phone next door. I had been off-radar all week but now someone was trying to get hold of me and I couldn't feign poor coverage if I wanted a job to go back to...

"Fine."

Stacey took charge with the second tape. We had an excerpt about Mr Monopoly's beautiful home – "the envy of everyone, especially Hearst. They say that's why he built the castle at San Simeon..." – and snippets about screen tests: "They were just about to light me when the director said, 'She doesn't need it, she's already glowing!' Can you imagine? What a compliment, especially as so many of the really big names of the time, who I won't mention but you can imagine, needed to hike back their hair to sculpt their faces and then have the lighting and make-up men do the rest. I just stood there, my hair down, and smiled, and got the part. I didn't even read a line, and this was for talkies, I only ever did talkies. But the director just knew..."

"When would Estella have been born, again?" asked Stacey, audibly annoyed.

"Mid-50s, if she was 20-ish when she disappeared."

She ejected the second tape and thrust the third into the Walkman in its place.

"Now, you would think, in all the time we'd been together, that the subject of marriage would have come up, but no. And of course this caused a terrible scandal at the time, only no-one ever really said anything because we were so popular and everyone wanted to come to our parties, even Hearst and he hated parties. So there was a kind of understanding that we were married and, anyway, as we'd never had children there wasn't really any proof that anything untoward went on. Lots of older men had young companions who were really more like doting daughters to them, and had lot of affairs on the side without worry. So I think most people thought I was just arm candy, and that suited me fine at the time. I lived well and I was happy and we travelled and everything was hunky dory.

And then Estella was born. Now, the trend at the time was to pass off awkward babies onto family members, who would raise them as their daughters, and no-one need ever know. It was easy to spend six months or so in Europe, pretend you had some nervous condition that could only be treated in a Swiss clinic, then come back when you felt yourself again, if a little larger. You could blame that on the fresh air and chocolate – and plenty did. But when I realised what was happening, I made a decision. I was going to keep my daughter and raise her, as brazen as that might seem.

I won't pretend I wasn't worried – poor Gene Tierney had a terrible time with her daughter and never recovered, poor thing, and I did worry that being... well, why lie, being almost 40, I wasn't in the first flush of youth and things could go wrong. But Mr Monopoly made sure I had only the best doctors to hand and it all went smoothly. Not that I could say the same for our relationship around the time.

I often threw lavish banquets in his widowed mother's honour, so we had became great friends. She reminded me a little of my own mother, although she was quite a bit older, and we would play cards and gossip together. She loved movies and had a cinema within her mansion, so we would watch films and I'd fill her in on the off-screen shenanigans of her favourite players.

So she told me about the marriage and, I must say, I was rather surprised – I'd been with Mr Monopoly for over 20 years at this point, so I felt it rather remiss that he'd never mentioned it. It was when I'd gone to see her share the news about the baby, so of course I was already in shock. As I said, we'd been together 20, maybe 25 years at this point and nothing had ever happened before. Remember that nasty fall I had from the horse, not long after I first moved to California?"

I raised an accusative eyebrow at Stacey – what other information had we missed?

"The doctors had all said it would be a wonder to conceive after that, what with the damage to my pelvis, so I'd never really questioned it. And we had so many animals that I never missed having children – If I felt broody, I'd get a new puppy and get it out of my system. So in many ways it was a miracle baby to me and I wanted to tell someone other than Mr Monopoly. I mean, he was thrilled, he'd longed for a son – if only so he could let the mantel of the family's good name rest on someone else's shoulders, I suspect – so he never balked when I told him, or suggested I terminate it or give it away to a family member. I hadn't seen any of my relatives in years. We went back for a premiere in the late '30s but after that, what with the war and everything, we never got around to it again. Although we did keep going to France and Italy, come to think of it... Anyway, they were all quite rough-looking by now, and I think if I'd have fobbed off a baby on them at that stage no-one would believe their bodies would be capable of it. They were like crones, or something. Pollution, presumably.

So I went and told his mother and she said, 'What does his wife think?' and I thought, 'Oh no, she's gone doolally.' She was rather old and here she is thinking I'm not me and she's wondering what I think. So I said, 'I'm fine about it, thrilled, who wouldn't be?' And she frowned and said, 'No, Louise, not you, you silly woman. Claudine.' I couldn't think of any Claudines we knew – and we knew a lot of people, a lot; everyone, I thought – so I said, 'Who's Claudine?' And she said, 'His wife. How odd he's never mentioned her.' So that was how I found out all this time I'd been the Other Woman."

Stacey grinned salaciously at the soap-iness of it all.

"So I telephoned Mr Monopoly, at his club, and said 'I wonder, do you have an address for Claudine, I'd like to tell her our happy news... ' and he went awfully quiet and was at his mother's in half an hour, which I think set some sort of land-speed record for the era. And he apologised and said he'd never had the right moment to mention it, as if he'd told me in Manhattan I'd never had agreed to go on a date with him, and if he'd told me in California I'd have gone back to Manhattan or even London. And I said, crossly, 'Well I can't believe there's not been a single moment in the past 20-whatever years when you haven't been able to blurt it out' and he said, 'For the past 20-odd years I've not been able to think of any other woman but you' and I thought that was lovely so I forgave him. Just like that. You might say that's not very feminist of me but I was pregnant, remember, and had been easing up on the acting so I was thinking of the baby perhaps more than myself, being pragmatic. And he was so, so apologetic and almost pathetic with grief about it all, that I feared for his health.

He never got divorced, though. The thing was this – he'd got married mid-bender, down in Mexico somewhere. The girl wasn't Mexican herself, 'Claudine' isn't a very Mexican name, is it? But they'd started drinking in Los Angeles and ended up over the border, got wed on a whim and then repented at leisure. Only he didn't really realise, and had gone off to Europe and then saw me on the boat on the way back and the rest you know. So it wasn't until we were back in California that he got word from the friends he'd been drinking with that night that his wife was looking for him. He made them swear they didn't know him, couldn't get in touch with him, and he asked the family lawyers to try and annul the marriage, which was how his mother found out about it all, of course. Only they couldn't annul it without her finding out who he really was – and more importantly, what he was worth – so he spent a fortune on tracking her whereabouts, so he wasn't unpleasantly surprised at some function and sued for half his earnings. Not that he actually earned a penny, ever, it was all allowance, but his allowance was generous and half of that would have been a sizeable sum to some starlet who'd never amounted to anything. So that's why we never got married ourselves.

But his mother was very generous when she learnt about the baby and had the lawyers add us to the family trust, so we'd always be provided for whatever happened to Mr Monopoly. And she didn't have to do that, we really had no legal standing and of course this was all before DNA tests so we couldn't have proven the paternity if it had got ugly. So anyway, that's how we became part of the family, legally, even though we never wed. Eventually, of course, Claudine died. I felt for her, in a way, because she'd never been able to remarry in good conscience, being already married, so I think she had a rather unhappy life. When we heard that she'd died, we made vague plans to finally marry ourselves, to ensure the legacy and all that, only after years of trying Mr Monopoly finally drank himself to death just a few months later, so that was the end of that.

I'd never have told her as much, but I think Estella killed him. Indirectly. Not only did we not have DNA tests in those days, we also didn't have access to ultrasound machines, so there was no way of knowing the sex of a baby until it was born. We did all the old tricks – dangling the watch and so on – and they all indicated a boy, so of course Mr Monopoly was thrilled and started picking out names and colleges and baby-sized blazers with the family crest on them. I told him not to be so certain but he didn't listen. So there I was in the delivery room, utterly exhausted, and the nurse went outside to tell him I'd delivered a healthy girl and he shouted so loudly that the surgeon knocked all the scalpels on the floor and he had to be sedated. Mr Monopoly, that was. I don't think it was the money he'd spent, that was nothing to him, I think it was the pride of siring a son and finally having done something worthwhile with his life, rather than just living well and financing films and spending time with me. I was terribly hurt and we had a row and he didn't come home for a week. Which meant I got to name the baby.

Do you remember I said a Spanish girl told me about the name Estella, back on Broadway? Well I'd liked it all these years so I checked that it meant what she said and it did, so my baby became Estella. Estella Dulac, because her father was behaving so abominably. And that was how I became the world's most famous single mother. It was an enormous scandal that she hadn't been given his name, and everyone took it as a sign that we'd split up and I was destitute and ruined, but it meant nothing of the sort. It was meant as a wake-up call and it worked. Not that the drinking ever stopped, but that was the family disease, you see, so something would have triggered it eventually. And this was years before Betty Ford, so everyone just suffered in silence back then, and hoped they'd get over it themselves but they never did, really. Sad.

The studios were all very moral in those days, they didn't think they'd be able to market a movie starring an unmarried mother, so the job offers stopped coming in, but I didn't really care. If I never walked onto another hot, sweaty set in my life I'd have been perfectly happy, and so I devoted myself to my daughter. And there's not a lot to tell about that – we were very happy and she grew into a beautiful young woman and... do you think we might stop there, dear? It's surprisingly tiring, just talking, talking, talking, even about oneself. Perhaps we could carry on tomorrow?"

"Good idea," I said, yawning as I went to retrieve my phone from next door. My fellow columnists were already busy and a big party had come up they needed me to cover, apparently, so my orders were to return to London at the first opportunity. I diligently booked us tickets on the 10am train back, leaving me just enough time back at the flat to shower, dress and dig out my Dictaphone for an evening of tittering at stale asides and trying to squeeze secrets out of inebriated guestlisters.

"The holiday is officially over," I told Stacey. "We will have to listen to the rest of the tapes on the train back tomorrow – OK?"

"Fine, fine," she said, sounding as tired as I felt.

"Sorry we can't stay longer, but..."

"I understand. See you tomorrow."

With that, Stacey slunk off to her room and I booked a taxi to the station, then stuffed the tapes, Walkman and laptop into my bag, ready for a quick getaway the next day, should we oversleep.

Which we did.

Or rather, which I did.

The alarm on my phone didn't go off, didn't seem to have ever been set, and the radio alarm seemed to have turned itself off in the night, even though the clock on the cooker showed there hadn't been a power cut.

If it wasn't for the taxi driver knocking insistently on the door, I might have slept all day and never realised how late it was – or that Stacey was long gone.

As was my bag.

(39) comments

*****

_Daily Mirror_ , FRIDAY 15.10.2010

_SHH!_ Which publisher has seriously cold feet about their celebrity-penned acquisition? The book in question surely has little left to say and many believe they got a fuller story for free online. Who'll be lining up for signings? It all depends on a bombshell ending...

Friday, October 15, 2010 _THE SUN_

_In the explosive final instalment of_ Stacey Blyth's _autobiography,_ Entitled _, she gets ready to reveal her true identity – and finally meets the living proof that she's an heiress._

'THE SECRET GUESSED'

So I'm going for broke.

(Not literally.)

_If_ Louise Dulac is alive and _if_ she knows about the party and _if_ she bothers to come, I'll just go up to her and do my little routine and I'll worry about a) what Chiara will say and b) proving it, later.

I'm not going to swab her saliva or demand a blood sample there and then, am I?

No, I'll wait a while.

Also, I'm pretty sure that as soon as she sees me she'll just know. Like people say they _know_ when they meet the love of their lives. If Chiara's spotted the resemblance, and Smoky the Stylist, then surely Louise Dulac herself will see what I'm going for.

Unless she's blind...

_Man_ , that would be bad luck.

_Fingers crossed she hasn't got a guide-dog_ , that's what I'm thinking.

Chiara decides we'll get changed at the restaurant, so she can oversee everything, so we get dropped off by another mini limo and hang up our outfits in the Ladies' loos.

'What dress is this?' I ask.

(Don't worry, Chiara hasn't sabotaged me or anything, I've made sure my white dress is the right one, but she's swapped the vintage tent she somehow squeezed into for some boring black dress from her wardrobe.)

'Oh, I had a bit of a re-think,' she says, not looking me in the eye, i.e. lying, 'and I thought, _It's Louise's night, I don't want to look like I'm trying to steal her limelight_ , you know? It would look crass.'

I'm not thick. I know she's trying to make me look like a d***.

But I also know that no way is a 90-whatever-year-old woman going to roll up in something slim-fitting and exquisite. So with Chiara retiring from the race, there'll only be one real contender – and it wouldn't be some old biddy in a glittery shawl.

Chiara's just made everything even easier for me.

'Fair enough,' I go, 'don't want to get in the way of the real star – do you?'

The real star being _me_ – did you get that? _Good_.

I know she's hoping I'll go, 'Oh, I agree' but no way do I. And anyway, I've only got that one dress and I can't very well mingle and sparkle in tracky bottoms.

Chiara goes off to fuss about in the kitchen so I start with the eyeliner then gel my hair into waves with hair pins, and when I'm alone I have this moment where I go, Oh.

Oh. I'm about to meet my grandma.

Like I've said, I'm not big on family, we're not close and I always knew I was probably adopted and all that, so I don't _really_ know how I'll feel when I meet someone I'm really related to. Like, I'm expecting her to just know who I am, but will it be the same for me, will I get one glimpse of her wispy head and be all, ' _Grandma_!'?

And does that mean I'll suddenly feel all sad about Estella being dead, too? So far, it's just been like I read about a woman dying and she could have been anyone, even though she's not, she's my mum. Was I going to start crying, there in the restaurant?

I check the mascara – water-resistant. _Phew_!

So I'm wondering about my family and I realise I haven't been thinking about the money. _Much_. Is this evening going to be like one of those adventure movies where you think the treasure is going to be actual treasure but really the treasure is just knowledge, like 'Be kind to one another, that is the greatest gift of all' written on a rock?

I f***ing hope not.

I might blub, I might not, but I'm definitely cashing in afterwards.

Chiara keeps popping back with canapés for me to try – not many, though, she must have been gobbling them next door – and they look well nice but _I can't eat_. Me! I don't _not_ eat. I know a lot of celebs pretend they're thin because they work out, when really they starve themselves, but I don't need to do either. But now, I'm all nerves.

'You alright?' asks Chiara, and I go, 'Fine!' and it comes out all high.

And she gives me this dead sly look and goes, 'I thought you were sort of famous, that you went to this sort of thing all the time – are you _nervous_?'

And I can't believe she's doubting me, after all the grade-A gossip I sent her way, _What an ungrateful bitch_ , but I've come this far without telling her who I really am, haven't I, so I'm not going to rush and tell her now – she can wait for the big surprise like everyone else. Also, if I told her she'd tell everyone, I've seen that happen.

Imagine having news and everyone else knows it before you tell them?!

I'd be furious, me. So I'm not letting anyone else near my scoop, no way.

So I shake my head and go, 'No, no, it's just been a while...' and it has, to be honest, I've not been on the circuit for a couple of weeks now, have I? That's a long time in celebrity – who knows who's got pregnant/engaged/divorced since...

Anyway, that'll be small fry when I tell all, right?

When Chiara's ready too – put on dress, brush hair, that's about it, and she's no natural beauty, let me tell you – we pick ourselves a booth at the back of the room, where we can see everyone arriving.

'No one will be early,' she says, like I've never been to an event like this before.

Of course not. Arrive early, look like a loser.

So she snacks on the canapés and I try to sip champagne but I just can't, I feel all butterflies-y. Like I'm about to win an award, only I already know I've won. This is my Oscars, and there aren't any other nominees.

Hang on – does this mean I need to practise an acceptance speech too?

If anyone overhears me and Louise, they'll expect an announcement...

So I start thinking about what to say – 'You can't choose your family, but if I _could_ , I couldn't have picked a richer one... ', something like that – and I get so caught up in it I don't realise people are starting to arrive at last.

Chiara's hanging round the front door like an autograph hunter, _so_ not cool, but she does well with all the air-kissing, I suppose, and she seems to know who everyone who turns up is. So do I, but I'm not going to flaunt it. Let them come to me.

So I sit and wait.

And wait.

And the room fills up and gets noisy.

And then this little old lady's wheeled through the front door by her carer.

Now, I don't really know what Louise looks like, I've just seen some old posters online and they're, like, 80 years old, and I assume she'll look like Estella, a bit. So is this Louise, or just some pensioner who can smell the mini quiches from the street?

They are pretty pungent – Stilton or something, ugh.

She trundles towards the back of the room, towards me, and Chiara totally hasn't noticed, she's excited just getting to stand close to properly famous people, so I know I've got her all to myself for the moment.

I wait until I know she isn't just aiming for the loos, then I go over to introduce myself. And I'm shaking a bit – _imagine that_! Me, _nervous_.

So I say, 'I'm so glad you could make it tonight, it really is an enormous honour to have you here.'

I think, _It might not be her, after all, so worst-case scenario, I sound polite_.

No response. So I think, _What if she's not blind, but deaf... or both_?

It turns out maybe she hasn't heard me first time, as her carer points me out to her, with a really odd look, like she's sort of amazed, maybe.

The old lady turns round to me and smiles, so I repeat it all, only louder.

She nods and stares at me, then turns back to her carer and says, 'Extraordinary!'

Yes I am. _Nice of you to notice_.

'You look very nice too,' I say. (I almost say, "You two... " but her carer's dressed in some tatty old ethnic sundress, and I don't want to encourage her.)

I know I won't have long before Chiara notices and introduces her to the whole room, and everyone lines up to pretend they're all big fans and how wonderful she looks and all that, so I take a big breath – not that easy, in an old dress, they didn't do cleavage back in the day – and try to remember my lines.

And I swear I practised that script, like, a _million_ times, I even did it in accents in the bathroom when Chiara went to bed, but I go blank, like I'm on a quiz show.

'I... I... erm... I just wanted to say, to let you know... no... erm, I'm...'

And I'm just going to pieces – _me_! – and I don't know how I'm going to get through this, I really don't, and this is my big moment and maybe I'm having a stroke or something, I can't explain it, and then Louise smiles and says, 'You look very familiar.'

And I breathe out, all relieved, because I know she knows.

And I don't need to remember my words after all.

_We're improvising_ , I think.

'Yes,' I manage to say, 'b-b-b-b-because...'

And Louise puts her crinkly old hand on top of mine, and it feels like it's made of tissue paper, it's all dry and delicate, and she looks me in the eye – right in the eye – and says, 'I know who you are... and I love you.'

Seriously, that's what she said: 'I know who you are and I love you.'

_She knows_! And here's me getting all flustered about telling her. I don't need to!

She knows as soon as she sees me, as soon as she sees the dress and the make-up and the hair and all that. She _knows_.

And I don't feel any great warmth towards her – relief and gratitude, yes – not there and then, but I think maybe these things come with time, right?

So we just sit and she holds my hand and we smile at each other and I try to make out whether she'd looked like me before she got so old but as she obviously hasn't spent any of her money on facelifts there's too much skin to tell. More cash for me!

Then I see Chiara's finally spotted us and I think, _You know what, I'm going to be famous for a long, long time now, let Louise have tonight all to herself_.

So I let Chiara wheel her away.

After all, we've got the rest of her life to catch up.

And when she dies, whenever that may be, then I'll celebrate.

Copyright Stacey Blyth/Suki Dulac, 2010

*****

http://callmechiara.blogspot.com/

You Might Have Guest The Rest...

Posted by Chiara on October 15, 2010

I didn't have time to panic, just to grab a carrier bag, stuff everything of mine left in the cottage into it and leap into the cab, if I was to make the train back to London in time for the function. So I was almost in Preston when I fully realised what had happened – that after almost a week of writing Stacey's life story for her, she had stolen it from me.

At any point, I could have called up the newsdesk and asked them to check a few facts, but I didn't. I gave her the benefit of the doubt, gave her my time, and she repaid me by running off with my laptop and the tapes.

More fool her. I had backed up everything I had written on email to myself, and Stacey didn't have my password to delete it all, so really all she had was the deadweight of an almost-obsolete computer to lug around with her to – to where? She would hardly be waiting for me on my doorstep, and I doubted Cady Stone would throw open the doors to her immaculate home should she attack the intercom.

Did she think she could arrive at a publisher's and hand over the laptop in exchange for a hearty advance? I would love to have seen her try...

She did have the tapes, but I doubted they would be much good to her now. As I put the third one back in its box last night I saw it was getting chewed up by the nth-hand Walkman; maybe they would self-destruct if she tried to listen to or transcribe them.

Basically, Stacey could be anywhere now, and I had neither resources nor patience enough to track her down – although she would be lucky to get a National Express ticket with what she could get for the laptop.

In the spare seconds before my train left I had bought a paper and stationery in the platform newsagent. I needed to get up to speed on the tabloid tales du jour if I was to sidle up to the main players that night – and I wanted to finish off Stacey's story.

'When Monday came, the diplomat marvelled once more at the sumptuous interior of the Mamounia's reception, wondering aloud at how much just one night in a riad might cost. 'I mean,' he said to his wife, 'you could probably stay for a week in a standard room for the cost of an overnight stay in a riad, so clearly she's not wanting for..." He quietened when their friend arrived, looking much younger with the kohl and lipliner all washed away. She was gently tanned and clear-skinned, one of those women who look their most beautiful when pregnant. Hilary had not been the same – her skin had suffered dreadfully, as had her digestion – and the diplomat now came to wonder if all her afflictions had been signs of the sadness to come, that her body could not cope with the pregnancy and ultimately no good would come of it? Surely not. Most women experience morning sickness at some stage, he knew, and yet most babies are born with no complications, so there could be no correlation. They could not have known. They could not have known.

"It's not far," Hilary told Estella, as they walked out into the shy warmth of the November sun, "but we'll take a cab, to be on the safe side." Estella nodded. As well as looking younger, she looked more vulnerable in daylight, as if being in character at the party had lent her a confidence she usually lacked. The diplomat despised himself for doubting whether they should pay, whether they should even befriend this stray waif – even if she was wealthy, she still needed support. And he would give it, they would give it, and, who knows, maybe it would begin the healing process?

Estella was ushered straight in to see Doctor Harris, and their consultation was swift. She emerged looking relieved, hugging her stomach, more visible today above the waistband of her jeans, beneath a white vest-top topped off with a pale denim shirt. "She is fine!" she smiled, "everything is fine." He saw Hilary's tiny flinch, but also her joy. She hadn't brought harm to the baby by accident, she would have no reason to hold herself responsible should anything dreadful happen, not that anything dreadful would happen, but sometimes it did, even if no-one knew how.

For the remainder of the gestation period, Estella and Hilary grew ever closer, so when the due date finally arrived, the diplomat's wife was unsurprised but honoured to be asked to be the birthing partner. "I would love to," she almost wept. The labour went well, and as the healthy baby was passed to Hilary for safekeeping while Estella was checked over, she felt a rush of love unlike anything she had ever known. When her own child was born, she had seen from the terrible expression on the faces of the doctor and midwife that something was wrong, so she had never allowed herself to fully connect to the tiny body that emerged from her own, she had never unlocked the sluice gate of her affections. But now, as she watched the minute child wriggle and breathe and be, she felt her chest expand to contain her heart. She was not mended, she would always have the scar of her loss, but in that moment she knew happiness once more and felt rejuvenated, as if she too had been born that day. She was Hilary, only happier.

With her husband busy at work so much of the time, Hilary became a regular visitor at the Mamounia, known as well to the staff as Estella. She had thought it a wonderful idea to have Suki, as the baby girl was indeed named, 'christened' there, albeit in a non-denominational ceremony. She imagined a blissful childhood, of running amongst the gardens, beloved by friends and staff alike, and felt almost jealous.

Yet as adoring as Hilary was of Suki, Estella seemed somehow distant. She had been prescribed painkillers after the birth so had not breastfed, and Hilary worried that she had failed to bond with her child. She diagnosed Baby Blues, and tried to cheer Estella up as best she could, but where she delighted at Suki's development – being able to focus on faces, to grip, to lift her head – Estella seemed uninterested at best, even irritated sometimes. How could she feel this way? She hadn't known the pain of loss first, so perhaps took for granted her ability to birth a healthy baby, but Suki was an empirically adorable creature, no-one would deny it. She was a very pretty, peaceful child who slept through the night after only a couple of months. No parent could want for more – and yet Estella seemed to be estranging herself little by little each day.

It was not until Hilary saw her arms one day that she understood. After the birth, Estella had taken to wearing long sleeves at all times, even when the spring weather arrived. Hilary did not follow fashion, so assumed it was another trend to which she was oblivious. Then, as they sat by the drained pool one morning (the manager insisted, for the safety of the baby, should she suddenly start crawling – it was filled with cushions instead), Estella stretched her hands above her head in a yogic pose. The cotton sleeves of her kaftan slithered down to her shoulders and Hilary saw with horror that the insides of her elbows were covered in scars and bruises, running along her veins. Hilary knew something was horribly wrong but that asking Estella about it outright was not the done thing; instead, she committed it to memory and made a call to Doctor Harris when she arrived home. Having accompanied Estella to all of her pre-natal check-ups, she herself had been given the physician's private number but thankfully had not needed it until now.

"I have a friend," she began, "who has these terrible marks on her arms. And I am worried that, well, I don't know exactly what they are but they look painful and dangerous and I fear for her..." Hilary stopped short of saying 'daughter' but suspected Doctor Harris was ahead of her. He asked that she describe exactly what she had seen and, after a deep doleful sigh, said he suspected her 'friend' was injecting heroin or some other opiate. "Heroin!" gasped Hilary. "Why, that's not possible – where would she get it?" "It's not uncommon around here," the doctor told her, "this was quite the destination for '60s musicians." He advised she should make time to talk to her friend, that he knew of facilities that could help, and that it need not be a death sentence, "just a misstep".

Hilary's heart was heavy as she rang off, not just for her friend but also Suki, growing up in the presence of a 'junkie', as she had heard them called. What kind of life could she have, taking second place to addiction, and at such an early age? She swore to herself she would take legal action if needs be – her husband could help, if they needed to take the child away in order to have Estella understand the severity of the situation. But when she arrived, galvanised, at the Mamounia the next morning, it was as if Estella knew her intent, and refused to open the door to the riad. Hilary had to wait until the maid came to change the sheets; "Allow me – she's not well," she insisted as the door was opened, taking the bedding from the startled girl's arms and waving her away. She went to Suki first, crying in a sodden terry nappy – the same one Hilary had changed the day before, she noted from the fold and the angle of the safety pin. She added 'neglect' to the list of ways Estella was failing her baby, then stormed into the bedroom to find her dead.

In a terrible way, she was relieved. Hilary hated confrontation and now all she had to do was arrange a funeral, not start a fight. Much easier. She composed herself, picked up Suki and rang her husband's office. "Estella is dead, drugs," she said, as if dictating notes. "You had probably better send an ambulance. Suki is fine, she is coming with us." And so the decision was made. Suki was coming with them. As the ambulance arrived, to the surprise of the front desk, Hilary left the riad for the final time, with Suki in her arms. The diplomat saw to it that any evidence of drug-taking was cleansed from the room. The ambulance took Estella to the hospital favoured by ex-pats – merely a formality, alas.

Being close friends of the deceased and the de facto guardians of her daughter, Hilary and her husband swiftly met with the approval of the local adoption board, who no more wanted to add another child to their care than to incur the wrath of the British High Commission or US Consulate. The diplomat knew enough of the right people to ensure fast passage through the correct legal channels, so, within days of the death certificate being signed off, the adoption papers were stamped.

They were parents at last. They had been parents before, of course, but never dared acknowledge the fact. But now they had physical proof, a living, breathing baby they could nurture and adore. They concocted a story to gloss over the discrepancies in the timeline – their doctor had miscalculated the due date and the baby was underweight for her age, but otherwise she was fine. Thankfully, they weren't well-known enough to have merited any announcements in the press, so if anyone said, 'Oh, I though you were due back in...' they would laugh it off with, 'So did we, so you can imagine how frustrating it was to have a few weeks more to wait!' It was a stretch, but who would debate dates with proud parents holding their child, the ultimate evidence?

With Estella gone and the trips to the Mamounia ended, Hilary felt no reason to stay in Marrakech when she could be setting up home back in London, so the diplomat took the first office job offered back in his native city and they decamped, taking with them only the documentation that revealed their daughter's true identity. Papers which they never found the right time to present and explain, papers which were stashed away yet omnipresent in their minds, like Edgar Allan Poe's Tell-Tale Heart beneath the floorboards, a nagging reminder of the white lie that had become a way of life. A reason to keep the child they had adored from before her birth increasingly at arm's length, until she truly was almost a stranger to them, a cuckoo in their nest.

So it was unsurprising that when the adult Suki found the certificates that made her question her entire existence, she wanted payback for her estrangement. If she really was who these old papers suggested she might be, she wanted to cash in. Immediately."

Arriving at Euston stopped me from assassinating Stacey on the page. That, and remembering my duties. I ran to-and-from the Tube, showered in five minutes, wriggled into the one ready-to-wear dress in my wardrobe, checked the batteries in my Dictaphone and stuck it in a clutch with pens, a pad – in case technology failed me, or was stolen from under my nose again – and cash, then ran out. My fastest pit-stop yet.

Back on the Tube I battled the vibrations to put on make-up, only poking myself in the eye twice with the liner and accidentally mascara-ing an eyebrow once. By the time I arrived in Kensington, I looked semi-presentable. Were I attending as a guest, I would have made more effort but as I would be little more than talking wallpaper for the evening, earwigging while famous folk admired themselves and stole snide glances at one other, it only mattered that I didn't look like I shouldn't really be there. There was an unwritten rule that we columnists should be passable but not glamorous, lest we turned up like Raquel Welch at her son's wedding, trying to outshine the bride. We wouldn't gather much gossip if anyone was jealous of us.

I had only a vague idea where I was going but when I turned into the little side street where the restaurant was supposed to be, the location was unmistakeable. The shop front was thronged by snappers and autograph stalkers – and I was home. I sauntered over to some photographers I knew, to find out what I was supposed to be covering.

"Dinner for some old-dear actress. Louise Dulac, if you know who that is."

"Louise Dulac, are you sure?" She is alive?

"I think that is what they said. Fucked if we know who she is."

I knew. And Stacey did too. Which explained why she was the first person I saw, sidling over to the main entrance, grinning and posing for the paps, then gliding inside with the confidence of an access-all-areas A-lister. It was a trick I often used myself – look like you are entitled to be there and often they will wave you in, rather than look like idiots for questioning you. 'It's all a game of who knows who, whether you are on the door or going through,' was one of the first things I had learnt at work. Look like you are meant to be there and you will be: the power of suggestion.

What did she think she was going to do, stand on a table and declare her birthright? Yank out hairs from beneath Louise Dulac's wig and go for a DNA test? Or just tell her?

I had to know.

I queued. As we lesser-celebrated types shuffled along, I was glad to see a familiar face wielding the clipboard, a PR friend who I had done favours for, seeding stories about whichever useless products or presenters she was touting at the time. A quick "Darling!" or two, a "You look well! Spa?" and I was admitted, leaving my competitors to glare through the window as I waltzed in, turning on my Dictaphone.

But my eyes weren't on the prized boldface names tonight; I had Stacey in my sights. She owed me: for my friendship, for my computer – and for my scoop.

As she worked her way around the room, I mirrored her actions, sitting down at the opposite side of the room, keeping an eye-line open even as the restaurant filled up. The turnout was impressive and I knew we would get at least a front-page splash. All I needed to do was get some piffle from famous faces about what big fans they were of Louise Dulac and what an honour it was to meet her (lie, lie) and I could retire for the night, ready to caption pictures for the next edition.

I had a commission of my own – I needed to know how Stacey's story ended.

The buzz in the room had started to dull, some guests suspecting it was some scam and they were being rounded up to be humiliated or worse, when two figures appeared at the door, an elderly lady in a wheelchair and her carer. The clipboard-wielding wallah had no intention of letting them in, and titters could be heard at the tables.

'Silly cow thinks this is for her!' said one teen actor-turned-gigolo, so young he obviously couldn't conceive of a celebrity being an octogenarian; his sliver of fame wouldn't stretch to 30, so how could he?

I took it upon myself to run to the front door. "Ms Dulac! Such a thrill to have you with us, please come in!" I flashed my eyes at my PR pal, inclining my head toward the old woman to indicate 'This is her!' Her tone changed to sing-song sunniness: "You're not on my list because the party is for you – do go through!"

Once inside, I had a decision to make. I either leave Louise to the mercy of the room – which was expecting some willowy goddess, well-preserved and as spry and bright-eyed as in her heyday – or blow my cover to Stacey and make an announcement. But before I could mentally toss a coin, the hostess arrived and intervened.

"So sorry I am late, terrible traffic. Thrilled you could make it, just thrilled," she whispered to Louise, before clearing her throat and making introductions.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are no strangers to British success stories in Hollywood – or indeed failures... But tonight we are in the presence of perhaps the most successful of them all, certainly the female trailblazer. Where Chaplin led, she followed, carving out for herself an unforgettable career as one of early cinema's more beloved comediennes and actresses. Her movies still delight today, and I am thrilled to say she is here with us now, so I ask you to please raise your glasses to a Brit who made her mark on Broadway, Hollywood – and the oil industry. Louise Dulac!"

Three things struck me at that moment. First, that the room turned on a sixpence from sniggering ridicule to adoration. Second, that Cady Stone was apparently the hostess of the event and, third, that Stacey was obviously now trying to hide from her.

Cady made some one-on-one introductions, to a group of film producers and their go-to leading man who was instantly effusive, then wove her way through the room to check the kitchens. At which point, Stacey made straight for the wheelchair.

I had wondered where she had got whatever she was wearing tonight and now, at close range, I knew. A charity shop. She was wearing some dreadful old nightdress, beaded and shabby, and had ringed her eyes so much she was in danger of being deported to a Chinese zoo. Her lips were a childish attempt at a Clara Bow mouth and her hair was kinked into waves with too much gel and endless slides. It was like fancy dress...

... And if Louise Dulac was as infirm as she looked, it might work. Through cataracts, glaucoma or short-sightedness, Stacey might look like Estella at the Mamounia.

I elbowed towards them, my Dictaphone thrust out in front of me like a figurehead on the keel of my ship. I got into earshot just in time.

Stacey stuttered: "I am, I am your... I am..."

It was pitiful.

To my astonishment, Louise replied "I know who you are."

She smiled, and I saw at once the attraction she must have had on screen all those years ago, barely diminished by her wrinkles.

"I know who you are, and I love you."

Stacey inhaled as if shocked.

It had been so simple, after all.

She had gone to take her grandmother's hand when another, more important guest leant over and shook it instead then went in for a kiss, completely blocking Stacey out. Looking dazed, she wandered back to her seat.

I waited until I had what I needed, then went to find her.

When she saw me, aside from a split-second pang of recognition at the dress I was wearing – fully restored since its rinse in the Thames – she didn't look guilty.

"I didn't expect to see you here..." I began, not too combative.

"She knows who I am," said Stacey, smiling trance-like. "And she loves me."

A part of me didn't want to play back to Stacey what I had just recorded. But I reasoned that I would want to know, and that the truth would come out eventually. This would be my payback. I would write off the computer once I had played it.

I stopped recording and rewound a minute or two.

"Do you want to listen back to it?"

Stacey's eyes lit up and I felt briefly evil.

STACEY: "Ms Dulac? I'm, I'm your... I'm."

LOUISE DULAC: "I know who you are. I know who you are, and I love you."

Stacey smiled and went for Stop, but I pulled the Dictaphone away and let it play.

She tilted her head to say, 'Why?'

There came the sound of the actor glad-handing Louise, then her carer spoke:

CARER: "What did that girl think she looked like?"

LOUISE DULAC: [Laughs] "Me, of course. They all think they look like me, the fans. They spend all this time on the costumes and make-up but they can never quite capture it, can they? But I love them, I love them all. The fans are what made me..."

CARER: "Yes, yes, blah blah blah..."

With that, she wheeled her away from my mic. I pressed Stop.

"She loves you because she thinks you are a fan."

"No," Stacey shook her head, her waves coming loose, "she knows who I am, that I am her granddaughter."

"No, she thinks you are a fan and she loves her fans. At least you met her, eh?"

My evil deed done, I went back to work.

Stacey sat in her seat for hours, only changing position when Cady Stone was in her orbit. There was unfinished business there – maybe I should stage another reunion?

The party began to peter out but Louise Dulac showed no signs of leaving early. If this was to be her last big hurrah, she was clearly going to make every moment last. Come midnight, there were only waiters, Stacey, Cady Stone, Louise, her carer and myself still there. I wasn't going to leave if anything was going to kick off, Stacey didn't dare make herself known to Cady. A Mexican standoff in an Italian restaurant.

When Cady's phone rang, and she stepped outside to take the call, Stacey finally leapt up from her seat. I pointed my recorder at Louise, sitting just feet away from me.

"I'm not a fan," Stacey stammered. "I mean, I am a fan but I'm more than that..."

This was not the first time an obsessive had presented themselves to Louise, and she handled it beautifully. True old-school class and glamour.

"My dear, every fan thinks they are the biggest and the most devoted, and I believe you when you say it. Every fan should feel that way, that they have a special connection, that they get the star and their work more than anyone else does, that they have a real relationship through the screen. If you didn't feel that way, I wouldn't have been doing my job properly. So I am thrilled to meet you. As thrilled as you must be to meet me."

It was a speech I was sure she had delivered before but she gave it with such poise and passion it felt almost improvised. Bravo.

Stacey felt differently.

"No. I'm not just a fan or an obsessive or a stalker..."

Louise flinched at the S-word as Cady slipped back into the room, out of view.

"...I am your granddaughter!" Stacey blurted with all the effort she could summon.

But for the stereo, the restaurant fell silent.

"You are... what?"

"Your granddaughter." Stacey was almost sobbing. "Suki. Estella's daughter?"

Now out of character, Louise looked stern. She turned to her carer.

"I have a granddaughter? When were you going to tell me this?"

The carer looked utterly confused. She turned to Stacey.

"What are you talking about?"

"I... um, I found some papers, and I... um, well..."

"Do you not mean you stole papers, like you stole stories?"

The sound of Cady's voice made Stacey jump.

"I do not understand what is going on," said Louise, sounding all of her 95 years.

"It is very simple," said Cady, calmly. "This girl..."

"No, no, I don't understand why Stella never said anything. Why, Stella, why?"

"Because I gave her away," said the carer.

The carer is Estella?

"I was very young, I could not have coped alone, the plan had gone wrong... and I met this couple and who so wanted a child and it seemed like the perfect situation."

"And this is the first I hear of it?" barked Louise.

"What would you have expected me to say?" asked Estella, "'Hi Mother, sorry the comeback didn't work out but, guess what, you're going to be a grandmother!'? That is the last thing you would have wanted to hear. If you couldn't get work as a single mother, being a single grandmother wouldn't have helped, would it?"

Louise did a dainty shrug. "I just wish you'd said something sooner, that's all."

She yawned; "Do you think we might go home now?"

I couldn't believe she had been so matter-of-fact about it all – and had one important question to ask before they left, to return to obscurity.

"So... she is not your daughter?" I asked Estella, pointing at Stacey.

The woman in the dowdy brown dress looked Stacey up and down, taking in the crass cosmetics job and ill-fitting nightdress while trying not to laugh.

"No. She's not. She looks nothing like the father. Sorry.

She looked straight at Stacey: "Did you really think you were?"

Stacey started to nod, then stopped. "I thought I did, but..."

"She just wants to be famous," said Cady. "Desperately. That is why she latched on to me and sold my secrets. I should have known, there was no way anyone else could have known some of the stuff that got printed, but I was too trusting, I suppose. I liked her, took pity on her, so I let her move in. That is when she must have stolen the papers."

My brain was slowly making sense of it all. "So... you are Suki?"

I looked at Estella, who was squinting at her maybe-daughter, analysing her height, her poise, her eyes...

"Her nose – it's his. Without a doubt. And the height is right, and the build. You look very like his sister did, actually, just like her."

Cady smiled shyly but a theatrical yawn from Louise meant there was no group hug there and then. Instead, cards were swapped and promises made to meet – when Louise was feeling rested again – and discuss DNA testing, and to take things from there.

"It is amazing what you can do these days, do you not think?" said a sleepy Louise as she was being wheeled out of the door by her thought-dead daughter.

I couldn't hear what Cady was saying to Stacey, accompanied by some fearsome stabbing gestures with her right index finger, but I gathered that if missing items were returned to her ASAP, nothing more would be said. (She should have insisted no more false claims be made, too, but who knew Stacey would dare to do her 'memoirs'?)

My scoop had come to nothing. But now I had something better.

So we came to an arrangement, the Dulac ladies and I. As long as their story stayed quiet in the meantime, we would meet when the full DNA results had come through and I would get everything, exclusively, with Estella and Louise's full and unabridged input. If they reneged, I would print what I already had – that was my insurance policy.

I couldn't predict what Stacey would do, but I knew Cady would be true to her word. You can't fake class like that.

(67) comments

*****

_The Mail On Sunday_ , Sunday 17th October 2010

_Having duped the tabloids,_ Stacey Blyth _was sensationally outed as a fraud last week. Now, for the first time, the real heir to the Dulac oil billions,_ Cady Stone _, talks about the night she met her mother, and grandmother, and how she feels about Blyth's betrayal..._

'As Duluc would have it...': the identity theft that revealed a billion-dollar baby

The similarity is striking. As three generations of the Dulac family sit before me, it is clear their connection goes as deep as their genes. But until recently, golden-era screen goddess (and self-confessed gossip-mag addict) Louise only knew her granddaughter by reputation, unaware that she and Cady Stone were related. It was a secret Estella, her only child by her late billionaire oil-heir lover, had kept for three-and-a-half decades, not knowing herself what had become of the baby she had given up for adoption in 1976.

So how were the family reunited, after all this time?

"I am a hoarder," explains Cady, the much-photographed willowy blonde whose boho dress-sense belies an admirably steely quality. "I have always known I was adopted, my parents were always very open about it and I respect them for that but, as a result, I keep everything. As if I am hoarding memories, in lieu of a family tree. Everything I have ever loved – a book, a record or CD, a movie, a dress or shoes or accessory... even magazines where I have particularly loved pictures – I have kept."

Her north London townhouse is like a storage facility, she explains, full of boxes of trinkets and clippings, mementos rather than heirlooms.

"It is surprising what you forget about your own life," she continues, "let alone learn about someone else's. Every so often, I would take out a box or crate at random and go through the contents, and events would flood back. And it gave me a sense of continuity with my own life, if not with my biological parents'."

At this, slender if weather-beaten beauty Estella looks a little uncomfortable, guilty even, which Cady spots, shaking her head. "I don't blame Stella" – as she is called by both her mother and daughter, who says she prefers not to refer to her as 'Mum' or 'Mother' yet – "I totally understand what she did and I don't judge her for it. She did the only thing she could do at the time, that was her karma."

(Her grandmother frowns comically at the spirituality slang.)

"One day, I opened a box full of my parents' pictures and in amongst it was that snap that turned up in the papers recently, taken at the Mamounia in Marrakech. They were in masks – the same masks that were hanging on the wall downstairs, so I knew it was them, but the other woman most intrigued me. I felt like I knew her, but didn't know who she was. I half remembered an anecdote my father once told about meeting a girl dressed like Marlene Dietrich at a party, but by now there was no-one I could ask..."

She doesn't suggest the link, but Cady's hoarding seems to have become chronic when her adored and adoring adoptive parents were killed in a car accident during her late teens; she inherited the house and set about making it a shrine to their lives. Amongst their files, she found the papers that would prove vital to uncovering her identity.

"My father was in the diplomatic corps and was very efficient, so their papers were all in order already, really. The executor took what was needed to settle the estate, such as it was, and I was left with the rest. All of which I read, to know them better."

I suggest she coped with the loss well, considering she was left all alone.

"Maybe..." she half agrees. "As much as my parents cared for me, I always had the sense it was a temporary arrangement, somehow. They travelled and were posted abroad a lot and I went away to school so sometimes we were in the house at the same time and sometimes not. We passed in the night, mainly. So when they died, it was just like they had been sent away again and I sorted their papers to send on after them."

Amongst the papers, three documents were found which puzzled Cady and the executor alike. Adoption papers, with a strange name on them – "they never called me Suki, or Amy" – a will and a death certificate.

"That was the oddest part," she says, avoiding eye contact with Estella. "There was no copy of my birth certificate, the names on the adoption papers didn't tally – we thought maybe I had a sister or something but the dates matched me – and then the death certificate for some woman I had never heard of, who named me in her will."

Intrigued, Cady hired a private detective to investigate the dead woman – only to learn that not only was her death certificate phony but she never actually existed.

"It was well done for the time, certainly, but it was a fake. They had copied the details for another woman who had died around the same time and just changed the name, but the serial number meant the original file could be found and compared."

Cady felt she was back where she started until her hired gun pointed out two things – one, that you would only fake a death certificate if you wanted to fake a death and, two, that a detail had been left on the paper that indicated the dead woman had given birth.

"This was the most amazing thing, and it seems like nothing. Every woman who gives birth naturally – as in, not via a C-section – gets these marks left on her pelvis. So you could dig up a mother in a hundred, two hundred years, and you could tell from her bones that she has given birth – it is incredible, like the most indelible tattoo. It is literally written on the body in a way that cannot be faked. And for some reason, the certificate they had chosen to copy carried this detail."

Could that not have been a coincidence?

"There are no coincidences, that's what I believe," Cady insists, her grandmother raising an eyebrow, obviously no fan of modern self-help doctrines. "I think whether it was deliberate or not, the subconscious of the man who copied the document left in this detail, so I – or whoever one day found the papers – would know."

Know what – what did it tell her?

"It told me my mother was not dead. That it had been made to look that way, for whatever reason, but that she was not dead. And that was the happiest day of my life." She beams as she speaks, and Estella slowly joins in. "Of course, with the name being fake, I couldn't get any further with it at that point, but just knowing the possibility existed that she was alive was enough. I had buried my parents but resurrected my mother."

At this point, Estella takes up the story.

"I know how all this must look and, please believe me, I hated myself for it every single day of my life until meeting Su... Cady in person, and having her forgiveness. I really did. I mean, I could have kept her, I suppose, but I was in such a strange place, I didn't know how to take care of myself, let alone how to raise a baby."

Heroin has been mentioned many times in connection to Estella, since her sojourn in Marrakech was revealed, but she denies all allegations of drug-taking.

"That was just part of the cover story," she explains. "We wanted to make the death look authentic, so we decided I would 'overdose', and the stuff about drug use on the death certificate meant the adoption process was sped up, so it worked out for everyone."

'Everyone' and 'We' being people who could arrange fake certificates?

"My father," says Cady, "my _adoptive_ father, that is. As I said, he was a diplomat, he could pull strings and fill out forms and whip up replacement passports and so on, and so he dealt with the paperwork. And quite well, really. I mean, it went unnoticed for 20 years, and even then it was a dead end – no pun intended."

Estella nods and continues her story. "I met them at the Mamounia, at the party in the picture. They were the first people I had really talked to since sort of exiling myself out in Morocco, and we really hit it off, but I could see the woman had a terrible sadness about her, like she was grieving. When she went to the restroom at one point, I asked her husband, 'Is she OK?' and he came out with all this stuff about a stillborn baby, like he hadn't told anyone yet, and it just gushed out of him. It was written all over their faces."

So you found out you were pregnant and immediately offered them your baby?

Estella shakes her head. "Absolutely not, no. No, it was nothing like that. I really wanted to keep her, but I just... couldn't." She inhales deeply. "I led a sheltered life. _Very_ sheltered. Mother was just trying to keep me protected but... it went too far. We lived in this huge house with acres of grounds and I knew nothing of the world. Nothing. I was home-schooled, and very well, but I was utterly ignorant of reality."

Louise does not miss her cue. "Stella had the very best of everything. Clothes, food, education, everything! She wanted for nothing."

"I wanted some freedom," insists Estella. "I wanted to be allowed out, on my own."

"And I let you, did I not? I let you go to college – and look what happened!"

What happened was Stella was kidnapped, like Patty Hearst and John Paul Getty III before her – right?

"It wasn't _exactly_ what it looked like," Estella admits, sheepishly. "The thing was, well, Mother hadn't worked in such a long time and she came up with this..."

"Ruse!" cackles Louise. "A wonderful ruse – but best-laid plans and all that."

The kidnapping was a con?

"We were very, very rich," says Louise with gusto, as if beginning a soliloquy. "Or rather, I was. Her father drank himself to death when Stella was, I don't know, ten? And his mother followed a couple of years later. So I got the lot. Which was wonderful in many ways, as the mansion was ever so run-down, you see, and they had been too tight to get it fixed up. They thought Getty's idea of a payphone for guests was a wonderful idea – only putting in the payphone in the first place was too pricey!"

She hoots at the memory.

"Anyway, once we started the renovations – and a lot needed doing, believe me, once they started stripping paper whole walls fell down, it was that sort of ruin – word got around as to how much money I had. And the estimates were way off, as they always are, but I was put at the top of some chart. And when that happens, you do start to worry terribly about thefts and kidnappings and things, so, yes, I did get a little overprotective. But I couldn't bear the alternative, you see. I do love Stella. So very much."

Going by Estella's reaction, this appears to be news to her daughter-turned-carer.

"Then I had some health problems, so I stopped socialising, and I suppose we became rather reclusive. We didn't really see anyone apart from workmen and staff for almost a decade. Which is a very long time." Louise's smile disappears. "It is silly, really, because no-one knew what Stella looked like, and we could have smuggled her out to go to school, but I just did not want to take the chance of losing her. So we stayed in."

"Which was fine, I guess," says Estella, generously, "but I really wanted to go to college. I didn't want to spend my twenties in the house, so I insisted I be allowed to go, under a fake name if needs be. So arrangements were made I would start in September."

"Leaving me all alone!" cries Louise. "Which would not do. So I decided on a comeback. Lots of the old dames did it – Bette Davies took out that ad, if you remember. Well, I wasn't going to do anything so coarse as to beg for work, I just wanted to get my name known again and I knew demand would follow. So we came up with a plan. The Getty boy had been taken a couple of years earlier, and the Hearst girl was still at large at the time, so we thought, 'What could be better that a quick kidnapping?'"

"It wasn't as dramatic as it all sounds," says a shamefaced Estella. "The plan was I would 'go missing' one afternoon, would be seen leaving my digs in a van going at high speed, then Mother would make an appeal and we would pretend money had changed hands and I would be left on the outskirts of Malibu somewhere, scruffy and bedraggled. Mother would be famous again and I would be used goods for any future attempts."

But that isn't what happened, is it?

Estella shakes her head.

"There were some... complications."

Such as?

"Mother wanted some work done at the last minute – not surgical, just a cosmetic dental procedure – but she was still groggy from the anaesthetic when the reporters called and so forgot the script and said some gibberish about it all seeming 'gauche'..."

"...And then they bloody well arrested Patty Hearst!" roars Louise. "Poor Stella! She is staying some old stable block beyond the beach where she could safely hide out for a few days, only all anyone can talk about is 'Hearst, Hearst, Hearst'!"

"So I made some amendments," says Estella. "I had a radio, so I knew what was going on, and that my story was dead in the water, so I hitched a ride to the airport. I had taken plenty of clothes with me, and money from my trust I had been stashing away since I turned 18, just in case I need a contingency plan, so I caught a plane to Europe instead."

And you went along with this change of plans, did you, Louise?

"I did not! I was furious. Once the ether or whatever it was had worn off, I realised it had all gone wrong, and when I sent a driver to the stables they came back without Stella. Next thing I know, I get a call from the Ritz in Paris, of all places, and we have a blazing row about everything and don't see each other for I don't know how long."

"It's true," says Estella. "We said lots of awful things to one another, things I don't think we even meant, but it felt like there was no going back for me, at that moment. So I went out and got drunk – and got pregnant."

At the mention of her father, Cady perks up.

"He was the son of some industrialist, the father. He and his sister, I think maybe they were twins, were doing a kind of Grand Tour, and I tagged along, to Morocco. But she got all jealous when I got together with her brother, and they ended up leaving Marrakech without telling me. So I was stranded. And then I found out I was expecting."

Did you not want to track them down, to tell them about the baby?

"Of course," says Estella, "but I didn't know his name. He _said_ it was Randy, 'as in Randolf', but I knew he was lying because he would never show me his passport. Then I refused to show him mine, so he didn't know who I was either."

Meeting the grieving couple must have been a godsend, then?

"I had been at the hotel for a couple of weeks by then, and had got to know the staff well. They were very kind and would check to see how I was, being all alone, but it wasn't the same as having a real friend – I was paying them to be kind to me, after all. So yes, they were wonderful. And my being pregnant seemed to cheer them up, so we bonded and they were very helpful after I gave birth."

"But they were probably being posted back to Britain soon, and the thought of being alone again was too much to bear, too much to cope with. They offered to let me come and live with them in England, and I was going to, but I felt if I was in a strange house in a strange land again, now with a baby to care for, I would be no better off than if I had never left California. I think I had a breakdown, maybe. And then one of them said they would look after the baby for me for as long as it took to sort myself out and I said, not meaning it – or maybe I did, I was so addled and upset – 'You can have her.' And somehow that became fact. And he could get all the papers sorted so quickly, he could cover up my disappearing with an ambulance and some paperwork done after hours, then they would have a replacement baby and I would have my freedom. No-one would know who I was and I could just travel around and see the world and go at my own pace and not have to worry about being kidnapped or over-protected or...

"Or being a mother?" asks Cady, pointedly.

"I was too young, _mentally_. Just because your body can cope with a baby doesn't mean your mind can. And I couldn't just stop seeing the world there and then. It would have been like being a battery chicken, like I was destined to a life spent indoors, just existing until I died. I didn't want that for me and I didn't want that for Cady. What kind of life would she have had if her mother was just some immature idiot? She would have been worse off than I already was. But they could give her a life."

"Of course, _I_ knew nothing of this," says Louise, her cloud-like silver hair giving her head a halo-like glow. "I had a granddaughter and no-one told me, until that party!"

"Which was how I had planned it," admits Cady. "I had seen a documentary about my mother on the 20th anniversary of her disappearance, 'The Forgotten Heiress' or something. All it really said was that she had gone missing the day before Patty Hearst was captured and no-one knew what had become of her, but her face rang a bell. And finally I placed it. I had a dream, believe it or not, where I met Estella Dulac at a party, and everyone but us was wearing masks! And I didn't connect it to that photo at the time but eventually my conscious mind made sense of it all and I knew who she was."

Did you hire another detective?

"Not this time, no. I mean, I had the internet now, I could go online and research it all myself. So I pieced it all together and realised that the disappearance happened a few months before I was born and adopted, but I had nothing other than that. So I focused on Louise instead, on trying to find out if she was still alive and, if so, where she was."

And at some point you told someone else about your investigations?

"I didn't tell a soul. Not intentionally..."

What does _that_ mean?

With a regretful sigh, Cady starts to bring the story full circle.

"As everyone now knows had a friend – a stray, really. Most people I socialise with are well-known and very busy, so the only chance I get to see them is at shows or premieres or launches or whatever, so that was my social life. And there was a girl I met there and she looked so lost and shabby my heart went out to her. She told me that she was adopted too, and that her parents were also dead; I have no idea if she was telling the truth, but I think I wanted to believe her and that we had a common bond. And I was lonely, I suppose, so I let her move in with me for a while, for company.

"After a while, she started to call me Lady Macbeth. We had just seen a new production of it and I suppose the female lead maybe looked a little like me, only much older, but it was something specific about her she was goading me about."

Ambition? Ruthlessness?

Cady shakes her head.

"You must know some Shakespeare – you probably went to the opening nights, right?" she chides her grandmother. The elderly actress only pretends to be annoyed.

"I know one scene, dear child, one scene only."

"Which one?"

"'Out, damned spot!' and all that... Did you kill someone?"

"No! The doctor and the 'Gentlewoman', do you remember that bit?"

"You will have to refresh my memory."

Cady seems perfectly happy to have the floor to herself.

"Before Lady Macbeth enters, and incriminates herself and dies, the doctor and the Gentlewoman have a conversation about her sleep-walking and -talking."

You sleepwalk?

"I sleep _talk_. I knew I did, I think, I have been told by exes but it never seemed to be a big deal, no-one said they minded. But apparently I sometimes say things I shouldn't, when I have dropped off on the sofa after nights out. And my so-called 'friend' wrote them all down as fact and sold them to the highest bidder."

"It is called 'Somnambulism'. And it gave me away. It gave _us_ away. I must have talked about Stella, only she kept all that stuff to herself. And I was oblivious, until I realised the only person who could have known about what was ending up in print, some of it very personal indeed, was her – at first I thought she must have been bugging me and that was how she found everything out. So we had a huge row and I threw her out and next thing I heard she had been rescued from the Thames. At the time I felt terribly guilty but now I think it was _her_ Lady Macbeth moment – she was trying to wash off the stain of selling me out for months on end, messing up friendships, almost ruining my relationship with... well, I would rather not say any more on the subject. Other than that when I came to clean out the room I had let her stay in, it became apparent she had been going through the storage boxes in there and had found the certificates. There were in the wrong place, like she had found them, photocopied them and put them back anywhere."

And you worried if she had overheard you sleep-talking, she knew as much as you?

"Exactly. I mean, what she would do with the information, I couldn't know... In a way, though, I owe her some thanks, because she forced me to take action at last."

So you arranged the party for Louise's 95th birthday?

(The almost-centenarian tuts playfully at my indiscretion.)

"I did. I knew Louise lived in London, or did the last time anyone heard from her. Years earlier I bought some old interview tapes off an auction site that claimed to be her last interview, and she said she came back to England in the '80s, after Chaplin died."

" _Did_ I?" Louise blushes. "I remember that journalist, she was very persuasive... I wonder if she drugged me to get me to say more? Probably not, I always did love an audience! But she never printed anything. She said no-one was interested in my story, that I was not famous or salacious enough. Do you think they would say that now?"

"So," says Cady, "I had a hunch that if she lived in town still, and I arranged a party and made enough of a fuss about it, then maybe she would hear about it and show up. And I was right. But I never knew about Stella – that was the real surprise to me."

No-one in attendance expected that reunion, least of all the delusional former friend who was either maintaining an elaborate pretence or had come to believe that she really had lived Cady's life. Indeed, it was her tearful declaration to Louise that she was her unknown granddaughter that finally ended the mystery of Stella's disappearance.

"I don't know if I would have been bold enough to simply tell Louise who I was if she hadn't tried it first," says Cady. "But she needs help, and I hope she is getting it."

(She is. In a final irony, she has been admitted to the rehab facility she only pretended to be a patient of in the fictional memoirs she flogged to an unwitting – and subsequently litigious – tabloid. Cady quietly admits to stints there herself at times of great stress, explaining that she booked in under the name 'Stacey Blyth' to avoid attention.)

So how does it feel, to be together after all these years?

The trio consider their responses.

"Good. _Great_ , actually," says Cady. "The first time the three of us were alone together, I felt an incredible sense of security. I feel very loved and protected."

"Not _over_ protected?" asks Louise, winking at Estella. "No, I am only joking. It really does feel wonderful to know the family has another generation in it, and that I have time enough to get to know my gorgeous granddaughter."

"It is the best gift imaginable," grins Estella. "And Cady has been very kind but I know I have a lot of amends to make, a lot of missed birthdays and milestones and so on."

"No gift could be better than this," smiles Cady, indulgently.

"I totally agree," says Stella, "but I do have one thing for you."

She reaches for her purse, sliding from it an old piece of paper, brown around the folds, and passes it to Cady.

"Happy birthday."

"But it's not my... _oh_!" Cady appears instantly overcome.

It is not, as you might expect from one heiress to another, a cheque. Rather it is another document, not unlike the clues that led Cady to uncover her long-lost mother.

Her hands shaking, she holds the paper up towards the room.

Around the Queen's crest of a lion and unicorn flanking a shield, in faded red type on now-beige paper, are the words 'CERTIFICATE OF BIRTH'. Below it, the fields 'Name and surname', 'Sex' and 'Date of birth'. It confirms that, on June 1st 1976, a baby girl was born named 'Suki Louise Estella Dulac'.

"I just need you to know," says Stella, choking on her words as her mother and daughter wipe their eyes, "that, Suki, Amy, whoever, you were always, _always_ beloved."

THE END

*****

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