I glance at Erica, who looks lost for words.
‘Minnie’s a very … self-assured child,’ she says at last. ‘Very independent.’
‘Er … yes.’
We both watch as Minnie whirls a skipping rope around her head like a lasso. Soon all the other children on the slide are copying her, and shouting, ‘My old man’s a dustman! My old man’s a dustman!’ even though they probably don’t even know what a dustman is. They probably call it a ‘garbage collector’ or ‘refuse sanitator’ or something.
‘Minnie seems to be transitioning with great confidence,’ says Erica at last. ‘Maybe you’d like to sit in the parents’ lounge, Rebecca. This is a facility for our parents of children who are at the latter stages of the transition programme. It provides proximity yet independence, and helps the child attain a sense of self, while feeling secure.’
I didn’t follow a word of that. All I heard was ‘sit in the parents’ lounge’, which has got to be better than ‘chase after my daughter, tripping over toy trucks and feeling like a moron’.
‘I’d love to.’
‘We also find it a useful forum for parents to exchange views on parenting issues. I’m sure you’re burning with questions on curriculum … socialization …’
‘Yes!’ I perk up. ‘Actually, I was wondering, do the mothers have lots of coffee mornings, parties, that kind of thing?’
Erica shoots me an odd look. ‘I meant socialization of the children.’
‘Right.’ I clear my throat. ‘The children. Of course.’
As we near the pale wooden door marked Parents’ Lounge, I feel suddenly excited. At last! A chance to make some friends. What I need to do is launch myself whole-heartedly into school life and volunteer for everything and then I’m bound to meet some nice people.
‘Here we are.’ Erica swings open the door to reveal a room furnished with brightly coloured foam chairs, on which are sitting three women, all dressed in workout gear. They’re chatting avidly, but stop and turn with friendly smiles. I beam back, noticing already that one of them has that cool embroidered bag I was looking at in Fred Segal.
‘Let me introduce Rebecca,’ Erica is saying. ‘Rebecca is new to LA, and her daughter Minnie is joining our Toddler Program.’
‘Hi!’ I wave around the room. ‘Lovely to meet you all.’
‘I’m Erin.’
‘Sydney.’
‘Carola. Welcome to LA!’ Carola, who has dark curly hair and lots of interesting-looking silver jewellery, leans forward as Erica leaves the room. ‘How long have you been living here?’
‘Not long. We’re here temporarily for my husband’s work.’
‘And you got a place at Little Leaf?’
‘I know!’ I say brightly. ‘We were so lucky!’
Carola stares at me blankly for a moment, then starts shaking her head. ‘No. You don’t understand. No one just gets a place at Little Leaf. No one.’
The others are nodding their heads emphatically. ‘No one,’ echoes Erin.
‘It just doesn’t happen,’ chimes in Sydney.
I want to point out that if no one gets a place at Little Leaf, what are all their children doing here? But they all look too intense. Clearly this is a serious subject.
‘We didn’t just “get a place”,’ I explain. ‘Minnie had to do a pre-test. And I think my husband made a donation,’ I add a little awkwardly.
Carola is staring at me as though I understand nothing.
‘We all do the pre-test,’ she says. ‘We all make donations. What else did you do?’
‘We wrote five letters,’ says Erin with grim satisfaction. ‘Five.’
‘We’ve pledged to build a rooftop garden for the school,’ says Sydney. ‘My husband and I have already engaged the architect.’
‘We coached Alexa in Karate,’ adds Carola. ‘She’s here on a sports scholarship.’
I stare at them all, open-mouthed. Are these people nuts? I mean, I’m sure it’s a good pre-school and everything. But at the end of the day, it’s still just children hitting each other with Play-Doh.
‘Well, we just turned up,’ I say apologetically. ‘Sorry.’
The door swings open and a woman with chestnut hair bounces in. She has merry dark eyes and is wearing a stylish blue swingy top over jeans, covering the teeniest little pregnancy bump.
‘Hi!’ she says, coming straight up to me. ‘I’m Faith. You’re Rebecca, right? Erica just told me we had a newcomer in our midst.’
She has a gorgeous lilting Southern accent which to my ear sounds as though it’s from Charleston. Or Texas. Or maybe … Wyoming? Is that Southern?
Do I mean Wisconsin?
No. No. That’s the cheese state. Whereas Wyoming is …
OK, the truth is, I have no idea where Wyoming is. I must do Minnie’s United States jigsaw puzzle and actually look at the names.
‘Hi, Faith.’ I smile back and shake her hand. ‘Lovely to meet you.’
‘Are these girls looking after y’all?’
Y’all. I just love that. Y’all. Maybe I’ll start saying ‘y’all’.
‘They sure are!’ I say, putting a little twang in my voice. ‘They surely are!’
‘What we want to know is, how did she get a place?’ Carola appeals to Faith. ‘She walks in here off the street, writes the cheque and she’s in. I mean, who does that?’
‘Didn’t Queenie put in a good word for her?’ says Faith. ‘Because she was British? I think Erica said something about it.’
‘Ohhhh.’ Carola exhales like a deflating balloon. ‘That’s it. OK, now I understand. You were lucky.’ She turns to me. ‘That wouldn’t happen to everybody. You need to thank Queenie. She did you a big favour.’
‘Sorry, who’s Queenie?’ I say, trying to keep up.
‘Our President of the PTA,’ explains Sydney. ‘She has a daughter in the Toddler Program, too. You’ll love her. She’s so sweet.’
‘She’s super-fun,’ agrees Faith. ‘She’s British, too! We call her Queenie because she talks like the Queen of England.’
‘She organizes awesome social events,’ says Carola.
‘And she runs a moms’ yoga class on Wednesday mornings. Knocks us all into shape.’
‘It sounds amazing!’ I say enthusiastically. ‘I’ll definitely come!’
My spirits are higher than they’ve been since we arrived in LA. At last I’ve found some friends! They’re all so welcoming and fun. And this Queenie sounds fab. Maybe she and I will really hit it off. We can compare notes on living in LA and share pots of Marmite.
‘How long has Queenie lived in LA?’ I ask.
‘Not too long. A couple of years, maybe?’
‘She had quite the whirlwind romance,’ puts in Faith. ‘She and her husband met on a Tuesday and were married by the Friday.’
‘No way!’
‘Oh yes.’ Faith laughs. ‘It’s a great story. You’ll have to ask her about it.’ She glances out of the window into the car park. ‘Oh, here she comes now.’ She waves and beckons at someone, and I sit up expectantly.
‘Queenie!’ exclaims Carola as the door opens. ‘Come meet Rebecca.’
‘Thank you so much for helping us—’ I begin, as the door swings further open. And then my words dry up on my lips and I feel my entire body shrivel. No. No.
A little whimper escapes my lips before I can stop it and Carola shoots me an odd glance. ‘Rebecca, meet Queenie. Alicia, I should say.’
It’s Alicia Bitch Long-legs.
Here. In LA. In Minnie’s school.
I feel pinioned with shock. If I weren’t sitting down I think my legs would collapse.
‘Hello, Rebecca,’ she says softly, and I give a little shudder. I haven’t heard that voice for years.
She’s as tall and skinny and blonde as ever, but her style has changed. She’s wearing drapey yoga pants and a grey top and Keds. I’ve never seen Alicia in anything other than heels. And her hair is caught in a low ponytail, which is also very diffe
rent. As I run my eyes over her, I notice a white and gold twisted bracelet on one wrist. Isn’t that the bracelet they wear at Golden Peace?
‘Do you two know each other?’ says Sydney, with interest.
I want to break into hysterical laughter. Do we know each other? Well, let’s just see now. Over the last few years, Alicia has tried to ruin my career, my reputation, my husband’s business and my wedding. She’s undermined me and looked down on me at every turn. Just seeing her is making my heart race with stress.
‘Yes,’ I manage. ‘Yes, we do.’
‘So that’s why you recommended Rebecca!’ Carola still seems obsessed by this. ‘I was just saying, how on earth did she get a place at such short notice?’
‘I had a word with Erica,’ says Alicia.
Her voice is different, I realize. It’s lower and calmer. In fact, her whole demeanour is calmer. It’s creepy. It’s like she’s had Botox of the soul.
‘Well, aren’t you a sweetie-pie?’ Faith puts an arm fondly around Alicia’s shoulders. ‘Lucky Rebecca to have such a pal!’
‘We were telling Rebecca all about you,’ puts in Carola. ‘Turns out we didn’t need to!’
‘I’ve changed a lot since I saw you last, Rebecca.’ Alicia gives a soft laugh. ‘When was that?’
I’m so shocked, I actually gasp. When was that? How can she ask that? Isn’t it etched into her brain for ever like it is into mine?
‘At my wedding,’ I manage to gulp. When you were being escorted out, kicking and screaming, having tried to ruin the whole thing.
I’m waiting for a flash of understanding, remorse, acknowledgement, something. But her eyes have a weird, bland quality to them.
‘Yes,’ she says thoughtfully. ‘Rebecca, I know we have some issues which we should try to put behind us.’ She puts a hand gently on my shoulder and I immediately recoil. ‘Maybe we could have a cup of mint tea together and talk it through, just the two of us?’
What? All those terrible things she did boil down to ‘issues’?
‘I don’t … You can’t just—’ I break off, my throat dry, my heart thumping, my thoughts all over the place. I don’t know what to say.
No, is what I want to say. You must be joking, is what I want to say. We can’t just put all that behind us.
But I can’t. I’m not on home turf. I’m standing in the parents’ lounge at a pre-school in LA, surrounded by strangers who think that Alicia is a sweetie-pie who’s just done me the most massive favour in the world. And now a new feeling creeps over me. A horrible, cold realization. These women are all Alicia’s friends. Not my friends, Alicia’s friends. It’s her crowd.
The thing about Alicia is, she’s always managed to make me feel about three inches tall. And even now, even though I know I’m in the right and she’s in the wrong, I feel like I’m diminishing by the second. She’s in the cool gang. And if I want to join it I’m going to have to be friendly to her. But I can’t. I just can’t. I can barely even look at her, let alone go to her ‘moms’ yoga class’.
How can they all be fooled by her? How can they call her ‘sweet’ and ‘super-fun’? An overwhelming feeling of disappointment engulfs me. For a moment I was so excited. I thought I’d found a way in. And now I find Alicia Bitch Long-legs is standing at the entrance, barring the way.
The door swings open and Erica comes in, her colourful shawl trailing behind her like a sail.
‘Rebecca!’ she exclaims. ‘I’m glad to say that Minnie is doing extremely well. She’s acclimatized remarkably quickly and seems to be making friends already. In fact, she’s a natural leader.’ Erica beams at me. ‘I’m sure she’ll have a little tribe following her in no time.’
‘Brilliant.’ I manage a wide smile. ‘Thank you so much. That’s fantastic news.’
And it is. It’s a massive relief to think that Minnie feels at home in LA already and is happy and is making friends. I mean, I’m not surprised. Minnie’s so confident and charms everyone she meets, it’s no wonder she’s fallen on her feet.
But as I look around at Alicia and all her disciples, I can’t help thinking … what about me?
SEVEN
For the next few days I’m in a total state of shock that Alicia Billington has turned up in LA. Except she’s not Alicia Billington any more, she’s Alicia Merrelle. It all gets worse, as I found out when I Googled her yesterday. She’s filthy rich and well known all over LA, because she’s married to the founder of Golden Peace. The actual founder himself. He’s called Wilton Merrelle and he’s seventy-three with a goaty grey beard and those fixed, stretched eyes you get when you have too much plastic surgery, and they met on a beach in Hawaii. A beach. Who meets their husband on a beach? They have a daughter called Ora who is a month younger than Minnie and they are, according to one interview, ‘hoping to expand their family’.
As soon as I started Googling, I found all these articles about the ‘super-stylish home-maker’ with her ‘British wit and charm’. I sent them to Suze and she sent back a one-word email: ‘WHAT?????’, which made me feel better. Suze has no time for Alicia. And neither does Luke (which is no surprise, bearing in mind she once tried to steal all his clients and ruin his company. Oh yes, whilst trashing my reputation in the newspapers at the same time. Luke and I actually split up because of it. It was awful). When I told him, he just grunted, and said, ‘Might have known she’d land on her Manolos.’
But the trouble is, everyone else here thinks she’s adorable. I haven’t seen her again at Little Leaf, thank goodness, but I’ve had to have about six conversations with other mothers about how great it is that Queenie and I are old friends (friends!) and isn’t she divine and am I coming to her spa party?
I can’t cope with an Alicia Bitch Long-legs spa party. I just can’t.
Anyway. Never mind. I don’t care. I’ll make friends another way. There are lots of other ways. And in the meantime, I’m going to focus on my new career.
I have a plan at the ready, and it starts today. I’ve been totally inspired by the story of Nenita Dietz marching into a wardrobe department and landing herself a job. So today I’m going to do the tour at Sedgewood Studios, which is where Nenita Dietz works, and I’m going to sneak away and find her. Luke has even got me a free VIP ticket through some contact of his, although I haven’t mentioned my plan to him. I’ll wait till I have success first. Then he’ll see.
I’ve put together a collection of my work as a personal shopper: look books, photos of clients, even a couple of sketches, all zipped up in a leather portfolio. I’ve also put together a critique of some recent Sedgewood Studios films, to show that I’m movie-minded. (Like, for example, that alien film they made, Darkest Force. They really could have had better costumes in that. The space uniforms were so clunky. By the year 2154, surely we’ll be going into space in skinny jeans, with tiny little helmets designed by Prada or someone?)
I’ve also done extensive research on Nenita Dietz, because I want to make sure we hit it off straight away. I’m wearing a really cool dress by Rick Owens, which is a label she likes, and I’m wearing Chanel N° 5, which is apparently her favourite scent, and I’ve Googled Martinique which is where she goes on holiday. All I have to do is meet her and I’m sure we’ll get along.
As I wait to join the VIP tour, I feel a fizz of excitement. My life could turn a massive new corner today! I’m standing by the famous gates, which are huge and ornate, with Sedgewood Studios in big iron letters at the top. Apparently if you kiss them, your deepest wish will come true, and lots of tourists are kissing them and filming each other. Honestly, what a load of rubbish. Like a gate could help. Like a gate could really have any secret powers. Like a gate could—
Oh, come on. I might as well. Just to be on the safe side. I’m kissing it and whispering, ‘Get me a job, please, please, lovely gate,’ when a side entrance opens.
‘Come forward for the VIP tour!’ A girl in a headset starts ushering us through and scanning our passes. I follow the crowd of tourists and soo
n find myself on the other side of the gates, in the studio lot. I’m here! I’m at Sedgewood Studios!
I quickly look around, trying to get my bearings. There’s an endless road stretching ahead, lined with pretty Art Deco buildings. Beyond that is a lawned area, and I can see more buildings in the distance. I couldn’t track down a map of the studio lot online so I’m just going to have to find my own way.
‘This way, ma’am.’ A young man with blond hair, a dark jacket and a headset is approaching me. ‘We have one more space on our cart.’
I turn to see that a whole fleet of golf carts have turned up, and all the tourists are getting on. The blond guy is gesturing to the back seat of a cart that seats six people and is nearly full.
I don’t want to get on. I want to find the wardrobe department. But I guess I have no choice.
‘Great.’ I smile at him. ‘Thanks.’
Reluctantly I climb on to the back of the cart and buckle up, next to an old lady in pink seersucker shorts who is filming everything with a video recorder. She even swings round to take a shot of me, and I do a little wave. The blond guy has got into the front of the cart and is handing out headphones.
‘Hi!’ His voice booms into my ears as soon as my headphones are on. ‘My name is Shaun and I’ll be your guide for today. I’m gonna take you on a fascinating tour of Sedgewood Studios, past, present and future. We’ll see the places where all your favourite shows and movies have been filmed. And while we’re on our tour, keep your eyes peeled, and you might just spot one of our stars at work. Yesterday I was beginning a tour just like this one, when who should we see strolling by but Matt Damon!’
‘Matt Damon!’
‘I love him!’
‘His films are awesome!’
At once, everyone starts looking around excitedly as if he might appear again, and one man even starts snapping his camera at empty space.
This is just like being on safari. In fact, I’m amazed they don’t do celebrity safaris. I wonder who the ‘Big Five’ would be. Brad Pitt, obviously, and Angelina. And imagine if you saw the whole family together. It would be like when we came across a lioness feeding her cubs in the Masai Mara.