Page 34

Chapter Seventeen

I wake up angry and determined. This will not be remembered as the holiday where Sebastian and a bunch of his dickhead mates made me feel like shit, and I had to, once again, sleep in a toilet.

Thank goodness I could wash off the arrogance and general eau de posh wanker under a hot shower when I got back to my hotel, and then starfish onto the superking bed with its zillion thread-count sheets.

I’m in a luxury resort, the sun is shining and I’m determined to prove Sebastian wrong: I am made for this life and I do belong here.

Something is going to happen today and it is going to be magical. I’m just not yet sure what.

Luckily, Layla’s feeling better and Madison’s called an emergency group lunch at some fancy restaurant on the marina.

So, I don my classiest dress and strut down to meet them, a pair of shades hiding my puffy, tired eyes.

I won’t admit it to anyone, but I did miss Damon yesterday.

Yes, he’s treated me horribly but he’s always fun and he always stands up for me, there’s no way ‘Ara’ would have got away with that behaviour had Damon been on the yacht with me.

But I don’t know if I can share that with the girls.

Layla and Madison are already at the restaurant when I arrive, they’ve bagged the most amazing table overlooking the sparkling water, the masts of the boat stretching into the azure skies.

“White wine, chips and Caesar salad,” Madison says, pointing to everything she’s already ordered for us, knowing exactly what we would need.

I don’t say but I know I’ll just pick at the chips, and choose to drink my calories instead. Madison is radiating a smug glow. I squint at her.

“Did you get laid last night?”

“Last night, this morning, in the car on the way here…I’ve been shagging non-stop. Girls, lean in, I have to whisper this next part as it can’t get out to the press. Actually, let’s fill your wine up first.”

She reaches for the bottle but a waiter comes rushing over, insisting he will pour, then takes far too long doing so. I mean, he actually probably only took two minutes but when you’re awaiting what appears to be the gossip of the century, every minute feels like an hour.

“So, I was walking past this restaurant yesterday, really feeling myself, you know, the sun was shining, I’m looking good.

Sure everyone looks classy here but I look sexy, I mean you don’t need to fit in when you stand out…

And clearly someone agrees with me, as I just get to that boat over there when this cute little man taps me on the shoulder.

He’s in this white linen suit, dead expensive looking, and he tells me that his boss really wants to meet me! ”

“Was the boss a creepy old man?” Layla says. “It always is, that’s why they send their handsome assistants, to lure you in.”

“No, his boss was…” She mouths the name. Neither Layla nor I understand what she’s saying.

She mouths again and I try to lip-read.

“Short and wide?” I say, confused.

“No, you numpty!” She mouths again until Layla shouts, “just spit it out!”

“CHAD SCHMIDT!” Madison yells in frustration, and a table of girls next to us turn around and say, “where?!”

“Oh, sorry, we thought we saw him but it was just that try-hard Marc from North Stars ,” Layla says, expertly batting them away. They don’t know who he is, and turn away from us, disappointed. We all lower our voices.

“What? So you went on a date with Chad Schmidt?”

“Better than that, I’ve literally just come from shagging him and… this whole lunch is on him.”

“In that case,” I say, giving the waiter a little wave. “Can we have a bottle of champagne, please?” I don’t even particularly like champagne, but it feels like the sort of thing you order after discovering your best friend has just shagged a movie star.

Layla just sits with her mouth wide open. “You’ll catch flies,” Madison says, shutting it for her. “Or better yet, a cock.”

“Are you serious?”

“I wouldn’t have just let Angelica order a bottle of champers if I was kidding you on, would I?”

“How was he?”

“I want to say amazing but—”

“But…”

“He was bang on average. Literally. Like, I don’t know, it was fine? He knew what to do, in, out, shake it all about etc.”

“I don’t think I know that move!” Layla giggles.

“Will you two stop it, it’s distracting from the shagging story!” I love a good fairytale, and the runner and the Hollywood star is exactly that.

“I think we did it like seven times last night and this morning, I’m exhausted. He was…obsessed by my tits.”

“Who isn’t?”

“Yeah your average lad from Wetherspoons is into them but he’s been with, well, basically every hot celebrity around. He’s seen LA tits.”

“He’s not seen a rack like yours,” I say, suddenly very proud of my best friend. “What’s Hollywood got that Liverpool hasn’t?”

“Anyway, he wanted to do all the tricks, and I let him because, well, he’s Chad Schmidt. But it wasn’t really rocking my world. He only went down on me for, like, ten seconds at best and only because I asked him to.”

“This is the problem,” Layla nods, just as the champagne arrives and we instruct the waiter that yes, we do want a glass of champagne alongside our wine and could he top up both, pretty please.

“Because he’s always had that face on him, he’s never had to get good at sex.

Ugly guys, they’re the best sex I’ve had, because they actually had to try.

I once had sex with this guy, he was no oil painting but… wow do I think about what he could do.”

“Tell me more?”

“You don’t want to ask,” Madison says, before lowering her voice even further and whispering, “when Layla woke up the next day she realised he was missing his front two teeth. He had dentures!”

Layla lightly punches Madison’s arm. “That was a secret! He’d lost them in a fight, it wasn’t like he was a crack-head or anything. Anyway, when he did oral it was earth shattering.”

“Well lucky for you,” Madison chimes in.

“When we’re all old and wrinkly and all the guys we pull have false teeth, you can look forward to some great head!

” she says, waving her arms out wide. “But anyway, back to meeeeeeeee. So…after his assistant chased me down, I came to the private back-room of this restaurant and it was down this big long corridor. I was walking down it thinking, god, maybe I’m being lured to be murdered… ”

“Glamorous way to get killed though, unexpected,” I say.

“That’s exactly what I thought! Everyone thinks I’m going to die—”

“As part of a botched bum job in Turkey, so, why not opt for this more glamorous way instead, so I kept going.”

When she reached the room, apparently Chad Schmidt was just sitting there, at the end of one long, gold table, with a bottle of champagne in front of him and he just drawls, “Good to meet ya honey, pull up a chair.”

“We chatted for hours, but his chat was pretty tame and he refused to tell me anything interesting as I hadn’t signed an NDA yet, so I said ‘Chad, mate, you don’t have to sign anything to hear my stories,’ and told him all about us…”

“Does that mean…?”

“Yes, that means Chad Schmidt knows about the times you were caught short, Angelica.”

It’s then I hear that dreaded voice.

“I definitely don’t ever want to hear those stories,” he says, disdain almost dripping off the figure suddenly blocking our harbour view.

It’s Sebastian, and despite it being over thirty degrees and blazing sunshine, he’s decked out in a tweed jacket, worn over a pair of salmon-pink shorts and those sludge-brown boat shoes him and his mates insist on wearing to all occasions.

It is suddenly very baffling to me that I ever found him attractive.

I have to take another sip of wine to stop myself from saying something I’ll regret.

“Not in your Speedos today then?” I mutter instead.

“No, that wouldn’t be the correct attire, would it?

” he says, deadly serious. At what point are budgie smugglers so tight you’re worried they’re going to be deemed inappropriate attire?

“Anyway, ladies,” he pulls up a chair and sits beside us, even though no one invited him to join.

“I wanted to steal Angelica away for a minute, my manager has had a rather splendid idea.”

“We’re kind of in the middle of something,” I say.

“And we’re kind of on the front-page of every red-top newspaper in Blighty,” he says, pulling a folded tabloid out of the inner pocket of his jacket, and there we are: huge, colour pics of us…

I’m lounging in my bikini, laughing, with shots of Sebastian and I looking like we’re about to kiss, the headline declaring:

THE PRINCE AND HIS PAUPER

Why is TV’s richest rascal romancing our favourite good-time girl?

“Skinny bitch,” Madison says, grabbing the paper for a closer look. “You look gooooood, Angelica.”

I shrug, she is right. I know these photos are all about angles but it’s true, I look banging. Which almost makes up for the headline.

“Good-time girl? That makes me sound like a slag.”

“But at least they call you our favourite slag,” Layla corrects.

“Indeed, and that’s what my manager wants to talk to you about, people are loving us together. He thinks we should make this an official pairing.”

“Are you asking me out via your manager?” I ask, while Sebastian helps himself to a glass of wine. I snatch the glass off him and down it in one. “The answer is no.”

“Don’t be so arrogant,” he snatches the glass back again, while Madison and Layla watch on, their eyes darting like it’s a tennis match. “It’s only a business proposal, you know, for publicity, a showmance type thing. He thinks it would get us great press coverage and…let’s face it, you need it.”

“Errrm, so do you,” Madison interjects. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be asking her.”

“What are you, her manager?” he fires back.

“I do have a manager, and your manager should be asking mine, rather than whatever this is,” I say. “So go tell him to call her, the fabulous Fliss Evans, and let us get back to our lunch.” I say, yanking the bottle out of his hands before he can pour another glass.

“Fine,” he shrugs, standing up. “Angelica, believe me, I know how to treat a lady, just ask, well, all of my 100+ body count. Being seen on my arm really means you’ve arrived.” With that, he swaggers off.

“Ugh,” I mime vomiting. “He’s so sleazy.”

“Great ass, though,” Layla says, watching him walk off. “And into you.”

“No he’s not, he’s just into attention from the papers, that’s all he wants from me.”

“That’s never stopped you before,” Madison says, in a not-so-sly dig at Damon.

“I just hate that Damon gets away with it, you know, all the guys do,” I say. “So smug about having shagged over a hundred women, I’ve only got with a fraction of that, and yet he’s a legend in the papers and I’m a slut.”

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with being a sexually confident woman. We’re getting ours, everyone else is just wound up and bitter.”

“I’d rather it wasn’t the first thing people think of me, when they hear my name: Angelica equals easy.”

“Well stop being so easy then,” Madison says, but with a sweet grin on her face. “Stop doing everything you can to lure Damon back and bin him once and for all. Oh and I know it sucks, the double standards. There needs to be a name for a male slut.”

“There is: hero, legend, lothario, stud, player…” Layla lists them off on her fingers.

“But an offensive one.”

“OK, let’s brainstorm then,” Madison pulls her eyeliner pencil out of her bag and begins writing words on a napkin.

PENIS PUMPER. DIRTY DICK. GIRL GRINDER. HUMAN DOORKNOB. THE WALKING STD. THE ROMANCE ROACH.

We’re cackling at our suggestions, while messages from Fliss are flooding my screen, asking me what I think of Sebastian and his manager’s plan.

Clearly he hasn’t wasted any time trying to seal the deal.

Fliss doesn’t pressure me either way, just says it’s my decision and whatever I want, she’ll help me.

It’s sweet but I almost wish she’d just tell me exactly what to do.

“What do you guys think? Should I follow through with this Sebastian plan?” I don’t tell them that a part of me isn’t just considering what Damon would think, it’s wondering if Leo has seen the pictures.

The girls both vote yes to the #Sebgelica scheme.

Madison’s answer is always “do it for the memoirs, it’ll make a funny story one day” and she reckons I’ll get to see his parent’s legendary mansion, which is known for having an actual ballroom which the cast used as a roller disco rink in one episode, three swimming pools (indoor, outdoor and a spa pool) and even exotic animals in the grounds, according to rumours.

“Their parties are said to be off the charts, just think, you could get us all on the list. The North Stars lot take on the toffs!”

“No party with the BiB lot is ever fun, even if there is a tiger there,” says Layla, who’s way more pragmatic.

She always says she’d rather be in the shittiest of pubs with the nicest people than a nice place full of shit-heads, and she sticks to her word.

Her friends are all lovely…but they’re rarely found in posh places.

Her last birthday party she genuinely held in her local working men’s club so everyone could afford to come.

It was a banging night, to be fair. “I still think you should do it, though Angelica, without series two our chance of a career could be short-lived and this could really boost your profile. You would only have to hang out with him long enough for the photos to be taken then you could bugger off and come hang with us.”

I’m still not sure. We drink some more wine, and just as the sun is setting, turning us all into golden, shimmering beings, I get a text.

Is that your new boyfriend then?

It’s Damon. He’s clearly seen the pictures and is Shrek-green with jealousy. It wasn’t my intention but, if it rubs him up the wrong way, or makes him feel even the slightest fraction of the pain he caused me, well, then…I message Fliss.

Sebastian and me? It’s on.

* * *