Fame
For the ultimate in glamour, it has to be Tilly Bagshawe. Perfect escapism for fans of Penny Vincenzi and Jilly Cooper.For the ultimate in glamour, it has to be Tilly Bagshawe. Perfect escapism for fans of Penny Vincenzi and Jilly Cooper.Plucked from obscurity at the age of seventeen, Sabrina Leon is the new darling of the film scene, bagging lead roles in the hottest Hollywood movies. But a Youtube sensation on the web is about to destroy everything she's fought for…After a bitter feud with a rival producer, hotshot movie producer Dorian Razmirez has had the plug pulled on every project he goes near. Casting the disgraced Hollywood diva Sabrina Leon in Wuthering Heights is a risk that might cost him what remains of his career.Newcomer Viorel Hudson, with his jet-black hair and high, slanting cheekbones has scored the role that every A-lister in Hollywood auditioned for – Heathcliff in Dorian Razmirez's Wuthering Heights. But is he ready for his latest role? For a five million pound pay cheque, it's a risk he's willing to take.Set against the backdrop of a sumptuous English country house, the filmmakers are desperate for some on-screen chemistry – but it’s off-camera that the sparks are really going to fly….
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Tilly Bagshawe
Fame
For Viorel Rezmives
and in loving memory of Abel Teglas.
Heathcliff shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer’s heart.
Fred Allen
Contents
Epigraph
Part One
Prologue
At the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, the Eighty-Fifth Academy Awards…
Chapter One
‘I’m not asking you, Sabrina, I’m telling you. You have…
Chapter Two
‘Oh my God, Vio! Don’t stop! Please don’t stop. Oh…
Chapter Three
‘I hate you! I fucking HATE YOU, you selfish bastard,…
Chapter Four
As Dr Michel Henri lifted the child out of its crib…
Chapter Five
Striding past the waiting paparazzi, ignoring the catcalls and boos…
Chapter Six
‘Hey, Mum, guess what?’ It was the third time Abel…
Chapter Seven
Dorian Rasmirez’s production company, Dracula Pictures, had offices on the…
Chapter Eight
Tish Crewe gasped for breath as the cold water from…
Part Two
Chapter Nine
‘I’m not asking for directions again, OK? I am not…
Chapter Ten
Sabrina Leon adjusted her new Prada aviators and arranged her…
Chapter Eleven
Harry Greene lay back against his purple velvet pillows and…
Chapter Twelve
Sabrina awoke gripped with fear. A familiar fear: her bedroom…
Chapter Thirteen
Chrissie Rasmirez stretched out her lithe legs on the sun-lounger…
Chapter Fourteen
Two days after Chrissie Rasmirez’s arrival on the Wuthering Heights…
Chapter Fifteen
For the next three days, until Chrissie left for Romania,…
Chapter Sixteen
For the next ten days, Sabrina and Jago were inseparable.
Chapter Seventeen
‘Viorel, over here!’
Part Three
Chapter Eighteen
Chrissie Rasmirez arched her back and thrust her hips forward,…
Chapter Nineteen
Saskia Rasmirez rearranged the plastic Little Mermaid tea set on…
Chapter Twenty
Tish stood in the hallway at Loxley, not sure whether…
Chapter Twenty-One
The final weeks of shooting at Dorian Rasmirez’s Romanian Schloss…
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘No.’ Chrissie Rasmirez’s angular face hardened, her lips drew tighter…
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dorian Rasmirez gazed sadly out of the restaurant window and…
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘We had a deal, Mike. You shook my hand, in…
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘Give me twenty more bicycle crunches. Go!’
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sabrina sat down at the corner table at Mastro’s, aware…
Chapter Twenty-Seven
St John’s Hospital on Santa Monica and Twentieth was comprised of…
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Tish knelt down and held out her arms as the…
Chapter Twenty-Nine
For three hundred and sixty four days a year, the…
Chapter Thirty
Three thousand people gasped as one.
Chapter Thirty-One
All over Los Angeles, people were throwing lavish, glitzy parties…
Chapter Thirty-Two
Viorel stared out of the grimy taxi window at the…
Acknowledgements
Other Books by Tilly Bagshawe
Copyright
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
At the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, the Eighty-Fifth Academy Awards were about to get under way.
In the hushed luxury of the auditorium, opposite the vast, 130-foot stage, designed by David Rockwell especially with the Oscars in mind, two men took their seats. Tonight, their bitter feud would be settled for better or worse. It would be settled in front of their peers, the three thousand of Hollywood’s chosen sons and daughters who’d been invited to tonight’s ceremony. It would be settled in front of the estimated sixty million Americans expected to tune in to the broadcast at home, as well as the hundreds more millions who would catch the Oscars around the globe. For one of the men, tonight would be a victory so sweet he knew he would still be able to taste it on his deathbed. For the other, it would be a defeat so catastrophic, he would never recover.
As the ceremony dragged on interminably – Best Live Action Short; Best Sound Mixing; Did anybody in the universe care? – both men kept their eyes fixed straight ahead, ignoring the smiles of well-wishers as totally as they ignored the pruriently intrusive television cameras constantly scanning their features for a reaction.
Disappointment.
Hope.
Humour.
Despair.
The cameras got nothing. Neither of the two men had got to where they were today by giving away their emotions. Certainly not for free.
At last, after almost three long hours of torture, the moment arrived. Martin Scorsese was standing at the podium, a crisp white envelope in his hand. He gave a short, pre-prepared speech. Neither of the men heard a word of it. Behind his diminutive Italian frame, a montage of images flashed across an enormous screen, clips from the year’s most critically acclaimed pictures. To the two men, they were nothing but shapes and colours.
I hate you, thought one.
I hope you rot in hell, thought the other.
‘And the Academy Award for Best Picture goes to …’
CHAPTER ONE
‘I’m not asking you, Sabrina, I’m telling you. You have to take this part.’
Sabrina Leon looked at her manager with queenly disdain. Ed Steiner was fat, balding and past his prime (if he’d ever had a prime). In cheap grey suit trousers and a white shirt with spreading sweat patches under each arm, he looked more like a used-car salesman than a Hollywood player. He also had an intensely irritating, domineering manner. Sabrina did not ‘have’ to take the part. She did not ‘have’ to do anything. I’m the fucking star here, she thought defiantly. I headlined in three Destroyers movies. Three! That’s Destroyers, the most successful action franchise of all time. You work for me, remember?
