by Chloe Rayban
19h45, my suite at La Vendôme Intercontinental
Not one but five incredibly black, incredibly shiny boxes in various sizes arrived, and inside was everything for the evening, including shoes. Kitten-heel pink pointy shoes – but in the softest leather imaginable. Clutch bag to match. Tights – palest pink too. And the yucky coral pink dress and jacket.
However, I have to put things in perspective. Mum has been a star about Thumper and we are having dinner together. (In PARIS!) And I am ravenous. So I guess it’s the least a daughter can do.
20h00
I look totally like a flamingo. I don’t even have to stand on one leg to complete the impression. The all-round mirrors in my bathroom confirm the fact. I even look like a flamingo from the back. The dress is v. short and kind of goes in at the hem, from which my legs emerge, looking endless, plus kind of knobby at the knee, which if you’ve ever bothered to notice is exactly how flamingo legs are. I am so NOT happy in this outfit I am ringing down and telling Mum to cancel and we’ll eat in. I’m sure she’ll understand.
20h30, La Chasse d’Or
Mum so-oo did NOT understand. I tried to sneak across the restaurant with my mac on but Mum allowed the waiter to take it off me. The restaurant is like all mirrors. So I’m not just one flamingo but a whole flock of them. Everyone else in the restaurant seems to have been tipped off and is wearing black, which makes a flock of stray flamingoes stand out even more.
Mum and I are shown to a table right across the room and I can feel myself blushing from head to toe as all eyes turn on us.
‘You look hot, babe. Why don’t you take your jacket off?’ whispers Mum as soon as we’re seated, noting my colour.
‘I’m fine,’ I say. My arms are about the only bit of me that is reasonably covered. I am certainly not taking my jacket off.
But what with the heat and all the attention I can positively feel my face flaming. I make an excuse to Mum and dash to the loo and plaster powder on my nose to tone down the shine. Then I tug the dress down as far as I can and take a deep breath. This may be the most mortifying night of my life, but I know what Reverend Mother would say: ‘This experience, Holly dear, is character forming. You’ll look back and be glad you did it.’ (Although Rev. M. would be more likely to be talking about doing a Bible reading at the carol service, not walking through a restaurant half-dressed with the whole of Paris gawping at you.)
Anyway, just as I am making my way back to the table I catch sight of … You are NOT going to believe this … And he’s looking just as drop-dead gorgeous as he did in Loyal Subject … Yes! Oliver Bream. O-L-I-V-E-R B-R-E-A-M! He’s by the doors having this discussion with the door guy about the valet parking service and he’s doing that kind of frown and smile thing he does – like so all-English irresistibly charming. And I immediately think of Becky and how she would SO-OO like his autograph and then I remember how I am currently a flamingo and totally cannot approach anyone the way I’m dressed, let alone Oliver Bream. So I rush back to our table, which is now kind of easier ’cos the full glare of the attention is now off me and focusing in on the doorway.
I slide into the chair opposite Mum.
‘Guess what! You’ll never believe who I’ve just seen!’
‘Who?’ prompts Mum.
‘Oliver Bream!’
This has SO little effect on Mum. I mean, I guess she’s used to being with all these celebs and everything. But still – Oliver Bream – and above all right now because everyone knows he’s up for Best Actor Award in the Oscars for his role in Loyal Subject. I went goosebumps all over actually seeing him in the flesh.
Mum takes a sip of her water and gazes over my shoulder. She’s smiling at someone and so I turn and there he is. Oliver Bream’s coming in our direction and I think like he’s going to sit at the next table and maybe I can just sneak an autograph for Becky after all. But he doesn’t go to the next table.
He comes straight to ours and leans down and gives Mum a kiss on the cheek and says, ‘May I?’ And sits down between us!
‘Well, fancy you being here. In Paris!’ says Mum.
‘Small world,’ says Oliver, then he turns to me. ‘Hi,’ he says. ‘You must be Hollywood Bliss.’
And I say really stupidly. ‘Hi, you must be Oliver Bream.’
I can feel my whole face fire up to precisely the same colour as my outfit. Even my nose, in spite of all the powder I’ve put on in the loo. How could I have said anything so DUMB?
But he seems to think this is really funny and so does Mum. And they both sit there laughing like people do when you’re a really young kid and you say something totally STUPID. Like for instance, you ask for cold sore instead of coleslaw. And everyone thinks that’s so cute and you hate it.
And then, looking at the two of them, I realise how dumb I actually am. I realise that this was never meant to be a quiet dinner for two, just for Mum and me. Because there are more than two places laid at the table (in actual fact there are four). So they must’ve planned this all along. And now I’m fuming. I’m really angry. I’m sending silent evil hate-vibes at Mum. Because whatever she says about wanting to do stuff with just the two of us, it’s never the case. No, we’re always doing stuff that she wants to do. Stuff that’s always totally selfish and self-obsessed. And although Oliver Bream keeps on prompting me to say things and he even does his frown and smile charm thing, it doesn’t work on me – oh no. I’ve like totally clammed up, which is handy because I can’t think of a single thing to say.
I just sit there staring at this fourth empty place and wondering who’s going to turn up next. Jacques Chirac or Michael Jackson or Prince William maybe?
‘Shug should be along soon,’ says Oliver.
‘Shug? He’s here in Paris too?’ says Mum.
Shug? Who’s Shug? Am I meant to know who Shug is? Sounds like a totally stupid name to me.
‘Yeah, but we can’t count on when he’ll turn up. You know Shug.’
Mum knows Shug. I guess the whole world knows Shug ’cept for me.
‘Perhaps we should order, then,’ suggests Mum.
‘You’re right. No point in waiting,’ agrees Oliver, taking up his copy of the Chasse d’Or menu. ‘So what shall we have?’
The Chasse d’Or menus are so large you could live in them. Or use them as a roof at any rate. I bury my face in mine and try to compose myself. With an effort I manage to put my anti-Mum feelings aside as I concentrate on finding something vaguely edible. This restaurant is so classy the menu’s got things no one in their right mind would normally eat unless maybe forced to ’cos they’d crash-landed somewhere and had to, to survive. (I know ’cos they have an English translation under the posh French names.) Snails and frog’s legs are the least of it. They also have sea urchins, squid in ink sauce, lightly broiled sheep’s brains, one-day-old faun and hare cooked in its own blood. This last makes me think of Thumper and wonder miserably whether he’s all alone someplace in some cold miserable RSPCA cage surrounded by feral and maybe violent animals.
I can see Mum is having problems with the menu too on account of her current diet. It’s a really simple diet. She can eat anything she likes as long as it’s raw – which is no big deal if you’re having like sushi (she picks out all the rice). It looks like her only choices on the Chasse d’Or menu are caviar and salad. I search for something that doesn’t involve blood, insides or baby animals and settle on lobster. I’d had a crab salad at Gi-Gi’s eightieth birthday lunch which I’d liked – lobster couldn’t be that different.
Oliver has ordered champagne which is opened at the table with a lot of fuss. He makes a big show of sipping it and swilling it round his mouth and then tells the waiter to take it back and get another that’s more chilled. After that the head waiter comes straight for me and leans over with a sort of little half bow. To my horror he asks me something in French, indicating that I should go with him.
I wonder if I’ve done something horribly wrong, like spread my roll with the fish knife m
aybe, and I’m getting thrown out. But Oliver nods condescendingly.
‘Run along, Hollywood. He wants you to choose your lobster.’
‘Oh, right.’ I get to my feet and follow the waiter to some big glass window thingy set in the far wall.
You are not going to believe this. The Chasse d’Or lobsters are not all pink and and arranged on a plate with little frills of mayonnaise round them like the crab salad was. No, they’re in an aquarium and they’re alive and they’re waving their feelers pitifully at me as if to say, ‘Not me, please, not me. I’m too young to die.’
The head waiter gestures towards them with pride and says something which I can only interpret as, ‘Look, there’s a nice big fat one at the back.’
The ‘nice big fat one’ seems to have realised that we have homed in on him and is trying desperately to scrabble a hole in the sand and bury himself.
I look the head waiter full in the eyes and come out with (in my very best French): ‘Non merci, je ne suis pas un murderer.’
Turning on my heel, I walk with dignity back to our table.
‘I’ll have the same as Mum,’ I mumble.
Mum exchanges glances with Oliver.
‘Hollywood is kind of into animals at present. It’s just a phase.’
‘It is not a phase, Mum.’
‘Well, let’s not discuss it now. Look, I think that’s our caviar.’
Sure enough, four waiters are gliding a trolley covered in a white cloth towards our table. Poised on it is a huge ice sculpture of a mermaid bearing an open ice seashell full of seaweed artfully arranged around a heap of something black and shiny.
‘Nice packaging!’ says Mum, and delves in with her knife.
Oliver speads a slice of toast and piles some black stuff on for me.
‘Try it,’ he says. ‘It’s beluga.’
I have a tentative nibble. It’s not bad, actually. Kind of like Marmite on toast but a bit more blobby.
I’m on my third slice when I nearly choke as I hear a voice say, ‘Hi, Dad.’
My eyes widen. I didn’t know Oliver Bream had a son. He’s certainly kept very quiet about it. And I can see why. ’Cos ‘Shug’ is bigger and older than me. About fifteen in my estimation, which means Oliver must be … !!!
This is v.v. bad news for Becky.
And I stare at Shug, wondering how he got in. Not that he’s wearing jeans or anything. No, he’s wearing a pair of the world’s biggest and baggiest combat shorts that are kind of cliff-hanging off his Calvin Kleins. And a ripped T-shirt that says F-OFF. And his hair is all kind of spiked up with gel.
‘Hi, Kandhi. How you goin’?’
‘And this is Hollywood, Shug,’ says Oliver.
Shug takes one look at me, sitting here in my goody-goody pink dress and jacket, and he snorts and sits down without saying a word.
‘Caviar?’ asks Oliver.
Shug eyes the mermaid up and down. ‘Nah, I’m not eating that black shit. Look where it’s bin.’ He stares rudely at where the mermaid would have had a lap if she hadn’t had a tail. Then he beckons to the head waiter and says, ‘Can you guys fix me a burger and fries?’
I reckon that head waiter deserved an Academy Award for expressionlessness – he wandered off without saying a word.
‘Shug’s setting up a band,’ says Oliver in a bright conversational tone.
Shug looks as if he’s about to put his trainers up on the table and then thinks better of it. He rocks his chair on to its back legs instead.
All eyes turn on me. It’s my turn to say something.
‘Oh? I say through toast. ‘What kind of music?’
‘For sure it’s nothing like your mum’s shit,’ says Shug dismissively.
I see a brief look of hurt flash across Mum’s eyes. Amazingly for someone so famous, she still can’t take criticism. Some instinct deep down inside me leaps to her defence. I redirect my silent hate-vibes towards Shug.
Oliver doesn’t seem to have noticed. He’s chatting on, still being really pally with Shug, when any other dad would have frogmarched him outside and told him to take a cab home. I sit silently munching my salad, observing them in action. Quite a double act. You could see the family resemblance. They have precisely the same size egos.
Over the next hour or so our table provided a kind of impromptu floor show for all the tables within earshot, as the two of them competed for the title of ‘World Record Difficult Diner’. Oliver sent his side order of spinach back three times till they got it steamed to precisely the nth second and Shug sent out first for ketchup and then for Pepsi ’cos the Chasse d’Or only served Coke.
Even Mum had gone quiet. She kept avoiding Shug’s gaze. I could tell she’d had a run-in with him before. How long had she known Oliver, I wondered?
I confronted her with it in the limo going back to the hotel.
‘So, you might have warned me.’
‘Warned you? Of what?’
‘That you were … “going out” with Oliver Bream.’
‘But I’m not “going out” with Oliver as you so quaintly put it. He just happened to drop by.’
‘Drop by! No way. You’d planned it all along.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘For a start there were four places at our table.’
‘What is this, an inquisition?’
‘Mum, can’t you ever just say something straight? Are you, or aren’t you, going out with Oliver Bream?’
Mum pouted and stared at her reflection in the window. An unreadable smile played across her lips. ‘Maybe I haven’t decided yet.’
‘Well, when you decide, do you think you could let me know? These things kind of affect me too, you know.’
Mum looked at me innocently. ‘Affect you, babe? How?’
‘Mum, give me a break. If you go out with Oliver he’s going to be, like, around the place all the time. Or were you just going to keep him in the closet and bring him out when he matches your outfit?’
‘There’s no need to be sarky, Hollywood.’
‘No, but see it my way. If he’s around all the time, so will that Urrrrrgh! of a son of his.’
‘Oh, I’m sure Shug’ll be doing his own thing.’
‘As long as his thing is way out of the way of my thing.’
‘You didn’t exactly hit it off, did you? Pity, I thought he’d be a nice little friend for you.’
‘Little? Nice? Mu-um!’
‘Well, I guess he’s misunderstood. It can’t be easy having a megastar as a parent.’
‘You’re telling me!’
‘Anyway, I think Oliver’s kind of sweet, in an Englishy sort of way. Don’t you?’
‘Sweet?’
‘But you do like him just the teensiest bit?’
‘Teensiest at most.’
‘So do I have your permission for him to call on me?’ said Mum in a baby voice.
‘Would it make any difference what I said?’
‘Good, because he’s coming round tomorrow to take us sightseeing.’
‘So you are going out with him?’
‘Depends what you mean by “going out”.’
‘Oh, Mum, honestly.’
Sunday 26th January, 0h45
La Vendoôme Intercontinental
I can’t sleep. I’m lying in bed trying to figure out a way to break the news kindly to Becky. She’s had this megathing about Oliver Bream for like for ever, ever since he stripped off his chainmail in Attila the Hun. (Though now I’m wondering if maybe he used a body double – he didn’t look that fit to me in real life.) I mean, each time we make up our Ultimate Wish List, a date with Oliver Bream is right up there at the top of hers after the Stradivarius.
This thought brought me on to my own list. Which has changed somewhat of late:
1) A pet (any kind): now down-listed because I currently have Thumper
2) Boobs (any size beyond AA)
3) A trip to Ranthambhore National Park in Rajasthan to visit what’s left of the Roya
l Bengal Tigers
4) Dad to record a hit – or maybe sell more than 100 white labels
5) Teeth that fit for Sister Marie-Agnes
6) Hair that doesn’t frizz when damp
7) To pass maths GCSE with a grade C or above
8) That Gi-Gi lives for ever and ever – or a very long time at any rate
9) That beetroot had never been invented
10) That caged birds are banned
(So now I’ve got Thumper and they’ve all moved up one place, I can add: smaller feet!)
Anyway, apart from revising my U.W.L. I had the problem of how to compose an appropriate text message to Becky. You have to be careful when you break tragic news. Like when you’re looking after your neighbour’s goldfish, for instance, and they ring up, you don’t say right out: ‘Jaws is floating upside down in the bowl stone dead.’ You start with something like, ‘Jaws was a little off his food this morning’ and then work through things like ‘He’ll only swim sideways in one direction’ until they kind of get used to the idea and the sad truth doesn’t come as such a blow. So I had to think of some way to tell Becky gently that Oliver is not for her. In the end I came up with:
dream date quiz
re: night out with oliver bream answer the foll:
O. B. is:
a) 23 years old?
b) 29 years old?
c) 39 years old?
HBWx
Sunday 26th January, 9h45
La Vendôme Intercontinental
I am woken by sun flooding into my bedroom. I go to the window and stare out. The rain has stopped, the clouds have disappeared, it’s going to be a fantastic day.
What’s more, when I climb back into bed and check my mobile I find there’s a text from Becky:
Ans to dream date quiz
don’t know/don’t care
a) is just old enough for commitment
b) is ripe for settling down