Vanished Years Read Online Free

new muse.’
    Well, at first it all went according to plan. I sat with Richard and Emma during rehearsals. There wasn’t much directing to do. Robbie was a one-man band. He knew how to work a crowd, and at the Albert Hall concert he reached his zenith. We all just sat around, waiting for our turn to be sucked dry by his hoover-like magnetism. Richard wrote my part, and we had a little rehearsal. The show was a great success. The BBC got a record number of complaints, which is always the sign of a hit. After the show, Richard came into my dressing room.
    ‘You were absolutely marvellous,’ he said.
    ‘Thanks, Richard,’ I replied, pinching myself just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Was it all going to work out as I had planned? ‘I hope we see each other soon,’ I ventured hopefully.
    ‘Yes, that would be lovely. Here. Let me give you my number.’
    Orgasm. Images of renewed Hollywood stardom burst across my brain like fireworks. ‘And the winner is … Rupert Everett for
Love Actually
.’ I could hear the applause.
    Unfortunately, a party of hags and swamp bitches had congregated in my dressing room and were all dangerously drunk. One of them, drunker than the rest, was the director John Maybury, a friend of mine from the dawn of time. He lurched towards us, his blue eyes glittering dangerously, and thrust his face in between Richard and me.
    ‘This is my friend John Maybury,’ I stammered, smelling trouble and alcohol on the same breath.
    The room suddenly turned silent. I looked round. John’s boyfriend Baillie was looking at me with a frightful grimace, arms outstretched. Everyone else – Princess Julia, Antony Price, Huge Crack, Les Childs and Connie, my PR – stood and gaped. It must feel like this on a beach momentarily drained of sea before the onslaught of a tsunami.
    ‘Oh, hello, John,’ said Richard, pleasantly. ‘I did so enjoy
Love Is the Devil
.’
    John thought for a moment and cracked a smile as huge as the Cheshire cat’s. He had a big famous mouth in more ways than one.
    ‘Why, thank you, Richard,’ he replied. ‘But look at your own achievements. You have single-handedly destroyed British cinema.’
    ‘Aw my gawd!’ muttered Princess Julia, but otherwise silence.
    Richard’s pupils dilated slightly, and the tip of his nose flushed. I broke into a sweat.
    All I could see were eyes. John’s were bloodshot fried eggs and Richard’s were narrow and icy, like a ferret’s. Mine were enormous and about to pop out of their sockets and roll across the floor. John took a generous gulp from his glass and waited for the ball to be lobbed back, with the same killer smile cutting his face (one of them) in half, but Richard just looked at his watch.
    ‘Well, let’s be in touch. All the best.’ And he left the room.
    Needless to say, I did not get a part in
Love Actually
or anything else actually, then or since.
    So when Emma Freud called me and asked me to take part in a charity version of
The Apprentice
, I should have just said no. But I didn’t. I never can.
    ‘When is it?’ I asked lamely.
    ‘Not for a couple of months. There is a task,’ explained Emma on the phone, ‘and it’s
made
for you. It’ll be a doddle. Only four days’ work.’
    Four days in two months’ time was a dot on the horizon, and I saidyes. I didn’t have a television and had never even seen
The Apprentice
, but I imagined it was something along the same lines as
The Avengers
, so I gurgled encouragingly back down the line and thought no more about it, hoping I’d get the Purdey role. I should have asked, what kind of task would be a doddle? What is a doddle in the Curtis–Freud world? But I put down the phone and thought no more about it.
    The day before the show was due to begin, a lady telephoned and told me to pack enough clothes for four nights away.
    ‘But I’m not going away,’ I said.
    ‘They want all the teams to stay together during the task.’
    Teams?
    ‘Oh well, I can’t. I have to go