The Truth about My Success Read online

  Contents

  Another day, another drama

  Bad moods here and bad moods there – bad moods happen everywhere

  Age does nothing to improve the day

  Jack Silk has an idea

  With nothing and everything in common, Paloma Rose and Oona Ginness consider their situations and come to the same decision

  Moving in with the Minnicks

  Meanwhile, far from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, Paloma Rose also considers the possibility that she has made a mistake

  Miracles happen every day

  As far as Paloma’s concerned, she might as well be a bug

  Living the dream

  Home, Home on the Range

  A man may work from sun to sun, but a princess’s work is never done

  Just when things are going so well…

  Little pitchers have big ears

  There’s never a paparazzo around when you really need one

  Waiting for Paloma

  Why Paloma finally went to the studio

  Don’t get mad, get even

  Show Time

  Just because things don’t always turn out as you expected doesn’t mean they don’t turn out well

  For the two Carolines, R and S

  Another day, another drama

  It’s a beautiful spring morning in Southern California.

  High in the hills of Hollywood, with a heart-stopping view of the tireless sprawl of Los Angeles, sits a large, elegant, white building with pillars and turrets and leaded-glass windows that would make most monarchs feel right at home. This house (for reasons that will never be obvious) is called Paradise Lodge. But although the day outside is bright and cloudless, inside a storm is raging.

  There are two people at the centre of this storm. The girl sitting at the table, screaming, who was born Susan Rosemary Minnick but is now known as Paloma Rose; and the woman standing beside her, stoically, whose name is Josefina Primavera Trudenco but who around here is called Maria. Neither of them thinks she is anywhere near Paradise.

  “I can’t eat this slop!” Paloma’s voice is shrill as a siren, her pretty face distorted by rage. “It’s, like, disgusting! It’s total garbage! I don’t know why I can’t ever have anything I want. Is that so freakin’ much to ask? Just once to have what I want?”

  You might wonder how someone can be so emotional over a disappointing breakfast. The reason is that Paloma is a princess. Not the kind descended from European royalty but the kind who stars in what until recently was one of the most popular television shows of all time. Today Paloma is a princess in a very bad mood. Which lately is about as rare an event as freezing temperatures in Siberia. Paloma’s bad moods are caused by the fact that she’s very unhappy. It may seem strange that a girl who has so much – celebrity, money, looks, adoring fans – can be unhappy, but having everything is no more a guarantee of happiness than beauty is a guarantee of love.

  Paloma pushes her plate away with so much force that a slice of toast shoots onto the table. “I mean, like, look at it! Just look at it! It’s so gross I could barf. It’s like two revolting yellow eyes staring up at me.”

  Because Paloma is usually only pleasant and polite when someone’s pointing a camera or a microphone at her, the housekeeper knows better than to remind Paloma that she asked for fried eggs. Maria has worked for the Minnicks for four very long years (a record for the Minnicks, who usually go through help the way other people go through socks), and is still here because she says so little that the Minnicks are under the impression that she doesn’t speak much English. Now Maria puts the toast back on the plate, and says, “Scrambled? Boiled? Omelette?”

  “Boiled. And only one.” The person who says these words is not Paloma, but her mother. Leone Minnick snaps into the room on her Louboutins like a soldier on parade. Always impeccably and immaculately turned out, Leone can walk through a rainstorm without getting wet. This morning she is wearing a seriously understated dark suit set off by several pieces of gold jewellery, and looks as if she might be on her way to address a meeting of investment bankers. Nevertheless, from her pinched expression, it seems likely that Leone doesn’t think she’s anywhere near Paradise, either.

  Things haven’t been going well this year. Ratings for Paloma’s TV show, Angel in the House, are dropping steadily; the network is threatening to cancel after the upcoming series; and the sponsors are very unhappy – which in this world is not unlike God being very unhappy in the world of the Old Testament. Watch out! Leone blames Paloma for all these problems. Paloma is pissing everyone off even more than usual. Arguing. Complaining. Acting out. She brought the set to more than one standstill during the last season. That could be forgiven, but what can’t be forgiven is the bad publicity and notoriety Paloma attracted over the winter. Drunken incidents. Suggestive photographs. Compulsively bad behaviour. Most of this her agent and her publicist have dismissed as gossip and rumour, but the hostile interviews and on-air temper tantrums couldn’t be made to go away without supernatural help. Since her meltdown on the most popular late-night talk show – when she threw the contents of the water pitcher over the host – Paloma has been banned from such appearances. Which has done nothing, of course, to improve ratings, win over the network, or gladden the hearts of the sponsors.

  “You know you shouldn’t have fried food, Paloma,” says Leone. “Think of your skin.” She puts her handbag on the counter with a thump. “And your hips. You’re supposed to be thirteen, not thirty.” Thirteen being the age of Paloma’s character, Faith Cross.

  “Think of your freakin’ skin,” mimics Paloma. Paloma blames her mother for her unhappiness. Paloma is sick of looking like she’s thirteen. She’s almost seventeen, which is practically an adult. She doesn’t want to be treated like a child any more. “Think of your freakin’ hips…”And, before Maria can step away, she reaches up, grabs one of the eggs from the plate, and hurls it across the breakfast nook, hitting the wall. She wipes her hand on the tablecloth.

  “Paloma, please…” Leone, searching through her bag for something, still doesn’t look at her daughter – or at the mess made by the egg. She won’t give Paloma the satisfaction. “I’m in no mood for one of your childish displays of histrionics right now. I have errands to run before lunch and I don’t want to be late.”

  “God forbid you’re late for lunch,” snarls Paloma. “I mean, the whole freakin’ world would just drop dead and roll over with its feet in the air if you were late for lunch. I mean, oh my freakin’ Lord, can you imagine the chaos and destruction if Leone Minnick was ten minutes late for her martini and bowl of lettuce?”

  “Language, Paloma.” The more heated Paloma gets, the calmer and more reasonable Leone becomes. “You do still have an image to maintain.” If barely. “You can’t go around talking like a guttersnipe.” She sighs. “And it happens to be a business lunch.” Besides being Paloma’s mother, Leone is also her personal manager. This is not only a job that is handsomely paid, but it also means that Leone considers just about everything she does – from having a manicure to mailing a letter – as business. “Although, for all I know, you do live on the street now. If I’m not mistaken you didn’t come home until dawn. Which is not going to be tolerated, Paloma. I told you that.” She has told her that, but Paloma, apparently, hasn’t been listening. If anything, her escapes and escapades have increased since “the problem” was resolved. “You are not allowed out by yourself. Not after what happened last winter. How many times do we have to have this argument?”

  What happened last winter was that Paloma was secretly seeing Seth Drachman, the head scriptwriter on Angel in the House. Until, Paloma believes, Leone found out, made him break up with her, had him fired, and ruin
ed Paloma’s life. Which means that the answer to the how-many-times-do-we-have-to-have-this-argument question is: until penguins are skating up Sunset Boulevard.

  “What’re you going to do?” taunts Paloma. “Chain me to my bed?”

  Chaining Paloma to her bed is just about the only thing Leone hasn’t tried yet. She took away Paloma’s car keys; Paloma, who’s never been seen to so much as microwave a cup of coffee, somehow managed to hot-wire the car. Next, Leone had the car disabled; Paloma started calling cabs and sneaking out of the house. Leone locked her in her room; Paloma climbed out of the window. Leone had it nailed shut; Paloma set fire to her wastebasket – and then she broke the window. Leone’s next move was to hire a full-time bodyguard to drive Paloma everywhere she went and pad after her like a loyal dog. Paloma then developed a top-spy’s ability to give Vassily, her bodyguard, the slip, leaving him wandering through elegant shops where a man built like a bear has no business being on his own and is eventually asked if he needs any help. Vassily quit.

  “If that’s what it takes to keep you in this house, then that’s what I’ll do.” At least if Paloma’s chained up she won’t be able to burn the house down.

  “That’ll look great on the front page of the papers won’t it?” Paloma squares off her hands as if she’s holding up a sign. “‘MOTHER CHAINS TEEN STAR IN ROOM’.” If smiles could kill Leone would already be a lifeless body on the floor. “I can’t wait to see the pictures of you being tried for child abuse.”

  Leone sighs and decides to try reason instead of threats, since her daughter is obviously so much better at them than she is. “All right, Paloma. Let’s forget about your tight schedule. And let’s forget your millions of fans who look up to you and want to be like you. And let’s forget about the fact that Ash drove all the way out here this morning for your training session and you were passed out like a flophouse drunk. But let’s not forget your career. Aside from the fact that you’re going to end up looking ten years older inside of a month if you keep running around like this – drinking and God knows what – filming for the new series starts soon and you have to be ready for it. Because you know what’ll happen if you’re not? I’ll tell you what, Little Mis—”

  “Shut up!” Paloma isn’t quite up to standing, so she leans forward, pressing her hands against the edge of the table. “Just shut your stupid mouth!”

  But as anyone who has spent more than two minutes with her mother could tell her – and as Paloma very well knows – shutting up never appears on Leone’s list of personal options. “Because if you think you’re going to continue playing a thirteen-year-old angel when you look like an old hag you better think again.” Leone finally finds her keys and snaps the bag shut. “You know they’re talking about cancelling the series. And you seem to be determined to give them a reason.”

  Paloma, of course, doesn’t believe her mother. She thinks she’s just trying to scare her. Well, good luck with that.

  “What’s wrong with you? Are you deaf?” she screams. “Shut the hell up! I don’t care! I couldn’t care less about losing the series if I was dead. Everybody knows it’s crap since you got rid of Se—”

  “I did no—”

  “Yes you did! You had him fired. Everybody knows that!” shrieks Paloma. “And I’d rather live on the street than in this dump. I’d rather live anywhere but here with you and all your lies and all your freakin’ rules.”

  Leone neatly steps over the part about lies. “There have to be some rules,” she says evenly, apparently unaware that she does, in fact, have enough rules to run the government, including all branches of the armed services. Since Paloma’s first commercial, when she was still Susan and wearing diapers, Leone has told Paloma what to eat, what to wear, what to say, and what to do and with whom to do it and when. “It’s for your own good. Everything I do, I do for you. I’ve dedicated my life to you.”

  “Pig crap! Everything you do, you do for you!” Paloma, of course, is speaking out of incandescent rage, and doesn’t yet really understand how close to the truth she is. But if you own the goose that lays solid-gold eggs you certainly don’t let it wander out in the road.

  “That isn’t true, darling. Ask anyone. I—”

  Paloma clamps her hands over her ears. “Pig diarrhoea!” she shouts. “Pig diarrhoea just pouring from your mouth!”

  Leone glances at her watch and sighs. “Language, Paloma.”

  Since Maria has taken the uneaten breakfast away and is cleaning the egg from the wall and the floor, Paloma throws the salt shaker this time. It sails past her mother and over the housekeeper’s head. Neither Leone nor Maria looks as it crashes to the floor.

  “And that’s another thing. We can’t have any more of this behaviour, either.”

  “Blahblahblahblah…” chants Paloma. “And anyway you’re the only person I throw things at.”

  This isn’t quite true, but it’s true enough to cause her mother another sigh. “I meant your mouth, sweetheart. People are getting really fed up with you and your rudeness.”

  “Well isn’t that too freakin’ bad? Oh look, Mommy, look! You’re making me cry!”

  “I suggest you spend the rest of the day studying your lines. Rehearsals start soon. You want to be ready.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Leone hooks her bag over her arm. “We’ll finish this conversation when I get back.” And she steps around the kneeling figure of the housekeeper and marches down the hall.

  Followed by the pepper.

  While the mother and personal manager of the teen star Paloma Rose has her lunch, Jack Silk, the agent of the teen star Paloma Rose, sits in his vintage Jaguar, talking on the phone to Maria Trudenco. Or, more accurately, listening in a there-really-isn’t-anything-else-to-do way to the housekeeper’s tale of recent events at Paradise Lodge. The staying out all night. The tantrum. The screaming. The egg.

  Jack is only half listening, his mind on other things. The static clog of traffic like a blood clot in an artery. How late he’ll be for his meeting. What he’s wearing to the party he’ll be going to tonight. The egg, however, catches his attention. Only Paloma would throw a fried egg. He bets she wiped her hands on the table. “I’m not really sure why you’re telling me all this,” says Jack.

  And whom else would she tell?

  “Because I am worried about Miss Paloma,” says Maria. “I think that maybe she is going crazy.”

  Jack chuckles. Soothingly. “She’s a prima donna. She always acts like she’s going crazy.”

  Although he can’t see her, Maria shakes her head. “No, she is worse. And now she is going out again.” There is no doubt in Maria’s mind who will be blamed for this. “Mrs Minnick said she has to stay in the house, but she isn’t.”

  Of course she isn’t. Jack closes his eyes. “And where exactly is Mrs Minnick?”

  “She went to lunch.”

  Of course she did. Flying eggs aren’t going to keep Leone Minnick from one of her see-and-be-seen lunches.

  “You hear that music?” demands Maria. In the background Jack can hear very unattractive music playing, very loudly. “That music means she is going out and she only just came home. There are clothes all over her room.”

  Jack yawns. He’s pretty sure that there are always clothes all over Paloma’s room. “She has nowhere to go, Maria.” She has no friends. Not now that he put the fear of God into Drachman – or at least the fear of failure. “What’s she going to do, go shopping?”

  “She has friends,” says Maria. “She meets them on the Internet.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t go out with those friends. You email them. Or tweet them. Or send them a message on Facebook.” Thousands of friends, not one of which you’d recognize if she were sitting next to you on a plane.

  Maria repeats that Paloma is getting ready to leave the house. “She has friends,” Maria insists. “She has real friends.”

  “She’s just saying that to wind you up,” says Jack. “You know what a drama queen she is.
She’s just pretending she’s meeting someone.”

  Jack Silk should know Paloma better than that, if anyone should. He’s been her agent for most of her life. He’s watched her grow from a baby you’d want to bounce on your knee to a brat you’d like to push in the pool. She’s a girl who believes in getting her own way as firmly as Louis XIV of France believed in the Divine Right of Kings; nothing Leone can say or do – much less anything Maria can say or do – is going to keep her at Paradise Lodge if she doesn’t want to be there.

  “No.” Maria is shaking her head again, but all Jack sees, of course, is the sun glinting off the polished bumper of his car. “She is meeting someone. I don’t know who. And I don’t know where. But she is going. And Mrs Minnick sa—”

  “Maria—” Most of Jack’s patience has been exhausted by sitting on the road instead of moving over it. “Maria, I’m very sorry, but I’m on my way to a meeting. An important meeting. And even if I weren’t, I’ve been stuck in traffic for the last twenty minutes. Hear the horns?” He turns the mouthpiece of his headset so she can hear the horns. “I don’t know what you expect me to do.”

  “Maybe if you talk to her…”

  “Talk to her? Maria, I’m Paloma’s agent, not her mother.”

  “But that is why you should talk to her,” says Maria. “She won’t listen to her mother. If Mrs Minnick says go left, Miss Paloma will go right. Miss Paloma listens to you.”

  “Well what about Mr Minnick?” In theory, if nothing else, as well as being Paloma’s father and business manager, Arthur Minnick is supposed to be a responsible adult. “Where’s he at? Why can’t he stop Paloma?”

  “He went for dinner,” says Maria.

  She means last night, of course. Arthur Minnick is pretty much an absentee husband and parent even though he lives with his wife and child.

  “Well what about Vassily? Isn’t he supposed to keep tabs on her?” Protect Paloma; protect the rest of humanity from Paloma.

  “Mr Vassilovitch quit after Mrs Minnick yelled at him for losing Miss Paloma again,” Maria informs him. “He said he’s a soldier, not a babysitter.”