Chapter 1

Chapter 1

‘Nobody wants to travel in coach,’ said Sebastian.

Even at 30,000 feet the man had an annoyingly loud voice.

I decided to ignore him. But he fidgeted like a girl in urgent need of the bathroom as he continued to whine.

‘One can see why deep vein thrombosis is the curse of the economy traveller. The whole business is unspeakably barbaric.’

This was going to be a very long journey. It was time to shut him up.

‘Have you ever lost your job at high altitude? Because, trust me, it could be arranged,’ I said.

That seemed to do the trick. He snapped open his copy of ‘The Thespian Times’ and gave the sort of sniff that was usually followed by some bizarre muttered Latin phrase. A part of me almost felt sorry for the old guy. I mean it’s not as if he had wanted to be stuck with me all the way from Los Angeles to London. And believe me, I hadn’t wanted any of this fuss; I had simply wanted to blend. But even with my baseball cap pulled tight over my hair I knew that I could kiss goodbye to any hopes that I might have had for a normal flight.

I had forgotten what it was like to travel with my Mom.

It was just so totally embarrassing.

Personally, if I were trying to travel incognito and actually wanted to avoid the kind of press attention that my Mom is forever complaining about then there are three things that I would never do;
1 Arrive in a parade of limousines
2 Travel with an entourage of conspicuous weirdos
3 Wear shades inside the airport building

My Mom has got to be the most photographed woman on the entire planet, she really does not need any more publicity, but for some insane reason she seems either unable or unwilling to act like a normal person. I mean, regular people seem able to take a flight without the help of a personal assistant, a hairstylist, a personal stylist, a voice coach, a personal trainer and a bodyguard.

The fact is, I cannot remember a time in my life when my Mom and I have travelled anywhere alone. Even when I was little and we still attempted to do normal things like take a trip to the mall, we always had to have at least one bodyguard with us.

You see people tend to go a little crazy when they see my Mom.

All my life I have noticed people as they have noticed my Mom. At first, maybe for a millisecond, they recognise her face but they can’t quite place her. You can almost hear their minds whirring with the possibilities. Is she a neighbour, an old friend or a teacher? And then – bing bing bing! Once they realise that they are, in fact, in the presence of a megastar you can actually see these regular people morph into slack-jawed fans. And let me tell you from experience, fans are capable of anything. Once people have seen my Mom on movie screens and billboards; they think they know her. At the very least they think they deserve a photograph or an autograph. Get too many fans at once and you’d swear that they actually wanted a piece of her.

Travelling with a megastar can be a scary experience. But mostly it is just plain annoying. And weird. It’s pretty well always annoying and weird.

Take this morning as an example.

Andre is supposed to be Mom’s hair stylist so you would think that he would pretty well limit his activities to things hair-related, but for some bizarre reason he had decided to supervise the last-minute packing. A simple task suddenly took on the magnitude of an Arctic expedition.

‘Have you packed enough sweaters?’ he asked Portia. ‘I hear that London is practically ice-bound all Winter. You know I’m sensitive to even small shifts in temperature.’

Portia, Mom’s personal stylist, rolled her eyes and continued to pack the remaining items into one of more than a dozen portable wardrobes that we were taking with us on our trip to England.

‘You’ve got to think season not weather Andre,’ she said. ‘Besides, I hear that the buildings are actually heated over there’.

She turned to face Andre who was busy snooping through her neatly-arranged packing. One look at him and she stood back in mock-horror.

‘What have you done to your face?’ she said.

Andre looked unperturbed. He turned his newly-frozen face up towards the light so that it could be more fully appreciated.

‘You like it?’ he asked. ‘I thought I’d zap those little laughter lines before the British weather turned them into something more permanent.’

‘I’ve told you before,’ said Portia, ‘you’ve got to cool it with those Botox injections. Pretty soon your face will wind up stuck that way; you’ll start to frighten little children’.

Andre gave a cool half-laugh.

‘Portia dear,’ he said, ‘you of all people should know that those lines of yours are never coming back into fashion.’

Portia had no choice but to arm herself with a copy of Vogue. And as I walked down the hall looking for some sane company I heard the distinctive thump of magazine on flesh. Andre really should have known better.

I found Tony exactly where I expected he would be. He was in the gym, working the elliptical trainer as though his life depended on it. And in a way, he probably felt as though it really did. You see looks can be deceptive. And even though he’s my Mom’s personal trainer and is built like a marine, I had long ago figured out that Tony has a major-league fear of flying. Most people put his habit of doing push-ups and squats while flying down to his absolute disapproval of relaxation. But I knew better. Even on short flights he looked like some sort of demented, caged lion. Had he ever even flown long-haul?

He grimaced a smile in my direction when he caught sight of me at the door and I waved to him.

I had to find my Mom. Apart from everything else, I knew that there was just no way that I could spend a whole eleven hours in close proximity to these people, with no workable exits. There was so totally no way that I was going to London. The sooner that Mom understood that the better.

Finding Martina, I knew that Mom could not be far away. But I also knew that it would take more than charm and persistence to get past my Mom’s personal assistant.

‘I thought there was a bad smell,’ I said as Martina blocked my way in the hallway that led to my Mom’s study.

Let’s not beat around the bush here. Martina is evil personified. She’s a power –monger supreme.

A Hollywood PA is powerful for lots of reasons. For one thing, they have access to all of the most important directors, producers and actors in the business. And for another, they get to control the diaries of some of the most popular people on the planet. That’s probably why it’s a position that tends to attract control freaks that like to bask in the reflected glory of somebody else’s talent. Or to put it another way, Martina is a failed actress who likes to over-organise and to generally push people around. She has managed to survive longer than the six months that it normally takes me to encourage these people to move on only because she is ruthlessly efficient. Plus, she is actress enough to disguise her absolute contempt for me whenever my Mom is around.

To be fair, she had her reasons for hating me. I did have a tendency to upset my Mom’s diary. And let’s not forget those pictures of Martina before the nose job that I published on Mom’s web site last month…..

‘She’s busy,’ said Martina, pressing her precious electronic organizer into my chest.

‘What, are you planning to zap me with that thing?’ I asked.

She removed her weapon and smiled a smile that was devoid of any trace of warmth or feeling.

‘We leave in four hours,’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t you be packing?’

I tried to brush past her as I casually made my excuses.

‘I’m not going,’ I said.

She stretched her arm against the wall to block my exit. In the silence of the hallway I could hear my Mom running through her dumb vocal exercises with Sebastian. I had to get to her.

‘Think again,’ said Martina, ‘Mommy seems to think that you could do with a lesson in manners. Personally I think that you’re more suited to military school than you are to a private academy for young ladies in London. Let’s face it, you cause nothing but trouble. And the last thing that your Mom needs while she’s filming in England is the kind of distraction that you are bound to provide. You are the only thing currently standing between your Mom and an Oscar. Honestly Bliss, is nothing sacred to you?’

I knew from experience and from my sessions with Dr Banks, the school shrink, that I was just about to have a ‘hot moment’. At times like these, when my temper threatened to express itself in some sort of ‘inappropriate behaviour’, I knew that I was supposed to breathe deeply, count to ten and wait for the anger to pass. But you know what? I had had enough of Martina. Who was she to tell me what to do and to stop me from seeing my Mom? It seemed to be exactly the appropriate moment for some thoroughly inappropriate behaviour.

So I grabbed her precious electronic organizer and threw it into a nearby vase. It landed with a very satisfying splash.

Martina screamed the scream of some second-rate B movie actress. It was a total over-reaction, but it was enough to bring my Mom and Sebastian running. For a moment it looked like a double-whammy. Martina was freaked and I finally got to see my Mom.

But Mom made up her mind the second she saw Martina fish her dumb gizmo out of the water. She gave me one of those disappointed looks that she seemed to be shooting in my direction a little too regularly and I knew that there was no point in fighting.

I was going to London.

But you know, the fact that I could not escape the punishment did not mean that I could not dictate my own terms. There was no way that I was travelling with them for a second longer than I had to. The whole craziness with the photographers at the airport had been bad enough. I didn’t have to sit surrounded by Mom’s posse in First Class when there was a plane full of perfectly normal people in the rear.

Was it my fault that I was the daughter of the hottest property in Hollywood? Did anyone ever really consider the many downsides that were involved in having a Mom like Angel?

Just for once I wanted to be normal. I wanted to blend and to be free of all of the weirdness for a while.

I wanted to sit in economy like any normal person.

It was just my luck to get stuck with Sebastian. Like I needed some sort of babysitter! Still, once I had finally managed to put an end to his endless whining, I was free to appreciate a little normal company. Not that I actually spoke to anyone. But all around me I got to hear regular people having regular conversations about regular things. Sitting there, where nobody knew that I was Angel’s daughter, I was free, for a few hours, to just be me. Nobody was pointing at me and whispering like I was some sort of freak and nobody was sucking up to me just because I happened to have a famous Mom.

I relaxed for the first time in months.

Maybe the trip to London would not be so bad after all. A new school, a new home, a new life - London might be the fresh slate that I needed. Besides it wasn’t as though my school wanted to see me again until I had ‘addressed some of my issues’. And it wasn’t as though any of my friends would actually miss me… My best friend CoCo seemed to have developed a bad case of lovesickness ever since she had hooked up with her first official boyfriend. (Who knew that boy-crazy hormones could wipe out so many years of loyalty? Lately CoCo had passed up the chance to spend time together if there was even a possibility that dorky David Lindley would call her with a better offer. It was totally pathetic.) And J.K.’s parents had decided to get some use out of the multi-million dollar ship that they laughingly called a yacht for a world cruise to celebrate his recovery from leukaemia – they would be gone for months..

It was definitely time for a change.

Plus, everyone would probably be too busy with Mom’s new movie to bug me too much.

A smile very nearly made a rare appearance on my face.

An overly-polite British air stewardess interrupted my thoughts as she cleared away the food trays. She stalled as she reached over for Sebastian’s tray.

‘Has your Dad finished his drink?’ she asked.

I almost choked on my gum. It was too awful to think that anyone could imagine that I was in any way related to a grumpy old actor like Sebastian.

Besides, I didn’t have anything as normal as a Dad…..


Ten Things I Know About London

1 It rains – a lot

2 People drive on the wrong side of the road

3 There are palaces
(some are even bigger than my Mom’s place)

4 Everyone drinks tea

5 They speak proper English with a strange accent
(from what I hear of Mom’s vocal training with Sebastian, there’s
lots of tight mouths and a serious nasal congestion problem..)

6 The buses are red and people actually use them

7 Some of the buildings are even older than my Grandma

8 The tabloids there are really mean

9 Everyone else is polite

10 Did I mention the crummy weather?