Two days passed in a whirl of press calls and interviews, fittings and meetings, and suddenly there were only twenty-four hours to go until the Academy Awards. Isabelle, nervous to the last, began to calm down when she saw a press release from Mercy Williams’s management announcing that she would be wearing Cissé on the red carpet. ‘I dare those bitches to do their worst,’ said Mercy to Will. ‘I’m flameproof.’

The night before, the whole of Los Angeles was one big party. Mike whisked Isabelle off to a gig at the Hollywood Bowl, where he had a box and a hell of a lot of hospitality, then out to a club. He was not the most attentive of boyfriends, and restricted his conversation to asking her repeatedly what her chances were of ‘winning the Oscar’ tomorrow. At first she tried to explain that she wasn’t actually nominated, then she tried to explain what it meant just to have a dress on the red carpet, but by that time he’d lost interest, perhaps assuming that she was already making excuses for losing, and that he would soon be finding reasons to dump her.

Nobody would sleep in town tonight. Plenty of time to go home, get dressed, get to the theatre on time . . .

Will worked late, setting up interviews, talking to all the important bloggers, preparing different versions of emails that would be sent off as soon as the awards were over and then, exhausted, jumped in a cab and gave the driver an address in West Hollywood. He had been invited to a ‘bachelor pool party’ by a friend of a friend in the adult industry, who had told him, very matter-of-factly, that there would be ‘a lot of hot men there’, and so Will, who would not sleep anyway, gladly accepted.

The water in the pool was Hockney blue, the light artificially sunny, the bodies the colour of expensive veneer, shiny and smooth, as if someone had just gone over them with a duster and a squirt of Mr Sheen. Will accepted a Martini from a waiter in a small apron and nothing else, and made his way towards a larger-than-life drag queen who was got up as Mercy Williams in Moanin’ Low. Well, if that wasn’t an ice-breaker, nothing was.

He was intercepted by a firm hand on his bicep.

Wow, he thought, I know they’re all queer for Englishmen, but I’ve only been here for thirty seconds . . .

‘Will.’

‘Joel! What the hell . . .’

Joel kissed him on the lips. ‘Couldn’t keep away, could I.’ He put an arm round his shoulders. ‘Welcome to LA.’

‘D’accord,’ said the driver, casting his eyes over the address.

Christine sat back and relaxed. After the hell of the journey, she had nothing more to worry about. She surrendered to la circulation and let the driver do his job.