a five-dollar bill into a sweaty headscarf. I tipped all the change I had in my purse into the dancer’s hands and swiped a card from a fan poking out of his top pocket.
Seconds later the train came to a halt, and one of them picked up the ghetto blaster and they were gone, probably darting into the next carriage to entertain all over again.
Rob and I were buzzing.
‘So we might be moving into a shoebox—’
‘Make that a children’s shoebox,’ I interjected.
‘Okay, a shoebox for a millipede – whatever you want to call it – but I really don’t care, because I’ll be living there with you and I couldn’t love you – or this city any more right now,’ he said, sighing. ‘You’d never get that in London.’
I had to agree. ‘And we’ll make our little millipede box the cosiest home ever. It’s going to be great. And you’re clever for sorting it out. I love you too.’
The next day, after cleaners had made the place smell of lemon disinfectant, rather than someone else’s toilet, and a year’s worth of burnt cheese had been scrapped off the microwave, we took a taxi across town with our suitcases of belongings and moved in.
On our first night in the flat, we were woken up listening to our next-door neighbours having very loud sex. She was a screamer, he a shouter. We might not have known their names before, but we certainly did now: Max and Tina. In between the thumps on the wall and the shouts, any chance we had of sleeping was put to an end by the fact we had so far failed to notice that we lived opposite a fire station. A whirring siren sound went off a couple of times just in the hour that we were trying to get to sleep.
On the second night, Max and Tina held a dinner party with some equally shouty friends. We opened another bottle of beer each and pretended it wasn’t as loud as it was, already feeling like an old married couple in our late twenties. Then we turned up our own music and tried to have sex on the sofa, but the noise from next door was too distracting. So we went out and got drunk on tequila and more beer at our new local, passing out back home, some time after the dinner party had finished.
On the third night, we wore earplugs and managed to sleep reasonably well, save for the strobing orange light from the streetlamp positioned directly outside our bedroom window and the occasional siren from the fire station.
‘Blackout blinds,’ Rob muttered woozily.
But, to be honest, when the light buzzed on for long enough for me to admire my boyfriend’s matinée idol profile on the pillow next to me, I didn’t really mind. And I knew I’d get used to the sirens.
There was something kind of pretty about the way the light hit our bed and bounced off the 1970s I HEART NEW YORK print we found in a thrift store earlier that day and which now hung on our bedroom wall, covering the brown marks. The only picture to grace our walls so far.
In the next blast of orange, I captured the image and uploaded it to Instagram; Rise filter; caption: ‘Goodnight Williamsburg #NYC #stylist #newhome’
Dana was true to her word and the following afternoon my new American cell phone rang with an unpaid rush job putting together a suitcase of cool looks for a ‘hot, young, model-stroke-actress’ desperate to make her fashion mark at the boho lover’s festival of music festivals, Coachella.
‘None of my girls has a free day this week, so I’m offering this opportunity to you, sugar,’ she drawled into the phone. ‘This will help get you back in the game while we’re waiting for your visa.’
‘Sounds great!’ I enthused. Thankfully, an inordinate amount of time spent scrolling through the Instagram feeds of the likes of Kendall Jenner and Poppy Delevingne had given me an insight into Coachella festival chic – and it was a million miles away from the mud-soaked Hunter-welly, waterproof-poncho practicalities of Glastonbury.
Coachella was the annual fash-pack pilgrimage to the Californian desert. It involved rock music, hot boys, even hotter weather and lashings of suede fringing, frayed denim, cropped tops, crochet, gladiators and flower garlands. The biggest decision for the rich kids in attendance was whether to go kaftan or cut-offs.
‘Who’s the celebrity?’
‘Liv Ramone – you might remember her name. She was a big shot in the late noughties, but lost her way a bit. Well, now she’s coming back with a bang. If you get this right, you could have a regular client,’ Dana said while briefing me. ‘I’ll bet most of her wardrobe is funded by the Bank of Mum and Dad – her flip-flops have a price tag of three hundred dollars – but she doesn’t have a clue how to put it all together. Liv’s manager says she’s really into accessories at the moment, so be sure to pull plenty of fun jewellery too. Good luck!’
Liv’s arrival was promising. She bounded over to me like an excitable puppy. She had incredible long, red, wavy hair, lithe limbs, big grey eyes and a sparkling smile – all qualities a stylist falls in love with at first sight. Plus, she had an immediately endearing demeanour, which was unusual for a former child star, who – so Dana had warned – were usually the worst divas of all. When she came closer she smelt of strong musky perfume, hairspray, and one too many cigarettes. When she opened her mouth, you could see the gum. She arrived at Milk Studios, where Dana had given me a corner to work from, piggybacking another photo-shoot due to start later that day. Her manager was a large, puff-chested man called Mickey, who had whiter-than-white teeth and obviously dyed-black hair.
‘I’m so glad to meet you, Amber!’ She launched at me, arms open, embracing me with a hug so big you’d think we were long-lost relatives. ‘Dana told me you used to assist Mona Armstrong.’ I smiled in acknowledgement. ‘I mean, wow!’
‘Even a guy like me has heard of Mona,’ Mickey added, ‘Liv’s brought you a gift.’ He gestured to the neat little pink bag she was holding and she handed it over, presenting it alongside another hug; this time the hug went on a little longer than was strictly necessary. The gift made me instantly suspicious.
‘That’s so sweet of you!’ I gushed, mustering up all the American enthusiasm I could. Inside the bag was a white square box, heavy with the weight of its contents. I looked at the sleeve – it was a luxury candle; the scent matched the heady perfume Liv was wearing and was described on the packaging as ‘Sensual Sunset’. On it was a black-and-white photographic image of Liv lying seductively – Oh God, she’s naked – on a shag-pile rug in front of a fake-looking sunset. Because of her model-perfect proportions and attention-grabbing hair, it was a gnat’s whisker on the passable side of soft porn.
‘The candle line comes out next month,’ Mickey informed me. ‘I took care of the production and styling, in case you were wondering.’ He winked, sleazily. ‘It’s the first step in launching Liv’s new lifestyle range. The candles are calming as well as deeply erotic; they help with anxiety too. Liv has ten burning away at one time in her house. The calming effect is better than any drug. Let’s light it while we work, yeah?’ Just the thought of ten candles releasing that overpowering scent was enough to give me a migraine. And, ah yes, the drugs. Following some online research, I had discovered that, unfortunately, Liv did a little too much Liv-ing during her late teen years when she shot to fame with the lead role in a hit film about an off-the-rails teenager on the run from her parents. It was a case of reality mimicking fiction, because Liv too left her nice, wealthy, suburban roots and moved in with a bunch of new friends in a hip enclave of LA. For a few years she ran with a fast-paced, heavy partying crowd, who thought nothing of staying up for three days in a row, cleaning out hotel minibars, setting up a pharmaceutical counter as good as any private hospital, getting naked on balconies and waking up in bed with strangers – all on what they considered a ‘little bender’.
Throw in a drink-driving rap, an ill-fated twenty-one-day marriage to a guy she met and married within twenty-four hours in Las Vegas, and numerous community-service appointments, and you could see how she earned a rep