.

      He was breathing heavily, and his eyes darted around, avoiding mine. He reached for me again, only this time his clammy, horrible hands were under my backside, and he pulled me further down so that I was half-lying with my head against the door, then he lifted my skirt and pushed it up over my hips. I screamed, in indignation more than anything else, but he put his hand over my mouth. I bit him, and I heard the snuffling noise again, as he started nibbling at my ear, my neck, my jaw, with slippery wet movements, and the sound he was making was like the jeering newspaper boy I scurried past outside Hampstead Heath tube every morning: heheheheheheh, heheheheheheh, only very soft.

      ‘Pretty girl, pretty girl,’ he said, in this soft, high-pitched tone. ‘You’re a very pretty girl. Now you lie still. The driver understands – he won’t stop till we’re finished.’ He smiled at me, a little impatiently. ‘Unzip the dress … unzip the dress …’ Again the snuffling noise, as he licked my ear, juddering against me in excitement. He slid his hands underneath me, undid the zip and pulled the beautiful velvet dress down my shoulders, and I struggled to free my arms. I could see the driver through the glass. Did he drive him around every day, while he did this? He didn’t move. His green cap, clipped hair. And I knew if I screamed he’d take no notice.

      Joe Baxter pulled the dress further down, so it was ruched around my middle, the bottom half pulled up to my stomach. My neck felt as if it might snap. He pulled my breasts out of their brassiere, chuckling to himself, then buried his head between them, murmuring. Heheheheh. Heheheheh. It got faster and faster, and he started rocking against me. He took my hand and rubbed it up and down the front of his trousers. I could feel his hard penis. I knew that much, at least; my boyfriend at Central, Richard, and I would kiss for hours the week when I had the good bed in Hampstead, and I knew this was what happened to him after a while. But Richard was a vicar’s son, a sweet gangly boy from Yorkshire. It wasn’t like this with him, this undignified, frightening tussle, in which I didn’t know where I was or who I was.

      And so it was the first time then, I suppose, that I realised I had to pretend it was happening to someone else, not me. Eve Noel. Pretend you’re this girl called Eve Noel. The indignity of it was worse than the force, the assumption of rights over my body. He was mounting me, in his own car, and his driver was ignoring us. I didn’t know where we were. I didn’t know where my hotel was, or how I’d get home. As I lay with him above me, looking out of the window at the blurred scenery, I could see palm trees flying past us, and a street light.

      He pumped against me, holding my hand against his body, and then he said, ‘It’s time, you pretty little girl. I want to play with you. You’re so beautiful. I won’t hurt you …’

      So I acted then. I knew suddenly that I wasn’t going to lose my virginity to him. I wasn’t going to start a baby because I’d been violated in a car by this fat, awful man, because he had power and I didn’t. I pushed him back, in a different way this time. I caressed his neck and pushed my breasts into his gobbling face. ‘Let me do something,’ I said, sitting upright, playing bright and confident, laughing. Rose used to laugh, hiding and then appearing behind the willow tree. ‘Catch me if you can,’ she’d say, and then she’d vanish, her fleet steps taking her further and further away.

      I kissed his neck, his oily, stubby neck, watching the palm trees over his shoulder so I didn’t gag. And then I opened his trousers, and did what I used to do with Richard. Only two weeks ago, two weeks and one day in fact. I rubbed him with my hand, pushing my breasts against him rhythmically, until he groaned, spurted his stuff all over: all over me, all over him, all over the buttery leather. And then, God help me, I kissed him on the mouth, and told him how much there was of it, how big he was, and how it scared me. And then I zipped his trousers up as his head lolled forwards and he panted, still making that snuffling noise in his throat.

      He patted my head after his breath was back. Squeezed my breasts again. But I knew he wouldn’t be able to do it again, not for a while. He was old. I was young, I look back now and smile to think how extremely young I was. I wiggled myself back into my brassiere, slid the beautiful dress over my arms and shoulders again. I moved towards him. ‘Mr Baxter,’ I said, in a sweet, little-girl voice. ‘Could you zip me up again now?’

      I gave a little giggle. And he did too, girlish and funny, as if we’d just enjoyed a picnic in the woods, not a rape.

      ‘You know some tricks, don’t you, Eve?’ he said. He zipped me up, and kissed the top of my neck. I held still. Now it was over, now he’d zipped me up, I felt sick. His hand stroked my thigh again. ‘Pretty girl, but you’re a clever girl too, aren’t you?’

      ‘Just like Helen of Troy, Mr Featherstone says,’ I said in my best cut-glass English accent.

      ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘Very good.’ He stared at me. ‘You’re beautiful. He’s right.’ He ran his fingers over my forehead, and I tried not to flinch, hating him, hating myself.

      ‘But I think you’d look better with a widow’s peak. Change the hairline. Moss is right. He’s always right, goddammit, the son of a bitch. I’ll speak to Tyrone at the studio – he’s the master. Smile?’

      I smiled, automatically, too shocked to know what else to do. He was panting still, as if trying to regain his breath. ‘Yes,’ he said softly. ‘The teeth, maybe the nose. But it’s fine. I’ve seen worse. I’ve seen much worse. Well done. We’ll arrive shortly. I tell you, I could use another drink.’

      He gave another snuffling laugh and patted my thigh with his clammy hand. He didn’t seem unduly pleased with himself, or to think that he’d done anything wrong or marvellous. It was, I realised, purely transactional. In a way that made me hate him even more.

      On the door of the Rolls was a tiny silver vase, fixed into the walnut, with a spray of roses in it. Mr Baxter took a single stem out and gave it to me. It was a white rose, beginning to bloom, its waxy petals slowly unfurling, glowing in the dark of the car like something ghostly.

      ‘This is for you,’ he said.

      I took it and smiled at him, and put the rose in the buttonhole of my cape. I could smell its rich, heady scent. I knew that by accepting it I was accepting something bigger. I knew I shouldn’t but I did. I went along with it because I was desperate for the part, and I realised it then. I wanted to act, that’s all I’d ever wanted to do. But I know now I did it because my survival instinct is strong. Over the years, I convinced myself it was because I wanted to act. And so it became acceptable for me to do things that I’d never have done before, because I told myself I wanted to act. It came out of this night, the warm night that I met Don Matthews and he gave me an avocado; my first Hollywood party, the night I ended up in the back of a car with bruise marks on my thighs and scratches and an angry red rash from his stubble on my breasts, marks I ignored as I’d ignored the indignity of the situation and got myself through it. It was the beginning of everything, and the end of something too.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      THE CAR WINDS through the dusty, shrubby hills, into Mulholland Drive, and begins its twisting final ascent towards Casa Benita. I’m staring out of the window, at nothing really, and so I jump when Denis, the security guard, taps on the glass and waves.

      ‘Hi, Sophie, that was quick! You’re back so soon!’

      I wave at him, but don’t correct him. Denis is not as young as he once was. He was a doorman at Caesar’s Palace in the seventies. He’s seen a lot; I like to think of this job as his reward in later years for services to excessive celebrity behaviour. My life’s pretty boring: he just has to sit at the gate doing his crosswords and wave through packages and the occasional sushi takeout. No wrestling Frank Sinatra to the floor or mopping up Elvis’s girlfriend’s vomit.

      As we pull up in front of the house Tina lopes onto the terrace. She is tall but her shoulders droop; the afternoon light catches her dark hair.

      ‘Hi, Sophie,’ she says as she opens the car door. ‘How’re you doing?’

      ‘I’m good,