Fame and Wuthering Heights

Saskia’s age.

‘By five they made me a permanent ward of the state. Which pretty much saved my life, although after that I was constantly on the move, bouncing around from one foster home to another.’

‘What were they like, your foster parents?’ asked Dorian.

Sabrina smiled. ‘Which ones? There were the Johnsons. They were nice. I lived with them for a year and a half until their older daughter got fed up with sharing her bedroom and they dumped me back on the doorstep of the children’s home like an unwanted Christmas puppy.’

Dorian winced.

‘Then there were the Rodriguez family. The dad, Raoul, believed in “old-fashioned family values”. That basically meant beating me with a bamboo cane across the backs of my legs when I was late home from school, or left food on my plate.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Dorian.

Sabrina smiled. ‘Yeah. It wasn’t the Waltons, but it was better than the next place. The Coopers.’

‘What happened there?’ asked Dorian.

‘Their son, Graham …’ Sabrina began, then broke off suddenly. ‘You know, I don’t really wanna talk about it. Anyway, it doesn’t matter ’cause I ran away and spent the next two years on the streets. Which actually wasn’t as bad as it sounds.’

‘How old were you then?’

‘Twelve,’ said Sabrina matter-of-factly. ‘I got off the streets at fourteen, but I learned a lot in those two years.’

I’ll bet you did, thought Dorian.

‘Such as the fact that men are assholes who only want one thing,’ Sabrina went on. ‘Luckily, they’re also mostly idiots, so if you’re smart you can use that filthy, one-track mind of theirs to your advantage.’

It was an unusually frank confession. Dorian could imagine just how many men in Hollywood Sabrina Leon had manipulated over the years to claw her way to the top. Now he knew where she’d learned her skills.

‘It was acting that really saved me,’ Sabrina continued. ‘A guy named Sammy Levine ran a youth-theatre company on the outskirts of New Jack City, where I was living at the time. I loved Sammy.’ Her eyes lit up at the memory. ‘He was passionate about theatre, passionate about kids. He was gay, and kind of flamboyant, and he could be tough as old nails when he wanted to. I remember he made me audition four times before agreeing to give me a part in West Side Story. And it was a fucking walk-on! Can you believe it? Rosalia.’

‘You remember the name of the character you played?’ Dorian was impressed.

‘Of course,’ said Sabrina, surprised. ‘I remember all my parts. They’re part of me. Anyway, I was so mad at Sammy. I thought I should have been Maria. Fuck it, I should have been Maria. I was the best.’

‘If you do say so yourself,’ Dorian grinned. Like everyone else in Hollywood, he knew the rest of the story. Tarik Tyler heard an NPR programme on the radio one morning about Levine’s Theatre and drove up to Fresno to take a look. He saw Sabrina, cast her, an unknown, as Lola, the lead in his first Destroyers movie. And the rest, as they say, was history.

‘So drama got you off the streets,’ said Dorian. ‘But what about now?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean what motivates you, today. Why do you act?’

Sabrina shrugged. ‘Because I can, I guess.’

‘Oh, no no no, I’m not buying that.’ Dorian leaned forward and looked her right in the eye. ‘What do you feel, when you walk out on stage or in front of a camera?’

Sabrina had been asked the question before. Every good director wanted to get inside her head, to find out what made her tick so they could draw it out in her performance, get the maximum emotional bang for their buck. With Dorian, however, she sensed that his desire to understand came from somewhere deeper. It wasn’t just artistic. It was personal.

‘I feel fear,’ she said honestly.

‘Of what?’

‘Of it ending. Of failure. Of going back to where I started.’

Dorian asked her the million-dollar question. ‘So why did you turn on your mentor, the man who helped you more than anyone? It doesn’t make sense.’

‘You mean Tarik?’ said Sabrina dismissively. ‘Firstly, I didn’t turn on him. It was a throwaway remark. He turned on me. Second of all, everyone says it was Tyler who discovered me and I guess that’s true in Hollywood terms. But Sammy Levine was the one who really changed my life. Sammy showed me the magic. He showed me how to do it.’

‘Do what?’ asked Dorian, quietly.

Sabrina’s answer was unequivocal.

‘Escape. I act for the same reason I drink. And fuck around and shoot my mouth off at airports. I act to escape.’

It told Dorian everything he needed to know. As a kid, Sabrina was escaping from others, from the grim reality of her life. Now she was escaping from herself, from the fears that still so evidently drove her. She’s so like Cathy, he thought. Part of her wants to fit in, to be accepted and loved. But another part of her wants to escape, to be wild and passionate and free. I was right to cast her.

‘Come on,’ he said gently. ‘I’ll drive you home.’

They walked out to Viorel’s car, Sabrina swaying like a ship in the breeze in her Manolos, fumbling in her Hermès Birkin bag for the keys. ‘They’re definitely in here somewhere,’ she kept muttering to Dorian. At some point in the last two hours, the sky had grown dark, and the throng of drinkers crowding the beer garden had thinned to a die-hard trickle. Dorian was gazing upwards, marvelling at the clearness of the starry sky, and wondering if his darling Chrissie was admiring the same view in Transylvania, when a belligerent young man approached them.

‘Oy. You!’ He was talking to Sabrina, but she was too preoccupied in her car-key search to notice him. This seemed to enrage the man more. ‘Oy, bitch. I’m talking to you. Are you deaf or something?’

Dorian stepped forward. ‘Hey.’ He put a hand on the man’s shoulders. ‘Easy.’

The guy was shorter than Dorian, and slightly built, but he was young and fit and had an air of aggression about him that made Dorian wary. His hair was cut army-short and he wore drainpipe jeans and a shiny red Manchester United football shirt, from which his tattooed forearms protruded like two white, freckly twigs.

‘Easy?’ he snarled, shrugging off Dorian’s hand. ‘D’you know who she is, mate? She’s a fucking racist. Don’t you read the papers?’

The man looked like such an unlikely champion of Great Britain’s black community that Dorian assumed he was simply drunk and looking for trouble. Unfortunately, by this time, Sabrina had realized what was happening, and appeared quite happy to oblige him.

‘Excuse me,’ she said haughtily, brushing past him to hand the Mercedes keys to Dorian. ‘You’re in our way.’

‘Don’t you push me, you cow!’ The man lunged forward. Without thinking, Dorian grabbed him by the shirt. He spun around and threw a punch, narrowly missing Dorian’s left eye.

‘Get in the car,’ Dorian told Sabrina, still struggling to keep his would-be opponent at arm’s length.

‘Why?’ said Sabrina defiantly. ‘You think I’m scared of this pathetic little prick?’

‘You what?’ The man turned around again, his face like fury. Sabrina was on the passenger side of the car now, but a couple of strides and the man would be within striking distance. ‘I’m a prick? You think you own the whole fucking world, don’t you? We don’t want scum like you in this country. You make me sick.’

‘Sabrina!’ Dorian shouted. ‘Get in the car! NOW!’

Sabrina did as she was told, but not before hissing ‘asshole’ at the tattooed man, forcing Dorian once again to have to grab him and manhandle him down the lane before running back and scrambling into the driver’s seat himself. He hit central locking and started the engine. As they drove away, he could see a furious red-shirted figure sprinting after them, hurling obscenities.

He turned to Sabrina, who seemed blissfully unconcerned in the passenger seat.

‘For God’s sake,’ he snapped. ‘Why do you engage them? Can’t you see it only makes things worse?’