‘Playboy?’
‘I know, right?’ She shrieks with laughter. ‘I need to hit the gym if I’m doing that.’
I blink in surprise. She’s doing it? I can’t believe Luke or Aran want Sage to do Playboy.
‘Cute shades,’ she adds, looking at my Missonis, which are propped up on my head. ‘You were wearing them on Saturday, right? The press was all over them.’
She’s right. There were pictures of me in my Missonis in all the tabloids, and on millions of websites. It’s all so surreal. When I look at the photos, it doesn’t feel like me. It feels like some other person out there, posing as ‘Becky Brandon’.
But that is me. Isn’t it?
Oh God, it’s too confusing. Do celebrities ever get used to being two people, one private and one public? Or do they just forget about the private one? I’d ask Sage, only I’m not sure she’s ever had a private life.
‘They’re so unique.’ Sage is still fixated on my shades. ‘Where did you get them?’
‘They’re vintage. You can have them, if you like,’ I add eagerly, and hand them over.
‘Cool!’ Sage grabs them and puts them on, admiring her reflection in the mirrored wall of the lift. ‘How do I look?’
‘Really good.’ I tweak her hair a bit. ‘There. Lovely.’
At last! I’m styling a Hollywood film star, just like I wanted to in the first place.
‘You’re smart, Becky,’ Sage says. ‘This is a great fashion story. I’m wearing the shades you had on two days ago. The press will love it. This will be everywhere.’
That’s not why I gave them to her, but I suppose she’s right. I suppose she thinks about everything in terms of the press. Is that how I have to start thinking, too?
We emerge on the ground floor, and Sage leads me straight to a big guy in a blue blazer, who is sitting on a chair in a corner. He has Slavic features and huge shoulders and doesn’t smile. ‘This is Yuri, my new bodyguard,’ says Sage blithely. ‘Do you have security, Becky?’
‘Me?’ I laugh. ‘No!’
‘You should totally think about it,’ she says. ‘I had to hire Yuri after I got mobbed at home. You can’t be too careful.’ She glances at her watch. ‘OK, shall we go?’
As we head out of the building, I feel a jolt of shock. A cluster of waiting photographers immediately start calling out, ‘Sage! This way, Sage!’ They weren’t there earlier.
‘How did they know you’d be here?’ I say in bewilderment.
‘You give them your schedule,’ Sage explains in an undertone. ‘You’ll get into it.’ She hooks her arm more firmly around mine, and dimples in a smile. Her long, golden legs look amazing, and the Missoni shades clash brilliantly with her polka-dot top.
‘Becky!’ I hear a shout. ‘Becky, over here, please!’ Oh my God, I’ve been recognized! ‘Beckeee!’
The shouts are growing into a chorus. All I can hear is, ‘Becky! Sage! Here!’ Sage is playfully adopting pose after pose, most with her arm around me. A couple of tourists approach, and with a charming smile, Sage scribbles autographs for them. It takes me a moment to realize they want mine, too.
After a while, a blacked-out SUV appears, and Sage skips along to it, accompanied by Yuri. We get in, the photographers still clustering around us, and the driver manoeuvres away.
‘Oh my God.’ I sink back into the leather seat.
‘You should hire security,’ says Sage again. ‘You’re not a civilian any more.’
This is unreal. I’m not a civilian any more! I’m one of them!
Sage is flipping through channels on the in-car TV, and she pauses as her own face comes into view, with the headline, Sage speaks out.
‘Hey! Check it out!’ She cracks open a Diet Coke, offers one to me and turns up the volume.
‘I feel personally betrayed by Lois,’ the on-screen Sage is saying. ‘I feel she’s let me down, not just as a fellow actor but as a woman and as a human being. If she has problems, then I feel for her, but she should deal with those in an appropriate manner, not inflict them on others. You know, we were once friends. But never again. She’s let down the entire profession.’
‘That’s a bit harsh,’ I say uncomfortably.
‘She stole my purse,’ says Sage, unmoved. ‘She’s a psycho.’
‘She didn’t steal it. It was a mistake.’
‘Tough talk there from Sage Seymour,’ a TV presenter is saying on-screen. ‘With us in the studio to discuss the scandal is Hollywood commentator Ross Halcomb, film critic Joanne Seldana, and …’