Bold as Love Read Free

to secondary school) into the centre of London. She ate in a restaurant for the first time in her life, she stayed the night at Carly’s tiny flat in Kensington Church Street. Carly took her shopping, gave her clothes, makeup and a mobile phone. (The phone didn’t work after the first day, because Fiorinda didn’t have any money: but it looked great). True to her word, she introduced Fio to the people in Kensington as ‘the daughter of a friend of mine’.
    In the summer Carly invited Fiorinda to stay for a whole week. This brought renewed resistance, but Carly wouldn’t take no for an answer. ‘And when you’re tired of this game,’ said Mum, ‘You’ll dump the poor kid and I’ll be left to pick up the pieces. That’s what pisses me off.’ Fio, eavesdropping from the landing, heard the defeat in her mother’s voice and exulted.
    Mum would have been furious if she’d known that Carly let Fio smoke dope. But nothing else remotely shocking happened: no stronger drugs, no vice. People came around and chatted, Fio was mostly ignored. She spent much of her time on her visits to the Kensington flat alone, in the cubbyhole Carly called her study, drinking diet coke and playing computer games. She didn’t mind. It was paradise compared to life at home. But this time Carly had been invited to a country house party, and she was taking Fiorinda with her. They were going to stay with Rufus O’Niall, the rock star. Of course this had to be kept secret from Fio’s mother. Rufus O’Niall had been a megastar before Fiorinda was born. He was practically retired. She’d have been more excited if she’d been going to meet Glasswire, or Aoxomoxoa and the Heads.
    ‘I wasn’t invited,’ she said, uneasily. ‘Won’t that be weird?’
    ‘Rufus is a billionaire or something, darling. He doesn’t count the spoons. And he’s a very, very private person, but he never goes anywhere without this huge entourage—’ Carly laughed. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be lost in the crowd. But you’ll meet people. You want to be a singer, don’t you?’ Fio had by this time confessed her secret ambition. ‘You’ll need contacts. You can’t start too soon.’
    The journey and the arrival passed in a blur. Carly had been right, there was a crowd of people, the kind of people Fio had met in Kensington only more so. She was shown to a room by a servant. The house must be five hundred years old—half timbered, spartan, smelling of beeswax and lavender and dried oranges. The portraits on the walls were not of Rufus O’Niall’s forebears, obviously not, since his skin was chestnut brown, and the pictured faces were as white as Fiorinda’s. But the sense of dynasty was right. Rufus was old money in the world of rock and roll. He and his band The Geese had reached that glorious plateau of truly unassailable fame, and solid wealth. Fiorinda began to feel thrilled. Later, when he took some of his guests on a tour of the manor grounds, she tagged along and tried to get next to the master. What was most incredible was that Carly’s friendship with these celebrities seemed to prove that Fio’s Mum had once been on intimate terms with the famous. But she’d been warned not to mention her mother. Whatever Mum had done, apparently it still rankled in the music world.
    She was trying to be cool, but feeling very uncomfortable. Used to the modest habits of her North London, mainly Hindu, neighbourhood, she felt terribly exposed in the clothes she was wearing. She was glad Carly had warned her how to dress, but she kept wanting to put her hands over her bum, to fold her arms over the outline of her breasts. And the men were no better. She supposed that if you were rich, walking in your own private grounds was the same as being out at a fancy club.
    As they climbed a flight of steps, from the fishponds to a rose terrace, Rufus turned and glanced at Fio: who had managed to reach the centre of the group. He at once resumed his conversation with the