Wish You Were Here Read Free

that Douglas passionately wanted to be made. For nearly a quarter of a century the project had inched its way fitfully through a contractual maze and a development hell so capricious that even jaded Hollywood insiders smote their foreheads and sighed. Many times it had come to within an angstrom or two of greenlighting before, triumphantly, it found the right director and a workable budget. All seemed well at last, but then, in 2000, it foundered again.
    Douglas had made lots of money. A rich author is paid in cash; his wealth is not tied up in the equity of some business, the value of which, as financial advisors sometimes forget to point out, can fall as well as plummet. A writer’s assets are built in and enviably portable: talent and fingers. But Douglas was never as rich as people imagined. He was self-indulgent and hedonistic—and extravagantly generous both to individuals and his favourite good causes. The concept of Treat was seldom far from his thoughts, and he applied it to others as well as self. Money was for pleasure. His talent for making it was more than matched by his genius for spending it.
    For all his warmth and humour, Douglas was sometimes hard to live with, a trait often shared with very creative people. In many ways he was an emotionally fragile yet precociously brilliant child. Children can oscillate between joy and gloom with mercurial rapidity, and anyone who has spent time looking after them knows that nature, for sound Darwinian reasons, has programmed the little so-and-sos with a certain egotism. Douglas was romantic, warm, funny, exuberantly enthusiastic and possessed of a quite exceptional brain; he also had his demons, and could be depressed, self-absorbed, sulky and difficult.
    But, despite all the problems, by 2001 things were looking up. Admittedly, the film was still in the Horse Latitudes and drifting, but it was at least afloat. Douglas, who now had a personal trainer, was being conscientious about getting himself fit. Physically he appeared to be in better shape than he had been for years. The weight was melting away. The diabetes had gone. The marriage, that had had its turbulent moments, was happy. He and Jane (who in their household was invariably the standard bearer for practical intelligence) had recently bought a beautiful house, redolent of rural England in its charm, which won a local prize for the excellence of its presentation. They found it much more sympathetic than their rented mansion where at any moment one expected a soap opera star with big hair and an improbable suit to appear. Also they had made some good friends in Chris and Veronica Ogle, a local Australian couple.
    Polly was happy there too. She was tall for her age, earnest, pretty and bespectacled. The outdoors life suited her, she loved riding and had also made friends with the Ogle boys, particularly the seven-year-old Joshua. Tom, Chris’s youngest boy who was then five, was very fond of Douglas and missed him a lot when he died. “He had great farts,” he said, and indeed Douglas was capable of the odd duvet-billowing eructation. It always amused him; one of the most memorable definitions in
The Meaning of Liff
was the Affcot—the sort of fart you hope people will still talk about after.
    The families were close. Chris is in the clothing business and successful in a field far removed from Douglas’s own, something that was probably good for Douglas as the media world operates in an orgy of self-regard that can become oppressive. Douglas and Chris otherwise had much in common: their love for their children, an enthusiasm bordering on the reckless for Apple Macs, Mercedes cars, and good food and wine. They even sported the same make of fine but obscure wrist watch (an Ulysse Nardin).
    In 2000, the families had enjoyed a blissful holiday together in Fiji. Douglas, a keen diver, had been so overjoyed with the experience that he had to call someone to share it. (Throughout his life if he found something