ashamed that one day her child would discover her disgraceful past.
But the hormones . . . Everybody knew pregnancy turned women into mental cases. Poor Scarlett hadn’t realised she was pregnant, so what had happened had been even more bewildering to her. If she’d known she was pregnant, not a drop of alcohol would have passed her lips. Plus, everybody also knew that, when you were pregnant, you got drunk a lot more easily. So it was the wine too, not just the hormones.
And suddenly, Scarlett was the favourite daughter of a sizeable chunk of the British population again. They loved her for her fallibility. What had happened to her could have happened to any woman. The blokes totally got it, because they’d experienced women going off their chops about all sorts while they were pregnant. The women totally got it, because who hadn’t had a guilt-inducing drink or smoked themselves silly before they knew they were expecting? The tabloids loved it because it gave them an excuse to print endless features about women going off the rails because of their hormones. Lurid tales of the violence, strange cravings and temper tantrums of pregnant women filled pages of magazines and newspapers. It almost began to feel as if pregnancy was synonymous with psychosis.
And now I was being dragged into the final step on the road to Scarlett’s rehabilitation. The perfectly crafted final piece of the jigsaw would be her three-hundred page letter to her unborn child, a sanded-down and varnished version of her autobiography to resonate with her public and make sure the love-fest continued. I had a sneaking suspicion it would be a big ask. But I’ve never shied away from a professional challenge.
Of course, Maggie knew that.
*
The more dubious the grounds for an individual’s celebrity, the more they need to be in control every step of the way. The ones who have genuinely achieved something or overcome true adversity are always happy to go along with my suggestions on how we manage the process. They understand that I’m the expert here, that experience has taught me the best way to do this. But when I’m dealing with the likes of Scarlett, the ones who are famous only for being famous, they’re always full of demands thinly disguised as suggestions.
The first of what I knew would be many skirmishes came over the venue for the initial meeting where Scarlett would decide whether she liked me as much as her agent and publisher did. She wanted us to take a suite in a Mayfair hotel. I wanted to go to her place. We both had our reasons. She wanted a symbol of how important she was. I wanted the scent and taste of her. And Maggie never wants to spend an unnecessary penny, because everything that gets lavished on the client up front has to be paid for somewhere down the line. There is no such thing as a free publisher’s lunch.
You don’t get anywhere as a ghost by stamping your feet and insisting on doing things your way. You have to sidle past their defences and make them think it’s all their idea. You know you’ve succeeded when you see them on daytime telly earnestly explaining to the host how they got up every morning two hours before the kids so they could find some peace to do their writing. By that stage, they really believe they did it themselves. That you were only there to put in the commas and check the spelling.
So Maggie called George, Scarlett’s agent, and they did their ritual dance. Maggie’s argument was that hotels leaked like sieves. That as soon as Scarlett showed her face in a five-star hotel, one of the staff would be on the phone to the press and they’d be full of Scarlett kiss’n’tell spoilers. I sat on the sofa in her office, admiring her greasing her way round Gorgeous George, a notoriously difficult man to flatter or cajole. But as I’d seen before, even he was no match for Maggie. ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘Let’s face it. Once they find out Stephie’s doing the book, she’ll be the focus
But the hormones . . . Everybody knew pregnancy turned women into mental cases. Poor Scarlett hadn’t realised she was pregnant, so what had happened had been even more bewildering to her. If she’d known she was pregnant, not a drop of alcohol would have passed her lips. Plus, everybody also knew that, when you were pregnant, you got drunk a lot more easily. So it was the wine too, not just the hormones.
And suddenly, Scarlett was the favourite daughter of a sizeable chunk of the British population again. They loved her for her fallibility. What had happened to her could have happened to any woman. The blokes totally got it, because they’d experienced women going off their chops about all sorts while they were pregnant. The women totally got it, because who hadn’t had a guilt-inducing drink or smoked themselves silly before they knew they were expecting? The tabloids loved it because it gave them an excuse to print endless features about women going off the rails because of their hormones. Lurid tales of the violence, strange cravings and temper tantrums of pregnant women filled pages of magazines and newspapers. It almost began to feel as if pregnancy was synonymous with psychosis.
And now I was being dragged into the final step on the road to Scarlett’s rehabilitation. The perfectly crafted final piece of the jigsaw would be her three-hundred page letter to her unborn child, a sanded-down and varnished version of her autobiography to resonate with her public and make sure the love-fest continued. I had a sneaking suspicion it would be a big ask. But I’ve never shied away from a professional challenge.
Of course, Maggie knew that.
*
The more dubious the grounds for an individual’s celebrity, the more they need to be in control every step of the way. The ones who have genuinely achieved something or overcome true adversity are always happy to go along with my suggestions on how we manage the process. They understand that I’m the expert here, that experience has taught me the best way to do this. But when I’m dealing with the likes of Scarlett, the ones who are famous only for being famous, they’re always full of demands thinly disguised as suggestions.
The first of what I knew would be many skirmishes came over the venue for the initial meeting where Scarlett would decide whether she liked me as much as her agent and publisher did. She wanted us to take a suite in a Mayfair hotel. I wanted to go to her place. We both had our reasons. She wanted a symbol of how important she was. I wanted the scent and taste of her. And Maggie never wants to spend an unnecessary penny, because everything that gets lavished on the client up front has to be paid for somewhere down the line. There is no such thing as a free publisher’s lunch.
You don’t get anywhere as a ghost by stamping your feet and insisting on doing things your way. You have to sidle past their defences and make them think it’s all their idea. You know you’ve succeeded when you see them on daytime telly earnestly explaining to the host how they got up every morning two hours before the kids so they could find some peace to do their writing. By that stage, they really believe they did it themselves. That you were only there to put in the commas and check the spelling.
So Maggie called George, Scarlett’s agent, and they did their ritual dance. Maggie’s argument was that hotels leaked like sieves. That as soon as Scarlett showed her face in a five-star hotel, one of the staff would be on the phone to the press and they’d be full of Scarlett kiss’n’tell spoilers. I sat on the sofa in her office, admiring her greasing her way round Gorgeous George, a notoriously difficult man to flatter or cajole. But as I’d seen before, even he was no match for Maggie. ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘Let’s face it. Once they find out Stephie’s doing the book, she’ll be the focus
Similar Books
