Havana Adams - Black Diamond

“How would you do it?” she asked. “How would you make me a star?” Her curiosity had got the better of her; it always did, Lola thought ruefully.

“Everything,” Tyler replied. “We’d start small – public appearances, openings, then a one-off fly on the wall documentary, the real Lola Wilde, something like that, tasteful, and then a series, endorsements, perfumes, fashion lines, the sky is the limit. Look at Paris, Nicky, Nicole…”

“But what would I actually have to do?” Lola asked confused. She hated asking questions that might reveal her to be dumb but she pushed on. “What would I actually be doing?”

“You’d just have to be yourself.”

At his words, Lola’s heart sank; the one thing she didn’t want to be was herself.

“Just think about it, Lola, your profile is high right now, you have to capitalise and monetise. You’ve got people making money off you right now, using your name as a punchline, selling stuff with your image. It’s time for you to make your own money, secure your own future.”

As Tyler spoke, his fingers moving through the air to punctuate his points, Amber was nodding along and Lola felt her anxiety ease away. His words were working their magic – what she wouldn’t give to have her own money, her own independence. Her trust fund wouldn’t mature till she was thirty and she thought about the way Scarlet used the threat of cutting her allowance off to control her. It was time to earn her own money and get out from under Scarlet. For all her desire to be a mother, for all her good intentions, Scarlet simply hadn’t been able to change. Film roles and being famous had somehow always ended up coming before her child. Lola thought back to all those times growing up when Scarlet had abandoned her with practical strangers, had disappeared on weekend benders with new boyfriends and left Lola alone in the mansion. The only thing Scarlet had ever given freely was her money and even that now she kept threatening to withhold. Lola nodded at Tyler.

“Do you seriously think we can do this, that you can make me my own money?” Lola asked quietly. Tyler reached across the table and took her small hand in his own.

“Trust me.”

And for once Lola let her wariness drift away; she would let Tyler take care of things.

As they emerged from the building, Amber let out a whoop of excitement.

“He is going to make us millionaires,” she squealed.

“Us?” Lola queried. Amber spun around, her hands on her hips, and looking as threatening as a five-foot-nothing woman in primary colours ever could.

“As your manager, I’ll expect 10% plus expenses.”

“My manager.”

“Yes your manager, we agreed this in grade school,” Amber pointed out waspishly. And Lola laughed a rich, loud sound. They had agreed back in grade school that whatever Lola ended up doing, Amber would be her manager. For a fleeting moment, Lola wondered how wise this all was. It was all beginning to feel real and wasn’t there some rule about never doing business with friends or family? Lola brushed the thought away; she and Amber went way back, they knew everything about each other, where all the skeletons were stashed, where all the bodies were buried. If she wanted anyone by her side in all this, it had to be Amber.

“So what’s it going to be then?” Amber asked tapping her foot, her hands still on her hips though her lips were already moving into a smile.

“Your first official job as my manager is to find us the best Burrito that Santa Monica has to offer. I need some carbs.”

Amber smiled and, threading her arm through the crook of Lola’s elbow, they walked towards the beachfront.

CHAPTER 5

The Radcliffe Camera stood out starkly against the bright blue sky and Grace had been staring up at it for so long that she’d started to feel dizzy. The Radcliffe Camera, or the Rad Cam as the students tended to call it, was her favourite of all of Oxford’s lavish buildings. Something about this monumental, circular library always filled her with awe and even now, after six months at Oxford, Grace still marvelled at the exquisite architecture, marvelled that a place of such beauty could exist so close to the inner London neighbourhood where she had grown up. Grace had read about the dreaming spires, she’d seen the lists of the University’s illustrious alumni – Presidents, Prime Ministers, Oscar winners, Nobel Peace Prize winners, traitors, saints; intellectually at least, she’d understood that this place was immense. And yet, from the moment she had set foot on Broad Street all those months ago for her interview, Grace had fallen in love. She had survived the interviews and had returned to her school a hero, the first pupil in sixteen years to earn a place at Oxbridge and when summer had come she had aced her exams – straight As. And now here she was, standing in Radcliffe Square, metres away from the Bodleian and the Sheldonian Theatre and the Bridge of Sighs and all those places that had once been just names in books about lives; white people’s lives, a place that was not for the likes of her. And yet in her months here, she’d excelled, academically anyway. Grace loved her lectures, she’d shone in tutorials, her peers called on her to talk through essay questions. But the social part of things, in this Grace stuttered. Grace felt heat warm her face as she thought about last night and the boozy party at the bar that she’d left early. Once again she felt like the perpetual new girl, unable to relax and drink and get merry, like all the other confident undergrads at college.

“Shit!” Grace gasped as a clock began to chime. Once again she’d dawdled and would only just have enough time to get back to her room in College to change before she had to start her shift. Grace hustled up Parks Road, passing the grand academic buildings, then took a short cut, darting across the dense green space of the University Parks until she reached Lady Henrietta College, or Hennies as everyone called it.

“All right, Grace?” Grace nodded and waved in greeting to Paul, the head porter. She walked through the main quad towards her room. Entering her small single room, she immediately began to pull off her clothes, her usual uniform of black sweatpants and an oversized hoodie were quickly exchanged for the white shirt and black skirt that were required for her job over at Newman College.

By the time she’d changed, there was little time left before she’d be really late for the dinner shift she was covering and so Grace jumped on her hated bike. The city of Oxford was awash with bikes and in the summer as she’d prepared to leave London, Grace had bitten the bullet and set about doing something that no child in the orphanage had ever had any need to learn: she’d learned to ride a bike. She’d forced herself to ignore the laughing little kids, who’d already left behind their stabilisers. She’d picked herself up after the falls, she’d persisted with the same doggedness with which she’d approached cross country running, until suddenly she’d been flying, cycling unaided, round and round and round. In that moment, as she’d completed her first complete loop of Pymmes Park, Grace had known that she was ready for Oxford; that if she could do this, there was nothing that she couldn’t handle.

Grace screeched to a halt as she spotted a spare bit of railing to which she locked her bike before rushing through the grand arch that marked the entrance to Newman College. In a city renowned the world over for its beauty and architecture, a city known for its pomp and grandeur, Newman was without a doubt the grandest college of them all. Grace entered the college through the main entrance, walking quickly across the vast intimidating quad towards her destination – the College kitchens. She dashed up the service entrance stairs to the kitchens and hoped fervently that Nessa would not be on duty.