Free Breaking Hollywood by Shari King Page B

who still consumed carbs on anything other than birthdays, Christmas or the
discovery that your partner was cheating on you with a twenty-two-year-old waitress.
    ‘Honey, you really need to get laid. Seriously. It’s the only thing that will help at this point.’
    Mirren tilted her head to one side, caught somewhere between amusement and outrage. ‘Then I think we can give thanks that you’re not a bereavement counsellor or there’d be a
whole lot of shagging going on.’
    ‘You’re right. I think I missed my calling.’
    Mirren couldn’t resist the urge to smile. Only friends who had been together for a lifetime could spark off each other like this.
    She’d first met Lou Cole when she came to Hollywood in 1992. Back then, the only three people she knew in the whole of the US were Davie and Zander, who’d come over from Scotland
with her, and Wes Lomax, who had ‘discovered’ them. Lomax had been on a golfing trip to St Andrews when Davie had persuaded the room-service waitress to let him take an order to
Lomax’s room, allowing him to sneak Mirren’s first attempt at writing into the legendary producer’s suite. Lomax had loved it, made the movie, called it
The Brutal Circle
and, goddammit, had it not won them an Oscar.
    Welcome to the American Dream. Come right on in.
    Back then, Lou had been a feisty young journalist on the
LA Times
, a go-getting African American rebelling against the establishment and ambitious to the point of ruthless. It had paid
off. Now she was the editor of the industry newspaper the
Hollywood Post
, a weekly publication with a linked website, that reported every industry move, play, leaked email and piece of
gossip. The stars came to her with exclusives, chose her centre pages to break stories or get ahead of scandals. In a time when the press were viewed somewhere between rodents and serial killers on
the Hollywood scale, Lou Cole still commanded respect, largely because she was a force of nature with integrity, brains and the ear of every important player within a fifty-mile radius of the Walk
of Fame.
    Back in the early days, the two women would share tubs of ice cream sitting on Santa Monica Beach late at night. Lou would dream of a Pulitzer, and Mirren would dream of writing bestselling
novels. The Pulitzer hadn’t materialized, but sheer graft had taken Lou to the top, while Mirren’s Clansman novels had delivered stellar success that led to movie-world glory. Now, they
had the money and sway to get them the best tables in Craig’s and Spago, but although the locations had changed, their friendship had not. They’d been together through every crazy twist
and turn that life had thrown at them.
    Lou had never married, but there had been a couple of long-term relationships that perished because they always came second place to her career. She was Chloe’s godmother, was a second mom
to Logan and came close to punching out Jack Gore when Mirren caught him being unfaithful. She was the secret-keeper in Mirren’s life, the person who knew everything. Almost everything.
Mirren had never told her the real reason that she, Davie and Zander had come off that stage at the Oscars over twenty years ago and gone their separate ways, with no contact until events of recent
months brought them back together. She’d never told her the truth about her life back in Scotland.
    One day, she’d tell her everything. But not yet.
    As if she’d tuned into Mirren’s thoughts, Lou wiped hot mustard from her bottom lip and asked, ‘So how’s the big childhood-friends reunion thing working out?’
    ‘It’s . . .’ Mirren paused, searching for the words. ‘It’s . . . weird. Davie and I have had dinner a couple of times, and it feels easy and familiar, and then I
remember that we’re not sixteen any more and he’s not Davie Johnston from two houses away. It’s like I don’t know him, yet there’s a love there. It’s like having
a piece of me back and trying to work out