Free Vanished Years by Rupert Everett

bursts in with the local atmosphere. Dorothy must have felt like this approaching the emerald city. It is claustrophobic and exhilarating.
    The airport building itself is quite modest and totally dwarfed by the rows of huge white jets parked around it. They look evil and incongruous against the explosion of summer green that surrounds them. This forest smoulders with heat, livid and threatening, kept at bay by wire fences through which its tendrils creep, clinging to the boiling tarmac, pushing against the fence with all its force. It feels for a chilling moment, as we squawk and clatter to our cars in the setting sun, that nature actually hates us and is seeing us quite clearly for what we are – a line of killer ants in black dresses and patent-leather bags, all set to chomp our way through Washington. The engines of our jet cut out and there is an ear-splitting silence. All life is stunned, but after a second every cicada in the forest rediscovers its voice. Birds begin to chatter and the giant Lyme ticks crackle as they lick their lips and hang from the gently waving branches, scanning the horizon for a passing blood bag to infect. Our shrieks and giggles join this deafening cacophony as we climb into our phalanx of limousines, clunk clunk clunk, and drive into the city.
    The NBC deal is born quite suddenly as I walk through the front door of our elegant British Embassy built by Lutyens. It is a sitcom.The ambassador, good looking, sleek in black tie, greets us at the door with his wife standing by – a pretty, slightly wild-eyed lady with a vaguely German accent. Behind them a vista of dove-grey rooms under glittering chandeliers. Mr Ambassador, or Sir Christopher as this one is called, is full of swishy ‘bons mots’ and presents us to the ghastly Jack Straw, who grins like a ferret and flings in a few laid-back drolleries himself. They are Blair people, better looking, sharper cut, with their bright engaging smiles of even fluorescent teeth, than their Conservative (smelly retriever) predecessors. Sir Christopher is magnetic, debonair, genuinely interested – or a great diplomat. I look at him and the world falls away. In a blinding flash I see dollars and the future. I must make a sitcom about the British Embassy and play a charming British diplomat installing myself for ever in the minds of America as Mr Ambassador. I can’t believe it. I can hardly breathe.
    My idea broadens and deepens with every turn around the polished grey rooms where
le tout
Washington congregates. The Queen observes, busty and distant, from above the fireplace. Canapés are served by cheeky young boys in livery with tufty hairdos and forget-me-not eyes. They have fabulous accents from home and I can’t help exploding briefly with patriotic fervour, so I drop a Percocet and have a couple of vodka and tonics, and pretty soon, as far as I am concerned, I am the British Ambassador. I breeze around the room charming everyone to death.
    ‘Would you like me to get you another drink?’
    ‘Let me light that for you.’
    I elbow my way into a Simon Schama huddle of six breathless, strapless, Washington hags. Simon is a gigantic hummingbird flapping above them. Their faces gape, fascinated and slightly terrified, hanging on his every word. How does he do it? I am extremely jealous by now. Well, readers, he has a strange technique. First he confuses them with his hands. These giant paddles bat around his face, which contorts and thrusts, and all this has the same effect as hypnosis. The women sway, numbed by the golden elixir of hisrepartee. Once they are hypnotised, he does what all stars do and sucks out their energy, and soon he’s flapping off to the next cluster of glistening hymens for cross-pollination.
    One of the recently sucked-dry hags of our group turns to me. She has a thin rust bouffant, mascara-caked lashes and a turkey’s powdered gizzard throttled by aquamarines. She looks drained and clutches my arm.
    ‘Oh my God!’ she