India's Summer

  Praise for India’s Summer:

  “India’s Summer is a furious, fast-paced, fun romp through the excesses of life in the Hollywood fast lane, with some thought-provoking wisdom interspersed throughout.”

  – Jane Green, New York Times bestselling author

  “A book has an energy field all of its own and India’s Summer has a really great one.”

  – Ekhart Tolle, spiritual leader

  and New York Times bestselling author

  “India’s Summer offers a timeless tale of women supporting one another – delivered in a way that makes it feel fresh, alive, and utterly of the moment.”

  – Arianna Huffington

  “India’s fascinating character is what makes India’s Summer a compelling read. She is trying to make a big shift in her life, in her career, in the choices she’s making. She’s funny, clever and vulnerable and you are rooting for her every step of the way.”

  – Goldie Hawn

  “India’s Summer avoids the familiar clichés of LA and yet captures the character of the city so well.”

  – Orlando Bloom

  “I love how India learns to trust her inner voice and begins to let her light shine.”

  – Miranda Kerr, Victoria’s Secret “Angel”

  and author of Treasure Yourself

  “I loved this book. India made me smile.”

  – Kim Eng, Presence of Movement Workshop Leader

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  The Fiction Studio

  P.O. Box 4613

  Stamford, CT 06907

  Copyright © 2012 by Thérèse

  Jacket design by Barbara Aronica-Buck

  Cover photo © 2011 by Jeff Eamer

  Print ISBN-13: 978-1-936558-34-6

  E-book ISBN-13: 978-1-936558-35-3

  Visit our website at www.­fictionstudiobooks.­com

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by U.S. Copyright Law.

  For information, address The Fiction Studio.

  First Fiction Studio Printing: January 2012

  Printed in the United States of America

  For May and Fred

  with love

  Act the way you’d like to be

  and soon you’ll be the way you act.

  – Leonard Cohen

  Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  FACEBOOK STATUS – Say YES.

  FACEBOOK STATUS – Where’s my tribe?

  FACEBOOK STATUS – School's out for Summer...

  FACEBOOK STATUS – I’m stuck in a holding pattern.

  PROFOUND THOUGHTS NOTE – Wahoo!

  PROFOUND THOUGHTS NOTE – California Casual?

  PROFOUND THOUGHTS NOTE – Two glasses good, four glasses bad.

  PROFOUND THOUGHTS NOTE – Emperor’s New Clothes

  C’EST LA VIE NOTE – Nobody in the Polo Lounge plays polo.

  PROFOUND THOUGHTS NOTE – Ohmygod.

  PROFOUND THOUGHTS NOTE – Maybe…just maybe.

  C’EST LA VIE NOTE – Hope Chateau Marmont is earthquake proof.

  PROFOUND THOUGHTS NOTE – Check in with self

  PROFOUND THOUGHTS NOTE – If I’d known I would have had my teeth whitened.

  C’est La Vie Note – My fifteen minutes.

  PROFOUND THOUGHTS NOTE – Check exchange rate.

  C’est La Vie – Let’s get this party started.

  PROFOUND THOUGHTS NOTE – In my element!

  Profound Thoughts Note – I will approach the big 40 with a whole new optimism.

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  FACEBOOK STATUS – If you can’t do it in high heels, I’m not interested.

  The crowd was howling her name.

  “In-di-a!”

  “In-di-a!”

  She was vaguely aware of an arm. Yes, it was definitely an arm. She could feel it steadying her, pushing her toward the searing heat. Then came the pounding beat of a medieval drum. She took a deep breath, a very deep breath. There was this weird tingling between her legs. And she was dizzy. Oh my God! The adrenaline. Like swallowing a Motorhead cocktail.

  I can’t do this. I can’t do this, she thought.

  Yes you can! YES! YES! shouted another inner voice. Focus … Focus.

  What is it you really want? Think.

  So she thought: tall, fit, rich, funny, a cross between Orlando Bloom and Hugh Jackman…

  “Don’t look down! Don’t look down!”

  Then she heard another voice. “What’s your name?”

  “India.”

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yes!” she yelled.

  “Louder, I can’t hear you.”

  “YES!” she screamed.

  She was burning up. She was on fire.

  Suddenly, as her feet were plunged in a bucket of ice-cold water, she was clinging to a volunteer like a koala on a gum tree. She had made it. And one by one, every member of her team charged across the bed of burning hot coals into the arms of other volunteers. And within minutes, it was over. Weeks and weeks of planning, and it was over.

  For one brief moment she stood there: the very image of everything she wanted to be – a valedictorian, a woman in control of her destiny; her olive skin glowing, her dark eyes shining with intensity, her chestnut hair piled high on her head. Then, overwhelmed with emotion, India started leaping up and down, sobbing, hugging all the kids around her, and waving triumphantly at the cameras.

  “We did it! We did it,” she cried, rivulets of mascara streaking her cheeks, sweat pouring down her long arms. “Amazing, unbelievable, and I am never, I repeat, never, doing that again!”

  FACEBOOK STATUS – Say YES.

  “Completely out of the question.” This was the wildly enthusiastic response from Dr. White, the head teacher, spluttering over his cup of tea, when she had proposed the idea of a charity fire walk. India taught drama at a grade school in London. Every year, the school held a fundraiser for the local children’s hospital, a fete that to her felt more like a day release for prisoners. There were a couple of cake stalls run by the nearby church, a raffle, some hot dogs, and a smattering of bored parents trailing around with strollers.

  But India had recently experienced an epiphany. She would take this year’s fundraiser to a whole new level. Destiny had come upon her in a flash while she was watching a TV special – Breakthrough with Tony Robbins. His message had hit her like a rallying call, like Moses on the mountain. Yes, she would be a leader not a follower, a believer not a doubter, a force and a voice for good. Yes, like Tony, she would inspire people to walk on fire. New wards would be opened and India would cut the ribbon, maybe even paint a few murals. Of course, the entire thing was easier said than done, even after the head teacher reluctantly agreed to attend.

  “Okay, if you’re determined to go through with this, I want liability releases from all the parents. I want it off school time and off school premises,” he’d ordered.

  The next major obstacle was to convince the students.

  India’s practical class demonstration didn’t move them at all.

  “See? Not even a blister! Ta-da!” she’d preened, swiping her finger several times through the tip of a burning candle. The next day she showed them films of a woman with prosthetic legs climbing a mountain, and a cross-channel swimmer with only one arm winning a competition. Still nothing. Then she took a different a
pproach and tried the spiritual angle.

  “Imagine being purified like a Buddhist monk!” she said. “Imagine being fortified, forged through fire like an Inca!” Blank stares.

  It was not until she brought in Pete, a trainer from London’s own (and impressively Tony Robbins–endorsed) Institute of Firewalking, that they sat up and paid attention. It was probably the silver bolt through his tongue, the safety pin in his eyebrow and the metal hook through his nostrils that sold them, or perhaps, the tattoo of flames on his biceps. The guy had street cred.

  “The firewalk, as you know from Miss Butler, is all about conquering fear,” Pete announced in the first (and only free) motivational session. “Once you’ve conquered your fear and walked across those coals, you know you can do anything.”

  Thirty minutes later, six volunteers had signed up,and peer pressure did the rest. With a mere two weeks to go before the intensive training actually began, India managed to book the grounds of a local hotel, clear the insurance and reassure the parents, check the legalities, write the press releases, even organize a photo call with the local fire brigade.

  “Are you going first tomorrow, miss?” one of the students asked nervously. He was hovering by the door after what India quietly hoped was her last ever class on Macbeth.

  India froze. Going first? I’m the producer. I’m … well … the cheerleader. I’m the après-ski girl, with the emphasis firmly on the après. I’m not into extreme sports.

  “Of course I am,” she heard herself say out loud.

  After a long sleepless night punctuated by an unsettling erotic dream involving one of her students dressed as a fireman, India was forced to surrender and accept her fate.

  “Obviously, I’m going first,” she told herself. “YES! I am a leader not a follower, a believer not a doubter. YES! I am a force for good…”

  ≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

  Closing her eyes and holding hands with a student next to her, she had waited.

  “Think of a time when you were ecstatically happy, powerful, in control of your life.”

  India scrambled around in her head for an image.

  “A time when you felt at peace, in flow,” Pete continued.

  She was still struggling.

  The conference room at the Holiday Inn was dead silent. He gave them a few minutes.

  “Hold that image, open your eyes, and when I put up my hand, yell ‘YES!’ as loud as you can.”

  India’s “Yes” lacked a certain conviction.

  “Now think hard,” he went on. “What do you want to achieve this year? Because the only thing holding you back from achieving what you want is FEAR! Now think carefully. Think big! One year from now, where will you be? You can achieve your dreams. What do you want? Make a clear mental picture for yourself.”

  What do I want? India wondered. Right now I just want this all over with … this is insane … okay … focus … focus. What? What? Think…

  As she and the kids formed a crocodile line chanting “YES! YES!” in unison through the halls of the hotel, India felt strangely disconnected. It bothered her that she wasn’t able to join in the exercises wholeheartedly; that she was holding something back.

  FACEBOOK STATUS – Where’s my tribe?

  “See ya, Miss Butler,” shouted one of the students.

  “Bye, miss,” yelled another.

  Maneuvering her way through the groups of kids who were slamming locker doors, India checked her watch. The traffic on the way home would be heavy, but she would still have time to get ready for the next day. Her flight to Los Angeles left at 11 a.m. It was the TV interview on the Morning Show with the head teacher, Dr. White that had finally pushed her over the edge. This was shortly after the fire-walk, when all the positive reviews from the press had started rolling in, and the hospital had received a huge donation from a wealthy businessman.

  “Congratulations, Dr. White. What a wonderful achievement,” enthused the TV host. “How did you come up with such an amazing idea?”

  “Thank you so much,” he had said, visibly relaxing and peering directly into the camera. “We all have to take risks in life, don’t we?” Then, in an unusually posh accent, he warmed to his theme. “I have long held the belief that young people need to be challenged. They need to learn about helping others.”

  “Bollocks!” India had muttered at the television screen. “I have long held the belief that you are a jerk.”

  As she sat in her MINI at a traffic light, she remembered how she had waited in vain for some sort of acknowledgment, for a reference to the wonderfully dedicated teacher who had done such an amazing job. For seventeen years she’d been working at the same school. Where on earth had the time gone? Countless Monday assemblies, seventeen Easter Parades, endless Midsummer Night’s Dreams… Sure, her natural enthusiasm and energy and the fact that she demanded a lot from the kids made her popular with them. The colleagues, however, were another story. Take last Christmas when she’d suggested hiring a martini bar for the staff party.

  “Alcohol,” Miss Roberts, the vice principal, had snorted. “Whatever next?”

  A good time perhaps? India thought, but said nothing.

  No. This was not her tribe, and worse, she was about to turn forty!

  “A milestone birthday,” she’d complained to her friend Sarah over a glass of Fat Bastard at her local pub the night before.

  “Forty’s the new thirty, haven’t you heard?” Sarah offered.

  “You’re only thirty-four,” India snapped. “Let’s see if you’re laughing in another six years!”

  “Well,” Sarah sighed. “Not all of us have legs up to our arm-pits and a bone structure to die for.”

  “Thank you. I can take any amount of that,” India said, flattered. “And at least I’m not gray yet,” she added, examining the ends of her long dark hair.

  It was five o’clock when she turned into her narrow street and ran up the stone steps to her tiny apartment in Queen’s Park. Even though it was too far away from Camden Town to be trendy and her street was a mess of seedy Victorian houses that had long lost their grandeur, India loved her place. She had scoured flea markets and junkyards for one-of-a-kind pieces and devoted entire weekends to painting the walls in perfect Farrow & Ball shades of gray and cord. She’d installed the wooden shutters and silk drapes herself to create just the right light. “Benign neglect.” That was what the French called it, a look and a feel that was all about ease; where you didn’t get neurotic about how you arranged your throw pillows.

  Uncorking a bottle of chilled Sancerre, India collapsed on a couch and listened to her phone messages. Her sister, Annabelle, sounded totally stressed.

  “I can’t wait for you to get here,” she said. “We’ll send the car. I’m at a shoot in Pasadena and Joss and the girls are already at the house in Malibu. But Maria will be here and I’ll be back late evening…”

  Annabelle was India’s older sister. Older by only two minutes, India thought, but what a head start, because, clearly, in those two minutes, she had worked out exactly what she wanted to do with her life. She was truly passionate about acting. When she was a kid, Annabelle would watch and rewatch movies for days. Bugsy Malone, India recalled with a smile.

  India just wasn’t driven in the same way. She didn’t take private voice lessons, write her own shows, or win a coveted scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts when she was eighteen. She wasn’t a household name in England after starring in several award-winning BBC series. And she certainly hadn’t married a rock star like Joss. India sighed.

  What had triggered her sister’s extraordinary drive? she wondered, knocking back her wine. Maybe it was their parents’ separation when the girls were teenagers. It was such a cliché: Husband has affair with wife’s best friend. “Aunty Dora’s run off with Dad,” was how it felt to India. She’d watched her mother turn from the vivacious life and soul of every party to a withdrawn depressive. India would come home from school to a house filled with cigarette
smoke and the sight of her mother coiled up in the fetal position on the bed.

  Annabelle’s form of escape, avoiding the house and throwing herself into more and more acting classes, seemed to have worked out better than India’s, whose own response had been to throw herself into a world of her imagination. India was the one making dinner and taking care of her mother on those endless winter nights when the house was deadly quiet. She buried herself in books, finding connection in Anna Karenina, Bonjour Tristesse, and works by Lévêque de Vilmorin, hoping that one day her own life might mimic a romance novel.

  But at least I’m proud of her – I’m not at all jealous, India told herself. Well … that’s if you don’t count her closet. Yes, I plan on spending many happy hours in Annie’s closet, she thought, picturing the circular rack that went round at the touch of a button and the light that clicked on when you opened a drawer, and the beautiful hand-painted gold wallpaper and dozens of shoe racks. Most of the shoes had hardly been worn and the names had such a lovely ring to them: Louboutin, Prada, Lanvin. With a sudden rush of excitement India leapt off the couch and ran down the small hallway to her bedroom. I need to get a move on, she thought. La-la Land! Here I come!

  FACEBOOK STATUS – School's out for Summer...

  Packing for LA was almost as daunting a prospect as walking on broken glass (a follow-up event Pete had suggested and that India had politely declined). What am I going to travel in? She thought, looking at the mountain of clothes on her bed. She’d been planning “rock-star casual” all week (à la Kate Moss in Marie Claire) but right now it was not coming together. “Sod it!” she cursed, flinging her All Saints biker boots across the room. “I’m going on a plane, not a Harley Davidson.”

  As she folded a couple of white tees, she thought of all the years she had spent trying to develop a “signature” style. A way of dressing that would carry her effortlessly through life; a life in which people would assume she was, well, French.