I took my clothes off, got into the pool in my bra and knickers and swam

Sophie Heawood reflects on a wild Los Angeles party she’ll never forget

My first mistake on attending a party at a modestly sized mansion in the Hollywood Hills was turning up with a bottle of wine. I already knew I was winging it, being so skint that I’d bought the wine in a budget LA supermarket that only sold own-brand bottles, and then covering up the label with tissue paper from my recycling bin.

Having moved to LA from London a few months previously, I felt confident that I could sort of dance my way into the party with a quick greeting of the hosts, all hugs and kisses and my charming British accent, and chuck the bottle on to the kitchen table with all the others before anybody noticed it. But what I hadn’t realised is that you don’t take a bottle of wine to a party in a Hollywood Hills mansion. You don’t take anything at all, because there will be a full bar in a marquee beside the pool and there will be uniformed staff to get you any drink you want, and some of the guests will be drinking, and some won’t be, not because they’re super healthy and supping only green juice, even though this is how they look, but because they’re passing around a joint of heroin upstairs, and meanwhile you will be downstairs,

completely oblivious, desperately trying to hide your plonk in a bush.

I did. I threw it into an area of manicured foliage and sashayed back to the bar. I talked to people about their work, which was all related to the film industry. (At LA parties, you don’t ask people if they work in film, you just say, ‘Are you in the industry?’ Everyone knows which industry you mean. There aren’t any others.)

I got a bit drunk and spotted a small dog running gleefully through the party. I filmed him on my phone, getting down on to his level. ‘P.O.V. dog!’ barked some man as I scuttled through the crowds at dog height, very intent on filming what he could see at the party, wondering if it was something different from me. It took me a moment, but then I realised what the man meant by P.O.V; my movie was being shot from the point of view of the puppy. The animal finally shook me off and I sat down at a table where there was a funny tall boy. Maybe a man. A manchild.

I felt young, too. I was 32 going on 17. At some point, he and I moved over to the darkness of the grass, and at some point we realised that, even though we were lying together in a lovely dark part of the garden, where nobody could exactly see us, we were getting too wet for a little light party canoodling. I mean literally – we were dripping, suddenly finding ourselves sprayed by the sprinklers that wealthy Angelenos use to keep their lawns from drying out in the dark of night. The city has water restrictions. Nobody’s going to illegally moisturise their grass in daylight.

We made our way back to the party, where the swimming pool, the most glorious, beautiful swimming pool, went completely ignored, like someone who had been brought to a party to look beautiful but who was, in fact, stupid. There was a little poolhouse where you could get changed, so I went in there, took my clothes off, got into the pool in my bra and knickers and swam. I remember getting to 20 lengths and feeling very pleased with myself. Nobody else cared. Nobody else needed to. I was free. I never released my short film about a dog, and I never saw the manchild again, even though he still pops up on my Facebook page sometimes, liking things.

‘I THREW MY CHEAP WINE IN A BUSH AND WENT TO THE BAR’