Homecoming (12 page)

Rae recognised Nora Flynn’s little greyhound and her fluffy pompom of a dog that loved to bounce along self-importantly.

But Nora wasn’t with them. Instead, a slender dark-haired girl with an elfin face and big haunted eyes sat on the bench watching. She’d been in Titania’s a few days before and Rae had recognised her as Nora’s niece, the actress. Rae hadn’t been able to recall her name, but was sure that when she’d last seen the girl, she’d been a pretty blonde slip of a thing, not a dark, sad waif.

Rae was aware that there had been some scandal. Someone at the counter in Titania’s had talked about it recently, but she’d listened with only half an ear. Rae was wary of gossip. Often, she found it to be wildly inaccurate and she hated the casual cruelty of the celebrity magazines.

She’d wanted to welcome the girl – Megan, that was her name – to Golden Square the other day in the tearooms but she’d looked on the verge of tears, so Rae had decided to say nothing. There were times, she knew, when kindness tipped you over the edge.

Today, Megan looked less sad.

‘Hello,’ Rae said. ‘I’m Rae Kerrigan, from the tearooms. You’re Nora’s niece, aren’t you? Welcome back.’ She inhaled the earthy scent of the park. Lots of people didn’t appreciate nature in winter: she loved it, the sense of hibernation before the earth slowly unfurled herself into beauty again. ‘It’s beautiful here, isn’t it? You could be in the middle of the countryside.’

The girl said nothing, just watched from under lowered lashes.

She was wary, Rae realised instantly. Speaking non-judgementally and idly was required.

‘Aren’t dogs funny? I love the way they enjoy the simple things.’ On the grass in front of her, the fluffy dog was wriggling in an orgy of pleasure, making little contented snorts.

Rae bent to rub the dog’s pink belly, murmuring ‘Hello, pooch,’ and she could sense the girl softening beside her. Animals were the true arbitrators of decency: it was hard to be the sort of person who’d convincingly stroke a dog and then lash out at the human being beside them.

‘She loves that,’ the girl said in a slightly husky voice.

‘They all do,’ Rae said, getting back to her feet. ‘My son loves animals and when he was a kid, he was always coming home with things he’d rescued. Apparently, when a dog lets you pet its belly, it’s at peace.’

‘In Cici’s case, she’s at peace and she also thinks she’s an Egyptian princess lying there waiting for the grapes to be peeled for her,’ the girl said drily.

Rae laughed.

Sensing she was being talked about, Cici sat up, shook herself to get rid of all the debris from the grass, and went to have a proper sniff of Rae.

‘She’s adorable,’ Rae said, reaching down for one more pet. ‘See you around,’ she added, with a smile at the girl.

‘Yeah, sure.’

For the first time, the girl looked at Rae straight on and Rae caught her breath. She hadn’t really seen her face in Titania’s, not properly, because she’d kept her head down. But now, Rae could see she was lovely, like a silent movie star in an old photograph, with more angles and high points than a normal person’s face.

And yet there was huge sadness there. Rae wished she’d paid more attention to whatever Megan’s story was. Not for gossip’s sake, but so she could understand. The gist, according to the people at the counter, was that she’d romanced a very married movie star. But this wary girl didn’t look like a femme fatale to Rae. No, there was something more to it than that.

She left the square by the vine-covered black-and-gold iron gate opposite Titania’s and said thanks for the blessings in her life.

It was one of her tenets: saying thanks every single day. Some people wrote gratitude journals, and Rae liked the idea, but she preferred a more living gratitude method. Every day, she said thanks for what had happened.

Thank you for Will, thank you for allowing us to have a good life and be able to plan a holiday when so many other people are barely surviving. Thank you that my life is calm, not like that poor girl in the square.

And always she added,
Let Jasmine be happy too, please. Wherever she is, let her be happy.

When the older woman from Titania’s Palace had said hello to her, Megan had frozen. Not another fake friendly person. Some awful cow with sly eyes had sidled up to her in The Nook the previous day, and said: ‘You look different with that hair, missy. Not so starry now.’

Megan had put down her basket and fled the shop.

But this woman – Rae, did she say her name was? – had been different. Nice. Welcoming.

Over the past two weeks, the routine of Golden Square had settled around Megan like a soft blanket. Each morning, after Nora had gone downstairs to the clinic, the dogs would gradually wake Megan. Animals were so much more comforting than people. There was never any censure in their eyes, except when they felt walking duties were being neglected.

Then Megan would make coffee for herself and stand outside the back door, often shivering in her dressing gown against the coolness, while she smoked a cigarette. It had been a long time since she’d lived in a house with a garden. It felt both strange and familiar. Nora wasn’t much of a woman for gardening, so the long hundred-foot garden was a tangle of briars and old trees. Although Megan didn’t know much about nature, she knew the biggest tree in the middle was a horse chestnut, but only because she could remember finding conkers under it when she was a kid.

Leonardo and Cici would head off into the undergrowth, noses glued to the ground as they followed scents. Then they’d return, wet from the morning dew and covered with bits of twig and grass, to sit beside her.

‘I shouldn’t be smoking beside you,’ she found herself saying on many occasions. Which was strange, as she’d never worried about anyone else being affected by passive smoking before. Smoking had been part of who she was, like wearing mini dresses and little pixie boots. But here in Nora’s house in Golden Square, smoking, a bit like her normal clothes, didn’t quite work. It was, Megan felt, as if she’d sloughed off the old skin of Megan Bouchier and was returning to Megan Flynn.

A few weeks was all it had taken. Carole had phoned her mobile a few times with updates on the disaster area that was her career.

An earthquake in the Far East and another wave of terrorist threats, coupled with a pop star’s illness and a reality TV star’s live breast-reduction operation had now claimed the headlines from Megan the Mantrapper.

‘You’re so lucky,’ Carole said. ‘That earthquake’s taken the heat off you. And thank God for Destiny’s boob op.’

Megan had actually watched a few minutes of the breast-reduction programme, until Nora had come into the sitting room and caught her at it.

‘Merciful hour, they’re like space hoppers under her chest. How did any surgeon do that to the poor woman?’ Nora stared at the television in horror.

‘He’s taking them out now,’ Megan said, searching for the remote control.

‘Not a moment too soon. They look like they might burst. I’d say she hasn’t seen her toes for a few years. Imagine the state of
her
feet.’

A rare bubble of real giggles erupted inside Megan.

‘The press haven’t given up, you know. Don’t get complacent,’ Carole warned.

‘I’m not,’ said Megan testily. ‘I’m just fed up. I want to go back to work.’

At least if she was working, she wouldn’t have time to think about what had happened with Rob.

‘Until you get offered a few decent roles again – and not slasher movies from people who know you’ll do anything now in desperation – you have to stay low. All decent offers have dried up. You hadn’t signed the contract for the costume drama, so they don’t want you any more. Thank fuck they’d finished with you in Romania. You’ll have to fly over to London for post-production work, but that’s not for another couple of months. You should do something charitable. Raise your profile in a more positive way. Do you want us to sort something out for you?’

‘No,’ said Megan, filled with misery at the cynicism of it all. Find a charity and pretend to care about something: that was the best advice from her old world.

There was no news of Rob Hartnell, other than the usual media speculation about his whereabouts. He was on a billionaire’s yacht in the Pacific or on a private island in the Caribbean or the Indian Ocean, depending which magazine you read.

‘He was supposed to be shooting a movie in Stockholm now. One of those crime thrillers,’ said Carole. ‘It’s been postponed, which means the production company is mad, which means the studio is mad, which means they all hate you. Rob Hartnell is box office magic, so there’s no way anyone’s going to hate him. One of the Hollywood gossip blogs says that you dreamed this up to garner publicity.’

Megan felt nauseated. ‘Aren’t you going to refute that?’

There was a pause. ‘Let’s just see how it plays out, right?’ said Carole.

Just thinking about it made Megan depressed.

Sitting on the bench in Golden Square, watching Rae walk away, she lit another cigarette. She wasn’t surprised the woman didn’t seem to recognise her: nobody would these days – which was one plus. The last thing she needed was for the media to find her here.

She lived in jeans and cardigans, didn’t wear make-up or even bother to brush her hair: it was so short, it didn’t need brushing. She ran her fingers through it and it settled. She was still astonished every time she looked in the mirror to find this dark-haired, wary stranger looking back at her. But the glory of her new look was that it gave her some privacy.

In London, she was used to paparazzi following her every move at film premieres and parties. After her hit Britflick, they’d trailed her for a few weeks, selling their pictures of her to the celebrity-watching magazines. She’d made an effort to dress up, had even enjoyed it.

‘You mean they papped you buying coffee in the local shop?’ Pippa had said the first time this strange phenomenon had occurred and Megan phoned immediately phoned her to report.

‘Yes,’ said Megan proudly. ‘I mean, I know it’s intrusive, but wow!’

‘What were you wearing? Not your pyjamas, please.’

‘No,’ said Megan, laughing. ‘I’m wearing my skinny jeans, a cream T-shirt with chiffon sleeves, that Vuitton scarf everyone wants – they sent it to me! – and a beret with a flower brooch on it.’

‘All that to go round the shop to get a latte?’

‘I made an effort, Pippa,’ Megan said, suddenly irritated. ‘That’s why they papped me. I’m not Julia Roberts, you know. I’m only good if I look good. I dressed up on purpose.’

‘Oh.’

Megan remembered that conversation now and felt a small dart of unease. She’d been angry at her sister for not understanding her world. A world where getting papped mattered; it meant you were somebody. Now she saw the downside of that world. She missed what she had once had. Here, apart from Nora, nobody thought Megan was anybody. That was hard.

Instead of her old glamorous life, her days involved coffee, smoking, walking the dogs, more coffee in Titania’s Palace if she could face being out in public, and then staying home watching daytime TV. Hiding. It was soul destroying.

‘Come on, walkies over,’ she shouted crossly at the dogs.

From the distance, they quivered at this new, tough Megan, and stayed away.

Oh, let them run on for a minute longer, she decided.

If anyone had changed it wasn’t her, it was Pippa. She’d once understood Megan’s life. She’d gone to the movie parties, she’d hung round with Megan’s friends. And where was she now? Not holed up with Megan, sympathising about what had happened. No, she was at home with her kids, slowly sliding on to the side of the moral police.

She’d only rung twice since Megan had come to Golden Square. That said something, didn’t it?

Nothing had happened in the few weeks since she’d come to Golden Square. Nothing had changed in her life, except that the trees in the small square were showing new growth, and early daffodils were starting to come out. She was just waiting in limbo. It was horrible.

A small, fat brown dog of indeterminate parentage lollopped along to greet Cici and Leonardo. Fed up, and just to do something, anything, Megan got off the bench and walked through the square to the play area, which was cordoned off from doggy poo by a low fence. Two young women with toddlers in pushchairs had just arrived and were starting the complicated business of unhooking the children. It seemed to take ages, this clip and that clip. Megan had watched Pippa do it with Kim when she’d been younger, but she’d always found it too hard. She’d put Kim into the pushchair, but someone else had to fasten the harness.

‘She’ll fall out if I do it,’ Megan said.

‘Just do it,’ Pippa had said once, then sighed furiously and rushed over to do it herself. Megan had been upset. Pippa never used to speak to her like that, but instead of saying sorry, her sister concentrated on her daughter. Like it was some strange motherly ritual, this pushchair thing. Settle Kim’s solid little body in properly, manoeuvre her arms through the straps, click them up, all the time talking in a soft, soothing voice.

Megan hadn’t wanted to speak, she was too hurt, but all the same she found herself mumbling, ‘I’m sorry, I’m just no good at that sort of thing.’

Pippa hadn’t even turned round. ‘You’d be good at that sort of thing if you wanted to be,’ she’d said shortly.

Megan had gone home soon afterwards. She couldn’t bear cross words or confrontation. Better to leave. She’d hopped in her sporty little MX5 and driven off, music blaring.

She’d never tried to do anything much with Kim after that, or with Toby when he came along. Megan was no good with children: she was like her mother. Ready to please men, not so good with kids.

One of the children in the playground reminded her of Kim as a squirming toddler. Same dark hair, same solid little body. Kim had grown taller now, and was all legs and skinny arms, but once she’d been a sturdy little person like this child.

The woman extracted her daughter from the pushchair, gave her a kiss, then set her down to toddle off to the sandpit.

Megan burst into tears. She’d never felt more lonely in her whole life.