The Last Time I Saw You (16 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Jules’s words whirl around my head the next few days, stubbornly refusing to quietly retreat into the ether. I’m so confused by now that I barely know which way is up. I know that William and I could never be, whatever she says, but I also know that he is a soul in torment, a man in need of a friend. And yet, who am I trying to kid? Every time I think of his kiss I feel a hot rush of shame at the fragment of time where I allowed myself to fall. The shame doubles as I remember how self-righteous I was back in the day, how quick to judge, the irony too bitter to contemplate. Until I know, absolutely know, that the urge has gone, then I must keep myself quarantined.

Not that there’s a shred of evidence that he wants my friendship—I haven’t heard a peep from him since I sent the last text. Perhaps it really is over, done, finished, back to the place where news comes via occasional updates from Lola, but some place inside me balks at believing it—the
secret, hidden part that feels connected to him, drawn together by her and yet irrevocably held apart.

I can’t help thinking that James is avoiding me. He’s conveniently away for the weekend, but come Sunday night, I find him standing at the stove, holding a wooden spoon as if it’s a hockey stick. James is not a natural chef.

“Hi!” he says, crossing the kitchen to kiss me as if I’ve just arrived at a dinner party. “Spaghetti bolognese coming up.”

“You always put massive lumps of carrot in it,” I say, sullenly.

“No carrots!”

“Stop talking in exclamation marks,” I say, glugging a large glass of wine out of the extravagant-looking bottle he’s bought. “It won’t stop me hating you.”

“Hate’s a very strong word, Olivia.”

“And don’t call me Olivia.”

William always calls me Olivia. Why is that?

“Livvy.” He abandons his station to clink glasses with me. “Sorry.”

He is sorry, I can see that, but there’s also an irrepressible glee that lurks behind it. Sometimes I wish I didn’t know him quite as well as I do. I think back with the minimum possible enthusiasm, and peer into the frying pan, poking at the bolognese with maximum disdain.

“Charlotte said you had a nice lunch together.”

I spin on my heels, enraged. I hate that they’re talking about me offline, that there’s already an “us” and a me. It was bad enough being the sex police, but this is worse.

“Oh did she?”

“Y-yes. I thought—”

“Whatever you thought, you thought wrong. This is a terrible idea, James. She’s engaged! She works with me. And even if those things weren’t the case, she’s not a nice person.”

Disastrous approach. He scowls at me, fire flashing in his eyes.

“I’m indulging you here, Livvy, it’s not actually any of your business what two consenting adults decide to do. And don’t go thinking you’ve got any right to the moral high ground.” That hits me where it hurts. I sit back down, winded. “Sorry,” he says again. I look at him, hoping that if my eyes are a window on my soul, the blinds are down. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“I’m sorry too.” The fight has all but left me. He looks at me, a softness about him that I rarely see, that macho jokiness turned down low. “Do you like her?” I say, even though I know the answer, the very asking of the question almost masochistic. At least I’m not thinking about William anymore.

“Yeah,” he says, a helpless smile unfurling across his face like a welcome banner. “She’s . . . she’s totally different from the others.”

Harder to get, I think, remembering the parade of ninnies who’ve tripped through our house, leaving any shred of resistance at the door. Is that all it is, or could it really be something more profound? I don’t think I can bear it to be the latter.

All these years I’ve told myself that James isn’t a man who can commit, that I’ve captured the best of him like a butterfly collector trapping the perfect Admiral—if it was just that I didn’t make the grade it will hurt more than I could ever admit.

“Just be careful, okay?” I say, leaning across the table and squeezing his hand. “Is she saying anything about leaving him?”

I look around our skanky kitchen, thinking about that oversized rock weighing down Charlotte’s spidery left hand. The Postbox is a banker, the kind of man who wears red pants but manages to get away with it thanks to the size of his bank balance. I bet her no-fat yogurts live in a top-of-the-range Smeg fridge, her unused oven some kind of self-cleaning masterpiece of German engineering. I can’t help worrying that James is the equivalent of the handsome tennis coach servicing a bored trophy wife until she can’t stand the heat.

“She’d leave tomorrow if she could, but he’s totally emotionally reliant on her.”

The idea that that phrase has sprung from the lexicon of James’s mind is patently absurd. A flash, a fragment, a shard of the past: Sally sobbing in my arms about Gabriel. That’s why—the very reason—I won’t let my feelings for William gain any kind of purchase on my heart: unavailable equals agony. James is the proof—both the fact of him and the state of him at this very moment. I spring up, cross to the stove.

“I knew there were carrots in it!”

I set off for Pinewood at the crack of dawn, hoping that tinted moisturizer will pass for a good night’s sleep. James and I stayed up until gone midnight talking, the subject of William inevitably rearing its ugly head. I totally downplayed it, repeated my line that it was an error of judgment born out of grief, leaving out the part where something
within me reared up to meet him. The fact I omitted that vital piece is probably why he didn’t warn me off.

“Poor bastard,” he said. “I bet he feels like a total tool, on top of everything else he’s getting thrown at him.” I thought of William that night at the Berkeley, the self-punishment that lurks inside him, and knew that it was true. “I’d give it a couple of days and text him again, put him out of his misery.”

Perhaps I will, I think, swinging James’s ancient Golf up to the Pinewood security gates—he always tells me if he thinks I’m behaving like a loser, so if he’s actually advising a course of action it can’t be so disastrous.

After I’ve submitted myself to the kind of questioning you might expect if you were crossing the Iron Curtain, the security guard finally waves me through and I go and park. I’ve been told Flynn’s assistant will be meeting me, and after a couple of minutes a stressed-looking girl in the skinniest of skinny jeans comes speeding across the parking lot clutching a sheaf of papers and gabbling into her phone. Her conical face is scattered with freckles, dark auburn hair hanging loose around it: she looks like a fox, pursued by a pack of hounds.

“Bye, bye,” she barks in a cut-glass accent, then turns to me. “So sorry, I’m Katy.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Follow me,” she says, bejeaned legs scissoring off at ninety miles an hour. “I’m afraid they’re running over. Flynn suggested you might want to come down to set.”

To set? Would I ever! They’re shooting an exterior scene on a back lot, the crew all standing around waiting for the lighting to be adjusted for the next take. Flynn’s sitting on a canvas chair with his name on it, like an old-fashioned film star. He’s studying his lines.

“I don’t want to disturb him,” I say, sensing Katy’s anxiety levels rising, but just at that moment Flynn looks around.

“Olivia!” he says, springing up, arms held wide. He wraps me up in a warm hug.

“Hi!” I say, my face crushed against his stubbly cheek.

“You just give us a few minutes and I’ll be all yours,” he says. “Have you got Olivia a drink?” he asks Katy.

“No, I was just about to,” she says.

Flynn grins and shrugs in mock despair.

“Can’t get the staff these days.”

“I’d love a cup of coffee if that’s okay,” I say, trying to tell her with my smile that he’s joking, that I’m a fellow serf. “Milk, no—” but she’s already left.

A gorgeous French actress who I’ve seen in a couple of art-house films prowls onto set, all long limbs and flicky dark hair. The scene is only a couple of lines, but the dialogue has to take place in the midst of a rain shower.

“It’s always been you,” she pleads. “You must know that.”

Water buckets over her, as Flynn replies.

“If only I could,” he says, crossing to kiss her and then striding out of shot.

You’d think we’d be done in ten minutes, but the crew have to shoot it from every possible angle, the actress getting more and more frozen on every run-through. Eventually the director shouts that it’s time to move on.

“One more guys, one more,” insists Flynn.

“We’ve got it,” says the director. “You nailed it.”

His costar is already wrapped up in a blanket, gratefully climbing into a warm pair of Uggs. Flynn’s expression changes to one of grim determination.

“I can do better. We can do better. You’ve gotta trust me on this.”

The director looks at him, the tension between the two of them palpable. I can feel a knot of anxiety forming in my stomach, even though it’s not my drama. Eventually she forces a smile.

“Reset for Flynn’s close-up.”

It’s a good hour before they finish, what with the retouching of Marie-Claire’s ruined makeup and the lighting being adjusted to best serve Flynn’s emerald green eyes. Once they’re done he claps me on the arm, full of bonhomie.

“Let me get showered and changed and then we can get to work.”

Half an hour later I’m tentatively knocking on the door of his trailer.

“Enter,” he calls, and I swing open the door. He’s got a shirt on but it’s still unbuttoned, toned six pack displayed to perfection.

“Shall I . . .”

“No, no. Come in, make yourself at home.”

I can’t help but feel a little disappointed: the trailer’s huge and everything, with an impressive-looking minibar, but it’s still faintly reminiscent of those rainy Welsh caravanning holidays Dad used to subject us to.

“Have you had a haircut?”

“No, not that I’m aware of,” I say, self-consciously patting my windswept mop. “Um, I washed it.”

“Glad to hear it,” says Flynn, gazing at me. “The washing, I mean.” I try my hardest not to get flustered, distracting myself by pulling the pages of script out of my bag. “Snap,” he says, reaching into a perspex folder and bringing out his own version. At least I think it is: it’s so covered in scribbles
that it looks like a troupe of inky-legged spiders have staged a line-dancing contest across it.

“Lovely job you’ve done here. Lovely. Had a few wee thoughts on where we could go next, if it’s any help.”

“Of course! That’s why I’m here—fire away.”

“I wanna bring everything I can to it, you must understand that,” he says earnestly. “So I’m thinking, shouldn’t I be on camera, out there in the field? So my fans can see I’m not just another celebrity piggybacking on some cause for their own glory.”

My heart sinks as heavily as an elevator plummeting fifty floors. I can’t bear for Mary to be right, for this to be no more than a vanity project. I suppose the writing was on the wall if I’d just chosen to read it.

“That’s so key, of course, but the whole idea is that it’s from the point of view of the young girl, the contrast between the two outcomes.”

He sits back in his seat, crossing his arms.

“And you think if my ugly mug pops up people suddenly won’t care?”

I laugh nervously.

“Of course not. I just wonder if it might be a more immersive experience if we enter her reality unadulterated.” He stares at me blankly, and no wonder—I sound like I’ve walked off Newsnight Review. What would Mary do, what would Mary do? She’d flirt, in that special patented Mary way that I can’t begin to emulate. “Your face would always be a bonus, but I just wonder whether your voice-over would do the same job.”

“That’s settled then,” he says, getting out a thick, black pen. “Open on Flynn, in a shanty town, wee children playing in the background.” He stares off into the middle
distance. “I was thinking I could maybe direct it too, save us a few quid. It’s
imperative
the money goes to where it’s most needed.”

I grit my teeth, a wave of anger rising up inside. A stubborn part of me still won’t let him throw away the chance to do something that’s genuinely good. I look at him, smile as warmly as I can. Surely, on some level, that’s what he wants too?

“Yes, and that would be great, but we do have some excellent directors we can call on. Spending money on making the best film we possibly can will mean we’ll pull in more cash in the long run.”

“And you don’t think I want to do that?”

“Of course I do!”

“Then you’ve lost me,” he says, a tight smile on his face. “Not sure what your point is.”

“I’m . . .” I pause. I know I should just back off, admit defeat and bow to Mary’s superior understanding, but something won’t let me drop the bone. “I’m just trying to advise you. Professionally.” Wrong tack—I can see his hackles rising as he feels himself being patronized. I hold his gaze, try and find the “jumped up gypsy” with no airs and graces who I liked so much. “Flynn, we can do something amazing here, we can really make a difference. I just want the finished product to be every bit as heartfelt as your vision.”

“And who better to deliver that than me?”

I might as well have brought a sleeping bag. By the time we’ve reached the bottom of page two, three hours have passed, Flynn questioning every single line, me refusing to play dead. There are repeated demands for him to go
back to set, but he ignores every one. When the third knock comes, he flings the door open like he’s being tortured.

“I will
be there
once this is done,” he snarls at the hapless walkie-talkie-wearing assistant director. “You cannot control me with a schedule.” A couple of minutes later his phone rings. “It’s my agent,” he mouths. She’s obviously been alerted by the producers, as he starts to get red in the face as he listens to her. “I’m about to go,” he snaps. “You know how important this is to me. It’s not like I’m just writing a check, why won’t people appreciate that?”

As I look at his earnest face, I realize that it’s true; in his Alice in Wonderland celebrity world, this is the closest he gets to duty. Now I’m close to it, it’s looking increasingly like an enormous playground, with grown-up-sized children playing an extended version of let’s pretend, every whim indulged until they’re barely able to feed themselves. What happens when something truly terrible happens, when the sky turns from blue to black in a way that no amount of money or sycophantic assistants can fix?