‘Mum, it’s fine.’ I try to ignore the awkwardness between us, focusing instead on the clump of lights. ‘What do you want to use it for anyway?’
‘A new hobby,’ she says, secretively, holding her Blue Peter-inspired advent candelabra aloft. ‘I don’t mean to upset you. It’s just that if you need to move back in, well, it might not be so easy now.’
‘I’m not upset and I don’t need to move back in.’ I nudge a thought of the bookshop closing out of my mind, and glance at my mobile, which is ringing.
‘Hi Caroline,’ I answer, mouthing ‘sorry’ to Mum. I’m surprised Caroline should be calling at all – it’s so infrequently that I hear from her – particularly given it’s a Saturday. Usually on the weekend she’s three-sheets to the wind in some Soho members’ bar without the foggiest notion of who 90 per cent of her clients are, let alone me.
‘I just took a call for you.’ Everything Caroline says sounds like an order from a sergeant major.
‘Uh-huh.’ I’m expecting her to say she’s booked me for a dreary library talk or schools’ event with a dozen other unknown writers.
‘From Castle Rock.’
I freeze. All the chaos of Mum’s Christmas crap fades into the background. Did she really just say, ‘Castle Rock’, Rob Reiner’s production company?
‘Are you there?’ she barks as I mentally massage my heart back to life.
‘I’m here,’ I say, abandoning the lights and going into the kitchen. Through the hatch I can see Mum ear-wigging on our conversation.
‘This is what was said.’ At this point Caroline repeats, probably verbatim, what she’s been told. ‘“The head of development read Nina’s treatment. He loved it. He wants to read the full script.”’
‘Holy moly!’ I say, desperate to tell Astrid that her fantasy came true.
‘He wants it emailed today. Can you do it?’
‘Caroline, of course I can!’
‘Good!’ she says, then hangs up without any niceties.
‘Castle Rock want to read my script!’ I blurt to Mum, unable to contain my excitement.
‘What’s Castle Rock?’ she asks, blowing up an inflatable Christmas pudding while simultaneously deflating my ego.
‘One of the greatest film production companies in the world!’
‘Never heard of it.’
I sigh, wishing that I could do just one thing that might impress her for once. ‘It’s a really big deal.’
‘Just don’t get your hopes up, that’s all. It’s unlikely to amount to anything, these things rarely do.’
I wonder when she suddenly became an authority on Hollywood, and why she can’t find it in herself to be a little more encouraging.
‘No, Mum, but still, I’ve got to go!’ I put on my coat and leg it back to the flat faster than I knew my little legs could carry me.
7
‘You still haven’t told me where you got this blackboard from,’ I say to Astrid, while updating the details of our loyalty scheme and OAP coffee morning on it. Astrid trimmed the board with white fairy lights last week, and positioned it in several inches of fake snow in the window. She also made a Christmas tree out of books, and surrounded it with gifts wrapped in brown paper and red ribbons. It looks gorgeous.
‘I told you, it’s reclaimed.’ She adjusts one of the Persian rugs she found abandoned in her attic and which now helps cover the nasty blue carpet of the shop.
‘From where?’
‘Home.’
‘You found the blackboard in the attic too?’
‘Something like that,’ she says, evasively, straightening the holly wreath on the shop door.
‘Astrid Gregg, I do believe you’re keeping something from me. Spill!’
‘Aye, spill the beans,’ says Doreen, who’s been parked at the counter since we opened this morning.
‘Yeah, Astrid,’ I laugh, conspiratorially. ‘Spill the beans.’
‘I found it in a skip,’ she says, barely audibly.
‘Speak up, lassie,’ says Doreen.
‘I found it in a skip, okay?’
‘Where?’
‘At the bottom of my road.’
Doreen laughs, her teeth full of cheese puff.
‘Did you have to climb in?’ I imagine Astrid scrabbling over piles of rubble, her kaftan pulled up to her waist, in her quest for the perfect freebie.
‘Ha ha!’
‘I like it. It looks great. Very “on trend”.’
‘And no a whiff o’ cat piss aboot it!’ chuckles Doreen.
‘Charming,’ says Astrid. She climbs a book ladder to tighten one of the fairy lights. The old place is hardly going to win awards for innovative style but the warm, homely feel we’re aiming for is beginning to take shape. And with the addition of the stockings at the counter, and the homemade paper snowflakes suspended throughout the shop, the place is beginning to feel much more snug, and welcoming. We’re hoping the till might start ringing soon.
Just as I’m about to tidy the counter, my phone rings.
‘It’s Caroline!’ I stage whisper.
‘Speakerphone!’ says Astrid, stopping what she’s doing to listen. Even Doreen stops her scoffing. It’s been three weeks since I emailed my script and still I’ve heard nothing. The quick of my nails has been all but gnawed away.
‘I have news,’ says Caroline, without preamble. ‘Meet me tonight. Chiltern Street. Eight o’clock.’
‘Got it,’ I say, clapping my hands silently in excitement and grinning at Astrid. Caroline hangs up.
‘Ya shoodnae get oer excited,’ says Doreen, sounding a lot like my mother.
‘Sure she should!’ beams Astrid, who is jumping on the spot like a small child who’s just opened the best Christmas present ever. ‘If it was bad news she’d have told Nina on the phone. Wanting to meet means good news. Caroline’s so going to sell your script!’
‘Ah woodnae be sae sure,’ mutters Doreen, scratching the rough skin on her swollen legs.
‘Let’s just wait and see, shall we?’ I say, hoping desperately that Astrid is right and Doreen is wrong.
‘The Chiltern Firehouse?’ I ask Caroline, trying to tame my hair outside the wooden entrance gates. I know the sort of people who dine here – Adele, Jay Z, even Tom Cruise, for crying out loud – I’m not one of them. These people don’t use crinkled book totes as handbags, they don’t have ladders in their baggy tights (or if they do, they’re intentional) and they don’t wear jackets that were bought the best part of ten years ago and even then weren’t cool.
‘Why not?’ says Caroline, air-kissing me on both cheeks. Her large cat earrings knock against my jaw.
As the hostess leads us to our table I take in the restaurant’s interior – it’s a blend of rustic and industrial chic, with lots of low lighting, mirrors and marble tables. While edging into my seat, I accidentally graze my bum against one of the blokes at the neighbouring table.
‘Sorry,’ I cringe, embarrassed that I’ve just rearranged his cutlery with my arse.
‘No problem,’ he says, with an American twang.
The guy in question is a hipster, exactly the type of person I’d expect to find at the Firehouse. He has wavy hair brushed up off his face, big, plastic, tortoiseshell-framed glasses, a blazer and bow tie. Every time I see a hipster I have to fight the desire to reach out and mess up their hair, and this one is no exception.
‘Order anything, it’s on the agency,’ says Caroline, once we’ve sat down and she’s asked for two martinis to be brought, quick sharp! ‘On the agency’, is usually reserved for best-selling authors and those she’s trying to woo away from her competition.
I scan the menu, hoping that something will jump out at me. Whenever I go out to dinner I can pretty much guarantee that when the food arrives I’ll want what someone else has ordered. It’s the worst part of my indecisiveness. The waiter is upon us before I’ve even considered the starters.
‘Good evening. Are you ready to order?’
I hope
that Caroline will dismiss him to give me more time but instead she fires what she wants at him.
‘And for you?’
‘Uh,’ I stall, still scanning the starters. ‘Poached egg, jersey royals, wild garlic and morels, please.’
‘And for the main?’
I dither. Caroline plays with the small sideburns of her greying, short hair. ‘The Firehouse Caesar,’ I say, because it’s the only thing I see that looks vaguely appetising. I close the menu, proud of my decision-making, and hand it back to the waiter.
‘Any side orders?’
‘You should. In tribute to Sally,’ says Caroline.
The waiter hands the menu back to me. There is a choice of bizarre vegetable dishes, which I stare at blankly. Maple-bourbon sweet potatoes? Really? Lettuce hearts, a definite no. Ordering food shouldn’t be this hard.
‘Just a bowl of French fries,’ I say.
As the waiter moves away I catch the eye of Hipster. Despite myself I smile at him. He returns the gesture with one of those awkward smiles that is somewhere between grimace and twitch. He probably thinks I’m a complete goofball, which is fine, given that I think he’s a pretentious moron.
‘Two o’clock,’ says Caroline, staring into the mirror above my head. I glance over her shoulder to see what she’s referring to.
‘Don’t stare!’
‘What am I looking for?’
‘Amy Schumer,’ she whispers loudly, causing Hipster to look too. I’m surprised at how small she is and how effortlessly pretty.
The excitement of celeb-spotting over, Caroline starts messaging someone. Caroline’s phone is like an extension of her left hand. She’s never without it and she never thinks anything about checking or answering it mid-conversation. It’s all very unnerving but in the sort of way you want from your agent. I’ve always felt she could terrorise a production company into buying my work even if they hated it.
Usually I don’t mind her inattentiveness but tonight I’m desperate to hear her news, I have to stop myself from blurting, ‘Tell me the news from Castle Rock; stop fiddling with your blinkin’ phone!’ but she taps away regardless, as if I’m not at the table. I look at my fingernails, reposition my wine glass, try to figure out how they folded the napkins, that sort of stuff, until Caroline looks up with an expression as if she’d forgotten with whom she was dining.
‘Mike Steinfeldt got back to me,’ she says, once the phone is back on the table and she’s registered who I am again.
‘I gathered.’ I lean in a little closer, hanging on her every word. Mike Steinfeldt is to development what Rob Reiner is to directing – every screenwriter wants to hear from Mike Steinfeldt.
‘He wants to option it.’
‘No way,’ I mouth, dropping my butter knife, causing Hipster to glance over.
‘He said, the fact it’s as much about Truman and Anna as it is Harry and Sally will appeal to a new audience. And he likes that it’s based around marriage and divorce and the whole broken-home generation, he thinks that gives it a different feel from the original.’
‘And does he think they can get the old cast together?’
‘He isn’t sure about that. Meg Ryan doesn’t let approaches about When Harry Met Sally sequels past her agent. Billy Crystal is open to ideas but he’s turned down everything in the past. Bruno Kirby you’ve already written out, and Carrie Fisher is dead.’
It still jars me to hear about Carrie. It’s almost a year to the day that she died and honestly? I’ve still not come to terms with it. I remember where I was when I heard – in the kitchen with the radio on, drying the dishes – and how sad it made me.
‘What’s up?’ Will had asked from the sofa, scrolling aimlessly through his phone.
‘Carrie Fisher, she’s had a heart attack, she’s…’ Tears had sprung to my eyes.
‘It’s sad,’ Will had said, not bothering to look up from his phone, ‘but not worth getting upset over. It’s not as if you knew her.’
Of course I didn’t know her. But she was one of those famous people who you could imagine putting the world to rights over a cup of tea and a chocolate cake. She had such verve, such passion for life, and a naughty streak a mile wide!
And so, when I started writing my script again, I kept her in as a sort of a tribute.
‘So, what happens next?’
‘Mike’s going to make some calls, see what he can do. There will be changes to be made to the script. Are you okay with that?’
‘Of course!’ I’m too excited at the prospect of my script being optioned by Castle Rock to give any thought to what ‘changes’ might entail, though I’m guessing I’ll have to rewrite the part of Marie.
‘Good,’ she says, sliding a small white envelope with my name on it across the table. ‘Open it!’
I unseal it and pull out the slip of paper on which Caroline has written a number. The number is not small. It’s enough to take care of rent for the next year and then some. I’m officially out of the hole Will dug for me. I wipe away a tear of relief.
‘And that’s only for the option rights. You can expect to sell the full script, if they buy it, for a least ten times that amount.’
I look at the number for a very long time – it’s more money than I’ve ever had, ten times the amount would be life-changing. Caroline smiles and returns to her phone. I pick up my martini, lean back in my chair, and down it in one, an action that doesn’t go unnoticed by Hipster, who doffs his head at me, his hair not moving an inch.
8
‘How about this one?’ asks Narissa in Debenhams, showing me a black dress that wouldn’t cover my thigh. Every year Mum insists that she, Narissa and I go shopping on Oxford Street on the last Saturday before Christmas. It’s their idea of heaven and my idea of hell.
‘Very you,’ I say, without an ounce of enthusiasm. I’m already exhausted by the experience and it’s not yet eleven o’clock. Even the excitement of working with Mike Steinfeldt isn’t enough to lift me out of this misery.
‘What is the matter with you?’ Narissa holds the dress up in front of the mirror. She pulls her mirror face: cheeks sucked in, head to the right, bunching the dress at her waist. Narissa has always been a natural size eight; even after two children there’s not a stretch mark on her.
I collapse onto a plastic chair near the dressing rooms. ‘Nothing.’
‘Look what I’ve found,’ coos Mum, returning from the nightwear department.
She holds up the Mrs Claus nightie she’s found complete with Santa hat ‘avec une pompom comique’.
‘Hilarious.’
‘You haven’t seen the best bit yet.’ She whips a pair of men’s pyjamas from behind her back. ‘Mr Claus!’
‘Dad will love those,’ squeals Narissa, even more delighted than Mum.
‘It might put a spring back in his step.’
‘It might put a spring back in something else,’ laughs Narissa and she and Mum bray like donkeys. ‘Maybe I should get one for Toby!’
‘Enough,’ I say, sliding further into my chair, wondering if I was switched at birth.
‘You’ll laugh one day.’ Mum picks up a sparkly silver dress and does pretty much the exact same pose as Narissa in front of the mirror. She pulls the fabric to see if it’ll stretch over her thighs then holds it a little higher to hide her ageing neck, possibly the only thing my mother and Nora Ephron have in common: the mutual loathing of their sagging neck.
‘Nee-naw, your turn to try!’
‘Not playing.’
‘Oh, come on, love,’ says Mum, turning away from the mirror. ‘How about this?’ She holds up a long, pink sheath dress with a slit up the side.
‘Never in a million years.’
‘Try it, Nee-naw. You never know, it might be flattering.’
‘Nope.’
‘Come on, darling, it will cheer you up.’ Mum puts her arm underneath my armpit and hauls me up, oblivious that shopping is the cause of my misery, not the cure for it.
‘I hate yo
u both,’ I say, as they bundle me into a changing room and whip the curtain shut.
Inside the cubicle I take off my scarf, remove my jacket and pull off my boots, which seem to be suctioned to my calves. Sitting on the chair I stare at the dress, like a boxing opponent in the corner. I undo my trousers and admire how I have sock marks that are all but ironed into my liberated, hairy legs. No razor has touched my skin since Will walked out almost two months ago. It feels great.
‘Hurry, Nee-naw.’ Narissa tries to open the curtain a peek, which I snatch closed.
‘How does it look?’ asks Mum.
‘Give me a minute,’ I say, inching it over my boobs.
I dare to look in the mirror. I look like a pig in a blanket.
‘Nina?’
‘The colour’s all wrong.’
‘You mean it’s not black,’ says Narissa.
‘I could show you some make-up techniques, that might help.’ Mum finds the fact that her youngest daughter’s beauty regime extends to a small pot of Nivea as a one-stop fix for everything from chapped lips to ragnails abominable.
‘I doubt it.’ I hurriedly take it off before either can look.
‘Let’s have a peek, Neenaw.’
‘There’s no point.’ I say, trying to peel the thing over my head. ‘Even if it looks great, which it doesn’t, I still can’t justify the cost.’
‘If she had a proper job…’ I hear Mum say. I’m ready to hang her by the mouth from a coat hanger.
‘Still wouldn’t want it.’ Now I’m really wrestling with the dress. ‘And besides, that script I told you about…it’s been optioned by Castle Rock, so I could afford the dress if I wanted it.’
I can almost hear the look of ‘no way’ that Mum and Narissa are exchanging.
‘That’s wonderful, darling,’ says Mum, meaning to sound excited but not quite disguising the note of astonishment in her voice.
‘Maybe you’ll get your dream of a New York brownstone after all,’ says Narissa.
‘Maybe I will.’ I tug at the dress and feel the seams begin to stretch past the point of no return. I struggle some more, bumping against the partition wall.
‘Everything okay in there?’ asks Mum. The dress is now stuck diagonally across my boobs, one arm pointing up, the other pointing down, John Travolta-esque, neither going anywhere.
If Harry Met Sally Again Page 5