by Alice Feeney
“I told you we should have found a shop further out,” Maggie says.
“And I told you it wouldn’t have made no difference. What kind of men pull a stunt like that in front of a child anyway?” says John.
“Exactly the kind of men we’re dealing with. I asked you not to take Aimee, you put her in danger.”
“Well, I didn’t take Aimee, did I? How could I have? Aimee is dead.”
I hear something smash.
I’m not dead.
I climb back into the bed and hide under the duvet again. Seconds later my bedroom door opens and I hold my breath. In my head this makes me invisible.
Invisible, but not dead.
I hear someone walk closer to the bed and I hope that it is Maggie, not John. He comes into my room sometimes at night. I think he must be worried about me being too hot or something because he always takes the duvet off the bed. He does it slowly and quietly, as though he is trying not to wake me, so I pretend to still be asleep, even when I’m not. Sometimes I hear his Polaroid camera and wonder what he is taking pictures of in the dark. Sometimes I hear other things.
Somebody pulls the covers back, then gets in beside me. She puts her arm around my tummy and kisses my head; I know that it is Maggie because I can smell her perfume. She calls it “number five” and it smells nice, but I always wonder what the other numbers smell like. Maggie is squeezing me awful tight, so that it hurts a little bit, but I don’t say anything. She is crying, and the back of my neck is soon wet with her tears.
“Don’t you worry, Baby Girl. Nobody is ever going to hurt you, not while I’m alive.”
I think she says this to make me feel better, but it makes me feel worse. My first mummy died the day I was born. Maggie could die anytime and then I’d be all alone. She stops crying after a while and goes to sleep, but I don’t. I can’t. I know she is sleeping because small snoring sounds come out of her mouth and into my ears, playing a little tune with the tiny bells that are still ringing. I try to sleep too, but all I can think about is Maggie dying, those three bad men coming back to the shop, and nobody being here to save me.
Twenty-eight
London, 2017
“Don’t worry, this will save you.” Jack walks into my bedroom with two steaming mugs of what looks like coffee.
“What are you doing here?” I pull the duvet up around me.
“Well, that’s gratitude for you! I was just going to put you in a taxi last night, but I wasn’t sure you’d make it, and I was right. You puked on the journey home. Twice. And that was just the beginning. I thought you said you could drink? I stayed the night to make sure you didn’t choke on your own vomit. I think the words you are probably looking for right now are thank you.”
“Thank you,” I say after a little while, processing everything he has just said, unsure whether his words fit the gaps that the holes in my memory have left behind. I take the coffee, it’s too hot, but it’s strong and I gulp it down. I look at the pajamas I’m wearing, wondering how I got into them if I was as out of it as he’s suggesting. It’s as though he reads my mind.
“I helped get you out of your dress, mainly because you’d been sick all down the front of it just after you got out of the cab. I cleaned you up a bit and you got changed yourself. I didn’t see anything I hadn’t already seen on set, and I slept on the floor.”
I look at where he is pointing and see a pillow and a blanket on the carpet. My cheeks are so hot I’m certain my face must have turned purple with embarrassment. I can’t seem to find the right words to say, so I stick with the two that seem most appropriate given the circumstances.
“I’m sorry.” As soon as the whisper of an apology escapes my lips, my eyes fill with tears. I just keep making endless mistakes and messing everything up, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
“Hey, it’s okay.” Jack puts down his empty coffee mug and sits on the bed. “You’re obviously going through a difficult time in your personal life right now after everything you said last night.”
What on earth did I tell him?
“We’ve all been there, believe me. You’ll be all right, I promise. It’s lucky I knew where you lived. You were adamant about not telling the taxi driver or anyone else your address.”
Having a stalker will do that to you.
My mind rewinds Jack’s words and plays them again.
“How did you know where I live?”
His cheeks take their turn to redden, and I’m surprised to discover that Jack Anderson is capable of blushing.
“I live a couple of streets away from here, just a house I’m renting while we’re filming at Pinewood. I’ve seen you running in the mornings. I’ve even said hi a couple of times, but it’s like you’re in your own little world, then you jog on past like we’ve never met.”
I don’t know what to say. I do tend to zone out, not even noticing the other runners that I pass, all chasing dreams they’ll never catch. It seems a little strange that he would live so close and never mention it before now, but I remind myself that my husband is the bad guy in all this, not Jack and not me. I mustn’t start getting paranoid.
I hear my mobile vibrate with a text. It’s charging on Ben’s side of the bed for some reason. I pick it up, reading the message before Jack reaches over, looking a little flustered and taking the phone from my hand.
“That’s mine,” he says. “Sorry, I was almost out of battery, so I borrowed your charger … I wasn’t planning to spend the night.”
That’s the trouble with iPhones, they all look the same. I decide not to mention what I just read.
Call me later, Alicia xx
I had no idea that Jack and Alicia were close enough to be exchanging text messages. I tell myself that it’s none of my business. I don’t want to sound like some kind of jealous schoolgirl.
“Do you know where my phone is?” I ask.
“I’m not sure. You dropped your bag downstairs, you sort of collapsed when we got through the door. I had to carry you up to the bathroom…”
I stand up and everything hurts. I think I might be sick again.
“Whoa! Maybe you just stay where you are, I’ll go get it,” he says, and I notice that he takes his own phone with him, as though he doesn’t trust me enough to leave it behind.
When he returns with my handbag, I’m relieved to find both my mobile and wallet inside; I was worried I might have lost them in that state. I turn on my phone and the screen lights up, a display of double-digit notifications on almost every app.
“That’s weird—”
“Shit.” Jack stares down at his own phone again.
“What is it?”
The wrinkles that fan his eyes disappear with his smile and seem to resurface on his now-furrowed brow. When he doesn’t answer, I open Twitter. It’s a fairly new account and I’ve never had so many notifications or DMs. To be fair, I don’t engage with social media too often, but this is insane. I click on a link and it takes me to an article on the TBN website, written by Jennifer Jones. Beak Face.
LOVE ON AND OFF SET AT PINEWOOD STUDIOS
My eyes are drawn to the pictures before the words written beneath them, because they are of me. There’s one of Jack and me in the bar last night. Another of us taken on set, simulating sex on a hotel desk. It looks real. The final one is of us in my dressing room. I’m wearing the silk nightdress from yesterday’s shoot, which leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination, and Jack appears to be holding me tenderly and kissing the top of my head. I don’t understand how someone could have taken this photo; we were the only two people in the room.
The words are even worse:
Jack Anderson left his wife soon after the filming of Sometimes I Kill began. Aimee Sinclair is still married, but didn’t want to talk about her husband during the interview. Now we know why.
I check my emails; there are hundreds. A lot of them from all those people who used to be my friends. I scan through them without reading, stopping when I see my agent
’s name in among them. The message is short, even by Tony’s standards.
Aimee,
I think you should come in for a chat. Sooner the better.
Tony
x
I read the message twice. Due to the brevity, it doesn’t take long.
It all makes sense now: his text the other day, the unreturned calls. I digest his words, and having forced myself to swallow them down, I am satisfied I have understood them correctly: my agent is going to dump me and I am finished.
Twenty-nine
Essex, 1988
Today is Sunday.
It’s the only day of the week when the betting shop isn’t open, so we all stay in bed until lunchtime. We do this every Sunday, and I didn’t used to like it, but I do now.
John takes me to the video shop next door on Friday afternoons, and we choose two films to rent all weekend. We always watch the first one together on Saturday night, in the front room. The Christmas tree is still up in the corner, even though it is February now. I thought that maybe it was bad luck, but Maggie says it is fine, so long as we don’t turn the twinkly lights on. I think I believe her, because Maggie doesn’t lie.
We eat curry on Saturday nights too, and I like eating something that isn’t on toast. I’d never had curry before I lived here. It tastes wonderful and you don’t even have to cook it yourself, somebody else does. The food comes all the way from India, which is a faraway place where everything is hot, including the food. It’s still hot when John brings it home in a brown paper bag. It’s called a takeaway because you take the food away and eat it at home.
We always watch the second VHS on Sunday mornings, in John and Maggie’s bed with bacon sandwiches. Maggie calls them something else, which sounds like bacon buddies, but when I called them that for the first time, they both laughed. We all call them bacon buddies now, even though I know it is wrong.
John chooses one of the videos every week, and I choose the other. I don’t think Maggie cares much; she reads newspapers and magazines most of the time while the films are on, and covers my eyes and ears for some bits when John chooses a film that says eighteen on the front. Sometimes she forgets and I see bad things, but I know they aren’t real, so I don’t get scared. Today we are eating bacon buddies and watching a film called The NeverEnding Story. It’s the best film ever! We watched it last weekend too. I think we should watch it every Sunday, but Maggie said this might have to be the last time for a little while, which means a long while. For some reason, I start to think about what my Sundays were like before I came here. They were not like this.
“Why don’t we go to church on Sundays?” I ask, still watching the film.
“Because God doesn’t answer prayers from people like us,” says John, lighting a cigarette. He’s started smoking again since the bad men came. I’m a bit glad about that because it means he and Maggie argue a bit less.
“Shut up, John. Don’t listen to him. Do you want to go to church, Baby Girl?”
I think about it before I answer. Sometimes her questions are tricks. “No, I don’t think so.” I’m still staring at the screen. It’s nearly my favorite bit in the film, with a flying dog that is really a dragon. John seems bored, maybe because we’ve watched it before. I pretend not to see, but he keeps trying to touch and tickle Maggie. She tuts and slaps his hand away each time because I don’t think she likes it when he does that. I know I don’t like it when he does it to me.
When the film ends, I feel sad. Sometimes I wish I could stay inside the stories in films and books and live there instead. Maggie tells me to go to my room, close the door, and listen to one of my story cassette tapes, but I’m not ready to go from one story to the next yet. She thinks I don’t hear the noises they make, but I do. It always sounds as if he is hurting her, and I don’t like it. I hear Maggie use the bathroom afterwards and then she comes into my room and I hit Play on the tape machine, so that she thinks I was listening to it and not them the whole time. Her hair is sticking out all over the place and her cheeks are red.
“Put some proper clothes on, we’re all going out,” she says, then turns to leave.
“Out?”
“Yes, out. It’s the opposite of in. Hurry up.”
We leave a little while later through the back door. I have never been out the back door before, and when I step through it, I see lots of gray concrete, and fences that are too high to look over. There is a red car too, which I think I have seen before. Maggie pushes the front seat forward so that I can climb in the back, and when I do, it smells like a memory.
I’m not sure how long we drive; I can’t stop staring out the windows. I think I had forgotten that there was more than just the shop and the parade. There are so many roads and houses and people, and the world seems very big all of a sudden. We stop at a pub, which is a place where people go when they are thirsty but don’t want to drink at home. I know this because my real daddy liked to do that a lot.
Inside, Maggie and I sit down at a table, while John gets some drinks: a pint of Guinness for him, a Coke for her, and a lemonade for me. We drink in silence, and Maggie’s face looks strange. I’m not sure what we are doing here, we have fizzy drinks at home. John says maybe we should go, but then two men come over and everyone except me hugs or shakes hands. One of the men rubs me on the head, messing up my hair, which had just been brushed.
“Remember me?” he says, with a smile that doesn’t fit his face.
I do not remember him because we have never met, but he does remind me of someone.
“I’m your uncle Michael, and last time I saw you, you were just a baby girl.”
“She’s still my Baby Girl, aren’t you, Aimee?” Maggie gives me that look that says, Be quiet, without her actually having to say the words.
His hair is orange, just like Rainbow Brite’s, and he has small hands for a man. He is not my uncle, but then Maggie is not really my mum, and John is not really my dad. People here seem to like pretending to be someone they are not. The two men sound like Maggie, not John, and the way they speak reminds me of before, when my home was in Ireland. I think Michael must be Maggie’s brother; they do look a lot alike with the same sort of lips and eyes.
They talk for a long time and I start to feel sleepy. Maggie tells me to stop fidgeting, but I can’t help it. I’m bored, and I would have brought one of my Story Teller magazines if I’d known I would just have to sit still all afternoon.
“I’m telling you, the last three shops they went after all had Irish links. The feckin’ eejits think we’re IRA just because we speak with an accent,” says Maggie.
“Keep your voice down.” John sees me staring. “What you gawping at, Pipsqueak? Why don’t you go play over there.” I look where he is pointing and see three colorful tall machines standing in the corner, all with flashing lights and buttons. John puts his hand in the pocket of his jeans and gives me some coins, but I don’t know what to do with them.
“She’s too little, John. She doesn’t understand.” Maggie sucks through the straw in her empty glass, making a funny noise. She tells me off when I do that.
“Nonsense! She’s bright as a button! Always got her head in a book, this one. Here, let me show you.” John lifts me up. He carries me to the first machine, then drags a chair from an empty table and stands me on top of it, so that I can reach. He lifts my hand in his to push a button, which plays a tune. “This is Pac-Man and I think you’re going to love it.”
“She’s turned into a proper little daddy’s girl,” says the man who says he is my uncle.
Everyone smiles, except Maggie.
Thirty
London, 2017
I shower and put on some clean clothes. I’ve taken a couple of paracetamol and I should be starting to feel better, but I don’t. My agent is going to dump me. He didn’t even reply to the email I sent, his assistant did, and only to say that Tony could squeeze me in an hour from now, giving me almost no time at all to get ready. This latest invasion of reality into th
e fictitious happy life I had curated for myself was unexpected. I don’t have sufficient defenses left to stop, or even subdue, the attack of anxiety that follows. I’ve only just got the life I thought I wanted; I can’t possibly lose it now.
“Your agent probably just wants to have a chat, like his email says. I think you’re reading far too much into it,” says Jack, as I attempt to apply some makeup.
I don’t normally bother with the whole face-paint routine when I’m not working; I’m not good at that sort of thing. My fingers find the shape of a lipstick inside my bag. I try to steady them enough to put it on, then realize too late that the bright red lipstick isn’t mine. It’s hers. The woman who left it here when I wasn’t. Only my lower lip is red, and for a moment I’m so tired and confused I consider leaving it that way.
“It’s just one stupid article, everyone will have forgotten about it by tomorrow, and I’m sure your agent doesn’t care whether you are having an affair,” Jack adds.
I turn to face him. “But we’re not having an affair.”
“You don’t have to tell me.” He’s sitting on Ben’s side of the bed with his feet up. I don’t know why I feel so guilty when I haven’t done anything wrong.
“I still don’t understand how Jennifer Jones got those pictures.” I apply the color to my upper lip and look at my reflection. For a moment, it’s Alicia’s face that I see. The idea that she is having an affair with my husband, and that the two of them are trying to frame me, still seems ridiculous, but stranger things have happened. Maybe I was too quick to dismiss it. Ben is handsome and charming, witty and fun. At least that’s the version of himself he presents to the rest of the world. Nobody would believe who Ben is behind closed doors. Just the idea of the two of them together feeds the hate that has been growing inside me all these years. Alicia has been a bitch to me ever since school.