by Alice Feeney
“When they come, you just say you hid out back and found everyone like this. You don’t tell them about the gun. You don’t tell them nothing. I love you, Baby Girl. You tell them your name is Aimee Sinclair, that’s all you say when they come, and you remember that I loved you.”
I’m crying too hard to speak. I lie in her arms, her blood all over my face and clothes, and when I manage to say, “I love you too,” her eyes are already closed.
Forty-six
London, 2017
I emerge from the bathroom at the club, coercing my head to hold itself high, and planning to just get the hell out of here as fast as I can. I feel as if everyone at the party is looking at me after my exchange with Jennifer Jones, and although she has been escorted from the building, I can’t stay here now. She’s confirmed what I suspected from the start: I’m being set up by my husband and a stalker who is pretending to be me. I remember all the vintage postcards I found in the shoebox in the attic, all written by her, all with the same short message:
I know who you are.
Well, I don’t know who she is, but I know that they’re working together, I’m sure of it.
If the woman looks older than me, then it can’t be Alicia, and I don’t know anyone else who hates me enough to want to destroy me like this. And as for Jack …
“There you are, I’ve been looking everywhere for you! I heard what happened,” he says, crossing my path right on cue. His face is doing such a good job of portraying concern that I almost believe it is genuine.
“How could you?”
His mouth opens and closes repeatedly, whatever he is trying to say experiencing a series of false starts. “Je ne comprends pas,” he eventually says with a childish grin, accompanied by a theatrical shrug.
I try to push past him, but he stops me. “I’m not in the mood for your silly French phrases.”
“No. Right. Of course, I’m sorry. If you mean sending the photos to the press, well, then I did that for you as well as me, you’ll thank me one day. All publicity is good publicity, did nobody teach you that yet?”
“I’m going to leave now.”
“No, you’re not.” He blocks my path. “Stay for one more drink. Journalists and politicians aren’t the only people who need to spin for a living. You need everyone here to think this little incident was nothing, laugh it off. Let them see that you don’t give a shit. Then, and only then, can you leave this party.”
“I hate you right now.”
“I hate me all the time, but I think you should put that to one side for a moment. Think with your head, not your heart, then you can go back to hating me again tomorrow.”
“No, I want to leave.”
He sighs in mock defeat. “Okay, then let me take you home, I’ll call us a taxi.”
“I don’t need you to take me home. Go hang out with Alicia.” He smiles at this, and I feel childish, wishing I could take back the words.
“It’s nothing, it never was. I’m not sleeping with her, regardless of what she might have told you, and I don’t plan to. Christ, she’d probably swallow me whole afterwards, like one of those spiders who eat the male after mating. I’m just being kind because she’s going through a bad patch. Her mother died a few weeks ago, and her grief seems to have consumed her. It surprised me a bit at first, because it sounded like they had a difficult relationship. I always remember this horrible story she told me, that happened when she was a teenager. Apparently, her mum didn’t speak to her for over a week once, just because she didn’t get the lead in some stupid school play, can you imagine?”
He’s talking about when I got the part of Dorothy instead of her, I’m sure of it.
“Alicia ended up running away from home because she thought her mum didn’t love her anymore after that. She slept in a cardboard box on the street for three nights before going back. Even then, her mother never forgave her, said that she had let her down because she didn’t get the part. It’s funny, isn’t it, why we do the things we do? Why we become the people we become? I’ve reached the conclusion that our ambitions are rarely our own. Her mother might have died, but I swear Alicia is still trying to make her proud, desperate for forgiveness. Imagine that; having a ghost for a muse. A few days after her mother’s funeral, her agent dropped her. It wasn’t his fault, he didn’t know, and to be fair she hasn’t even had an audition for months.”
No wonder she hates me so much.
“She said she has an audition for the new Fincher movie tomorrow.”
“Ha! See what I mean! Now, Alicia is someone who knows how to spin! From now on, in any given situation, I want you to think, ‘What would Alicia do?’ Then you should at least consider doing that, instead of being so nice all the time. Nice wins in the movies, but rarely in real life. There is no Fincher audition; rumor has it he’s already decided on the female lead and the deal is practically signed off.”
I feel a moment of pure joy rush through me but say nothing. I’ve learned to keep quiet about everything in this business until contracts have been signed and exchanged. Promises and hearsay are worthless. But I can still feel people staring at me and I want them to stop.
“I need to go home.” The words come out of my mouth wrapped in a whisper, but Jack hears them.
“Let me help you.” He takes my hand, and I let him lead me through the crowds and different-colored rooms towards the exit.
A waiter carrying a tray with a single glass of champagne blocks our path in the middle of the red room.
“No, thank you,” I say, avoiding eye contact.
“It’s Dom Pérignon, not house,” the waiter says. “We don’t normally serve it by the glass, but this was paid for by the gentleman at the bar. He also wanted me to tell you that he likes your shoes,” he adds, looking more than a little embarrassed. I peer behind him, but don’t see anyone I recognize. Everyone I do see seems to be staring in my direction; I don’t think I’m imagining it anymore. My phone beeps inside my handbag, and I let go of Jack’s hand, my fingers franticly searching for it, scared of what it might say—some news alert about what the police think I have done, or Jennifer Jones’s latest online article. But it’s just a text, albeit from a number I don’t recognize. At first, I think it must be a mistake when I read the two words on the screen accompanied by a link. Then I feel my body turn icy cold.
“What date is it?” I ask Jack.
He twists his wrist to consult his Apple Watch. More people seem to be filling the room with every second that passes.
“September sixteenth. Why?”
I read the two words on the screen again, blinking, unsure whether I can trust my own eyes.
Happy Birthday!
I have celebrated my birthday in April for most of my life. Nobody knows that I was really born in September. Except Maggie. But she’s been dead for years.
I watched her die.
I look wildly around the room.
Who bought me this drink?
Who sent me that text?
Who is it that knows who I really am?
It isn’t her that I see, it’s him. Just a glimpse of his eyes watching me from the corner of the red room. My not-so-missing husband finally found. He raises a glass in my direction, but then someone walks right in front of him, and when I look again, he’s gone. Like a ghost.
Did I imagine it?
More and more people are staring at me, I’m not imagining that.
I turn to Jack, but he is busy looking at his phone, and when he looks up, his expression is not unlike all the others being worn by the faces in the room. He looks at me as though he were staring at a monster. I look back at the text message and click the link. It redirects me to the TBN news app, and I see my face on the screen and read my name in the headline.
The sensation is disorienting.
It’s like thinking you were sitting in the audience, only to discover you were actually on center stage the whole time. Surrounded by expectant eyes, but unable to remember your character, let a
lone your lines. I feel dizzy. I think I might be sick right here in front of them all. The crowd is almost completely silent as I see the now-familiar shape of Detective Alex Croft walking towards me, the sea of expectant faces parting to allow her through.
“Well, isn’t this a nice party,” she says. “Aimee Sinclair, I am arresting you on suspicion of murdering Ben Bailey. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”
Each one of her words seems to be punctuated with a further loss of hope, until I have none left.
She smiles her crooked smile, then leans forward and whispers in my ear, before cuffing my wrists, “I always knew you were a killer actress.”
Forty-seven
Essex, 2017
Maggie O’Neil sits in her flat reading the Sunday newspapers. She wears cotton gloves on her hands because the flat is cold, and because she hates the sight of them; they are hands that have spent a lifetime working for a living, not acting. Her hands have worked hard because her life has been hard, and nothing about any of it is fair, because life just isn’t. Maggie has been waiting a long time to tell her side of the story, and now that her turn has finally come, she’s enjoying every minute.
She removes her gloves temporarily, to look at the picture of Aimee as a child she keeps on the little side table next to the telephone. The frame is covered in a thin layer of dust, the wood a little chipped and scratched in places. The photo inside the frame is old now, and a little faded. Maggie shakes her head, unaware that she is doing so, and narrows her eyes at the smiling face of the child in the picture. After all I did for you, she thinks, and tuts. Maggie believes that she is responsible for Aimee’s success; she helped raise her as a child after all, taught her things, gave her opportunities that Maggie herself never had. And what did the child ever do for her in return? Nothing, that’s what. Doesn’t even acknowledge her existence.
She holds the frame right up to her face, as though she might kiss the glass. Then she breathes on it and wipes the dust and grime with the sleeve of her hoodie, to get a clearer view of the face beneath the dirt. Aimee was only five or six when the photo was taken. She was a good girl back then. She did what she was told.
Not like now.
Maggie prefers to remember Aimee as the child she used to be, rather than the woman she grew up into; a woman who acts as though Maggie doesn’t exist. She spent years wondering what happened to the sweet little Aimee in this photo, but she knows the truth about that now, too, no matter how badly it still hurts. Sweet little Aimee found a new home for herself with a series of foster parents and started acting. She was so good at pretending to be someone she wasn’t as a child, she went and made a career of it—a lifetime of lying to everyone, including herself. But Maggie knows the truth. Maggie knows who Aimee really is. Perhaps that’s why Aimee acts as though Maggie is dead.
Maggie reads all the online articles about Aimee, checking Twitter and Facebook and Instagram for updates at least once an hour. She buys all the newspapers and cuts out all the reviews, then saves them in her giant red album of Aimee. She’s read every single interview, and despite searching for some scrap of gratitude or recognition, Aimee has never, ever, mentioned her. Not once.
Maggie looks down at her ugly hands again and sees that she is doing that thing that she does from time to time. She can’t remember when she started doing it, but wishes she could stop. She holds the three smallest fingers of her left hand inside her right one and closes her eyes; it’s easier to pretend she’s still holding the little girl’s hand when her eyes are closed. Aimee used to like holding Maggie’s hand, but then she went and grew up into someone who didn’t look or sound like Aimee at all. The children we raise are supposed to love us, not leave us behind.
Maggie keeps that picture of Aimee by the telephone because she knows that the girl will call her up one day, she just knows it. Her eyes move from the smiling child in the picture back to the sight of her own ungloved hands holding the frame. She is equally disgusted by what she sees and puts her white cotton gloves back on.
You can do all sorts of things to your face and your body to make them look younger and more beautiful. A variety of potions and lotions for the amateurs, a wide range of procedures and operations for the more dedicated followers of self-preservation. But the hands are always a giveaway. She stands and stretches, her back aching from leaning over today’s newspapers for too long.
Maggie walks around the tiny front room, negotiating a path around the clutter. Some of it her own, most of it inherited from people who didn’t need whatever they had wherever they were going. She runs a house-clearance company now, a rather successful one too. She often has to turn down work lately; she can only do so much on her own, and she likes working alone; she learned a long time ago that other people can’t be trusted. Clearing out the homes of dead people is hard work, not like acting, but it does have its rewards.
She stops pacing to examine her reflection. The mirror on the wall is nice, with a good, solid frame. She recovered it from an old lady’s house in Chiswick last week. Maggie only takes things she knows won’t be missed. She is mostly pleased by what she sees when she looks in the glass. Mostly. She’s worked hard on this face and body, really hard. She’s had some help: a nose job, liposuction, eye-bag removal, Botox, fillers. Her face looks very different from how it used to, but it still isn’t quite right.
She pulls her long black curly hair across it like a curtain, then flicks it back over her shoulder before lowering her gaze, unbuttoning her shirt a little. Her chest is still her worst feature, the sight of it inflicting daily damage on her self-confidence, but the doctor in Harley Street is insisting on yet another meeting before going ahead with the procedure. She closes her eyes, touching her chest with her fingertips, imagining what her body will feel like when everything has been done.
Technically she is middle-aged now, and it’s about time she had what she wanted in life, everything she has worked so hard for. She leans closer to the mirror, sees a black hair on her chin, and reaches for a pair of tweezers on the mantelpiece—there are several pairs all over her home. Maggie only sits down to relax on the sofa again when the face she has tried so hard to perfect is hair-free.
She refreshes her laptop and smiles at the new tweets she reads about Aimee, taking screen grabs of each one. Then she checks her emails, but there is nothing new. Maggie has tried dating websites in the past, but true love is a luxury that she has never quite been able to afford. And she hasn’t spent all these years, working hard on this body, just to share it with some loser. She glares at the letter on the mantelpiece from the Harley Street doctor because she often thinks that her current situation—being alone—is his fault.
Maggie returns her attention to today’s newspapers, slipping her glasses up onto her nose and licking her finger before turning the pages. She sips her lukewarm green tea with a series of loud slurps. She hates the flavor, but the proven antiaging and antioxidant benefits far outweigh any displeasure experienced by her taste buds. She reminds herself as she gulps it down that green tea can help delay several signs of skin aging, such as sagging skin, sun damage, age spots, fine lines, and wrinkles. Maggie thinks the idea that what is on the inside of a person counts the most, is nothing more than a myth invented by ugly people.
Her gloved hands hover in midair when her eyes find what they have been looking for, forming a bird-shaped shadow on the wall. A picture of Aimee Sinclair is staring right back at her from the newspaper: Aimee the actress, all grown-up, with a big smile stretched across her stupid, lying face. It must be an old picture; she’s quite certain that Aimee isn’t smiling anymore.
Maggie’s eyes stick to the words written in the headline, as if she’s fallen under a spell. She removes her glasses and wipes them on her hoodie, ignoring the stains from last night’s spilled baked beans on toast. Then she rests them back on her nos
e to get a better look. She stares at the words as though she were in a trance, translating them into something that makes her smile so hard it hurts.
AIMEE SINCLAIR ARRESTED FOR HUSBAND’S MURDER
Maggie reads the story three times. Slowly. Some meals for the mind are too delicious to rush. She picks up her left-handed scissors and takes her time cutting out the article, careful not to tear the thin paper. Then she lifts the heavy photo album from its place on the coffee table, and turns to one of the few empty pages at the back. She peels away the transparent sleeve and sticks the new Aimee Sinclair clipping right in the middle of the page.
Forty-eight
London, 2017
“Name?” says the prison guard behind the desk.
“Aimee Sinclair,” I whisper.
“Speak up, and look at the camera,” he barks, and I repeat my name, while staring at the small black device attached to the wall. It feels a bit like being at an airport, except that I know I’m not going anywhere nice.
“Place your right hand in the middle of the screen,” he says next.
“What for?”
“I need to process your fingerprints. Place your right hand in the middle of the screen.” He sounds weary. I do as he says. “Now just your right thumb.” I move my hand. “Now the left…”
I feel strange as I follow a female guard through further airport-style security. A little light-headed, as though perhaps I am dreaming and none of this is real. I walk through a full-size scanner and then stand with my arms and legs spread, while two guards pat down every single part of my body.