by Alice Feeney
Am I losing my mind?
I lean against the wall, my breathing uneven and rushed, until the stress of my current predicament breaks the spell. I force myself to stand up straight and close the door, as though the memories the room invokes need to be locked away. I search the rest of the house before returning to the lounge, but Jack is not here. I stare at his keys and mobile, left redundant on the coffee table, and feel as if I’m going completely mad. How can this be happening to me again?
I find my own phone and for a moment consider calling Detective Croft, but then I remember where that got me last time: prison. I cannot call the police. I cannot trust the police. I can’t trust anyone. I notice that I’ve missed five calls, then see that they are all from my agent. I could tell Tony that Jack has gone missing, but what would that achieve? I decide against it. I’m quite certain my agent already thinks I am crazy. I see that he’s left two messages; I’ve obviously lost the Fincher film, so it seems pointless to listen. Before I get the chance to hear whatever he has to say, there is a knock at the door and I freeze. I don’t know what to do. I’m convinced it’s the police, that maybe I’m being set up all over again for something I did not do.
The knocking at the door resumes almost as soon as it stops, louder this time, more insistent, as though whoever is out there has no intention of going away. I walk into the hall and see the shape of someone bigger than me behind the frosted glass, but that’s all. What if it is him? The man I was married to for nearly two years, who didn’t even tell me his real name.
It could be him.
I walk to the kitchen, take a knife from the stainless-steel block on the counter, then return to the hallway holding the blade behind me. I open the door, just a fraction, enough to see who is standing on the other side.
“I forgot my keys, can I come in, s’il vous plaît?” says Jack.
I let out the breath I hadn’t known I was holding and step back from the door, watching as he passes by with a collection of shopping bags in each hand. I follow him into the kitchen, replacing the knife without being seen, and pulling my towel a little tighter around my body. Jack puts a carton of milk in the fridge, then turns around, his eyes lingering on my legs beneath the towel before making contact.
“I thought we might need a few supplies, and I also thought you might need something to wear. Apologies in advance if I’ve got your size wrong. It’s all from Portobello market, just some bits to keep you going for now.” He hands me one of the bags, and I can see a couple of dresses, some loungewear, and some new underwear inside. “And I got you these, I know how much you like to run.” He opens a shoebox, revealing an expensive-looking pair of trainers.
“Thank you.” I feel overwhelmed by his kindness, so I don’t know why I can’t stop myself from saying something I shouldn’t. “I didn’t know you had a little girl.” The words come out of my mouth like an accusation, and I can see I’ve caught him off guard.
“Yes, I have a daughter, she’s called Lilly. I don’t get to see her as often as I’d like, with the job, you know how it is.”
Not really. I would have given it all up if I’d had a child.
“Does she live with your ex-wife?”
“No, my daughter was a result of my first marriage. She was born in France and lived there until she was five, that’s why I’ve been trying to teach myself the language. She moved here last year and lives with my sister when I’m working, or here with me when I’m not. It isn’t a secret, it’s just that the whole single-dad thing tends to put people off. I’d love for you to meet her one day.”
He cared what I thought enough to hide the truth from me.
I don’t blame him for not telling me before now. We learn to future-proof our hearts, building a maze around them until they are almost impossible for others to find. I imagine myself becoming a mother to someone else’s little girl. I could do that, but deep down I still want a child of my own, my flesh and blood. I can tell Jack wants to change the subject, but I’m not ready to yet.
“Why doesn’t she still live with your first wife?”
He looks away briefly. “Because she died.”
“Oh, I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be, you weren’t to know. Cancer took her. She fought a good fight. Sometimes I wish she hadn’t, she was ill for a long time and it was hard. For all of us. It broke my heart, broke my everything actually, but I had to carry on for Lilly. We’re okay now.” His face changes, as though a filter has been applied to my view of him. “By the way, your agent called. He said you need to call him back, urgently.”
“My agent called you?”
“Yes, he said you weren’t answering your phone.”
“But how did he know I was with you?”
Jack frowns. “Darling, do you ever check Twitter? Facebook? The news?”
“Not if I can help it, no…”
He walks back into the lounge and picks his phone up from the coffee table, tapping it a few times before holding it in my face. He’s opened the TBN app, and there I am, headline news, again, along with a photo of me embracing Jack on his doorstep less than an hour ago.
“Did you tell her I was here?” I ask.
“Not guilty this time.” He looks a little hurt. “I am sorry about that. I made a terrible mistake a few years ago, did something I shouldn’t have when my first wife was ill. It was such a dreadful business, watching her fade away. I was dealing with it all on my own, and I’m not making excuses, but I was scared and so … lonely. Jennifer Jones knew about what I did and threatened to spill the beans; she’s been blackmailing me ever since. If I’d felt like I had any choice, I would never have done what she asked, and you have my word that nothing like that will ever happen again. If I hadn’t let her into your dressing room that day, and then sent her the pictures of us, she would have destroyed me. Not just my career, my relationship with my daughter too; I can’t have Lilly read about what I did online one day, she’d never forgive me.”
“You slept with someone else when your wife was ill?” I guess, hoping that I’m wrong.
He stares at the floor. “Yes. There’s really no need to look at me like that, we all make mistakes when we are under enormous stress and strain. I was drunk, emotionally exhausted, it meant nothing.”
“Who did you sleep with?” I whisper, not sure I want to know the answer.
“She had a tiny part in the film I was in, it was so stupid, but life at home was so hard and—”
“Who?”
“Jennifer Jones. That’s how she knew I’d cheated on my sick wife, because it was with her. Maybe she thought I could help her nonstarter of an acting career, I don’t know, but I couldn’t do that, and I couldn’t see her again either. I knew it was a mistake at the time, but I didn’t know it would haunt me for this long. She gave up on acting shortly afterwards and became a showbiz journalist, but she never gave up on getting revenge for our one-night stand.”
The revelation makes me feel a little sick. I don’t like the idea of Jack sleeping with anyone, not that I have any right to think that way, but Beak Face, of all the people. No wonder she hates us both so much. Something else occurs to me, interrupting my revulsion.
“If you didn’t tell her that I was here, then how did she know?”
He shrugs, and we both stare down at the latest Jennifer Jones headline:
AIMEE SINCLAIR BACK IN THE ARMS OF HER LOVER AFTER BEING CLEARED OF HUSBAND’S MURDER
Fifty-eight
Maggie arrives home, barely able to remember any of her journey from the clinic. Coming back to a cold, empty flat after news like this is far from ideal, but she doesn’t have anyone she can call. At times like these she wishes she had some sort of pet for company; she has always preferred animals to people, animals know what they are. She feels smaller than she did before. As though having the fragility of life thrown at her this way has made her shrink a little.
She’s hungry, but she can’t eat, not now. She suspects that knowing the end is
coming is worse than the end itself. Her parents didn’t know when their time was up, and she wonders what they might have done differently if they had. The answer is one word, and she believes it to be true: everything. When things don’t look right, sometimes you just have to change your perspective, she thinks to herself, then reaches a more positive conclusion:
This death sentence is an opportunity to fix things before it’s too late.
She decides to eat after all, knowing she’ll need her strength to make this work. The fridge is practically bare, so she makes beans on toast. “Nothing wrong with that, packed with protein,” she mutters to herself, while stirring the orange contents of the saucepan.
Once she has eaten, she lights the fire. It will help to warm the place up, and she should probably start burning all the things she doesn’t want anyone else to find when she is gone. In her hurry, she forgets to put on any gloves before picking up a piece of wood and gets a splinter in her finger. She tries to get it out with a pair of tweezers, but it snaps in half, leaving most of the fragment still buried beneath her skin. She ignores the pain and strikes a match, lighting a small bundle of newspaper and kindling, watching the worthless words written on the paper smolder and burn. She unexpectedly finds herself smiling. Life might have moved the goalposts when she wasn’t looking, but she’s confident that if she adjusts the plan and her aim just a little, she can still win the game.
Maggie has some regrets, but doesn’t want to share them, not even with herself. When you’ve spent your whole life living a lie, it can feel a little late to start telling the truth. She checks her emails, then checks Aimee’s; she knows all her passwords. She can also see exactly where she is, thanks to the phone tracker app she installed on Aimee’s mobile. She just knew that Aimee and Jack Anderson were having an affair. She imagines him fucking her right now and squeezes her eyes shut to try to delete the image. Slut. Maggie has tipped off a journalist and is pleased to see that the story has already been published online. Jennifer Jones has come in very handy indeed so far.
Maggie closes her laptop and sits quietly in front of the crackling fire, trying to silence the thoughts that seem so loud and profound to her now. Perhaps it’s the clarity of knowing that her journey is coming to an end. She looks around the room and concludes that her life hasn’t amounted to much. Her eyes come to rest on the pile of unopened mail sitting on the coffee table: white paper rectangles, with tiny plastic windows revealing her name.
Maggie O’Neil.
Except it isn’t really hers.
Knowing a person’s name is not the same as knowing a person.
She’s used that name for so long now, sometimes she forgets it was secondhand, borrowed, stolen. She wonders if perhaps Aimee feels the same way too. Maggie stares into the flames and starts to think she has more in common with other people than she previously believed. We are born alone and we die alone, and we’re all a little bit afraid of being forgotten.
Maggie wasn’t always Maggie.
Maggie was just who she became in order to hide.
You can’t find a butterfly if you’re only looking for a caterpillar.
As soon as she is reunited with Aimee, Maggie will go back to being who she was before.
Fifty-nine
A meeting with my agent is something I could really do without today, but Tony was quite insistent on the phone and said it couldn’t wait. I don’t think I’m looking my best, but perhaps that doesn’t matter anymore. The dress Jack bought for me isn’t something I would ever have picked out for myself. The figure-hugging plum material is flattering, I suppose, a little more revealing than the sort of thing I normally wear. My hair has dried into its natural curls and I’m not wearing any makeup, because it is all still at my house, and I daren’t go back there anytime soon.
I walk into the restaurant and see him straightaway. Tony eats out a lot, and he has a favorite table everywhere he goes. He’s reading the menu, even though he always chooses what he is going to eat beforehand, and he looks a little stressed.
He’s going to dump me.
I’m sure of it this time, and I don’t even blame him after everything that has happened. Nobody will want to work with an actress accused of murder. Maybe this is what agents do when they decide not to represent you anymore—take you out for a slap-up meal to soften the blow. Just as I start to back away towards the exit, he looks up from the menu and sees me. I’ve left it too late to run away.
“How are you?” he asks as I sit down. He looks genuinely concerned, and I’m not sure how to answer. He carries on speaking without waiting for one, but I’m still thinking about the question. The truth is, I’ve never felt this close to oblivion before. I’ve never let myself. I’ve never let life break me, despite all the numerous occasions when it has tried so hard to. I’m proud of myself for that. Proud for staying strong, at least on the outside. The armor I’ve worn to hide what’s on the inside has grown heavy over the years, weighing me down, so that it has become increasingly difficult to pick myself back up. People are always so jealous of me, but they wouldn’t be if they knew the life I’d had to live to get the one I lead now.
“… so, I thought we could just have lunch and see what happens?” says Tony, as I tune back in to what he is saying. My tired mind has wandered again, leaving both me and it a little lost.
“Lunch?” They make great chips here, but I think I’m too anxious to eat.
“Yes, that’s right, lunch. You look like you’ve lost weight, but you do still eat, don’t you?”
“I thought you were dumping me.”
He frowns. “Why would I do that?”
“I let you down.”
He shakes his head. “You didn’t let me down, and besides, I’ve told you before, all publicity is good publicity. I’ve had seven scripts offering you lead roles just this morning. Even JJ’s people have been in touch.”
I came close to working with JJ last year and was so excited, but then it didn’t happen.
“I thought JJ said no?”
“I guess he’s changed his mind. Four of the scripts that have been sent are worth you reading. I have a favorite, but, as always, I’ll let you decide. I expect all this is the reason Fincher moved the meeting forward.”
“Forward to when?”
“Lunch. Here. Now. Have you been listening to anything I have been saying?”
I stare down at the unfamiliar dress and see my hands resting on my lap, my unpolished nails reflecting my entire current appearance. I remember my messy hair and missing makeup. I’ve wanted to meet this man forever, but this isn’t how I imagined it. I haven’t rehearsed, I don’t know what to say …
“I can’t have lunch with Fincher now!”
“Yes, you can. Take the leap, Aimee. You’ll only fall if you forget you can fly.”
Sixty
Maggie feels as if she is falling.
Time is running away from her and she’s no longer sure she can catch up. She’s worked so hard, for so long, to make things right. She deserves for things to go back to how they should always have been. It’s what would have been best for both of them; she just has to make Aimee see that. She can’t wait any longer for the girl to figure things out for herself. Maggie turns the final page of her Aimee Sinclair album, having reread all the newspaper and magazine clippings she has collected over the years. It was almost full anyway, perhaps it is time after all.
The shade Maggie has spent her life hiding in just got darker. She can feel it, the lump inside her chest. She has a pain there now that she never noticed before, as though she were always able to feel the cancer growing inside her, but pretended not to. We all avoid the truth when we think it might hurt too much. She feels the lump with her finger, not knowing how she could have missed it when showering; it’s huge. She feels a sharp pain and pulls her hand away, realizing that this particular discomfort is in her finger, not her chest. The splinter from the firewood is still buried beneath her skin, despite several attempts to remo
ve it. She’s read about how splinters can travel through the bloodstream, all the way to the heart and kill a person. She doesn’t know if that’s true, but she doesn’t want to risk it.
She stands in front of the bathroom mirror and pulls at the pink skin with a pair of tweezers. She makes her finger bleed, but she still can’t get the damn thing out. Her reflection distracts her from the discomfort, and she notices some tiny black hairs have sprouted from her chin. She starts to pluck at them instead, getting some small satisfaction each time she successfully removes one at the root. Extracting pleasure from the pain.
She wants to look her best this evening.
She can see from the mobile phone tracker app that Aimee is eating out somewhere special tonight, as though she has something to celebrate. She checked Aimee’s emails and has read the three latest ones sent by her agent.
Maggie does not want Aimee to be in another film.
That is not part of the plan.
She’s heard of the restaurant Aimee is at; it’s the kind of place that requires a booking several months in advance, unless you are someone like Aimee. Or Jack Anderson. So Maggie knows she needs to dress the part.
She puts on Aimee’s old trench coat, fastening the teeny tiny belt around the slim waist she has worked so hard to achieve. Then she blots her red lipstick one last time, with a piece of quilted toilet tissue, before admiring her reflection. She puts on her sunglasses, despite the fact that it is already dark outside, and leaves the flat. Maggie has thought a lot lately about whether grief was a price worth paying for love, and has decided that it was. Love is all Maggie has ever wanted, and she’s going to get it, regardless of what it will cost her.
Sixty-one
“Cheers!”
“Here’s to you,” Jack replies, clinking his champagne glass with mine. “I want to hear more about the meeting. I want to know everything. Every single word he said.”