by Alice Feeney
I laugh. “No, I don’t want to jinx it. I think the lunch went well, and now we’ll just have to wait and see whether I get the part.”
We’re sitting at the bar of an exclusive West London restaurant, waiting for a table, and enjoying the taste of premature celebration until then. I let myself relax a little, appreciating the way the alcohol numbs my senses and diminishes the fear that has been growing inside me since this nightmare began.
I’ve already said more than I should about the meeting with my agent and Fincher. I couldn’t help it, it’s all too exciting. I embroidered the truth a little, just a few stitches here and there, to present the story how I have chosen to remember it. I might have let the waist of the story out just a tiny bit around the middle, to let it breathe, but that’s okay. I think we all do that. The stories we tell each other about our lives are like snow globes. We shake the facts of what happened in our minds, then watch and wait while the pieces settle into fiction. If we don’t like the way the pieces fall, we just shake the story again, until it looks how we want it to.
I used to think that everything happened for a reason, but I stopped believing in whims like that some time ago. That said, if there was a point to the hellish last few days, then maybe this was it. Maybe this is the part that will change my life for the better. I try to stay calm and steady and deny the excitement that I feel. I don’t want to let the fantasy of fiction seduce me into a false sense of security; I’ve made that mistake before.
“There was one thing Fincher said that I can’t get out of my head,” I say eventually, aware of the weight of Jack’s stare as I take another sip of champagne.
“Well?”
“He said that the character he wanted me to play was morally repugnant but fascinating, and I got to thinking that maybe I am too.”
Jack stares at me for a few seconds, then the creases around his eyes fold, his mouth opens up into a wide white smile, and he laughs at me. Really laughs. Completely unaware that I wasn’t joking.
“I’m so proud of you, do you know that?” He takes my hand in his.
“I don’t have the part yet—”
“I don’t just mean about today, I mean all of it. Most people would have crumbled or just crawled under a rock to hide, but you’re so strong.”
I’m only strong on the outside.
I’m not sure what we’re doing anymore. Whatever it is, I’m quite certain that I shouldn’t be encouraging it, my life is complicated enough right now. We’re sitting facing each other on expensive-looking barstools, far closer than we should or need to be. My legs are tucked inside his, and I like feeling the warmth of his body against my own. Being this close to him makes me feel safe, and a little more willing to succumb to his charm-plated seduction.
Despite the alcohol, I’m fully aware that the comfort I feel from Jack holding my hand is nothing more than a placebo. It’s not real, but I swallow it down anyway, wanting to hold on to the feeling for as long as I can. He downs his own glass of champagne before taking my empty flute and putting it next to his on the bar.
He looks serious all of a sudden. “I want you to know that you’re safe with me.”
I do feel safe in this moment, as though maybe everything that happened was nothing more than a bad dream.
“You can trust me.”
I so badly want to that I don’t pull away when he leans in to kiss me. Not the sort of kissing we’ve been doing on set, but something real, almost animal-like. It’s as though I’ve wanted this for just as long as I suspect he has, but have been denying the truth until now. I know this is madness, to behave like this in a public place, but I can’t help it. His hands cradle my face and I wish that I’d met him first, before I married the wrong man.
I hear someone tapping on the glass window directly behind us, and when I open my eyes, I see Jack frowning over my shoulder. “Who the fuck is that?”
I turn to see her standing right there, outside the restaurant. The woman who has been stalking me for the last two years.
I knew Ben wasn’t working alone.
She’s wearing what looks suspiciously like the coat I can’t find, and her long black curly hair is blowing about her shoulders in the wind. Despite her dark glasses, it’s pretty obvious she is staring right at us, and I wonder how long she has been there. She waves a white-gloved hand without smiling, and my scales tilt in an unexpected way; my anger far outweighing my fear. I run to the restaurant door, ready to confront this woman, whoever she is. Jack follows close behind as I burst out onto the street, but we’re too late. The woman in the window has gone.
Sixty-two
Maggie always suspected that Aimee was having an affair with Jack Anderson. But seeing them together like that, watching him kiss her through the restaurant window, the whole experience has made Maggie feel utterly wretched and physically ill. She had to run away, there was no other alternative now that she knows for sure who Aimee Sinclair has become: a filthy, lying, cheating whore. She wonders what happened to the sweet, kind, innocent child she used to know.
She closes the door behind her and starts to pull off all her clothes, dropping them to the floor as she walks through the flat. She removes Aimee’s trench coat first, then her jumper and skirt, until she is standing naked in front of the antique mirror in her front room. She cries a little, she can’t help it, unable to get the image of Aimee and Jack out of her head.
Then she slaps herself hard across the face, three times.
Her finger stings and she notices that she still has a splinter, which brings a curious mix of pain and comfort. If it is still there, then it hasn’t started to travel through her bloodstream to her heart. She might just live long enough to finish what she started and take back what should have been hers.
Maggie turns to stare at the photo of Aimee by the phone, and the tears continue to stream down her face. She holds the three smallest fingers of her left hand inside her right, pretending that the little girl she once knew had stayed that way, instead of growing into a selfish slut. She puts the picture facedown, unable to look at what she lost any longer, and returns her attention to the woman in the mirror. Tomorrow she will get back to work, but for now, just for tonight, Maggie wants nothing more than to just be herself again. The tears have stained the face staring back at her, and she no longer likes what she sees. She starts to remove the makeup from her damp cheeks, washing away the woman she was forced to become. She feels a little better when the reflection shows someone she recognizes, someone real. It’s as though Maggie O’Neil has left the building.
Sixty-three
“And you saw this woman too?” asks Detective Croft the following morning. I don’t know why I let Jack persuade me to call her.
“Yes,” he says. I can hear his patience evaporating with every question she asks. “Yes, I saw her too, yes, she is exactly as Aimee described. It seems to me you’ve bungled this entire investigation from beginning to end, no offense, but what are you actually doing to catch this person?”
Detective Croft stares at him for a long time. “It can be hard to solve a puzzle when you don’t have all the pieces. We still haven’t established that this woman is linked to what happened, or who she is. Have you thought of anyone matching her description who might have a grudge against you?” she asks me.
Jennifer Jones.
Surely not. The idea sounds so ridiculous inside my head, I can’t say it out loud.
Alicia White.
Seems more plausible; she’s hated me for such a long time now. Plus, she changed her hair color to match mine and she sometimes copies my clothes. The woman in the window was dressed just like me. She looked older, but then Alicia is an actress. I try to extract the memory of exactly what I saw last night. It’s already a little frayed at the edges, but it’s possible it could have been Alicia. I still can’t say her name out loud because the truth is, it could have been anyone. I shake my head.
“Well, if you do think of someone, just let us know,” says Crof
t. “We still don’t know the true identity of the man you were married to either; all we know is that he wasn’t really Ben Bailey. Whoever he is, he closed down his profile on the dating website shortly after you met, and they no longer have a photo of him. Sadly for us, they purge their servers every three months, and unused profiles get deleted. It might be easier to put all this together if we knew the motive, and it might be easier to establish a motive if you started being honest with me. How long have the two of you been having an affair?”
“This is outrageous, I want to make a complaint,” says Jack.
“Join the queue. How long?”
“I told you already, we’re not having an affair,” I reply.
“The night before the man you married disappeared, he accused you of cheating on him. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve interviewed every member of staff at the restaurant you were at last night. None of them saw the woman you have described standing in the window, but several of them saw you two … kissing. Some of them even took pictures. Do you want to see?” She reaches for her iPad. I shake my head and feel my cheeks flush. “Now, unless you’re going to tell me next that the two of you were just rehearsing for a new film together—”
“I really don’t see how this is relevant,” I say.
“It’s relevant because whoever is responsible for what happened had to have been planning it for a long time. Which means they have hated you for a long time. And if we knew why, we’d have a far better chance of knowing who they are.” She waits for me to say something, and when I don’t, she expels an audible sigh. “We’re done here.” She stands to leave, her silent sidekick following close behind.
“You’re done?” asks Jack. “Are you kidding me?”
She stops and turns. “One more thing.” She ignores Jack and stares at me. “We managed to track down your birth father.”
I sit completely still, and it’s as though I feel my blood turn cold. She knows I was born in Ireland. She knows I’m not really Aimee Sinclair. “What do you mean?”
“John Sinclair.” I try not to display the huge relief I feel. “He moved back to Essex when he was released from prison, stayed with someone called Michael O’Neil for a while, your uncle on your mother’s side, I believe.”
John is really alive?
I don’t know what to say and stare back at her. As usual, Detective Croft doesn’t waste any time waiting for me to find the right words. “Given you thought your father was dead all these years, and I’ve just told you he’s alive, your reaction does seem a little strange.”
I rearrange the expression on my face. “It’s just a lot to take in. Where is he now?”
“We don’t know. We think he moved to Spain, but that was almost twenty years ago. Would your father have any reason to want to hurt you?”
I put a gun in his hand and he went to prison for the murder of three men I killed in 1988.
“No.”
She turns back towards the door. “Mrs. Sinclair, I know when someone isn’t telling me the truth, and I know you’re keeping something from me. When you’re ready to tell me whatever it is, you have my number. Until then, please don’t waste any more of my time.”
Sixty-four
Time is a funny old thing, the way it stretches and folds and bends.
Maggie stares at the photo of Aimee as a little girl, thinking that it could have been yesterday. The look in the child’s eyes dislodges memories of happier times and reminds her that there were some.
We weren’t always the us we are now.
Maggie pushes the thought far away, wishing she’d never had it, but some memories are impossible to delete, no matter how hard we try.
Her back aches from a day of delivering antiques to shops along Portobello Road, and her hands are blistered from moving the larger items. Business is booming, and she had a lot of stock she needed to shift. The homes of the dead are dusty, neglected treasure troves, and the plunder is there for the taking; the dead don’t miss what is no longer theirs. It’s been hard work, and while she’s all for equality, truth be told it is man’s work; all that heavy lifting. She relaxes a little when she remembers it was the last time she’d ever have to do that job, there’s no need now for her to work ever again; Aimee will call soon.
The girl has always had the most incredible memory, even as a child, and once she remembers her past, they can both get on with their future. Maggie’s memory is a little less reliable. As far as she is concerned, none of us can remember every moment of every day of every year for an entire lifetime; the storage systems of our minds simply do not have that capacity. Yet. We select which memories to save and which to archive, and like everything else in life, it’s about choices. We lead the life we choose to, based on what we think we deserve, and we hold on to the memories that mean the most to us, the moments we believe shaped the life we lead now. It’s a pretty simple system, but it works. Unlike Aimee, Maggie might not remember it all, but she remembers enough.
Everything that has led them here was so carefully thought out, and soon, all of her hard work will have been worth it. It was always a good plan:
Identify a suitable partner for Aimee.
Someone nobody knew well enough to notice if he came back to life: Ben Bailey.
Cast someone believable to play his part.
Keep the keys to his home and delay clearing out his belongings until Aimee was in L.A. and could be persuaded to buy the property.
Dig up and rebury the dead man beneath the decking in what used to be his own garden.
Burn his remains in Epping Forest first, so that dental records would be used to confirm his identity.
Dress like Aimee to visit the bank and petrol station and make police believe she was violent.
Make it look as if she had killed her husband, to teach her a lesson: you should never forget who you are and where you came from.
No wonder Maggie feels so exhausted.
She stares at the framed Polaroid photo next to the phone again, reassuring herself that Aimee will call. All Maggie has to do is wait a little while longer. She knows this, because although Maggie might not have the best memory in the world, she knows Aimee better than she knows herself.
Sixty-five
The phone rings, waking me from a deep and blissful sleep. My dreams had taken me so far away from here that, at first, I don’t know where I am. My mind struggles to identify the unfamiliar bedroom and the crisp white sheets. Then I remember that I am in Jack’s house, and that the nightmare was real, but that I am safe again now. Safe enough at least. It’s only 8:00 p.m. but I’d gone to bed early, exhausted and unable to fight the call of sleep any longer.
I stare at the screen on my phone and see that Tony is calling. My agent only calls with very good or very bad news; anything in between he does by email. It has to be about the Fincher film. I think it might be too soon for good news and let it ring, but then something inside me screams that I deserve this part, it must be good news. I answer, listening while Tony speaks on the other end. I don’t say much. I don’t need to.
As soon as I put the phone down, there is a knock on the bedroom door.
“Come in.” I pull the sheets up over my bare legs. I’m wearing one of Jack’s T-shirts; I still haven’t been able to go back to my own house or get my things.
“I heard the phone ringing, I just wanted to check you were okay?” He peers around the door.
“Come in, I’m fine. It was Tony.”
“Good news?” He sits down on the bed and I shake my head. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m fine, honestly. I didn’t really expect to get it.”
“Bullshit, of course you should have got it. Do you know who did?” I nod, wishing I didn’t. “Who?”
“Alicia White.”
His face experiences a freeze-frame. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“No joke. Alicia got the part.”
He looks gen
uinely appalled by this news, which does make me feel a little better. “Wait here,” he says before leaving the room, as though I have anywhere else to go.
I let myself fold a little, now that there is nobody to see the creases. I didn’t just want that part, it meant so much more than that. Acting is like taking a vacation from myself, and I need a break. I need to be someone else again for a little while, think her thoughts, feel her fears, walk in her shoes, with the help of a map-shaped script. I don’t know how to explain it; sometimes I just get so damn tired of being me.
There’s no secret ladder to reach the stars; you have to learn to build your own, and when you fall, you have to be brave enough to start the climb again. Never look back, never look down. I’ve put my broken self back together plenty of times before, I can do it again. I can handle not getting the part, I think. I just can’t believe that she did. Of all the people. Tony says that she somehow knew where we were having the secret meeting with Fincher and followed him afterwards. I don’t know what she said to convince him, or how she knew where he would be. The only person who knew where I was and what I was doing was Jack. How did she know? And why is it that so many horrible human beings succeed in life?
Jack returns with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses.
The anger I feel rushes straight to my head. “Did you tell Alicia where I was meeting Fincher?”
He looks as if my question has physically hurt him. “If you try hard enough, I think you’ll remember that, like you, all I knew beforehand was that you were meeting your agent. I didn’t know anything about Fincher until you got back. Even if I had known, I would never do that. Do you really not know how I feel about you?”
I do know. I just don’t believe it.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
He pours two large glasses and downs one of them. I don’t even like whiskey, but I drink it anyway. All of it. It’s as though we are out of words and wasted time. When he kisses me, I kiss him back. When he lifts the T-shirt up over my head, I don’t stop him, even though I’m wearing nothing underneath. I reach down to unbutton his jeans, my fingers far more confident than I would have expected them to be. It’s as if my body has taken over, no longer trusting my mind to make the right choices. When his hand reaches down between my legs, I open them a little wider. I’m not feeling like myself right now. I’m not feeling shy or anxious. I want this. I want him. I think I’ve wanted him since we first met, but I just wouldn’t let myself be that person. I forget about everything that has happened, concentrating instead on the taste of him, the feel of his body on top of mine. If I’m honest with myself, as honest as I can be, I’ve imagined this moment for so long that now that it is happening, it feels completely natural. I don’t even feel bad when it’s over. I feel satisfied, I feel like a woman again and I feel alive.