by Daisy Pearce
‘People will buy it, David,’ she was saying. I could tell by how ragged her voice was that she was done shouting. It sounded like my father was only just gearing up, however.
‘You think that’s the answer? Selling Stella’s hair? You think that’s what’s going to save this family? She’s not bloody Rapunzel!’
‘There are people out there—’
‘Say what you mean, for crying out loud, Marion. There are perverts out there. Sick perverts who want to buy a little girl’s hair. Why don’t you just throw her to the wolves?’
‘Oh, now you’re saying—’
‘This is what I’m talking about—’
‘I only want the best—’
And on. And on. Worst thing is I would have done it too. I would have hacked all of my hair off in a heartbeat if it had meant keeping our family together.
When my phone rings I jolt upright, slamming my computer closed with a snap. Of course, I realise as I pick up my mobile, if Marco has installed the same software on my laptop as he did on Alice’s, he’ll already know what I’ve been doing.
‘Hello?’
‘Stella? Stella? Is that you? It’s Joey again, Joey Fraser.’
I cradle the phone beneath my chin.
‘I’m here.’
I smooth my hand over the table surface, feeling the years of it, the chips and knocks and bumps.
‘I need to see you, Stella.’
‘Where are you?’
‘You know where I am. Don’t you read the news?’
I roll my eyes. He’ll never change. ‘Can’t say I’ve seen mention of you.’
‘For the last few weeks I’ve been staying in St Ives. The Portmoir. Five-star. On the seafront. Jack Nicholson stayed here in the eighties. Hold on.’ I hear rustling, the sound of pages turning. ‘Here we are: “Hollywood Actor Joey Fraser Enjoys the Beach Life”. Page nine. There’s a photo of me in the sea, one of me having an ice cream. It’s cute, I’m loveable. Bringing glamour to your dingy town.’
I laugh, I can’t help it. I can hear the smile in his voice, the knowing wryness.
‘Please can I see you, Stella?’
‘Why? I’m not doing a reunion, Joey. I’m not.’
‘No, I suppose not. In California if you don’t see your face in the papers three times a week you’re downgraded to a civilian.’
‘Is that so?’
‘You wouldn’t last five minutes out there with this attitude.’
‘So what do you want from me?’
‘I think we need to talk. About what happened.’
I prickle with cold. Distantly an alarm bell is ringing at the back of my skull. ‘Joey—’
‘Please, Stella. Please let me move on.’
I hesitate. I can hear him watching the television in the background of his hotel room. It immediately makes me think of the silent calls I’ve been getting. I am so tired of being afraid.
‘All right,’ I tell him. ‘All right. Come on over.’
Less than twenty minutes later Joey Fraser arrives at the cottage in a rented Prius. As he steps out of the car, I notice his mirrored aviators, his oak-coloured tan. He is alone, and my nerves are singing. I shouldn’t have let him come here alone, I should have called Frankie. That day in the trailer. I can still remember the burning pain, the shock. The way my mouth had tasted metallic and sticky. I open the door as he walks up the path. I’ve made an effort with myself – showered, brushed my hair, changed my clothes – but all the same I notice the slight hesitation as he looks up and sees me, the ghost of a double take.
‘Stella?’ It’s almost a question, as though he can’t believe it. I know I don’t look well.
‘Hi, Joey. You look great.’
He nods, as if this is the least he expects. He’s toned and lean and has shaved at least ten years off his age. His teeth are bright and white and strong and unnerving. I hold out my hand and he shakes it, waits to be invited in.
‘I should have done this years ago,’ he tells me, as he drinks his iced water (‘Any jasmine tea? How about oat milk? Any coconut water?’). He picks up an earthenware bowl and puts it down again. ‘This is a nice place.’
‘You should know,’ I tell him. I feel hyped up, jumpy. ‘You’re the one that’s been creeping in here when I’ve been asleep.’
His face creases with confusion and I laugh at him airily. ‘I was thinking about you the other day. You ostracised me. You and all the other kids. You cut me out. A seven-year-old girl. You made me feel like the loneliest person in the world. You wouldn’t even let me join in your games, for Christ’s sake!’
Where’s your muzzle, Katie Marigold? I can hear it now. That high, girlish voice ringing out, the muffled sniggers, the way my cheeks had flushed and burned with shame.
‘You ever wonder why we behaved like that? You ever stop and think that there might have been a reason – a pretty good reason – why no one wanted to go near you?’
‘You going to tell me I was some kind of monster, are you? Is that what you’re here for?’
‘No, Stella. No, you weren’t. It wasn’t your fault you were the way you were. I know that now.’
We stare at each other in silence. Joey adjusts his shirt cuffs and sips his drink as though he wishes it were something stronger.
‘Hey, do you remember the Christmas episode with the fake snowman we made?’ he says. ‘I’ve still got it. I bid for it at auction.’
‘Why?’
‘Something to remember the show by.’
‘You hated the show.’
We are both silent for a beat.
When he next speaks his voice is level and quiet. ‘It wasn’t just me, Stella. It was all of us.’
‘Well, I’m glad you were all united in your hatred of me.’
‘You know, I’ve kept in touch with most of the old Marigold! crew – Christmas cards, occasional emails. Sometimes we meet when I come to London.’
I feel that familiar envy spike, and I am seven years old again, wanting so desperately to be included. Put your muzzle on, Katie Marigold.
‘You didn’t keep in touch with me,’ I say petulantly.
‘No. I didn’t. You must know why.’ He leans forward in his chair. ‘Lesley would always ask about you though. Anne too. She would always say it wasn’t your fault. It was her idea I contact you to get some – heh – closure.’
Why weren’t you invited to these meet-ups? I think in my mother’s sour, shrill voice. You were the star of the show!
‘Well, go on then.’
He looks up at me. The back door is propped open with the heavy black doorstop and a cooling breeze is blowing through. I sit on the arm of the sofa, my legs crossed serpentine around my thighs and ankles.
‘Go on. Say it.’
Joey looks genuinely confused. He scratches the back of his head.
‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To be forgiven?’
He tips his head back and laughs. Slaps his palm against his thigh. ‘That’s a good one, Stella,’ he says, and then he sees that I am serious and the smile drops away like a landslide.
‘Oh, Jesus. You’re not even joking.’
Now it’s my turn to be confused. He smiles at me again. It is not a nice smile. It is loaded.
‘Okay then. I’m sorry, Stella. I’m sorry for hurting you.’ Pause. ‘You were just a kid.’ Another pause. ‘A spoiled, horrible little kid who always got her own way no matter what.’
I stare at him, heat building in my chest. Somewhere in the house my phone is ringing and ringing.
‘But like I said, it wasn’t your fault. Not really. I knew that even as a thirteen-year-old boy.’
He leans closer, lacing his fingers over his knee. ‘Your mother was a bitch, and I’m not sorry she’s dead. Not a bit.’
‘You can’t say that.’
‘She had a way, didn’t she, of getting what she wanted? A way of twisting things so they always turned in her favour – in your favour. Why did you think the
show changed so dramatically? Because you were talented? Irreplaceable?’
He laughs again, a strangled, sick sound. ‘No, no. Of course not.’ He lowers his voice, careful to keep it level. ‘Even your dad knew. Your poor dad. Sidelined by his daughter’s career and his promiscuous, fame-hungry wife.’
My past is a tapestry unravelling at frightening speed. I keep picturing my mother climbing the stairs of the multi-storey car park, the darkened stairwell smelling of piss and oil, the way the wind would have buffeted her at the very top where she would have climbed over the railing to stand on the ledge. That plunge onto the hard concrete.
‘That’s not true. It’s not true.’
‘Everyone knew. Everyone. And it was so unfair on the rest of us. But she didn’t care, and why would she when you were pulling in three, four times as much money as the other kids? I mean – do you want to get that phone?’
I wave it away.
‘I guess I went a bit overboard. We all did. We were mean to you and could see you were cracking under the pressure of it all. Too much going on in here, you know?’ He waves a vague hand at his temple and then his voice at that awful high pitch which makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. ‘I got a lot of thinks in my brain, Katie Marigold!’
I flinch, visibly. I remember now. That day in the trailer. He’d been nearly thirteen years old, me only seven. We’d been in costume – navy-blue bell bottoms, sailor collars, anchor motifs stitched onto our chests – and he’d come to the door, stuck his head round it, all freckles and jug ears, that horrible high voice.
‘Your mama’s in the room with Terry,’ he said to me. ‘Heard ’em talking.’
Terry was one of the producers on the show. I’d been introduced to them all, and they all looked the same; interchangeable, Terry, Barry, Gerry.
He made a ring with his thumb and forefinger and slid his index finger in and out of it, leering at me.
‘Your mama sure likes “talking”, Stella, I suppose that’s why she does it all the time.’
I stared at him. In my stomach, fury, white-hot. My eyes filled with tears.
‘Aw, is baby upset? Does baby want a dummy?’
I’d let the tears roll down my face, thick as treacle. His expression changed, his mouth pulling downwards into a moue.
‘Oh, hey, listen, don’t cry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ He was looking around nervously, frightened of being caught. He came in, pulling the door closed behind him. ‘Come on, Stella, don’t cry.’
He walked towards me and my breath was coming in gasps. He could see the sobbing coming, swelling in my chest, and he was so desperate to stop me that he put his arm around me and that’s when I bit down on his arm, hard. He had forgotten the rules about not getting too close to me. There had been a memo sent out. His skin broke and my mouth filled with blood. I was only seven years old, and I hung on as he tried to pull away, shouting, wailing. I had done this before. It was why people tended to avoid me. I pulled away, my teeth snapping as he planted a hand on my chest to keep me back. He was trying to get out but I wouldn’t let him. I sank my teeth into his shoulder and wrist and he howled with pain. Then he slapped me, hard across the face. The air rang with the sound. For a moment there was a fine, brittle silence. He was cowering and the thing he was holding out of my reach was his arm, his injured, bleeding arm, staring at me with horror and suddenly I was screaming and screaming. Then they finally came to the door, my mother pulling her shirt around her, just the top two buttons undone (Your mama’s ‘talking’ with Terry in the room, Stella), and she was saying, ‘What happened, what the hell happened?’, and I told them all: ‘He hit me.’
Later, my mother and I in my trailer, and two women from the Social Services dressed in corduroy and polyester shirts, both smelling of cigarettes, and my mother saying, ‘Tell them, Stella, tell them what you told me. Tell them he touched you, he’s always had a funny way about him, he’s always been a creep’, and I don’t think I said a word, she did it all for me. All I had to do was point.
‘You said I molested you.’
‘I know.’
‘I had to leave the show. Move house. My parents got hate mail for twenty years. You know someone put a firework through the letterbox? The whole place nearly burned down. I didn’t work again for ten years.’
‘I know.’
‘Why did you do it, Stella?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You know it’s on my Wikipedia page? It gets brought up in interviews every goddamn time.’ His hand makes a fist and he thumps the arm of the chair he’s sitting on. ‘It’s followed me my whole life. It’s a curse.’
‘You slapped me.’
‘You were hysterical.’
‘I know.’
He toys with the cuffs of his shirt, won’t look at me. ‘I suppose you saw the story in the papers?’
I think back. I have a vague memory of Marco showing me an article on Joey Fraser when he’d first come back to England. Was that in the spring? What had it said?
‘Sexual harassment.’
He nods. His lips are set in a grim, bloodless line.
‘She was a make-up artist. I met her on set. She liked me – or she had seemed to. I thought she did. Guess I misread the signals, huh? That’s not a crime, is it? To ask a woman out?’
I shake my head.
‘You can’t even— I mean, I never touched her, Stella, I swear. Not once.’
‘Okay.’
‘Anyway. She’s dropped the charges.’
‘Oh yeah?’ I don’t know where this is going.
‘Yeah. It’s a relief, I’m not going to lie to you. Even my lawyer said as much. Because with what’s been said about me in the past – about what you and your mum claimed I did – well, it wasn’t going to look good for me. Makes me look like a predator.’
We look at each other across the room.
‘And I’m not. And you know I’m not, don’t you? Don’t you?’
I nod.
‘Say it. Please, Stella. It’s been over twenty years, and I’ve never stopped thinking about this. For a long time, I thought maybe I did do it, maybe I did and I just don’t remember. Why else would you say I had? And it went round and round in my head, until I believed that I’d assaulted you. What other explanation was there?’
‘I’m sorry, Joey.’
‘Just tell me. Just this one thing.’
He fixes me with his pellucid eyes.
‘You – you didn’t do it. You were mean and you were unbearable and a bully, but you never did the things my mother accused you of.’
I can see something cross his face, a ripple over dark water. Is it relief? Happiness? I don’t think so. Not quite. But all the same I see the way he inhales, eyes closed. I step towards him and he says, ‘Christ, please get that phone, it’s driving me crazy.’
I stumble into the kitchen, my head reeling. I snatch my phone from the table, not looking at the caller ID.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s Marco, Stella. I just don’t know what to do to help you anymore.’
I am silent.
‘You’ve been going behind my back. I know about the photos you were sent. The ones you lied to get. I can’t stand it. I can’t bear dishonesty.’
I snap then. ‘Dishonesty? When were you going to tell me about Ellie, Marco? When you moved down here? After the wedding? When? Don’t you talk to me about deception, Marco, don’t you fu—’
‘Don’t swear at me. Don’t raise your voice.’
‘Why did you do it, Marco? Just tell me that. Why?’
Silence. I can hear the huff of his breath. Then: ‘You’ve been so on edge. Unpredictable. I haven’t wanted to upset you. I don’t think you have any idea how hard this is for me.’
My heart twists in my chest because deep down, of course, I believe him. I swallow, fighting back tears.
‘Stella? Stella?’
‘I’m here.’
Through the window the sea is glassy and gr
een and cold. I wonder what it would be like to walk into it and just keep on walking.
‘I’m sorry too,’ I say. ‘I shouldn’t have lied about the photos. I was just interested, I suppose. But you should have told me. You should have told me about Ellie.’
‘Ellie isn’t important anymore. I’ve got you now. So you need to hold on, Katie. Just hold on. I’ll be there soon. I’ll be there.’
I heard it. My heart is pounding as he hangs up the phone. He called me Katie. I don’t think he even realised he was doing it.
Chapter 29
As I am walking back into the sitting room I remember a party Marco had taken me to last year. It had been a hazy day, stiflingly hot. We had driven out to an affluent suburb in Essex and the dress I had been wearing made me itch and sweat. It had rustled when I’d walked, prickly beneath the fabric. I’d been nervous that day. Anxiety spreading through me like the roots of a tree. The party was boring – Carmel would have described it as the Whitest Party In The World – and I’d found myself wandering through the landscaped gardens. At one point I’d caught sight of my reflection in the kidney-shaped swimming pool. She looks familiar, I’d thought. I’d leaned out over the cobalt-blue water to get a better look at myself. You ever peered into the mirror and seen someone you don’t recognise? I have. It’s terrifying. I’d looked in the water, and I hadn’t seen Stella Wiseman. I’d seen Katie Marigold. Marco had found me there, kneeling over the lip of the water. He had been black-suited, scissor-legged and stiff as the Reaper. I’d done something, I think, to make him angry. And then, olfactory memory, that smell of burning, roasted meat.
My God.
I lean against the doorframe, and Joey stands as though to catch me.
‘I’m fine,’ I tell him, ‘but you have to go.’
The Reaper is coming. And I have to be ready.
I walk the narrow lane which threads like an artery through the landscape towards Tyrlaze. I walk in the places where the pavement disappears and the hedgerow crowds in. I walk past silvery cobwebs like garlands, heavy purple fruits just turning rotten. My hair snags on brambles, pulling at my scalp like ghost fingers as I approach the house, the one with the eggs outside it.