by Shari Low
Jess was next. ‘Nah, he’s totally let himself go,’ she said, feigning disgust as she nudged Kate out of the way and took her place.
My inner health and safety officer was suddenly concerned that Estelle was bristling so much she may split that Balenciaga frock, shooting sequins across the room. She could have someone’s eye out.
We introduced Estelle to the newcomers. Of course, we’d already given them a full rundown of her snide disdain for us, but they covered it up well with wide smiles and handshakes. Jess wasn’t into hugging strangers unless she’d found them by swiping right on Tinder.
‘Is your room okay?’ Sam asked Jess. Since Carol and Toni were still in the guest house, Arnie had put the girls in the suite next to mine – a twin room, decorated in classic California whites and pale woods, with a huge bathroom and walk-in closet.
‘Nope, there’s only one steam room in it and the safe isn’t big enough for all my diamonds,’ Jess quipped, making him laugh.
Estelle had clearly had enough of all the cosy joviality and stepped forward into centre stage. ‘I’m just off to bed. Early call in the morning and Scorsese is so demanding. Coming, darling?’ Was it me or did she ramp up the sultry stuff when she threw out that question?
Sam. Rabbit. Headlights.
His gaze caught mine and I tried to send him a telepathic instruction. Don’t go, Sam. Say no. Hang out with us. You know you’d prefer it to a night of passion with a global celebrity who’s been on the cover of Vogue, Vanity Fair and Sports Illustrated. Okay, maybe not, but there’s some Kung Pao chicken left and we’re happy to share.
‘Eh, sure,’ he said, but it was to Estelle, not me. His telepathic receivers were clearly being blocked by Estelle’s sequins.
Was it my imagination or did she respond with a smug grin of victory? My imagination. Or maybe the wine.
‘You guys enjoy the rest of the night and just help yourselves to anything you need. It’s good to have you here.’ I was so busy thinking how lovely he was, that I was startled when I realised he was now talking to me. ‘We’re scouting locations tomorrow, so I’ll be away early in the morning and I’m not sure when I’ll be back.’
‘Oh. Okay. It’ll be tough, but I suppose we’ll find something to do around here,’ I joked, making him smile again. He was almost out of the room, when I blurted, ‘Sam!’
He stopped so suddenly that Estelle nearly dislocated a shoulder trying to hang on to his hand. Shit, it was the bloody wine again. Goddammit. It was determined to challenge Estelle dominance and ask him to stay and hang out with us. It was the equivalent of hoping the popular kid at school picked your gang to hang out with. Pathetic. Sad. And now everyone was staring at me.
‘Erm… Thank you. We really appreciate you letting us stay here.’
His eyes were locked on mine again. ‘Sure. You know I love to see you all. Goodnight, Cooper.’
This time, I managed keep my gob shut and let him go.
‘Oh no,’ Kate said, in the low wary voice she usually reserved for the arrival of serial killers in crime shows. ‘There’s something going on with you two. It’s gone all awkward and weird.’
‘It’s not!’ I said, completely aware that I was being both very awkward and very weird. ‘I just wanted to spend a bit more time with him, that’s all.’
‘That’s all?’ Jess asked, lifting her eyes from her phone.
‘Definitely.’ I couldn’t meet Kate’s eyes again, so I was delighted when Jess pivoted to a completely new subject. ‘Okay. Do you think this is the real Channing Tatum?’ she asked, holding up her phone so we could see a pic on her Tinder app. ‘Only if it is, I might need to pop out for a couple of hours.’
I really hoped she was kidding, but Val took charge, swiping the phone out of Jess’s hands and popping it down the front of her bra. ‘I’m not having you sexticating…’
Ironically, Carol was the first to suss out what Val meant. ‘Sexting, Val. It’s called ‘sexting’.’
‘Well, whatever it’s called, I’m not having you doing it any more, Jess Latham.’ As always, the full names came out when she was chiding us.
‘Eeeeeeew, I’m never going to be able to not see Channing Tatum in your boobs. I’ll never have sex again,’ Jess moaned.
‘Good. Because you’re going to catch something if you carry on like this and I saw a programme about those genital warts and they can make you walk funny.’
‘Excuse me, forgot my purse.’ Estelle had picked that exact moment to walk back in. She picked her Lagerfeld clutch off the worktop and backed out of the room, horrified.
Toni put her head on the island, shoulders shaking, while the rest of us bit our tongues.
‘That was probably more information than she needed to hear,’ Val said. ‘Anyway, I’m off to bed. I’ve found the BBC on that telly and I want to catch up with EastEnders. Love you all, lassies.’
She blew us a kiss and marched off, handbag under one arm, wine in the other.
‘I think I’ll turn in too,’ Carol said, stretching. ‘Toni, come with me and we’ll call your dad and Charlotte. I’m going to lie through my veneers and say you begged me to stay here so he doesn’t call in the lawyers.’
Another grin from Toni. Since we’d got back from the airport, she’d reverted to her happier mood from a couple of days before. I wondered if this week’s sulks and strops were because she was dreading going home? I wasn’t entirely sure, but I had another seven days to try to suss it – and her – out.
‘Shit, Val’s away with my phone,’ Jess groaned, before taking off in pursuit, leaving just Kate and me.
‘LA has been good for you,’ she said, grinning. ‘Loving the hair and the tan. You’ve managed to put on outdoor clothes and everything.’
‘I know. I’m like a new woman,’ I agreed, laughing as we began clearing away the dishes and food boxes. ‘I’ve even brushed my hair five days in a row. It’s progress.’
‘Have you spoken to Mark?’
‘Every day.’ That was surprisingly true. Mac and Benny would put the phone on loud speaker for at least part of our daily calls, and Mark would chip in too. It had been strangely easy. Almost friendly. ‘The boys are having a great time and he sounds happy too. I hope so. I’m still finding it strange that I’m not there, though. And not just because I miss them. Don’t judge me for this, but…’ I paused. ‘I want them to have a fantastic holiday, I promise, but it still stings that they’re having a great time without me. I mean, who’s organising what they do every day? Who’s nagging them to get their clothes in the washing machine? Who’s telling them to get off their phones and moaning at them for watching fourteen episodes of The Walking Dead in a row? Those are my jobs. Who’s doing all that?’ I suddenly felt emotional and wanted to call them to hear their voices.
Kate switched on the tap and began rinsing plates. ‘You have to let them do their thing,’ she said gently. ‘I understand though. I’d find it hard to think of Bruce and the kids having a brilliant time without me. It’s that whole “needing to be needed thing”, isn’t it?’
I thought about that as I took her rinsed plates off the drainer one by one and put them in the dishwasher. It was time to loosen off the cords. I knew that. But I still wasn’t ready to fill the gaps that would be left there.
‘What about Sam?’
I’d moved on to the cutlery now. ‘What about him?’ I tried to channel innocence, but she didn’t buy it.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she chirped. ‘Maybe just the fact that he was one of the biggest loves of your life, and now you’re here, in his home, and he’s the same lovely guy as he always was and you’d need to be dead from the neck down not to have any kind of response to that.’
‘Sssshhhhh,’ I hissed. ‘I’m pretty sure Estelle has this place bugged. One wrong word and she’ll storm in here and stab me with her Louboutins.’
I was only half-joking. In her last movie, she’d played a devious international assassin with a quirky taste in killing methods.
There was a fairly good chance she’d picked up some tips.
‘Val would protect you. I’m fairly sure she has some kind of impenetrable force field in that handbag of hers. She never goes anywhere without it. But come on, spill. Do you think there could be anything between you again?’
‘Kate, have you seen his girlfriend? I look like her elderly aunt, the one who works in a pie shop and likes comfortable shoes. Estelle Conran is half the planet’s wet dream.’
Everything rinsed, she flipped off the tap. ‘Yeah, but she’s not you,’ she said simply.
‘Thank God, because she’d need to use a body double for nude scenes.’
I closed the dishwasher and leaned back against the cool marble of the island, letting Kate’s words sink in.
‘The thing is,’ I said, ‘I’m not even me any more.’
Wow. How had we gone from riotous fun to deep and profound so quickly?
Her expression changed to a sad smile. ‘You will be. You just need time.’
I wasn’t sure that all the time in the world would help, but I wasn’t going to argue. Instead, I picked my wine glass back up, took another sip and then went for full disclosure, using her words from earlier.
‘I’m not dead from the neck down though,’ I conceded. ‘I’ve thought about him. About us, and everything that happened. It would be impossible not to. But there’s no going back. Our chance passed a long time ago.’
Kate dropped the last of the rubbish in the bin. ‘Any regrets about that?’
Regrets? Her question took me back to the last time I had the chance to choose a life with Sam. It was the next chapter in the story that I’d been telling Toni on the flight on the way here. The History of Sam Morton and Carly Cooper, year 2008 AD – the one where Sam drops a bombshell that leads to a crossroads and a decision that would shape the rest of my life.
And I would never know if I made the right choice.
17
Los Angeles, June, 2008
White Flag – Dido
I’d come to LA on a mission to sell my first book, Nipple Alert, to a movie studio, so that it could be a global success, dollars would fall from the sky, and I could spend the rest of my life wearing leopard print and having lunch once a week with Jackie Collins at the Chateau Marmont. I had brought the boys with me, but Mark had stayed at home, not even pretending to be happy that I’d come to Hollywood to chase my dreams.
However, there was already a whole lot of acting going on in the family. At almost three, Benny was pretending to be Buzz Lightyear, jumping off any high surface shouting ‘To Infinity and Beyond’. We already had a standing reservation at Accident and Emergency. At four and three quarters, Mac was showing a real talent for impersonations. Unfortunately, it was always of the bad guys in movies, and I was already having nightmares in which I’d see his face on FBI Most Wanted posters.
Bottom of the performance scale were Mark and I, who were acting really badly as a married couple. It was amazing how quickly the happy ever after had been derailed by the stresses and strains of everyday life. When we’d said our ‘I do’s’ at that brilliantly rushed ceremony in New York, I’d been absolutely certain that I was marrying my soulmate, the guy I’d love until the end of time, one who had promised to do everything he could to make all our dreams come true.
I was sure nothing could break us and I still felt the same, but that didn’t mean we wouldn’t get a few dents along the way.
Straight after the wedding, Mark got a transfer to the London office of his legal powerhouse, a competitive yuppie-fest that demanded sixteen-hour days and unflinching commitment. I could almost live with that. We’d moved into the house next door to Kate, and my pals had pretty much taken up residence in my kitchen, so I wasn’t bored or lonely. However, I was broody. I bought my first ovulation kit and we became that cliché couple, having sex on demand, to a biological schedule, then seething afterwards because Mark would fall asleep when I was still lying with my legs up a wall to give his swimmers the best chance of success.
Still, we didn’t give up. Kate had her third child, Carol had her twins. Sarah’s were approaching their teens and Jess was thinking about having another to keep her toddler, Josh, company. And oh, the irony. I’d spent years of my life trying to avoid getting pregnant, and now my ovaries seemed to have downed tools and organised a walkout.
Three years later, it was all worth it. Mac had come along, then Benny, and the happy ever after was back on the horizon. However, I was the only one sailing towards it. Mark was too busy working to even get in the dinghy. The long days didn’t change, and the weekends were spent sleeping or preparing for the week ahead. Oh, the predictability of it all. I was the frustrated suburban housewife who felt her husband took her for granted and didn’t pull his weight. Once upon a time, I was a driven, ambitious, life-loving, twenty-something with an admittedly chaotic but thrilling love life. In just a few years, I’d become the one thing that I absolutely, definitely, positively didn’t think I’d ever be: normal.
My only hope of opening our lives back up to thrills and excitement was the possibility of making my writing career a success, so when Hollywood came knocking, I answered the door. The soulmate who’d promised all that richer-or-poorer stuff tried to slam it shut.
It had started with a phone call from Ike Tucker, a big-shot talent agent who specialised in book to movie deals. My publisher had sent him my novel and he wanted me to come to LA to work with him on pitching it around the studios. Was I interested? I’d started packing before I got off the phone. This was it! My big chance! My dream!
I was rudely awakened when Mark had refused to come with me, because, well, the truth was, he was a realist. In in his fact-based world, the chances of me landing a movie deal were so miniscule that he was absolutely certain it wouldn’t happen. In Mark’s mind, that meant there was no point in even trying, and definitely no point in spending money we didn’t have and disrupting our lives for the sake of an unattainable dream. We should just accept our lives for what they were. Embrace normality. Settle for what we already had.
But I couldn’t. I was restless and I was miserable, and I definitely wasn’t ready to concede defeat to a husband who wouldn’t know excitement if he tripped over it on his way to another long day at the legal coalface. I was a dreamer who was stuck in a rut, with two admittedly gorgeous toddlers, but how many days could I pass singing Barney songs, baking cakes and speaking in words of one syllable, then writing my Family Values columns and my next book while they were asleep, and hoping my husband would make it home before midnight?
I wanted more. A big shiny future was being dangled in front of me and I couldn’t resist it. Besides, it was the summer holidays and Mac would be starting school in August, so this was going to be the last chance to go on an extended adventure. This wasn’t some crazy whim, it was a genuine opportunity and if I didn’t take it, I’d always be wondering, what if?
So, despite Mark’s furious objections, I’d waltzed through the brand new Terminal 5 building at Heathrow, with one kid dressed as Buzz Lightyear and the other one as Woody (I didn’t have the emotional strength to argue), and jetted off to La La Land to stay in one of Uncle Sam’s guest suites.
It was like a parallel universe in LA. At home I was a cook, a cleaner, a babysitter, a financial planner, bill payer, holiday organiser, car fixer, stressed-out working mum of two toddlers. I hadn’t had a proper conversation or decent sex for as long as I could remember. Here? For the first time in years, I could exhale. The sun was shining, and all I had to do every day – with the exception of a few meetings my agent had set up with movie producers – was hang out at the beach and pool, play with my boys, and when they were in bed, I could chill with one of my best mates in his incredible home, watch movies, eat our favourite foods and chat about his day at the giddy heights of movie stardom. It had been a long, long time since I’d felt that happy or that relaxed.
For a while, I almost convinced myself that it was real, until the sti
ng from the persistent phone calls from my pissed-off husband burst my bubble.
A month after I’d arrived, the movie deal hadn’t come in, Buzz and Dr Doom (Mac had gone over to the dark side by then and decided he’d rather be a baddie) were starting to speak with an LA twang, and Mark was getting more and more insistent that we come home.
‘Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum, MUM!’ Mac said excitedly. That was his thing. He’d been born in a perpetual state of excitement and enthusiasm, so he repeated everything he said, in ascending volume, until someone answered him, by which time he’d usually forgotten what he wanted to say.
‘Yes, my darling?’
His tone would suggest I was miles away, but I was actually lying between them on the sofa, watching old episodes of Scooby Doo.
‘Tomorrow, can we, can we, can we…’ I stroked his hair as I waited, unable to guess. It could be anything from ‘get pizza’ to ‘see if Spiderman can come for a play date’. ‘Can we phone Dad and tell him to come play with you and me and Uncle Sam? I miss him.’
‘Me too,’ added my little Benny Bear, from somewhere deep in my armpit. I was aware that Benny’s declaration may not be particularly heartfelt, given that he spent all day agreeing with everything his brother said.
Mac when he wakes up: ‘Mum, Mum, Mum, MUM, I’m hungry!’
Benny: ‘Me too.’
Mac at the park: ‘Can you push me on the swing? I want to go so high I can see the Death Star!’
Benny: ‘Me too.’
Mac in the evening: ‘Mummy, I love you more than chips. With tomato ketchup.’
Benny: ‘Me too.’ (Pauses, looks around.) ‘Where are the chips?’
I’d almost forgotten Mac was waiting for an answer. ‘Of course we can call him. I’m not sure he’ll be able to come play though, because Daddy has to work.’
‘Not fair,’ Mac pouted. He got no arguments from me.
Even after two more mysteries had been solved by Scooby and the pesky kids, I was almost reluctant to let the boys go to sleep because I was avoiding Sam, for two reasons. First, despite my happily married state, I’d been having obscene thoughts about doing things to Sam that would use muscles I’d forgotten I had. And secondly, well, there was the trifling matter that a few nights before, he’d told me he was falling in love with me again.