Melody had tried to get in touch with James after Wonder Woman had wrapped, but he wouldn’t return her phone calls or emails; she’d sat down and written him a long letter, pouring out her heart, wishing him the best of luck as Romeo, apologising, begging him to forgive her for letting him down, leaving him in the lurch, pages and pages on the elegant stationery of the Hotel Bel-Air.
He hadn’t replied to that either.
And I can’t blame him. I let him down professionally and emotionally. I broke our pact. He has a total right not to trust me any more. It’s my job to convince him that he can.
But Felicity’s right – he mustn’t see me like this.
Because Melody wasn’t just waiting out the paparazzi up here, high in the eyrie of Limehouse Reach like a princess in a tower. She was counting the days until her bruises faded completely, her swelling diminished, so that she could try to persuade the RSC to let her audition to play Beatrice in the New Year. Her agent wouldn’t even consider putting her forward until she could prove, visually, that she was once more the Melody who had played Cathy in Wuthering Heights, not the Hollywood porno doll.
‘I thought they hadn’t made their mind up yet about Beatrice,’ she said now to Felicity, as casually as she could, trying to pitch her voice evenly, though her heart was pounding a mad syncopation.
‘Oh really?’ Felicity’s features pinched as she craned her head towards Melody. ‘Where did you hear that?’
Melody didn’t want anyone knowing that she wanted so desperately to play Beatrice. She bit her lip automatically in frustration at what she’d let slip, then flinched in pain as her teeth scraped the scar in her soft inner lip.
‘I’d love that part!’ Kathy sighed. She was a wonderful stage actress; Melody was very glad when Kathy continued: ‘But I’ll be shooting for Howerby Hall next summer – I couldn’t do it.’
‘I’d imagine Priya’s almost definitely going to play opposite James again,’ Felicity said, scanning Melody’s face for a reaction, but defeated by the bruising and swelling that turned it into a mask. ‘They were such a success together at the Haymarket! And they totally had a thing during the run. Everyone knows that.’
‘Felicity— ’ Kathy whacked Felicity’s ankle. ‘You don’t have to go on about it!’
‘It’s better for her to know, isn’t it?’ Felicity was unabashed. She stretched her arms up, pulled out the elastic holding her fine blonde hair into a messy bun, ran her hands luxuriantly through her hair and twisted it up onto the crown of her head again. ‘I’d want to know who my ex was shagging, wouldn’t you?’
Upsetting as Felicity’s words were, she was undeniably right. Melody did want to know, positively craved the knowledge: it was one of the reasons she’d asked Felicity over. She had to be aware of what she was up against.
‘And you were fucking Brad Baker in LA anyway, weren’t you?’ Felicity continued to Melody. ‘We all knew that.’
‘I was not!’ Melody snapped angrily, sitting bolt upright. ‘That man’s a pig! I never let him touch me!’
The ring of the doorbell was the most welcome noise Melody had heard in her life. She pushed out of the sofa and shot towards the door, faster than she should have moved, catching her hip on the built-in bar as she went, a judder that ran down her slim frame so that by the time she dragged the door open, she had dislodged her splint; it was hanging sideways from her nose.
‘Oh dear, what has happened?’ Aniela said, stepping forward and steadying Melody with a firm grip on her shoulders. Melody hadn’t even realised that she was shaking until she felt Aniela’s wide, warm hands wrapping over her slender frame, holding her still.
‘Take a deep breath,’ Aniela said gently. ‘One, two...’
She waited, still holding Melody, as if she could stand in the hallway all day and all night if she needed to, until Melody’s ragged breathing had calmed down; then she reached up with the index finger and thumb of her right hand and expertly tweaked Melody’s splint back into the correct alignment. The relief of having it in the right place was huge. Melody felt pent-up tears spring to her eyes now that she had someone to lean on, someone to take care of her.
‘Let us sit down and look at that nose,’ Aniela said, turning Melody round, kicking the door shut and shepherding her patient back into the apartment. ‘What has happened to make you so unhappy? Have you had bad news?’
And then, as she saw the two girls sitting on the sofa, she commented:
‘Ah, you have visitors.’ She surveyed Kathy and Felicity with a clear, observant gaze as she continued, directing her words to them: ‘I must please ask you to leave now. I must look after my patient in calm and quiet.’
Kathy was already jumping to her feet as Aniela guided Melody to a chair and sat her down.
‘We’re so sorry,’ she said. ‘We never meant to upset you, Mel... ’ She nudged Felicity, who hadn’t made any move to leave at all. ‘Felicity, come on! The nurse needs to check up on Mel!’
Slowly, snakelike, Felicity uncurled herself, a tiny smile on her mouth; Kathy was rushing over to the hall cupboard, grabbing their coats. As Felicity stood up, Aniela glanced over at her.
‘You are too thin,’ she said bluntly.
Felicity, taking her coat from Kathy, preened herself; in her world, this was a compliment. But Aniela wasn’t finished.
‘It is not healthy,’ she continued. ‘Your bones will snap like twigs from osteoporosis when you are older. Like this.’
She raised her hand and snapped her fingers in Felicity’s face. It was a surprisingly loud sound, and Felicity flinched back.
‘Go and eat something,’ Aniela concluded. ‘A cheese sandwich, perhaps. It will make you more happy. And maybe even nicer. When people are hungry, they are not very nice. Goodbye now.’
She turned to give Kathy a quick smile, making it clear that Aniela knew perfectly well who had been upsetting Melody; Kathy sketched a quick wave at Melody and made for the door. Felicity glared at Aniela but sensibly didn’t attempt a retort; she flounced out in Kathy’s wake, and could be heard saying: ‘How rude!’ as the door closed behind them.
Aniela smoothed down the strips of tape holding Melody’s splint in place, and then took both of Melody’s hands.
‘Do you want to tell me what the thin girl did to you?’ she asked. ‘Or would you just like to be quiet?’
A wail, almost like an animal in pain, emerged from Melody’s bruised lips: tears flooded from her eyes. She’d suspected that James had got together with Priya during the run of Romeo and Juliet, had heard rumours to that effect, but hearing it like this from Felicity was infinitely more painful.
The image of her beloved James, wrapped in Priya’s arms, doing with her all the things he had done with Melody, was like a knife in her guts. James, whose body she knew as well as her own; better, she corrected herself, because you look at a lover’s body so much more than you do your own. You lie beside him and trace your fingers over his skin, you draw lines connecting his moles, you tickle and tease him and play with the hair growing at the back of his neck, you play Five Little Piggies with his toes as if you were children, you run your palms up the inside of his legs, slowly, watching him start to tremble, arching towards you, knowing exactly where he wants you to touch him, to cup him and stroke him, and you pause, listening to the sounds he makes, the way he draws in his breath in pleasure, and you know those sounds, too, better than you know the ones you make when he’s driving you crazy...
With perfect recall, she remembered James’s skin, smooth and pale, lightly dusted with moles; the dimpled curve of his buttocks, the hollow at his neck in which she loved to bury her head, the soft vulnerable skin of his stomach, which he always worried wasn’t concave enough; she’d always laughed and said that when he got cast as a superhero, he could start doing sit-ups, but till then he’d be fine. In his early twenties, he could eat like a horse and never put on weight, drink beer in the pub with his mates after the cricket or football that were the only exer
cise he got. He didn’t go to the gym, didn’t pump up his muscles: his long, lean limbs were perfect for period films.
From the moment Melody had seen James across the room that first day at RADA, she’d fancied him madly; the floppy fair hair falling over his forehead, his sweet expression, his full lips, the way his legs were stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankle, the careless ease of a public schoolboy, utterly confident in his own skin. He’d sensed her staring at him and lifted his long blond lashes, his blue eyes widening as he took in the sight of her, the black hair framing her beautiful pale face, her slim body in her shabby-chic Top Shop minidress and Converse trainers. Instant, mutual attraction. They’d all gone out to the pub that evening, James manoeuvring to sit next to her, his long thigh in its faded combat trousers pressing against hers; she was really glad she’d worn a short skirt to show off her legs. And she’d made him wait a couple of weeks, knowing that she shouldn’t jump into bed with a fellow student the first night, concerned that, as a posh boy, he might shag and run, treat her like a common little chippie.
But he hadn’t, of course he hadn’t. They’d been in love by the end of the first week, the envy of every other student in their year, ridiculously happy, swinging their linked arms in great loops of celebration as they dashed up and down Gower Street, around Bloomsbury’s quiet grey tree-lined streets, running from one rehearsal room to another in a perpetual golden haze of bliss.
They’d moved in together after the first term, into the basement of a house in Highgate owned by a friend of his mother’s; the other sharers, also students, had been out most of the time, partying, socialising, but also wanting to avoid the spectacle of James and Melody’s overwhelming happiness. They were the example of a perfect couple, two beautiful young people so completely in love with each other that they barely noticed anyone else. They had done nothing that first year, as far as she could remember, but go to classes, have sex, and lie around on the ratty mattress in their room, naked, in each other’s arms, learning lines, reading plays, watching films, studying their craft.
And planning their future. They’d get somewhere of their own, as soon as they could afford it, so they’d be able to walk around the place naked, make love whenever, wherever they wanted. They’d get agents, start to make some money, work on their stagecraft, pick their roles as carefully as they could, try to balance their careers with their lives, not to be away from each other for too long. They’d stay faithful; they’d heard all the stories about how actors behaved on shoots – the casual affairs, the drunken orgies – and they’d agreed that wasn’t for them. What they had was the best thing ever, the best sex they could imagine, as if their bodies had been designed to fit together perfectly; the first time they’d dragged each other’s clothes off and fallen onto Melody’s bed together, it had been as if they’d known each other all their lives, a fluid, beautiful choreography; they’d stared into each other’s eyes the whole time, their mouths barely parted, kissing and breathing and gasping together as they came over and over again. Neither of them had been virgins; they’d known just enough to realise how incredibly lucky they were to have found a partner who balanced them so perfectly.
And nothing they had ever done together had felt anything but right. They hadn’t been particularly wild or kinky; when the sex is naturally that good, you don’t have to be. They had just, very simply, made love, over and over again, and every time had bound them together tighter and tighter, made them feel more and more secure. As if they were walking no longer on hard dirty London pavements, but on a springy, resilient cloud that buoyed them up, would carry them through anything.
That had been Melody’s undoing. James had come from a cosy, privileged background, his father a vicar in a lovely part of Somerset, his mother’s family well-established in the county, with enough money to send all the children to private school and ensure a cushion of security for all of them. With the confidence that his class and education had bestowed on him, he had less to prove than lower-middle-class Melody, who was working so hard to perfect her RP accent, to ‘pass’ for a lady if she were cast as one, to prove herself to a family that thought going into debt for drama school, of all things, was the stupidest idea they’d ever heard. Ironically, most of the male members of the Corset Crew had been to Eton; the richer your family was, the more likely you were, in these recessionary days, to be able to try for a career which notoriously offered only a tiny chance at success.
‘I was so stupid! I thought it would be all right,’ Melody sobbed into Aniela’s comforting embrace; the nurse had pulled another chair right next to Melody’s and taken her patient in her arms to let her cry herself out. She had been blurting out bits and pieces of her story, trying to tell Aniela, between fits of uncontrollable tears, how wonderful things had been with James, and how she’d messed everything up, how every single thing that had gone wrong for her had been entirely her own fault.
‘I left him in the lurch,’ she heaved out through her tears. ‘I broke our pact. He was right to dump me, he was right about me not doing the film, he was right about everything! And now Felicity’s saying that everyone thinks I had sex with Brad to get the part! I’d rather die! I’ve never cheated on James, ever.’
She raised her head from Aniela’s shoulder, which was damp now with her tears. Her eyes were as swollen as her cheeks.
‘I never wanted to,’ she said miserably. ‘I love him. I’ve always loved him and I always will. I don’t want anyone else but him.’
‘Does he know that?’ Aniela pulled a tissue out of her pocket, folded it carefully and began, very delicately, to blot the tears from Melody’s face.
‘I want to tell him,’ Melody said eagerly. ‘That’s my whole idea. I’m going to wait till my face gets better – I have this audition the first week in January, it’s to play opposite him – I want to get the part, then go to see him, show him that I’ve put myself back together, got back on track – my old face, my old career, everything the way it was when I left for LA—’
‘But you need him now,’ Aniela said simply. ‘Don’t you? You are very unhappy without him.’
It was as if all the stuffing had been knocked out of Melody; she slumped back onto the chair, its plastic yielding fractionally, as she stared straight ahead, her whole body acknowledging the truth of what Aniela had just said. She was so used to the flowery language of theatre and film people, the empty flattery, the outright lies, the circumlocutions of people put on the spot who were constitutionally unable to tell the truth, that the nurse’s Eastern European straight-talking was like a dash of bracing cold water to the face.
‘You know, Melody,’ Aniela continued, ‘I am a nurse. I do not just work here, with rich people who like to look more young and pretty. I am on wards most of my life with patients who are very sick, very ill. Often dying. And they do not look perfect. Not at all. The old ones especially. If you want to be with this man for a long time, for ever, you will see him get old, get sick, maybe die. And the same for him. You must not try to be perfect for him all the time. Especially now. It is more important that you need him. If he loves you still, he will understand why you look like this right now. And if he does not, you learn that too.’
Melody turned to look at Aniela, but she couldn’t say a word. Aniela had left her speechless. And the nurse was already standing up, going over to the kitchen, running Melody a glass of water, shaking out a pill from a phial in her bag, returning to hand it to Melody on the palm of her hand, as if she were feeding an animal.
‘Here, a little Valium,’ she said, watching as Melody obediently swallowed the pill. ‘Lie down now and have a nap. I will come back later to see how you are.’
Very grateful to have Aniela taking care of her, Melody nodded obediently, standing up and going through to the bedroom, pressing the button that automatically closed every blind over the huge windows. She eased her clothes off and slipped under the covers in T-shirt and pants, as Aniela put the Valium back in her bag and came ove
r to shut the bedroom door.
‘Sleep now,’ she said calmly. ‘Rest is what you need. And when you wake, your head will be more clear.’
With great relief, Melody closed her eyes. She hadn’t realised how exhausted she was feeling, but Aniela had known; Aniela had seen off Felicity with effortless skill, had calmed Melody down and given her excellent advice, and then sent her to bed to give all that excellent advice plenty of time to sink in.
It’s like Aniela always knows the right thing to do in any situation, Melody thought sleepily. God, I wish she’d been around when I got offered the Wonder Woman part – she might have been the one person who could have convinced me not to take it...
Aniela
Lucky Melody, Aniela thought wistfully as she left the actress’s apartment. Her boyfriend, their relationship – it’s what everyone dreams of having. Real love.
She huffed a laugh at herself. What do you know about real love, Aniela? You’re so good at giving advice, aren’t you? What would Melody think if she realised that you’re a big hypocrite, that your own love life is a bloody mess? That you haven’t kicked out the big useless lump of a boyfriend you don’t give a damn about, because you’re too frightened of being alone?
Lubo, Aniela’s boyfriend, was the thorn in her side that she knew she had to pluck out. The sooner the better. But the main cause of deaths on battlefields, before guns were invented, Aniela knew from her favourite type of reading, military history, was people pulling out arrows from the bodies of their wounded comrades. You’d have to wrench them to get them out; and often, despite that, the arrowhead would stay stuck inside the wound. Suppurating, driving the dirt and fibres of your clothes into your body, killing you with all the secondary infections even faster than the original wound.
She sighed. Maybe I read too many books about war and fighting. I just like facts, that’s all. You know where you are with facts. Made-up stories can be anything at all: facts, you can rely on.
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