No self-pity, Melody, she told herself firmly now. And no blaming other people. You made your own mistakes. You brought your trouble down on your own head.
But now, hopefully, you’re on the road to changing all that. Getting James back, being cast as Beatrice, having your old face and body again...
Melody’s lips curved into a smile, even though it hurt her lips.
Just a tiny little list, she thought, amused at herself. No major New Year’s resolutions or anything. Just getting my entire life back, that’s all...
The cab had turned right on Commercial Road now, and was heading into very familiar territory. Shoreditch, Spitalfields, Bethnal Green, the most fashionable couple of square miles in London, where she had hung out all the time at RADA, and moved to as soon as they could afford it. They were, of course, members of Shoreditch House, the private club that was Soho House’s hipper younger offshoot. Melody had spent long happy summer days lying by the rooftop pool in a Miu Miu bikini, sipping chilled rosé, hanging out with the Corset Crew and their stylist and photographer friends; but much more important to her than the access to the private club, the about-to-be-really-famous names surrounding them, had been looking up and seeing James gazing at her with so much love that it warmed her even more than the sunshine on her body and the wine she was drinking.
That night he threw me in the pool with all my clothes on for a dare, and I pulled him in with me – we were soaking when we got out, laughing and laughing, and we ran home hand in hand, our shoes squelching, my New Balances squeaking so much it made us laugh even harder – and then we got home and didn’t even stop to take off all our wet clothes, just fell on the bed and had the most amazing drunken sex... and when we woke up the mattress was all wet, because we’d passed out afterwards, and we had to pull it off the frame and lean it up on its side and it didn’t dry for days...
Under the Overground, down Shoreditch High Street, onto Bethnal Green Road, and right down a little cut-off that led to one of the railway arches.
My God, we’re here!
She leant forward and tapped urgently on the Plexiglas panel.
‘Pull over!’ she said urgently, not ready to drive right up in front of the house. ‘Just park here!’
It was a little row of cottages, built to house the silk weavers who had flooded into the area in the early nineteenth century: trade had slipped, French silk had been imported in increasing quantities, and Shoreditch had become a slum. The inhabitants of London were in constant flux, ebbing and flowing, with the East End in particular a shore on which fast-moving tides of immigrants had landed, made some money, and left in their turn as the new rush of would-be Londoners moved in. The weavers had been Irish, driven to London by famine, or Huguenots forced out of France by religious persecution; they would have been unable to even process the information that their little cramped cottages were now worth over half a million pounds. Because, finally, after centuries, Shoreditch was a truly desirable destination, not just a way station for people working all hours to buy themselves a better life.
And a particularly desirable destination in this little street in Shoreditch, tonight, was the house that Melody had shared with James, and on whose mortgage her name still appeared. James had said that he’d make arrangements to take it over, that he’d been asked to shoot an ad for whisky in Japan that would bring in a decent wodge; he’d do that, use the money to pay off Melody’s part of the deposit. The paperwork was being drawn up, the lawyers tasked to remove Melody from James’s life. It was like a divorce.
But apparently, I’m not grieving at all! I had no idea I was throwing a party! she thought bleakly, staring at the bright square windows of the cottage in question, which looked so densely packed with party guests that it was about to burst. Even with the windows closed against the cold night air, the music was clearly audible: Christmas music, Wizzard singing about wishing it could be Christmas every day. She could hear people inside shouting out the words, laughing as they chanted them; it was very Shoreditch to simultaneously enjoy the song but also mock its cheesiness.
‘Um, miss?’ The cabbie was looking at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘Are you going in or what?’
‘No!’ she said quickly. ‘No, I’m not! Just... just wait here, okay?’
The cab had pulled up into a space a few doors down from the house, on the opposite side of the street. It gave Melody a clear view, not only of the front door, but the approach from Bethnal Green Road.
‘Wait here?’ he echoed.
‘Yes! Just – turn the lights off, so no one comes over to see who’s inside,’ she said.
‘I’ll have to keep the heat on,’ he pointed out. ‘Or we’ll freeze our knackers off. And the meter running.’
‘Okay! Fine! Just please turn the lights off !’ Melody pleaded, hearing footsteps coming down the street from behind the cab, the high heels and higher giggles that almost certainly meant incipient party guests. She was frantic to avoid detection, desperate that no one should see Melody Dale, her face messed up, huddled in a black cab, waiting outside what was technically still her own home.
Acting like a crazed stalker.
Just in time, the cab driver killed the lights, and Melody ducked against the frame of the cab as she realised how familiar the voices were. Felicity and Kathy, the former in a spectacular fur cape which swirled around her dramatically, the latter in a sensible duffel with the hood pulled up, tick-tocked past on their heels. Felicity was saying loudly:
‘Good, it’s already going strong! I loathe getting to a party too early and having to make dull conversation!’
‘That’s my favourite bit,’ Kathy said wistfully. ‘When you can actually hear yourself talk.’
‘Oi, gels!’ called a male voice behind them with a heavy Cockney accent. ‘Give us a photo, eh? It’s Felicity, ain’t it? And Betty the maid!’
Shit. A paparazzo. Melody shrank even further down in her seat.
‘Going to Dr Who’s Christmas party, gels? Give us a nice photo on the doorstep!’
The voice was passing the cab now. Melody levered herself up a fraction, just enough to see a burly man in a bomber jacket and jeans catching up with Felicity and Kathy, who were ringing James’s doorbell. The cottages were two-up, two-down, no entrance steps or basement areas, and when the door swung open James was clearly visible, light behind him but light on his face too from the streetlight in front of the house.
‘James! Darling!’ Felicity launched herself at him, the cape swinging, kissing him on both cheeks with huge enthusiasm. ‘Sweetie, there’s a pap out here, can we give him a photo?’
‘Um—’ James began unwillingly.
Melody knew him so well; he hated that paps knew where he lived, hated the business of posing when he wasn’t on a red carpet or doing publicity. But he’d known, when he was offered the part of Dr Who, that he would have to accept this kind of intrusion into his private life as part of the territory. James was a gentleman: he’d made a bargain with fame, and he’d stand by it.
‘Go on, mate!’ the photographer said chummily. ‘Won’t take a sec!’
James was already putting one arm around Kathy as Felicity threw herself onto his chest and stared up at him adoringly. The flash snapped, a series of dazzling white flares against the yellow sodium streetlight, and Melody gazed longingly at her ex-boyfriend’s handsome face, his long lean body, illuminated so clearly for those brief moments, his high-bridged nose and fair hair flopping over his forehead, his shy, adorable smile. Her hands ached to tear open the cab door, run out, drag Felicity off him, and wrap her own arms around his neck.
That was what I was hoping for. I must have been mad. I’ve been gearing myself up all day to work up the courage to come here – I had this fantasy that I’d find James all alone, sitting in front of the fire like we used to do, staring at the coals... missing me...
They’d had to buy small-sized furniture to fit in the dinky little cottage; a loveseat rather than a three-seater sofa, on wh
ich they’d curled up together, James constantly, jokingly complaining that his legs were too long to be comfortable, that he’d get a cramp. Melody had bought him a footstool last Christmas, a joke present which he’d actually loved.
I teased him – called him Grandpa, told him that now he had a stool to put his feet on, he’d want a pipe and slippers next – and he just smiled happily and said that sounded lovely, and maybe we could get a dog as well...
I should be grateful he’s having a party. At least he isn’t curled up in front of the fire right now with someone else in my place on the sofa, snuggling up to him, finding things to tease him about...
Tears were prickling at Melody’s eyes, blurring her vision. Dimly, she saw that James was chivalrously standing to the side of the door, ushering the girls in before him, out of the cold; a cab chugged past hers and stopped in front of the cottage, and he waited for its occupant to pay the cabbie and step out.
‘Oi-oi!’ the paparazzo carolled, delighted, as the cab pulled away under the railway bridge, giving him a good view of the new arrival. ‘It’s Juliet! Give us a kiss, you two!’
Priya Radia was less obviously a fame-chaser than Felicity, but she knew perfectly well how to play the publicity game. Flicking her white padded By Malene Birger coat open with an expert tug that popped all the fastenings in one go, revealing an eye-catching peacock-print Mary Katrantzou dress whose acid turquoise, yellow and pink colours set off her warm cappuccino skin to perfection, she took James’s hand, leaned towards him on her yellow and orange Kandee patent heels, and tilted up her brightly lipsticked mouth to him for a kiss. Her thick, glossy black hair was piled on top of her head in a 1960s-style bun, her make-up perfect. She looked amazing.
James’s head came down to hers. Their lips met. Priya slid one hand around his neck – the one on the opposite side to the photographer, of course, so that it wouldn’t block his shot – and pulled him in for a deeper kiss as the flashes exploded one after the other, the paparazzo, unable to believe his luck, making the most of what would be a very lucrative photo.
‘What about Melody, James?’ he called bravely, after checking his monitor and making sure he’d got the shot. ‘How are things with you two? She still in LA or what?’
James looked thunderstruck by the question, freezing in place. As he stood there, unable to say a word, the music playing inside flooded out into the street: Wham!’s ‘Last Christmas’, the lyrics feeling horribly appropriate to Melody. Last Christmas, Melody had had James’s heart. And as George Michael asked his former lover if he recognised him, Melody felt the most enormous lump building up in her throat. If she stepped out of the cab now, if she ran over to James, would he recognise her? Or would he rear back in horror at the sight of the horribly bruised woman in front of him?
But Priya, who had stepped into the front hall, turned and gave the paparazzo a dazzling smile over her shoulder. She was still holding James’s hand; as she pulled him inside with her, the paparazzo snapping away again, she called back:
‘Melody who?’
It was the perfect exit line. The door swung shut behind Melody’s ex-boyfriend and his new flame; the paparazzo propped his back against the streetlight, checking the monitor on his digital camera; and Melody, in a strangled whisper, said to the cabbie:
‘I want to go back – take me back to Limehouse Reach, now...’ Collapsing onto the seat as the cab pulled away, doing her best not to burst into the raking sobs to which she was dying to give vent, she thought bitterly how true those words were.
It’s too late to go back. Much too late. You’ve been a stupid fool, an idiot. You’ve thrown away everything you had. You’re all alone, on Christmas Eve, watching your ex throw a party and a whole slew of gorgeous girls throw themselves at him. You’re the crying woman in the back of the black cab driving around London like a drama queen. In a French film, my character would be beautiful. Eva Green with lots of black eyeliner, mysterious and haunting. But me – I’m in a brutally realistic, low-budget British movie, and I look like shit.
Melody raised her hands to her face. Her greatest fear was that her face would be lumpy or scarred after the surgery, that she would lose her livelihood as well as her lover. All I’ll be fit for if I don’t recover properly will be going on Celebrity Big Brother with the rest of the drunks and misfits, she thought wretchedly, winding herself up into an increasingly agitated state. What else will I be able to do? I’ll be a total laughing-stock! The Wonder Woman money’s running out fast, with the surgery and the stay at Limehouse Reach – I’ve got some equity in the house, but I can’t live off that either, I’ll need to buy somewhere else to live...
There was very little traffic on the road back to Canary Wharf on Christmas Eve. Almost everyone was home already, curled up happily with family and friends, and the cab made short work of the drive. Much too short for Melody’s liking. It was warm and dark inside the taxi, the engine was ticking away with its loud, comforting rusty purr; she wasn’t ready to get out, walk through the bright lobby of Limehouse Reach, a testament to Christmas cheer that was like a mocking reminder of everything she had lost...
‘Keep on driving,’ she said to the cabbie. ‘Just for a little while more.’
‘It’s your money,’ he said, shrugging; if a crazy rich woman who looked as if she’d been punched in the face wanted to drive round some of the nastier parts of the East End on Christmas Eve while she cried her eyes out, what did he care? He had nearly a full tank of petrol – he could take her to Canvey Island and back if she wanted. This was a cabbie’s dream fare. Instead of turning off East India Dock Road, he kept going down the A13, the cab chugging along past the Beckton sewage works, past Rainham Marshes. They were fully into Essex golf course territory by the time Melody, slumped into a tear-stained ball of misery, roused herself to look out of the window and panicked at the realisation that she had no idea where she was, alone in a cab with a strange man.
‘Back,’ she managed to say, her voice thick with tears. ‘Back to where you picked me up.’
The road was absolutely empty, a strip of black macadam in the middle of the dark, cloudy night. Pulling a U-turn, the cab duly headed back to London, the high skyscrapers of Canary Wharf soon rising up, bright against the black horizon, their spires picked out in red and green and blue neon lighting, their outlines filled in with tiny white dots. As soon as she spotted the Four Seasons, lower than the other buildings and uplit in a wash of golden lights that puddled out onto the dull dark gleam of the Thames, Melody tapped on the glass.
‘You can let me out here,’ she said, clearing her throat, trying to sound a bit more in control. ‘I’ll walk the last bit.’
The fare was a hundred and forty pounds, and she added an extra ten; happy as the cabbie was at this Christmas gift, he rolled down the window and looked at her dubiously as she stepped out of the taxi.
‘You ain’t going to do anything stupid, love, are you?’ he asked bluntly, his gaze passing over her battered, tear-stained face to the dark waters just visible round the side of the hotel.
‘What?’ Melody said blankly.
And then, realising what he meant, she felt her face suffuse with blood, embarrassed at how crazily she’d been acting. I must seem like a basket case, she thought.
‘No – no, I’ll be fine,’ she muttered. ‘I just want to walk a bit. Have some fresh air.’
Through the open window, she heard his radio: Chris Rea, singing about driving home for Christmas, and she turned away so that the cabbie wouldn’t see her face crumple into misery yet again. It was such a simple song, by a totally unfashionable singer, but since she was a little girl, Melody had loved it: his raspy, lyrical voice, like toffee melting over rocks, the sweetness of the sentiment, the love and yearning to be home, to feel the nearness of the person he loved.
Home. That was with James, almost since I met him. My home was with James. But Mum and Dad, Ashley – that’s my home too, and I miss them all so badly...
Melody ha
dn’t told her family where she was or what she was doing over Christmas. They’d been desperate for her to come home, knowing that she’d broken up with James, wanting to have her back for the holidays; but Melody had been equally desperate to put back the clock, get back her old face, and she’d known that she couldn’t tell them that she’d decided to get even more surgery. After the disastrous work she’d had done in LA, the exaggerated botch-job the surgeon had done on her face, her mother, in particular, would have an absolute panic; Melody could picture all too well the hysterics, the entreaties not to let anyone else mess with her lovely daughter, her mother bursting into tears on the phone, her father getting on the line to ask what was going on, his own horror at the news that Melody was having more elective surgery—
She shuddered at the mere thought as she walked down to the waterfront, taking the narrow public footpath that led between Limehouse Reach and the Four Seasons. It was almost completely dark, shadows thrown by the buildings even blacker than the night sky, but there was not a soul around, and Melody wasn’t in the least afraid. It felt like nothing could scare her more than the sight of her own face in the mirror. The weight of solitude pressed down on her, dense as the shadows. And she found herself pulling her phone out of her pocket, scrolling through it and then, impatiently, cancelling that and hitting the dialler instead, her gloved hands slipping on the keypad. She had to drag one of her gloves off with her teeth so that she could input the number that she knew by heart.
The need to hear her parents’ voices was rising inside her frantically, a need she’d buried for so long. There had been no one who loved her to accompany her as she went to Dr Nassri, sat through the necessary appointments to establish her psychological stability, that she wasn’t suffering from Body Dysmorphic Disorder, the X-rays to determine exactly how the previous work had altered her bone structure, the pulling and prodding at her cheeks where her own fat had been used as a filler, to see where that had settled and if it could be removed evenly. No one to hold her hand as she went under the anaesthetic, no one there when she came to, groggy and disorientated and aching. No one to send her flowers or Get Well Soon cards.
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