by Jane Robins
I walk to Soho. The rain has gone, and it’s a bright morning, filled with silvery light, the sort of weather for making strides, getting things done, and I walk briskly up to the reception desk, asking to see Felicity, boldly, as though I have an appointment.
“Tell her that it’s Callie Farrow, and I’m going to LA tonight, so I’d like to see her urgently about Tilda.”
Five minutes later, Felicity escorts me into her office. She’s wearing batwinged clothes again, and heaps of her jangly jewelry, and she has her hair up in a messy bun, a silky scarf tied turban-like around it. Her style, I figure, is supposed to exude a tone of creativity and friendliness—but the look on her face is one of pure annoyance.
“I have only a few minutes . . . ,” she says. “But I’d like you to take this message to your sister—tell her to get in touch with me. She’s still not returning my calls or my emails. Frankly, Callie, I don’t have much to offer her right now. It’s thin pickings. But she does need to stay in touch. It’s the professional thing.”
“Absolutely,” I say, trying to think of some appropriate small talk, before I get to my real reason for being here. “I’m going to LA tonight, and I thought you might want to give me a message for her, that’s why I’ve stopped by.”
“What is she saying about her UK work? Is she even available at the minute?”
“Oh, definitely . . .” I’m improvising. The truth is Tilda hasn’t been returning my calls either. “And she’ll be back for Envy, of course.”
“But I’ve had the producers on the phone telling me she’s backing out.”
I don’t show how shocked I am by this news. “Oh, she hasn’t totally made her mind up yet.”
“It’s unacceptable, Callie.”
“I’ll tell her.” I get up, saying, “Do you mind, I just want to look at this photo again.” And I stand, staring at it, my heart beating against my ribs.
“Who’s this girl, standing next to Tilda?”
“Why do you ask? What’s this got to do with anything?”
“I need to know . . . I think Tilda’s back in touch with her.”
“That’s Lottie Watts. She was on my books once. . . . I don’t know what happened to her.”
Lottie, Charlotte. Charlotte, Lottie. “My girl crush.” That’s all I need to know. I leave in a hurry; Felicity Shore making no secret of her irritation at my visit.
47
I should have gone straight home and bought my air ticket. But I didn’t. I lost my nerve. I knew the truth now, but I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t face Scarlet, and I dreaded seeing Tilda again. It hit me as I was sitting there, staring at the British Airways website and its pictures of sunny Santa Monica beaches, of turquoise swimming pools belonging to whitewashed hotels. All that brightness seemed like an impossible choice.
Instead I felt stuck in dark, wintery London; and I opened up the dossier and started to write everything down. That pitiless, penetrating insight from Liam, and the confirmation from Felicity Shore that Scarlet was Lottie from Tilda’s drama school days. Everything was explained, all the loose ends tied up neatly, just like Strangers on a Train. It took me more than an hour to think it through, and type it up—and when I’d finished I transferred the dossier to a memory stick and then, with Tilda in mind, I hid the memory stick in the corner of a pillowcase, and put it at the bottom of a pile in the linen cupboard. And that’s where it stayed, month after month, as I worked on suppressing all thoughts of Tilda and Felix and Scarlet and Luke. Belle was the only one I allowed myself to remember, the only one who made me feel better inside.
I distracted myself by concentrating on my new life with Wilf—who was relieved by my inaction, and moved himself back into Curzon Street. I worked hard as his manager at Wilf Baker Gardens, booking new business, making sure that we were paid on time, checking that the crew were in the right place. And often I’d go along at lunchtime to see Wilf at work, bringing ham sandwiches and a flask of strong tea, and sitting with him while he explained his planting ideas—“a perennial meadow, blocks of color, that’s the idea, with gravel paths.” Or “white roses and raspberry bushes—purity and blood—it’s what Catholics used to plant hundreds of years ago.” Sometimes I’d lend a hand, under Wilf’s guidance, and dig and plant, like I did on our first proper date, thinking of long ago when I was seven, and I ran down through the blue sky, into the bush and the earth, where the skull was.
In the New Year Wilf grew a big ginger beard, I became a better cook, and we both resolved to get out of London more, planning to see Mum in Wales in the spring and then travel down to Cornwall to go surfing. Also we moved out of Curzon Street. All the costs of the flat had been paid by Tilda, direct debit, and for a while we were grateful to be able to live somewhere so central, I’d even say glamorous, for nothing. But I was always less comfortable there than Wilf was, seeing Felix everywhere—in the choice of furniture, of crockery, even of the bathroom taps. And my feelings about Felix had become horribly painful. I knew now that he wasn’t a monster after all. He just liked order in everything, was a run-of-the-mill control freak. In Curzon Street it was hard to suppress such thoughts, but we couldn’t go back to my flat, which had been let out to someone else, and I was pleased when, in January, Wilf and I viewed a one-bedroom first-floor apartment back in Willesden Green. The kitchen was tiny, and the bedroom filled up totally by the bed—but the sitting room was a decent size with a balcony and a view of a garden. When I stood out there I could hear the sound of trains.
Wilf resigned from Willesden Estates so that he could do gardens full-time. He worked longer hours than before, sometimes gardening from first light until after dark, and he would arrive home sweaty, dirty, exhausted and never quite free of the garden smell, even after he showered. He’d collapse onto the sofa with me, and we’d sit there with our chili con carne and beers watching I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here or The Great British Bake Off, making occasional comments about the contestants, or about the rain outside, which was going sideways. Not real conversations, just enough to feel companionable. I loved those evenings and I could see that he did too.
One time, I was lying with my legs across his, TV on, and I looked over, catching a slightly dazed expression on his face. I asked, “What are you thinking?” He smiled and said, “Never ask me that. Life’s better when you don’t have to spell it out.” In total agreement, I kissed him, thinking only for a second about my dossier and its horrific catalog of secrets; only for a second about Tilda and her extraordinary career in Hollywood. It ends here, I thought. This is my life now.
48
Everything has changed, because of the body of a girl floating, facedown, in a swimming pool in California. The image is so clear inside my head. I see those long thin arms outstretched, those parted fingers, and that bloated white skin taking on a tone of grayish-blue. I see too the long hair radiating out like a distorted halo, signifying something that I can’t articulate. Something toxic. She’s wearing that diaphanous golden dress, the one with the delicate straps that crisscross all the way down her back. It’s the dress that I tried on that day in Curzon Street, the one that I pulled off so quickly that I split the seam. Is it split now, I wonder, as it clings to her lifeless body and winds around her skinny legs?
When Felix died, the hotel manager said he was reminded of the painting of the death of Thomas Chatterton; and now I think of another painting—of Ophelia, a beautiful floating corpse, caressed by the softness of her dress, seeming as though she might be gently sleeping. But this Ophelia is inverted, her blank eyes gazing at the bottom of the pool. All I see is the back of her head, the radiating hair, and I wonder about her last thoughts. Was she regretful, or remorseful? It’s two weeks ago now, but I haven’t stopped thinking of the scene, turning it over in my mind, trying to make sense of it.
I slump in the back of the taxi that is taking me from Los Angeles airport to Tilda’s villa in the Hollywood Hills—to that cursed place, that pool. It’s my first visit to
America, but it’s hard to be curious about my new surroundings. The road starts to twist and climb, and I’m dimly aware of the hazy sky, the strange, waxy vegetation, the low whitewashed buildings set back from the road. It’s merely an unfamiliar backdrop for my grim mission here.
“Come for a vacation?” says the driver.
“No—nothing like that.” He doesn’t hear, and in any case my mind is elsewhere—I’m thinking of the dossier, and the section that I wrote after my visits to Liam and to Felicity Shore.
Before I left London, I had opened it up and reread those final words one last time. I wanted every detail to be fresh in my mind when I arrived in America. I’ve brought the laptop with me, of course. It’s in the bee bag on my lap, and I hold it tight, clinging to my dreadful words, the loathsome truth that I put into a letter that wasn’t sent.
Dear Tilda,
I know now that you met her at drama school—your “girl crush,” the young woman who is Scarlet, Charlotte, or Lottie. And you made such a pretty couple: your willowy beauty, her dark intensity. I imagine that you were the sisters then, the twins. But afterwards, Charlotte failed at acting and modeling, while you picked up decent roles and were stunning in Rebecca. You had the beginnings of the glittering career that you so desired, while she was stuck in Manchester with horrible, sadistic Luke, occasionally picking up some role in a tiny theater production. What did you promise her, Tilda? A life together in LA, where she could make a fresh start?
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I want to go back to the beginning—and that night when you invited me to Curzon Street to meet Felix for the first time. I remember you in my flat, half out the door, saying, “How can you stand it? All those broken fingers tapping at the glass.” I should have realized that you weren’t really talking about the twigs tapping at my windows, you were thinking of the painful self-doubt in your head, the needles in your brain. But I wasn’t thinking deeply enough then, not like I am now, and I turned up at Curzon Street, bright and sunny, with my bottle of Strongbow—noting that Felix was in charge of everything—the wine, the kitchen. But I was wrong. I see that. You were in charge, not Felix—making us watch Strangers on a Train—the film that was an inspiration not just for your acting but also for a path in life that you had dreamed up, a path that involved me and Charlotte, and the death of Felix.
You must have felt smug, self-satisfied, as you lay on the sofa watching us innocents taking everything at face value. Remember, we talked about Hitchcock putting his good people on the right hand of the screen, and the evil characters on the left? You explained that that made you the evil one, because of where you were sitting. Felix and I were enjoying your joke, but you were laughing at us, really, at our gullibility. And when Felix said he was “in the middle and could go either way,” you must have thought, He has no idea! I’m going to send him clearly in one direction! And from that day onwards you did exactly that—you set about making him seem dangerous, sinister, a threat to your life. I realize now that the only time I ever actually saw Felix appear to be harmful was that day on the river, when he held you under the water. How long were you down there? I wonder. Was it truly long enough to justify your state when you came up for air? You were heaving, and limp, and sank into his arms as though you were about to expire. But, Tilda, you were acting, weren’t you? That’s what I believe now. And I have to acknowledge that you’re very good at it—a real professional.
From then on, it was all about the bruises on your arms, those little ink spots. Not just the fact of them, but the way you hyped up the drama, dashing into the bathroom when I pulled up your shirtsleeve, emerging sort of spacey, as though you were covering up deep distress. And I recognize now, Tilda, that you were always capable of desperate measures when you were on a mission, that you have a long history of extreme behavior. Liam made me realize the truth about your self-harming at school—that you did it in order to gain admiration from your friends, to show off your troubled soul to an audience. You’re a narcissist—covering up your self-loathing with a fragile, empty show of how special you are, deeper than the rest of us, emotionally, even spiritually. Well, it’s crap. That’s what. Total garbage. I’m angry with myself for falling for it so completely, and I think of those times that I snapped and raged at Felix, even drawing a knife on him. No wonder that, by the end, he wanted to keep me at a distance.
I see now that all your behavior is deception. You’re endlessly acting. That time when you went out of Curzon Street, for fags, and I surprised you with a tap on the shoulder. You started, like you had been stung by a wasp, immediately turning it on. You seemed so ragged, distracted, distressed—it was hard to get your attention for ordinary things, and I blamed Felix. Always, Felix. I didn’t see the artifice, not for a moment. And I have to ask myself why that was. Partly it was you, and your craft, so excellently executed; but mainly it was me. I had bought into your narrative, weakly, naively, and now I was looking for corroborating evidence. I was alive to it. My heart was open. And every time I found something, I felt somehow vindicated, and motivated to rescue you. Just as you wanted, Tilda.
How lucky that Felix had obsessive compulsive disorder, categorizing his shirts in white boxes, arranging the crockery and cutlery so perfectly, everything painstakingly cling-filmed. Once I might have seen all that and thought how eccentric! I might even have found it endearing. But, guided by you, Felix’s peculiar habits became sinister—your message was always the same. Look how weird he is. Look how he controls me. You added violence to the mix, and I was hooked.
I even think this—that when you went to France and I asked to stay at Curzon Street, you planted the memory stick in the pillowcase especially for me to find. You knew I would find it, because of our childhood mind games, because of your history of hiding things in pillowcases. And what did I discover? An account of your strange psychosexual relationship with Felix, of you surrendering to his control, emotionally and physically. Of violent sex. But none of it happened, did it, Tilda? You were riffing for my benefit. Having fun. No purple vase was ever hurled at your head. You made it up, along with the cracked mirror, the thousand shards of glass. I realized this when I spoke to Francesca Moroni, who told me that Felix was never violent, and I believed her. So, dear sister, you made a stupid error. You were relying on me being nosy, ferreting about in your flat, finding the memory stick. But it’s my nosiness that made me go one step further than that—seeking out Felix’s ex and asking her embarrassing questions, the sort of questions that most people would never ask. I suppose it’s possible that he became violent only after he met you—but, when you think about it, really think—the evidence is rather thin, isn’t it?
It’s funny—I got to the truth by working out that I was the obsessive one, far more so than Felix. When I used to eat your things, it was because I felt a compulsion not just to be part of you, to be synthesized with you, but paradoxically, also to resist being dominated by you. It was logical, at least according to my way of looking at it—my act of devouring your hair and your teeth showed that I owned you just as much as you owned me. These days, I’ve displaced the urge to eat bits of you with an obsession with understanding you. I’ll never be able to do that, not completely. You shine too brightly, and dazzle me so that I can never see inside your head. I know it, and yet I try and I try. And maybe arrival doesn’t matter, maybe the quest is enough because it has taught me one crucial fact—that you are malevolent. I know what you did Tilda, and I know how you did it.
49
The taxi rounds a steep, shady bend and pulls up alongside a white wall in a patch of late-afternoon pinkish sun. I see a metal gate, an entry pad and the house number—1708. The cabdriver grunts the fare at me, and after I pay he drives off without a good-bye—so I’m left standing in the road, my parka over my arm, my heavy bag weighing me down—I’m a refugee from a wintery place, disconcerted by the sunshine and some foreign insect that’s making a high-pitched, rasping sound.
The buzzer is answered by a man wit
h a familiar American accent—like Felix’s, but slightly looser, a more conciliatory tone.
“Lucas? What are you doing here?”
He buzzes me in, and I heave my bag along a narrow terra-cotta path overhung with heavy foliage that only partly masks the pool, a blue flash over to my left, one level down, and at the end of the path Lucas waits in the doorway of the house, leaning on the frame with one arm, seeming weirdly nonchalant. He’s wearing a pink linen shirt, and for a second I think I recognize it as Felix’s, worn as Felix never would, ostentatiously unbuttoned, not tucked in.
“I want to say hello, sister-by-marriage,” he says. “But are you my former sister-by-marriage now?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” I don’t care either, and I drop my bag on the floor. “Where is she?”
“Upstairs. She’s getting ready, beautifying, for a movie premiere—it’s later this evening. She said to send you up but not straightaway because she’s in the shower, so come on through and let’s give you a drink of something. You must be shattered. What would you like, Callie? A cup of tea, or a lime soda, or a glass of wine?—all we have is sparkling; Tilda likes it.”
I notice all we have—we, like he’s living here. And Tilda likes it, like he knows her habits. I take the sparkling wine, an attempt to settle my nerves, and we sit side by side on a low squarish sofa, while I look around, assessing Tilda’s new home. It’s darker than Curzon Street, dark tiles on the floor, wooden kitchen cabinets, trees and shrubs advancing on the French doors. Would Felix have liked it? I think not. It’s not exactly jumbled, but the lines aren’t clean, and there are cushions, and curtains with swags, paintings on the walls of hills and sunsets. Not as crazy as Mum’s, but not a million miles away either.