Mac laughed. ‘“Bunny soup”, I like it.’
‘Would you like my thoughts on the film’s portrayal of women?’
‘Desperate for them.’ Mac’s pen was poised delightfully sarcastically above his notebook.
‘I felt sorry for both women,’ I said. ‘I think Alex was perfectly justified in her persistence with Dan, her unwillingness to accept it was over. Her resistance to just being a cheap one-night stand. Of course, she went a bit crazy at the end, but they probably had to satisfy audience expectations of Woman as Psychopath.’ Oh, I loved this. I hoped I sounded super intelligent. ‘They had to make her a monster or there would be no story to tell,’ I continued, totally warming to my theme. ‘She couldn’t have just gone away quietly. She had to make bunny soup!’ I postured, and Mac laughed again.
‘Very good,’ he said, scribbling on his pad. ‘Very good indeed.’ He sucked on the end of his pen. ‘Let’s see, crazy … psychopath … cheap one-night stand …’
‘I hope you’re not referring to me,’ I said, mock-challenging. I knew I was none of these things, and also that one night with Mac would probably not be enough. He looked directly at me, making my insides crumble.
‘No,’ he said evenly. ‘I don’t believe you’d ever be a cheap one-night stand.’ He was gazing at me so intently, I had to briefly look away. ‘What did you think of Dan’s wife?’
‘Lovely. A victim. Justified in protecting her family, I suppose. But, actually, I also think she let Dan get off lightly.’ This was just occurring to me and it was genius. ‘She treated him like some kind of naughty boy, like a prize, whilst the wicked woman who he cheated with had to be totally destroyed. He did it too, you know? Beth should have shot him!’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’ I was so brave, so on fire Mac had to be loving all this! ‘And I think there was some ambiguity at the end, wasn’t there? About whether they stayed together or not. The family photo – it almost seemed ironic, to me, too staged.’
‘Hmm,’ said Mac thoughtfully and he wrote something else on his pad. I glowed; he was noting, storing away things I had said. ‘You’re quite the interesting character, Arden,’ he added, eventually, ‘with your bunny soup, and now I’ll walk you back to your halls. Where are you?’
‘Twenty-one Whitefields.’ Oh, I was disappointed. I thought tonight was to be the first of several non-one-night stands. My heart sank to my DMs and I felt crushed. Denied.
‘OK.’
Mac didn’t kiss me on the corner of the building. He didn’t say much to me at all. But from how he looked at me and the way he said, ‘Goodnight, Arden,’ my faith in what was going to happen between us was restored. There would be more kissing between Mac and me. More of everything. I could just tell.
‘Will we do this again?’ I asked him, confident enough to know his answer.
‘Yes.’ He smiled, taking one of my curls and twisting it round his finger. We stood, for a few seconds, just looking at each other. Then I opened the outer door and skipped up the stairs to my room on the first floor.
NOW
Chapter 4
Thirty years ago, I think, as I close my front door and set off down the street to work on Monday morning. That’s a long time ago. Eighteen was a whole other land. I was young and optimistic, with grand ideas about love; I knew nothing but thought I knew everything; I had a driving licence but no car and a Sony Discman loaded with songs for the uninitiated … and both of my parents were still very much alive and in a marriage almost as soul-destroying as the one I’ve escaped. Yet, for me, at eighteen, the possibilities for life and love seemed limitless.
At eighteen I didn’t hide away, like I have this weekend. Mac didn’t say anything else in Ward 10 on Friday night despite me talking at him on and off for another hour or so. He let me hold his hand, he looked into my eyes, he drank water; he managed to eat a couple of custard creams. We watched an episode of Eggheads. But he didn’t say another word. Nothing. I had to make do with ‘bunny soup’. But that funny little reference couldn’t have been more full of meaning for us. How we met. How we started The List of the films for his course, for his lucky, lucky students. And how he eventually betrayed me.
I left in a bit of a daze. Mac fell asleep towards the end of the visit and I can’t even remember what I said as I left, something inane like, ‘nice to see you’, that he probably didn’t hear. Since then, I’ve spent the whole weekend thinking about him. Absolutely, totally thinking of nothing and no one else. ‘Bunny soup’ nearly had me running straight back to the hospital on Saturday morning, but I needed time to process that it is him and he is here. What it means for me to see him after all these years. Thrilled, overwhelmed, scared and sleep-deprived; the weekend hasn’t seen so much of a derailment as me pulling, breathless, into a siding, to consider what to do next. Do I go back? Do I go and see Mac again?
I slept better last night and this morning, finally, I rumbled off the siding. An onlooker might almost say I have a spring in my step, as I walk to work, despite the stretched layers of graphite cloud squatting on the horizon and giving it an ashen gloom. I have thought and I have remembered and, as a result, I have plans once more, for tonight, and it feels good to have plans. I’m going back to St Katherine’s to see Mac. How can I not? My mind has been almost blissfully blank for such a long time. Five years, in fact. Five years since I have escaped Christian. Now it is etched with Mac and movies and Fatal Attraction and, although it scares me, it delights me, too, and I know I have to see him again.
I blush a little as I walk along Trinity Road. I won’t be told to ‘Cheer up, love, it may never ’appen!’ today as I know I am smiling. Fancy Fatal Attraction being the first film Mac and I saw together! So much sex, when we hadn’t even ‘done it’ yet (student vernacular), so much lust and intensity and drama, when we had that all to come, too, but were unaware of it on our horizon. Although, I think we were, actually. Mac knew it and I hoped for it. I recognized, even then, there was both art and design in Mac holding that Christmas party; casting himself as the older, wiser, highly charismatic object of desire for all those wide-eyed ripe and ready female students. I felt I had been recruited, that there must have been others before me, but I didn’t care, because it was me he’d chosen that night. And I was on entirely the same page. I knew exactly what he was doing because I was doing it too.
Mac would also have been conscious of how sexy and thrilling it was to watch a sexy and thrilling movie in the middle of the night. The nightie, the hair, the lift, the sink, Alex’s leather coat … The eighties gloss. But I was on board anyway. I would have gone anywhere with him. That’s who I was back then. Up for excitement, up for escape. Up for it all.
I use my key fob to buzz myself into the production offices of Coppers and walk to my desk, politely saying hello to the colleagues that I pass. I have a reputation for being ‘head down’, quiet. Funny how much of a brazen seductress I was thirty years ago. How unapologetic. How fearless. I don’t recognize that girl now. She slipped out of view a long time ago.
Charlie is hovering by my desk.
‘Hall! You missed a good night the other night!’
‘I can tell, by the bags under your eyes and the Red Bull in your hand.’ I smile. I place my bag under my desk and sit down, turn on my grubby computer. I really must get some of those special wipes and give it a good clean. ‘I’m glad it was a good one, though.’
‘It was! It got totally messy – Joe from Scripts got tanked and Lou and Teresa from Accounts got engaged! Wedding bells are on the cards … I can hear them chiming.’ He cupped his hand to his ear. ‘I wonder if we’ll get an invite … So what did you do that night? A little light telly? Some reading? Knitting?’
‘Knitting! How dare you,’ I say, mock-affronted. ‘No, I went to visit an old friend.’
‘Interesting …’ teases Charlie. ‘Say no more!’
‘Then I won’t.’
‘You’re such a moody cow,’ he says, and I laugh.
I have no moods to speak of at the moment, I’m all evened out. At least I was until Mac came back into my life. Now I feel like I’m pulling down the metal bar and buckling myself into an unpredictable rollercoaster. ‘Only joking; you know I love you, Hall. Now, New Year’s Eve tonight,’ he says needlessly. How could anyone not know? ‘What are you up to? There’s a few of us going down The Long Good Friday if you fancy it.’
I haven’t been to The Friday for years. And I won’t be going tonight. I’ve already declined invitations to a meal and a tribute Michael Jackson at the Taj (with Becky) and a night on a boat on the Thames (with Dominic). I’m not a big fan of New Year’s Eve, never have been. Growing up it was a raided drinks cabinet and the under-eighteens’ disco, which was always a disappointment, then it was pubs, clubs and extortionate tickets, no taxis, no coats, freezing walks home and more disappointments. Years and years of them. In the early days of Christian there was one mad party, somewhere, which was fun, as he was still in ‘love-bombing’, reel-me-in mode, but once we were married, New Year’s Eves anywhere with Christian were hell. When I couldn’t even glance at another man or say remotely the wrong thing. When love-bombing turned nuclear.
‘I can’t,’ I say, ‘I’m going to visit the same friend. He’s in hospital.’
‘Ah,’ says Charlie. ‘Sorry to hear that. Nothing serious, I hope.’
‘Well, it is,’ I say, ‘but I’m hoping he’ll be OK.’
‘You’ve got egg in your hair, by the way,’ says Charlie. He knows I occasionally start the day with an egg burrito from the canteen.
‘Have I?’ I pretend to reach up to check. I enjoy Charlie’s cheeky chastisements – at least I no longer live in fear of having my faults dragged out for examination and scoured into my face.
‘Right, I’d better go.’ He grins. ‘I have a drug addict and a teenage runaway to cast. See you later.’
‘See you, Charlie.’
The streets are quiet tonight. Everyone is at home glamming themselves up. Squeezing themselves into bodycon dresses and skinny-legged TOWIE suits in electric blue. Dousing themselves in perfume and aftershave. Getting into that party spirit – the horrifying one where you have to be all overexcited and hyped-up to toxicity … before it all turns to too-much-vodka and disillusionment. I’m a little nervous, but happy to be swished in through the quiet automatic doors of the hospital and into its lemon light. Cocooned inside the embrace of its low voices and purposeful activity and the muted soundtrack of both hope and resignation. No party hats and shouted song lyrics here. No ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’s. I feel guilty, though, about Becky and her Michael Jackson night – once upon a time we would have had a right giggle at something like that; especially as she doesn’t even like Michael Jackson. I wonder who has gone with her.
As I wait to be buzzed into the ward, I spy through the small square of glass in the centre of the door a man standing by Mac’s bed. He’s wearing a dark suit and has dark hair. He’s tall. Is he a consultant or another visitor? He doesn’t look like a consultant. He has no files in his hands or lanyards around his neck. I’m a little disappointed it won’t be just me, really, if he’s not. If I was Mac’s first visitor, is this his second? Is it his son, maybe?
Fran opens the door before I get the ‘click’ to let me in. She’s wearing a turquoise party hat, one from a cracker, and has eye make-up on. She looks pretty.
‘He’s got someone else visiting,’ she says, looking incomprehensibly furtive and darting her eyes around like a member of the French resistance. ‘A man.’
‘Yes, I can see,’ I say. I’m trembling a little at the thought of the man being Mac’s son, considering our history, and it may be a little bratty, but I don’t want Mac to have another visitor. I want to have his full attention. I don’t want someone else sitting there on a plastic chair, making inane chit-chat and nodding at Mac and expecting Mac to nod back. I want Mac to look at me and I’m hoping he will say something else to me tonight. I can remember the second movie on The List and I hope Mac does, too.
‘I’m off on my fag break; see you in a bit.’
‘Yeah, see you, Fran,’ I say absent-mindedly. I make my way over to Mac’s bed, aware of my heels on the floor again. Under my checked coat I’m wearing a green, sleeveless shift dress, one of my favourites, in a vintage-y boiled wool. It’s a bit tight as I ate so much of Julian’s shortbread over Christmas and I’ll need to hold my stomach in, if I remember.
The ward has had its decorations refreshed. Intertwined with the Slinkies are now paper chains, the old-fashioned ones you lick and stick together, which also drape between the metal headboards of the beds. Shiny new concertinaed garlands hang optimistically from the ceiling; one or two are in the eighties style of the terrible bell at Mac’s party, which makes me smile. The nurses all have party hats on; some are wearing sparkly deely-boppers. There are pops of colour all over the ward and it looks cheery; hopeful.
The man by Mac’s bed has his tailored charcoal back to me. He is still standing.
I approach, wave a weak ‘Hello’ at Mac, although he appears to be asleep, and take off my beret. The man is still standing there, slightly awkwardly. He’s very good-looking. He has the face of a movie idol – chiselled, strong jaw, salt-and-peppered temples. I am suspicious of very good-looking men; they are usually hiding something. Does he look like Mac, though? He is dark to Mac’s fair and holds himself very differently – he is straight-backed, composed-looking.
‘Hello, I’m Arden,’ I say, holding out a hand I am trying to steady. ‘Are you Mac’s son?’
‘No, I’m his neighbour,’ says the man. Of course, he’s too old to be Mac’s son – this man is forty-something. Forty-four? Forty-five? He actually looks like an estate agent. A bit of a wide boy. Wide boys are the ones to avoid. I know this, having called on my knees to one through a locked bathroom door, begging for next week’s housekeeping. ‘I’m James.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ I say.
‘I’ve been away since before Christmas,’ James says. ‘Eleven nights at my mum’s down in Kent. Just got back. The roads were terrible. The nurse says he’s only had one visitor on the ward so far; was that you?’
‘Yes.’ And thank you for the information about the roads. I take a few steps closer to James so a sleeping Mac can’t hear. I notice he has soot-grey eyes; dark eyelashes. ‘I wonder why his family haven’t come,’ I say.
James frowns. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I’ve never seen any family. Mac lives alone.’
‘He’s not married?’
‘Not that I know of.’
Oh. ‘How long have you lived next door to him?’ I ask. I’m still a little nervous but I’m being really nosy; this is not like me, these days.
‘Four years. I haven’t known family come to visit. No kids, no grandkids …’ James appears to be almost talking to himself and has a northern accent, a little like Mac’s, though not as strong.
‘How strange,’ I say. No children, no wife; I’m surprised. ‘Whereabouts in London do you and Mac live?’
‘Larkspur Hill.’
‘Oh, right.’ Then Mac does live near me. He lives very near. How miraculous but terribly sad it is that Mac and I have been living mere streets away from each other, but never met. We could have bumped into each other. We could have looked surprised, then delighted, refused to make small talk and only talked about the big stuff in our lives, then, after a while, Mac could have smiled one of his long, slow smiles and pulled me into him for a hug … ‘That’s not far.’
‘No, not far.’ James smiles, a little unsteadily.
‘Where are you from?’ I add. Now I’m being really nosy. What’s wrong with me?
‘Macclesfield, originally. Why?’
‘Oh, I like accents,’ I mutter, feeling foolish.
‘He’s a nice man,’ says James, obviously deciding to ignore what an absolute nosy twit I am. I can’t believe myself. Years of barely saying boo to a goose and now I’m interrogating some poor stra
nger. ‘How do you know him?’
‘I’m a former student of his,’ I lie.
‘Ah,’ says James. ‘I believe he was quite the legendary academic, back in the day.’
‘Yes, a Film Studies’ lecturer.’ I am still reeling from the fact that all this time Mac has been living so close to me. I could have reached out and touched him, almost.
‘I met one of his former students at a barbecue he held once. I don’t think it was you.’
‘No, it wasn’t me.’ And I wonder who it was, and what she was doing there, and if the tequila came out.
‘Do you want to sit down?’ James has a formal way of speaking, I think. And he doesn’t look me in the eye.
‘Thanks.’
He pulls the sole plastic chair by Mac’s bed forward for me and I sit. He drags over another, marooned by the next curtain, apologizing for the awful noise, and sits down next to me. He stretches out his legs, a little self-consciously, I think, and with a small smile I see that under all that charcoal he is wearing a pair of red and white stripy socks. Where’s Wally, I think. Or The Cat in the Hat, one of Julian’s favourite films when he was growing up. He watched it over and over; knew every line. It became a kind of comfort blanket and escape for him, when life became very hard. I will text Julian ‘Happy New Year’ at midnight, and I do wish him a very happy one. I know he’s fine, but I worry about him, still. He’s a confident grown-up man now but I sometimes worry that that terrified little boy, under Christian’s regime, might still be there, in the shadows.
Mac’s eyes are still closed. He has one foot sticking out of the bed which makes me grin and wonder if he asked one of the nurses to move his leg for him. His foot always had to be out; he got too hot in bed otherwise. The telly is on, above us, The Review of the Year or something similar. It’s mostly bad things, some silly stuff. Famous people who have done things. Other famous people who have sadly died.
You, Me and The Movies Page 5