You, Me and The Movies

by Fiona Collins

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ James says. He suddenly looks nervous. ‘Sorry, I’m shit at this.’

  Shit at what? I think. Why does he look nervous? ‘Yes, you can ask me something.’

  ‘Is it OK to give someone a present on the day of someone’s memorial service?’

  ‘A present?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who do you want to give a present to?’

  ‘To you. I can give it to you another day, if you’d like. It’s just that I saw something this morning and I bought it. Maybe I shouldn’t have done.’

  I’m so curious. Why has James bought me a present? ‘If you’ve brought it, you’d better give it to me,’ I say. ‘And I’m sure it’s fine to give someone a present on the day of a memorial. Who would care, really? I certainly don’t – I’ve been crying my eyes out for almost an hour so anything that can cheer me up will be very welcome, quite honestly.’

  ‘That’s what I hoped.’ James reaches into the pocket of his coat and pulls out a square of folded gauzy fabric that has vibrant splashes of colour across it – red, orange, yellow and green. ‘I’ve been thinking about the lovebirds,’ he says.

  ‘Mum! Are you OK? You cried so much!’ It’s Julian, appearing in front of me, Sam standing next to him, all perfume and pretty eyes. Their coats are off; I’m pleased to see Julian has got a black tie on with his grey suit. He’s made the effort, for me.

  ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ I say, always prone to be buoyed at the sight of my wonderful boy. ‘I was really sad but I’m all right now, I promise.’ I sound brave, I realize; I need to be brave. Julian followed by Sam leans in to give me a hug. James steps back a little, still holding the square of material. Sorry, I mouth at him.

  ‘You’ve got a drink?’ asks Julian.

  I waggle my pina colada at him. ‘Yes, I’ve got a drink.’

  Julian looks from me to James and back again. ‘OK, well, we’re just going to get another one. Sam says the margaritas are amazing.’ Sam grins at me; I grin at her in return.

  They walk away, Julian looking so happy as he smiles at something Sam says and puts his arm round her – my loving, strong boy – and I realize that I need to be strong, too. Stronger than I’ve ever been, if I’m ever to release my guilt about Julian and his childhood. I can’t let it envelop me any more. I can’t let it haunt me for ever. Becky is right: I need to try to let it all go.

  ‘Arden.’ Stewart Whittaker is to my right, holding out a paw for me to shake. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got to leave. Dry, dusty lecturing thing to do, you know how it is.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re never dry or dusty,’ I say, shaking that big warm paw, and I think of the photo of him and Mac outside the London Film School, laughing their heads off. Such a fantastic photograph.

  ‘That’s very kind,’ says Stewart, in his wavering, rumbling voice. ‘And thank you for today. It was an excellent send-off for Mac.’

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ I reply, feeling tears spring to my eyes again. In the periphery I see James turn to talk to Fran who has appeared holding an enormous red cocktail with half a pineapple sticking out the top of it. Stewart looks like he’s about to go and then he adds, ‘I remember you, you know, from Soho, a long time ago. Do you remember the day we met?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ I say. I feel a blush creep on to both of my cheeks.

  ‘I’d just like to say that I think Mac looked happy with you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, surprised. ‘I was a very different person back then.’ But I was capable of making someone happy, I think. That really counts for something.

  ‘We all were,’ says Stewart, ‘but in some respects we’re all exactly the same. Goodbye, Arden.’

  ‘Goodbye, Stewart.’

  Fran is laughing at something James just said. The square he showed me is in his hand, down by his side. She moves away to talk to one of Mac’s old students and James turns back to me.

  Looking at me with grey, steady eyes and without saying a word, he brings up the square of fabric and shakes it out in front of him like a magician and it’s a large fluttering square of almost opaque cream, flocked with pairs of plump and happy red-and-yellow-and-orange-breasted lovebirds, with wings of brilliant green, and dancing between the lovebirds are lilac butterflies, their wings flecked with silver thread.

  ‘Remember The Birds? Melanie and Mitch?’ I stare at him. I look at the scarf and then back to his earnest face and those soot-grey eyes. ‘This morning, on the way here, I passed a little shop called The Emporium, and there was this scarf in the window. I think it would look really nice with your Ali MacGraw Love Story pea coat, and the red tights.’ I smile; he noticed. ‘The butterflies are an extra touch,’ he adds.

  The scarf is beautiful. The lovebirds are so wrapped up in the gossamer thread of mine and Mac’s story. Yes, I remember The Birds. Yes, of course I remember Melanie and Mitch. I start to cry again, just a little.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ he says gently. He takes the scarf and wraps it softly round my neck, gently freeing my escaped curls from it. ‘It suits you,’ he says. ‘You always want to be the girl in the movies, but you don’t need to be,’ he says. ‘You don’t need to imitate anyone. You don’t need to hide away. You’ve got a star that shines all on its own.’

  I don’t know what to say. James takes one of my hands and, palm to palm, I feel an electric shock of something delicious and scary travel up my arm and round my body. Does he feel it? Does he feel it here in this room with the chatter and laughter of sad but hopeful people around us? People who will go on?

  ‘I’ve been thinking about leaving lovebirds outside your door,’ James says steadily, his hand in mine. ‘I’ve been thinking about it for a while.’

  My heart starts to flutter like one of the butterflies on my scarf. My mind races. ‘Have you?’ Hitchcock didn’t do anything unless it was laden with meaning … What does this mean? Is James saying what I think he’s saying …?

  ‘Yes. You said you’ve been brought lovebirds before, but it has all gone horribly wrong. That what started as love ended in nightmare. It doesn’t have to. Sometimes things can stay full of possibility. Sometimes love ends in love, all the way to the final scene and beyond.’

  My heart is pounding under the drape of my new scarf. Wrapped in the flashes of these bright colours, I don’t speak.

  ‘I want to bring lovebirds to your door, Ardie. Will you accept them?’

  I still don’t say anything. I just look at James and think that one day really soon, if I dare to, I might love him.

  ‘Oh, fucking hell, Arden,’ he says, ‘I just really like you! You make me laugh, you make me feel happy, you make me feel that I’m OK, as a person, when others around me don’t. I feel like you’re good for me, I know you are. Will you please go out with me, on a date?’

  ‘A date?’ I’m smiling now. He likes me. I make him feel happy. I make him laugh. He’s leaving lovebirds outside my door! My insides start doing a number from A Chorus Line. Somewhere, Judy Garland is singing something upbeat and chirpy. And I dare to start living again – properly.

  ‘Yes, a date. Dinner, the movies …’

  He winks at me and I beam. The scarf is cool as I stroke it with my hand, a soft cotton under my fingertips. ‘I accept your lovebirds,’ I say. ‘The real thing would have been slightly better,’ I add cheekily, ‘but you probably didn’t pass a pet shop this morning and they probably wouldn’t have fitted in your pocket.’ James laughs. ‘I accept your lovebirds and I accept your offer. I’d love to go on a date.’

  ‘You would? So that’s a yes?’

  ‘Yes, that’s a yes.’

  ‘Well, thank fuck for that!’ James sighs a huge sigh and then envelops me in a huge, huge hug. He is warm and smells of lemon and cinnamon. I don’t want to let him go but, eventually, I do, and I laugh and pull the scarf tighter around me, embracing its softness. I love my gift and I wonder, suddenly, as James smiles at me, if he is a gift to me, from Mac. Mac has reminded me that I can love an
d that I can do so with passion and without apology. The old Arden, the ‘handful’ certainly did – rightly or wrongly, didn’t she throw everything into it? Has Mac now brought James to me, so I get to fulfil his promise of having a Bigger Love? Or would that be downright crazy and I have definitely watched far too many movies?

  ‘OK,’ says James, putting both hands in his coat pockets, ‘now I need to go and talk to somebody else otherwise I’m going to blush and grin right in your face for the next hour and that wouldn’t be cool.’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t be,’ I say. ‘Go ahead.’ And I am blushing and grinning on this day that started with such sadness and is now so full of hope. I decide to nurture that hope, let it grow. All I have experienced has made me who I am, and all I am yet to experience I will greet with open arms. I won’t imitate life any more or be content to have it dull and unlit – I will leap into colour and light. I will step away from past hurt and let remorse and regret leave me. I will embrace the hope of love and the promise of everything.

  ‘All right?’ says Becky, coming up beside me with her cocktail. ‘Bloody hell, I’ve just been chatting to Perrie. Boy, that woman can talk. It was like being bulldozed by an army tank with a heavy fringe.’

  ‘She’s quite a character,’ I agree. ‘She’s flying to New Zealand tomorrow.’

  ‘They can have her. She can stand in the middle of a field of sheep and talk at them.’

  ‘Ha. She probably would, as well.’

  ‘It’s been so sad but somehow good today,’ says Becky. ‘Perfect, in fact.’

  ‘I think so, too.’ I nod. It has been perfect. ‘What do you think Mac would have made of it, the circle of us at the top of the hill, the movies his son made of his life?’

  ‘I don’t know – I’m not the girl who loved him. What do you think?’

  ‘He would have absolutely loved it,’ I say. ‘He would have appreciated it as a real moment. All that snow and grey skies – it was so cinematic. I don’t think even he could have planned it better.’

  ‘Will you be OK, do you think?’ Becky is looking at me, over the top of her straw, her eyes full of love and concern.

  ‘Yes, I’ll be OK. I have you, don’t I? How about you?’

  ‘Oh God, yes, I’ll be OK. I have you, don’t I?’ She laughs and puts her arm round me. ‘Single gals together, all that jazz.’

  ‘Actually, about that …’ I venture, snaking my arm round her, too. ‘James and I are going on a date.’

  She shrugs, after pretending to look comically disappointed. ‘We don’t both have to be single,’ she laughs. ‘And you know my hero is always just around the next corner … Sod it if he is or isn’t, to be honest. But, really, that’s great, Ardie. You’d be good together, I reckon, what I’ve seen of him.’

  ‘I really like him,’ I say. ‘And I make him laugh, apparently.’

  ‘Perfect, then,’ says Becky. ‘You’ve found your Richard Gere. Pretty Woman or An Officer and a Gentleman?’

  ‘Oh, definitely Pretty Woman,’ I say, ‘but if he tries any of that rescuing nonsense I’m just going to have to reciprocate.’ I can rescue, too, I think. I can love and be loved. I am a grown-up, a survivor and the lead role in my own narrative.

  I can do anything.

  Becky laughs. ‘Good plan. Excellent. Just think, you’d never have met him if it hadn’t been for Mac.’

  ‘I know.’ James is a gift from Mac. Discuss, I think. Yet, even if this wonderful gift doesn’t become the story I’d like it to, if it’s just me, after all, I know I’ll be OK.

  ‘He won’t be forgotten,’ says Becky, putting her arm round my back. ‘Mac Bartley-Thomas. He’s one of those people who never will be.’

  ‘No, he won’t,’ I say, and I let myself choke up and welcome the tears that flood back to my eyes. I want to feel everything for Mac, for ever. For all that he was and all that he gave to me. ‘You’re absolutely right.’

  And as Lloyd stands on a chair to chink on a glass with a knife and make a speech to the perfect little audience here in this sparkling velveted bar, where silver screen memories are forever held, I’m already raising mine to Mac and thanking him.

  I am finally about to find out what happens after the movie ends.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to my brilliant editor Francesca Best. I’m so grateful for your support, kindness and spot-on editorial advice.

  To my amazing agent Diana Beaumont. ‘My agent’ is a phrase I never thought would happen to me and to have such an incredible one surely justifies me saying it about a million times a day (at least in my own head).

  To my wonderful writing friend and day-to-day cheerleader, Mary Torjussen – I couldn’t do any of this without you.

  And, as always, to Matthew.

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

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  penguin.co.uk

  Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Corgi Books

  an imprint of Transworld Publishers

  Copyright © Fiona Collins 2019

  Cover design by Jo Thomson/TW

  Cover images © Shutterstock

  Fiona Collins has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781473567054

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Now: Chapter 1

  Now: Chapter 2

  Then: Chapter 3: Fatal Attraction

  Now: Chapter 4

  Then: Chapter 5: The Birds

  Now: Chapter 6

  Then: Chapter 7: Casablanca

  Now: Chapter 8

  Then: Chapter 9: Bonnie and Clyde

  Now: Chapter 10

  Then: Chapter 11: The Graduate

  Now: Chapter 12

  Then: Chapter 13: Some Like It Hot

  Now: Chapter 14

  Then: Chapter 15: The Witches of Eastwick

  Now: Chapter 16

  Then: Chapter 17: An Officer and a Gentleman

  Now: Chapter 18

  Then: Chapter 19: A Star Is Born

  Now: Chapter 20

  Then: Chapter 21: Pretty Woman

  Now: Chapter 22

  Then: Chapter 23: The Way We Were

  Now: Chapter 24

  Then: Chapter 25

  Now: Chapter 26

  Now: Chapter 27

  Now: Chapter 28

  Now: Chapter 29

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

 

 

 
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