by Anna Maxted
An official rushed her to the front of the queue; another woman pressed her mobile phone into her hand. Someone else brought her hand luggage. ‘Do you need medical assistance?’ A bottle of ice water was put to her lips. In a daze she handed the customs official her passport. ‘Are you sure you’re OK, ma’am?’
She was crying now, howling, in the middle of LAX. It was a mistake – he must have got it wrong – that much vitality – it didn’t just go. She fumbled with her mobile. The last number was withheld. When it rang again, she put it to her ear with a shaking hand.
‘You’re wrong, you’re wrong,’ she shouted. ‘It can’t be true – it’s a mistake, she can’t be. She wouldn’t leave the children – she wouldn’t do it. Please, check again, she’s just unconscious.’
‘It’s been certified by a doctor,’ Ethan whispered, his voice cracking. ‘I can’t believe it either. She was my great friend.’
Claudia screamed, ‘You knew her a couple of weeks. She was my sister! Oh my God, Emily. Please don’t go, oh please.’
‘Claudia. I’m sending a car.’
‘My mother – she doesn’t know yet. My parents. I need to go to the Hills.’
‘My driver will take you wherever you want.’
‘W … where is she? I want to see her.’
‘She’s at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. I’ve spoken to the Chief Medical Officer. Claudia, I’m so desperately sorry.’
‘Oh my God, what about her kids. George, she was his world. And baby Molly – oh my God.’
‘Claudia. Please. It’s going to be OK. I’ll help you. Whatever I can do to help, I will do it.’
‘Thank you,’ she stammered. Dazed, red-eyed and disbelieving, she found her suitcase and wandered out to where a thousand grinning people awaited loved ones, shouting and laughing, because they didn’t know that Emily Kent was dead and that little George and baby Molly would never see Mummy again. Claudia yelped as a suitcase wheel rammed into the back of her ankle. ‘Keep moving, lady!’ said a man. Only then did she realize she was standing still. She couldn’t move. The world should stop turning. How dare it spin so blithely and merrily, so blue and green – it should be black, a cold, still, black sphere because Emily was dead and it was the end of the world.
‘Claudia Mayer?’ A hand briefly touched her shoulder. ‘I’m Christian. Mr Ethan Summers sent me to drive you to your destination. I’m so sorry for your loss. Please allow me to take your luggage. Is this all you have?’
She looked up, nodded and permitted herself to be led away to a black SUV with blacked-out windows.
LOS ANGELES, MONDAY
Innocence
They have money, but they have nothing else.
Innocence sat in the hospital morgue and shivered in her sable fur.
All these years later, she could still hear the scorn in the man’s voice. She’d pitied him, then. They had money. What else was there? Now she understood. When you had no love, when you had no children safe, warm, happy, alive, by your side: you had nothing. She and Jack had wanted Emily to suffer, because they wanted her to be strong, and what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. People were wrong to focus on the ‘makes you stronger’ aspect of that saying.
They’d wanted her to suffer because she’d enraged them by being a bad daughter, expelled, pregnant, divorced, heaping ever more disgrace on the family – and being bad for business.
Money was the root.
She couldn’t believe it.
Emily’s friend the film star had taken charge. Flanked by bodyguards, he had stood outside his enormous gated mansion and tried to ward off the slavering press: ‘I beg you, grant Emily’s loved ones their privacy at this difficult time.’
He had even called Jack. He was charming and kind and normally she would have killed for the chance to bond with Ethan Summers, but she was rigid, dumbstruck with grief. She realized she wanted him to go away. He wasn’t family.
Emily’s death – my baby’s death – was the fault of the system. The police, the social services, the courts had made an example of Emily because she was on some level a ‘public figure’. They had taken away her children. They had taken away her reason to live. They had blood on their hands.
Just like that.
Innocence sobbed silently, briefly into her hands. Then she gently stroked Emily’s brow, wincing at the black bruising on her cold pale face, and bowed her forehead until it touched her daughter’s arm. She was so very cold, in this thin cotton gown, lying on this hard cold metal tray. Innocence wished for a blanket.
‘Forgive me,’ she whispered. ‘I failed you. I failed you as a mother.’ She swallowed a sob, and said, through gritted teeth, ‘But I swear, Emily, I will not fail you as a grandmother.’
LOS ANGELES, A WEEK LATER
Jack
What happened to the body when the weather was so hot?
Shut up. But the nasty little voice in his head chattered on, goading him, jabbing at the agony, twisting the grief like a knife turning in his gut, until he wanted to fall on the polished white coffin, prise it open with his fingernails, pull his daughter out of it and shake her alive.
He couldn’t believe that this was goodbye. Emily didn’t belong in the cold, hard ground, her place was here, with her kids. She had a great future ahead of her, decades of love and happiness; she was urgently required above to give the world its sparkle.
‘Oh, she would adore it here,’ one middle-aged woman in dark glasses and an ugly stretched face had drawled. ‘She’s in great company – Marilyn Monroe is buried here – and such a hot spot, bang in the middle of LA’s prime real estate with Wilshire Boulevard just around the corner.’
He’d wanted to throttle the stupid old hag. He’d wanted to shout in her hideous surgery-ravaged face: Why aren’t you dead, you old bitch? It’s a travesty that she is young and beautiful and dead, and you are still alive and ugly and breathing her air. Emily doesn’t give a toss about where she is. Marilyn Monroe should be glad to be in her company, not the other way round. Who’s Marilyn Monroe to me, you stupid cow, I’m burying my daughter!
Innocence had reclaimed her long-lost Catholicism and the service had taken place at the Church of the Good Shepherd. Every one of the six hundred seats had been filled, and many more were standing. The young ones always attracted a big crowd. He was in so much mental pain that he could barely move. It was as if Emily’s death had accomplished what a coma couldn’t: complete physical shutdown.
And yet he had to shake hands; reply coherently to people’s condolences; smile at their bungling discomfort. He was an accomplished public speaker, in fact he found it easier to address a thousand people than to address one, but today he couldn’t manage it. To be alive when his baby was dead: it was so profoundly wrong. He literally couldn’t stomach it, and had been sick, just before the service. Ms Green, a nanny to the end, had passed him a breath mint.
He hated the church. It was too bright, too sunny, the shafts of light filtered prettily through the stained-glass windows, casting a pink and red glow on those sitting nearest. It was more appropriate for a wedding.
He wished for an English church: chill, ancient, quiet in the subdued light of an early spring, Gothic awe-inspiring gloom. Or an orthodox synagogue: the one in Marble Arch was beautiful. Emily should have been buried in lashing rain as the heavens wept. Instead, here, with the sunshine mocking his pain, here, in the land of frivolity, the biggest deal about this funeral was not that he was mourning his 23-year-old girl, but that a movie star was giving a eulogy.
There were so many private security guards, so many ex-military, it was more like an army funeral.
He had fought with Innocence to give the day a little dignity.
He had refused the garish East-End-style ‘EMILY’ spelt out in flowers. Revolting. He had also refused Casablanca lilies – the scent of death. Innocence had wanted camera crews and he’d been furious – until he’d seen the tears in her eyes and watched her struggle to get the words out
: ‘Jack,’ she’d said through clenched teeth. ‘I need the world to take note.’
So television was the world’s witness. In exchange, Innocence had agreed that no names would be spelt out in wreaths.
‘Thank you,’ he’d muttered.
She’d nodded, a tiny, agonized movement.
They’d fallen on each other, sobbing. She’d moaned in his arms, ‘Why, Jack, why, she was our baby.’
The church was filled with clusters of tiny white spring flowers, a symbol of purity, because one didn’t have to be pure of body to be pure of soul. Emily had been a good person and Jack hated and despised himself for how he had treated her. He found it hard to get close and so he’d stayed away – and yet, how did it still hurt?
He had remained aloof to protect himself, so that when he lost her, as he’d lost Felicia and Maria, he wouldn’t feel so bad. But it was impossible to feel worse than this. He was responsible, he knew, for this death. He had neglected her because he didn’t want her to need him.
He’d wanted her to be able to stand alone. Only now was he beginning to understand that a child could only stand alone with confidence if she had been nurtured and protected and reassured from birth. Ability to survive in the world was a learned skill, finessed over the years. Now, of course, he saw all his mistakes with clarity, and he wondered for what had he been hoarding his money and his love?
And now his grandchildren were deprived of a mother. They had been allowed out of the foster home for the ‘occasion’, accompanied by some sort of social worker. He could barely look George in the eye, but he’d forced himself. George had been subdued and robotic until he’d seen Claudia. Then he’d become hysterical, lashing out, kicking, scratching, biting, screaming, ‘I want my mummy! I want my mummy!’ Jack could hardly control him. Finally, he’d subdued the child with a long hug. He’d made himself be pleasant to the chaperone. For the first time he had put his own feelings aside for the sake of those more important.
‘I want to stay with Auntie Claudia,’ George had whispered. ‘Please. Molly doesn’t like it there. She’s scared of the dark. The food is disgusting. They make her eat slugs. No one gives her a hug. Please, Granddad, I’m begging you. I’ll be as good as gold – and silver.’
He couldn’t hear any more, his heart would break. It had crossed his mind to snatch the children – he couldn’t quite believe they had to obey the decision of some halfwit parochial court judge – but this was the American legal system and a battle that would only be won through the correct bureaucratic channels.
‘You will stay with Auntie Claudia,’ he’d said fiercely. ‘I am going to make that happen, George.’ He’d paused. ‘It might not happen immediately, because there are rules. But it will happen soon. I promise. You and Molly will stay with Auntie Claudia, very soon.’
That child had sat there, thin, silent, bewildered, clutching Claudia’s hand, piteous in his navy suit. He had always hated dark colours on a child for this very reason. A child should not have to face death. He looked from George to Claudia and back again, and it was a horrible déjà vu; George became his little Claudia, sitting so small and helpless, wearing the same terrible expression, at her mother’s funeral, all those years ago.
When Jack took the stand, he found he could barely form a sentence. He grasped the piece of paper handed to him by Ms Green.
‘Today, I find that I have all this love for Emily in my heart,’ he said. ‘But it never reached her. She never knew it was there. Emily was an easy person to love and yet I found it so hard – I was so afraid of the power of love and the capacity it has to cause us pain. And so I squandered it. I am truly the poorest, the most humble, the most foolish man in this room. I was given the gift of love, the most precious blessing of existence – a child – and I wasted that gift. I pray that none of you in this room will ever make such a momentous error.
‘Emily was my baby – is my baby, will always be my baby – and it is so very hard to believe that she is gone back whence she came. And, if I am honest, I cannot prevent the thought that if I had cherished her more, she would not have been taken. So I have a poem, a short poem, to read, for Emily. It’s by a Scottish writer, George MacDonald.’
He looked up. A great blur of faces stared back. Timmy, that worthless skunk, was there with a handkerchief, and his father. The Earl looked subdued and solemn. What a hypocrite. Jack despised him for his grudging increase in warmth to Emily following the newspaper revelations about Tim. There was Elton, with that sweet boyfriend of his, in funeral purple. Who was that guy in the third row? He looked devastated and familiar. An actor? Quentin? Quintin – one of Innocence’s people. Little Molly was asleep in the chaperone’s arms after a jagged marathon of crying. He couldn’t stand that she was already ravaged by loss.
He coughed. His throat felt as if it had been stuffed with wire wool.
‘A “Song”:
‘Where did you come from, baby dear?
Out of everywhere into here.
Where did you get your eyes so blue?
Out of the sky as I came through.
What makes the light in them sparkle and spin?
Some of the starry spikes left in.
Where did you get that little tear?
I found it waiting when I got here.
What makes your forehead so smooth and high?
A soft hand stroked it as I went by.
What makes your cheek like a warm white rose?
I saw something better than anyone knows.’
He had to stop every few words, and found that he couldn’t finish reading. Instead, he whispered, ‘I hope Emily is … somewhere better.’
It was Innocence, majestic rather than ridiculous in a black veil, who helped him back to his seat. ‘I know that Emily is somewhere better,’ she told the congregation. ‘Because wherever she is, is better.’
Everything felt obscene: to ride, flanked by security, in a shiny black chauffeured car, with butter-soft leather upholstery – his every ridiculous vain whim and frivolity catered for – when Emily lay dead in a box. Now he understood the concept of sackcloth. When his jacket caught in the door, he pulled it so hard, in a spasm of rage, it ripped and he was so glad.
When they arrived at the cemetery it took him a full minute to summon the strength to step out and face people. He knew that if he met their gaze they would see all the way through to his soul and witness his deep shame. He was grateful, in a way, for the celebrity contingent – the presence of Ethan Summers had drawn out others, like salt acting on slugs.
It took the attention away from Jack.
He’d worn his dark glasses with relief, the sole reason not to curse the day’s heat. It was a myth that LA was always hot. Their winters chilled him to the bone. He was never so cold in Britain, perhaps because he always expected to be. An extra day of winter for his little girl: was it too much to ask?
Ethan’s speech made people cry. It was direct and simple: a waste of a good life, a beautiful person, inside and out, a mother who had so much more to give, a sister, a daughter, a friend. Perhaps there was nothing terribly profound, but delivered in his clear, rich, penetrating voice, his message caught at your heart. He was like a man of God – no, a god – preaching from the pulpit. Jack watched as the citizens of LA gazed at him in wonder. Remember, young man, Jack found himself thinking, remember who the star is today.
One tiny thing jarred, but he was bound to be edgy. Ethan said, ‘We cannot argue with fate.’
What did he mean by that? It sounded as if he was saying that Emily’s death was meant to be. As that would be inappropriate and grossly offensive, Jack had to assume that here was a young man, propelled to huge fame, accustomed to being agreed with, not quite – in the cold light of day – living up to his celebrated reputation. Like all of them, he must be exhausted and muddy-headed with shock. You had to respect the guy. As he’d said himself, looking directly at the audience, he felt sick with guilt that Emily had ended it under his roof, when he had inte
nded his home to be her sanctuary.
Jack sighed.
The police investigation had been thorough but there was no suggestion of foul play. They had been kind, wanting to assure Jack that there was always the possibility it was an accident, that she had tripped, but the awful probability was, given the circumstances and her state of mind, that Emily had felt there was simply no hope and had thrown herself to her death.
Afterwards, there was a reception at the Bel Air Belle Époque. Its elegant sweeping drive was lined with trees from the Enchanted Forest. They had silver trunks and a classical tree shape. He had seen two great rows of them adorning Rodeo Drive and said, ‘I want those.’ He still had no idea what sort of trees they were, but they were fairy-tale perfect. Now their perfection mocked him. This world was lousy with beauty that Emily would never see.
He wanted to go home to his London residence, crawl into bed and tip a bottle of pills down his throat. It was repellent to see all these people stuffing their faces with salmon bagels with Emily still warm in her grave. How could they eat? His stomach threw up water. He’d heard people didn’t eat in LA. Well, that was a lie. They were pigs.
He wondered if he could sneak away and go and lie down in the penthouse suite, where it was quiet and people’s incessant idle chatter would not be able to worm its way into his head, making him want to rip it off. He wanted to howl and moan and throw himself on the floor and tear his clothes and all around him people were eating cake.
He couldn’t stand it. People with chocolate crumbs around their mouths, tipping their heads back to drain the last drop of their free wine – they weren’t even talking about Emily, they were networking, swapping business cards, bitching about other guests. He caught, ‘Last thing he was in was Teen Wolf …’ , ‘ … couldn’t get a guest spot on Entourage.’