“Oh yes. I’m very familiar with this place. I spent many joyous hours here. A very dear and much missed friend of mine lived here when I was a young woman.” Catlin wondered at the coincidence, but thought nothing more of it.
“Well, I’m sure you didn’t come out here simply to relive old times or because you learned I was living in an apartment you used to hang out in.”
“No, not just because of that.”
Maria fumbled in her bag.
“Look, Catlin, I have no idea how to explain this, so if I show this to you, perhaps we can decide from there how to proceed.” She handed Catlin an old photograph. It was Catlin’s turn to be rendered dumb. She looked at the picture, could see it, but it would not register in her brain, forcing her to continue to stare at it, but the longer she looked the less she trusted her eyes. She did not understand, could not understand. She had in front of her a black and white image of a group of thirty something year old men and women at a celebration of some kind. She could pick out Maria, and thought she recognised William. There were three other people there, a gorgeous woman and two men. The others were near invisible compared the man at the centre of the huddle, and he was the one who held Catlin’s attention. She recognised him straight off. There was no way she could have failed to identify him, for the man in the photo was none other than Ben.
Chapter Ten
Catlin was blown into silence. Her mind endeavoured to come up with some logical explanation for the inexplicable. The photo had to be thirty years old at the very least, older based on the age of the Maria in it and the Maria sat next to her. Yet, was it not a remarkably easy conundrum to solve? The man in the photo had to be Ben’s father or some such relation. That would account for the similarities in their looks. As tempting as it was to take that theory and run with it, Catlin was not able to deceive herself. She knew in her heart as well as her head that the Ben in the photo and her Ben where one and the same person. The resemblance was too precise, too close. Too perfect. Her knees were beginning to shake and she sank down onto the arm of a chair.
“I don’t understand. What is this? What’s going on?”
Maria, who thought Catlin had been on the verge of passing out from the shock, chose a chair near to her and took a long, steadying breath.
“I’m not sure myself. I thought I was going mad at first, seeing him and you on the balcony. It was like glimpsing a snapshot of the life I might have had. A life I wished could have been for these past thirty five years.” Through her haze of bewilderment, Catlin was able to see that Maria was suffering from the same symptoms she was experiencing. She tried to get her brain into some order in the hope of finding the solution to the puzzle she had been dropped into the middle of. Maria was surveying the apartment again. “It’s as if I’ve stepped back in time coming here. I can still see him, Catlin, sat here rehearsing his lines or trying to draw us into a debate on the deeper meanings and hidden themes of this or that book, failing more often than not. We were interested in nothing more intellectually challenging than discovering if so-and-so was wearing a wig and how to sneak into the newest club.”
As a rule, Catlin had the patience of a saint, but listening to the ramblings of this woman as she talked of the life she had lost when Catlin’s own world had been bombed caused it to run out in double quick time.
“I don’t mean to be rude, well I suppose I do, truth be told, but can you get to the point of why it is you’ve come here. I’m assuming there is one, besides your intention to ruin my life that is.” The older woman seemed stunned, whether it was Catlin’s comments that had the effect or another agency was unimportant, all that mattered as far as Catlin cared was that Maria was back in the room with her and not off on some voyage to the past.
“I apologise, but when you’ve heard my story, our story, I am certain you will see why it is that this has had such an impact on me.”
“What do you mean, ‘our story’?” Catlin asked, but had a horrible stomach-knotting feeling she was in possession of that answer already.
“Mine and Ben’s,” Maria replied, confirming Catlin’s suspicions and sounding like a guilty mistress who had been confronted by the betrayed wife.
It took considerable will power on Catlin’s part to remember that Maria, who was gazing dove-like at the photo again, was not only speaking of a different period in time but that she was a woman of nearly seventy years old and keep from scratching her perfectly lined eyes out of her skull.
“Ben and I met shortly after he came out here to chase his dream of being an actor. I was quite the spoilt princess back then. My father was wealthy, even by today’s standards, and had many influential friends. The combination ensured I had no difficulty in finding my way into the same industry Ben was slogging his guts out in to gain the slightest amount of recognition. It should have been the other way around. He was far more gifted than I ever was.
“We met on the set of some police show, both of us as extras. Oddly enough, he was not my type of guy, and our very opposite social circles meant that normally I’d not have mixed with him, but there was no way a girl could ignore those looks of his, not that he thought of himself as good-looking or remotely handsome, which I suppose made him all the more attractive.” Catlin understood that all right. “He was quite unlike any man I’d met before and there has certainly never been anyone like him since. Intelligent, caring, funny, quiet and serious, nothing at all like me. I used to drag him to the best nightclubs, the swankiest parties and he hated it. He did his best to get me involved in his interests, but in those days I threw a tantrum if I had to go without a hairdryer, so camping or hiking through the mountains were not high on my list of things to do of a weekend.
“I guess we weren’t remotely suited, but he was so rare a find I held onto him by any means necessary. Don’t get me wrong, there were good times together, but he didn’t quite fit in with the lifestyle I sought and I did the best I could to change him. He refused to allow me to use my connections to help advance his career, would not give up this poky little den and take a residence in an area where I didn’t have to be embarrassed to bring my friends, despite his having the money to. He said it was a waste of money, to move into a five bedroomed house when it was just him and that it shouldn’t matter to his friends where he lived, be it a palace or a park bench and if it did, they weren’t friends at all. Stupid, wasn’t I? After falling for him because he was different from the other men I’d dated I did my utmost to make him into one of them.
“Then his break came – Ben was offered the lead role in a movie, one which would have made him a world re-known star. That photo was taken the night our gang went out to celebrate. The young lady there, she was his leading lady in the film. They began to spend a lot of time together, rehearsing together, nothing more to it than that, but I was a jealous creature and when a mutual friend hinted their on-screen relationship had crossed over into their personal lives, my possessiveness and spoilt nature took hold of me. I flew into a rage and marched around here one evening and accused him of having an affair with her. He kept saying it was rubbish, but I was having none of it. I told him he was useless, a failure and had no hope of succeeding as an actor and that it had been with my assistance that he’d got the role and had nothing to do with his alleged talent. For good measure I threw in that while he thought himself to be clever he wasn’t actually smart enough to see the obvious when it was right in front him. How else had he failed to see that William and I were dating behind his back and had been for months. It was a lie, but I knew Ben held Will as a brother and the remark would cut deep. I dumped him, vowing to make him pay for all he’d done to me.”
Maria was close to tears as the errors of her past were dragged to the surface.
“What was I thinking? I discovered in the weeks that followed how wrong I had been about the pair of them, but it was too late to make amends by then.” Catlin did not believe that. Ben would have forgiven her a thousand times over if he had been in love with her hal
f as much as she thought he had been.
“Didn’t you make any attempt at an apology?” she asked, handing the woman a box of tissues.
“I couldn’t. I wanted to, but I couldn’t do it.”
“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?” Catlin stuck in abruptly, outraged that anyone could treat Ben so badly. And yes, she included herself in that.
“Couldn’t,” Maria affirmed. “You see, the morning after our fight, Ben failed to turn up for work. When no-one was able to raise him on the phone one of the crew went to his apartment and that’s when they found him. Dead. He’d taken an overdose of sleeping pills and washed the whole lot down with a bottle of whiskey.”
Catlin went cold as the irrevocable truth of their situations began to fully unfold.
“It transpired that Ben had not been as happy in his life as we had taken him to be. How could we have guessed that the success he had achieved actually meant very little to him, that he loathed the person his lifestyle was forcing him to become, and that money could not actually buy you all the things you wanted and how, despite being surrounded by the elite of the human race he always felt isolated and alone. On the night of the longest day of the year, it seemed he could stand it no more and my rejection of him and the terrible things I said to him were the final straw.” Catlin was struck by two points at once. The first was that to think of Ben, her Ben, being so low made her feel physically nauseous and the second was how Maria, in relating his story, pretty much described how she, Catlin, had felt the night she had been on the verge of committing the same act of obliteration he had done years before, and on the same night too. June twenty first - the longest day of the year. Was that significant?
Maria also appeared to be struggling with her emotions. She had buried most of the guilt she carried deep inside her for almost four decades, but once she started talking to Catlin she could not stop herself from telling the girl the entire tale.
“That was why I had to come and see you. Don’t get me wrong, I love Will, but in an entirely different way to how I loved Ben, and he is aware of the majority of my story but not all the details. When I told him I had seen you and Ben together he thought I had snapped, but I was so adamant he agreed to look into it. He got the names of those people who had seen you and your mystery man from Guy and tracked them down. They had caught little more than brief, sideways glimpses of you, out of the corner of their eye, or in the low glow of the evening sun but from the description they gave, he too recognised it to be Ben they were speaking of. These past few weeks, since we found out where it was you lived, we have taken to following you about, in the hope of proving our conclusions right and being absolutely certain before telling you this. Until I entered here tonight however, I still had doubts, but not anymore.”
Catlin looked dubious, still favouring the insanity theory where Maria was concerned but her instincts told her otherwise. Neither of them spoke for a while, the woman who had broken his heart and the one who fixed it, sitting there battling with their private thoughts. How could it be true, any of it? Ben was not a misty apparition who materialised by walking through walls. Catlin had touched him, held him, shared the warmth of his kisses, made love to him. That had been real, so real that as she thought about it, Catlin was transported back to her bed and could feel him pressed between her thighs, taking possession of her body. That had been no trick of the imagination.
“I’m sorry, Maria, you probably mean well, but I cannot take a word of what you’ve told me seriously. I’m not saying you are lying, but the man you are on about and the one I know can’t be the same person.”
“But they are.” The voice came from within her own being and Catlin heard it clearly. Maria sank back in the chair.
“You’ve seen the photo and heard the story. How else do you choose to explain it?”
“Coincidence. It’s just not possible for someone who died thirty five years ago and the man I’m in love with to be one and the same.”
“But they are.” There it was again. Her own instinctive recognition of an unreal reality.
“I said I wasn’t sure until I came here tonight, but I have proof that what I said is the truth. I found here.”
Catlin was growing angry. Did this woman have the slightest inclination what it was she was doing to her? Did she not give a damn that she was tearing her life apart? Perhaps she did. Having ruined her own chances of happiness maybe Maria was set on destroying hers and for no greater reason than the fact that their lives had some uncanny resemblances.
“Oh indeed. What is it? Got a medium or two stuffed in your handbag?!” Maria put the photo, the accursed object which had allowed the curse to come to pass and destroyed the picture of the life Catlin had saw for her and Ben, in front of the young woman. “I’ve seen it thanks,” she said, pushing it away. “Photos can be manipulated. It means nothing.”
“Do you see that?” Catlin did not want to, but her eyes betrayed her mind and looked.
“What?” Maria placed her finger on a specific spot on the photo.
“Does that seem familiar in any way?”
The few hopes Catlin had struggled to hold onto were dashed. On his finger, the Ben in the picture wore a ring. A very distinctive ring made of silver with a turquoise stone in its centre. The same ring Catlin was wearing on her hand and that Ben had given to her that very night.
“It could be someone else has the same ring,” she said clutching at straws.”
“No. That ring was one of a kind. His mother had it made for him for his twenty first birthday. She died a year later. It was Ben’s most treasured belonging and nothing could induce him to take it off.”
Catlin crumbled inside. Her hopes, dreams, beliefs, heart and soul fell into a pile of rubble and dust, their screams of agony ripping through every cell of her body. It was still make- believe, like the worlds she created in her books. None of had any substance but unlike her stories, this one could not be altered. There was no happy ending. Maria could see the turmoil Catlin was in and decided to make her exit.
“It wasn’t my intention to hurt you. I hoped to the last that I would be proved wrong, but I could not sit back and do nothing. I had to be sure, for my own peace of mind.”
“What about mine?” Catlin wanted to shout, but she no longer had the strength left in her to argue. Maria reached out to touch Catlin’s arm, but the girl recoiled. The memory of her and Ben, their intimacy collided with the realisation of who and what he was and the idea of physical contact with anyone made Catlin’s flesh cold as ice. “I’ll leave the photo and, if you need someone to talk to, come find me.”
Maria left and Catlin gave into the cry of despair which had been threatening to erupt from her lungs from the instant she had looked upon the photo. Who would have thought a piece of celluloid could unleash so much devastation? Catlin picked up the object which had stolen her future away, never wanting to see it again but unable to stop staring at it. She hoped to find something that would reveal Maria to be a liar at best and mad at worst, but there was nothing. It was exactly what it appeared to be. It was Ben there, along with William, Maria and the rest of their crew and she suddenly felt jealous. They had shared in his life, his friendship and warmth. Maria had shared his love for a time, a love so deep that he had killed himself rather than face life without her. Catlin could not begin to compete with that. Ben had been unwilling to escort her to one party, yet he gave his life up because Maria ended their relationship.
Then it dawned on her how stupid she was being. How could Ben have taken her out, he didn’t exist! Other things began to make sense too – the way he could appear out of no-where, that he turned up just when she was thinking about him, how he was always in the same clothes and he would only go places with her where they ran little chance of meeting anyone else. He had not been ashamed or embarrassed to be seen out with her – he couldn’t be seen, not with her or anyone else. But he had been spotted. People had seen them out together. They were what brought Maria to her door. How w
as that possible? Sure it was a coincidence, her going to kill herself on the very same night he had done it. Had their identical thoughts, feelings and deeds (almost in Catlin’s case) created some sort of bridge between then and now? Was it possible such links could be forged, that acts committed in the present could connect with those of the past? Had any of it been real or was she the one who was crazy? She could not figure it out.
Catlin had not realised until then that she had been pacing about the apartment, trying to get her head around it all. She was angry, confused, hurt. She never wanted to see Ben again yet all she wanted was for him to come to her, take her in his arms and shield her from the living nightmare and the gathering demons which had tracked her down at last.
Chapter Eleven
Never had the night been simultaneously loathed for its interminable length and adored for its all-consuming shadow. Restless and finding it beyond her to remain in once place for more than a few seconds, Catlin fretted from room to room, up out onto the roof terrace, ignoring the chill air which permeated her inappropriate dress, thanking the starless sky for hiding her shame and stupidity from the world while wishing the day would come and bring with it, as promised by the man himself, Ben. He held the solution to her woes and until he was there with her, rest was as far from her reach as the moon. She willed him to come to her, wished for it but to no avail. He had been there for her in the past, had he finally deserted her, abandoned her like everyone else in her life had done?
By the time the sun was above the horizon she was well past the point of exhaustion, could detect the tell-tale tickle of a cold starting at the back of her throat and did not have the inclination to even bother changing out of the damp clothing she wore. Her mind ached feverishly, but for the hours of thinking and rethinking Catlin was more confused and uncertain of things than she had been eight hours earlier.
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