by Cate Andrews
‘Yes Nancy, what it is?’ barked Frances, adjusting her spectacles in displeasure.
‘A word, Dr Sharpe, if you will,’ whispered the girl. Frances was a notorious matriarch who liked to bully and patronise her underlings. Needless to say, she was the least popular draw when the staff’s secret Santas were allotted each December.
After a great hoo-ha about the need for privacy during her sessions, Frances grudgingly complied. Christine watched with interest as they conversed in hushed, urgent tones in the doorway. Suddenly, Frances snatched the newspaper away from the girl and peered at the headline above the rim of her glasses. Shooing her from the room, she returned to her desk, slipped the paper under a revolting tartan-knitting bag and sat back down again.
Christine glanced from the paper to her therapist.
‘Is there something you wish to share?’
This time it was Christine’s turn to face the demi-circled glare of the spectacles.
‘I don’t think it would be prudent at this time,’ replied Frances snootily.
Oh shut it, you self-important old bag, fumed Christine. She had often fantasised about throttling Frances with her mauve chiffon scarves or plucking her moustache hair one wiry strand at a time.
‘Right then, moving on,’ began Frances bossily. ‘Recently we’ve been exploring your family history and potential links with addiction. In our last session, we touched briefly on your daddy’s penchant for quadruple G & Ts before his morning kedgeree…’
As she droned on and on about her profligate father, Christine felt her resolve crumble like over-buttered flour. Suddenly, she just had to know what was splashed across the front page of that newspaper.
‘Excuse me, Frances…?’
‘Is there a problem?’
‘Well, yes. I’m finding the lure of today’s headline somewhat of a distraction. Would you mind awfully if I took a look?’
Frances flushed. ‘I really don’t think that’s appropriate…’
But Christine was already lunging for paper, upending the knitting bag and sending tightly woven orbs of grey wool vomiting across the room like oversize fur balls.
Glancing down, she wished she had followed her advice, for spread across the entire page was a carefully PR orchestrated picture of a gooey-eyed Maisie and Stephen posing demurely for the camera as his star was unveiled on Hollywood Boulevard. Christine’s eyes narrowed to slits when she saw that Stephen was kneeling slightly to the right to make his penis look larger against the strained material of his designer suit.
You egotistical little fucker! I hope they stuck you down by some tacky souvenir shop, she thought savagely, casting her eyes over the headline.
‘A real-life Desert Affair: De Vries in love!’
Stephen’s final kick in the teeth more like, she reflected sourly.
Kissing his new love tenderly on the cheek, the superstar director describes his relationship with 25 year old Maisie as a ‘powerful spiritual connection, impossible to deny…’
Oh shut it you pompous plonker, it’s still bazookering your marriage vows no matter how arty-farty you make it sound. Incensed, she skim-read the rest of the article.
Three-times Oscar nominee De Vries goes on to say how he and the sexy Miss Peach, three-times ‘Hot! Hot! Hot! Hottest Ever Bikini Hottie’, only recently acted on their true feelings, despite a successful working partnership on the Pirates franchise and the soon to be released A Desert Affair…
Christine snorted. True bullshit, more like. They had clearly been screwing for years. Hadn’t Joe insinuated as much in Morocco?
‘I’m so sorry Christine, this must be a terrible shock, but you must not allow it to set you back.’ She felt Frances’ hand rest on hers and she shook it off, repulsed. Her touch was even less sincere than her words.
Rebuked, Frances glanced sideways at the front page. Stephen De Vries really was an extraordinarily handsome devil. ‘Let’s draw on this and turn it to our advantage,’ she said quickly. ‘An unhappy marriage can easily re-ignite and trigger addiction…’
‘…Which would explain why my last booze bill invoice was over twenty thousand pounds,’ snarled Christine. Maybe there was something to this cognitive therapy after all.
There was another knock at the door.
‘Oh for goodness sake Nancy, what is it now?’
‘Apologies, Dr Sharpe,’ stammered the blushing Nancy, ‘but there’s a visitor for Ms LaVelle. He’s waiting in reception. Shall I show him into the day room?’
‘But that’s impossible,’ gaped Christine, dropping her guard. ‘My husband’s just run off with a floozie. It says so in The Sun.’
‘I believe it’s your brother-in-law, not your husband, Ms LaVelle,’ corrected Nancy, blushing an even deeper shade of red.
‘Oh how splendid!’ screeched Frances, clapping her hands in mock delight. ‘Isn’t that wonderful, Christine? Your very first visitor!’
Christine ignored the patronizing bitch. All of a sudden she felt as naked and vulnerable as a Sycamore in winter. Joe detested her and rightly so.
‘Shall I show Mr De Vries to the day room?’ repeated Nancy, gunning for another chance to talk to Christine’s hot ex-brother-in-law.
‘No thank you, I’d like to speak with him privately,’ said Christine quietly. ‘Please show him to the patio.’
‘Certainly, Ms Lavelle.’ Nancy hurriedly closed the door behind her.
‘Well, well, what a lovely surprise, my dear,’ crowed Frances. ‘I shall leave you two to chat. Let’s reconvene in an hour.’
Christine rose unsteadily from her chair, craving twenty Voltorol and a triple vodka chaser. That was the problem with sobriety, she thought, dully. Reality had a habit of smacking you in the face when you least expected it and it stung all the more when you couldn’t have booze and drugs to numb the pain. Stepping outside, she balled her hands into fists when she saw him standing next to a row of clashing red salvias and orange marigolds.
‘Hello Joe,’ she said, weakly. ‘I’m surprised to see you here. I can’t imagine this little day trip is your idea of fun.’
‘It’s a damn site more enjoyable than receiving your Fed-Ex’s. Christ, Christine, you don’t believe in the softly, softly approach, do you?’
‘It wasn’t easy for me either,’ she shot back, defensively. ‘I thought the dirty rat was filming in Mexico, so imagine my surprise when I discovered him pounding away at my sister-in-law instead of a piñata.’
Joe froze.
‘When?’
‘Three months after your wedding.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I’ve nothing to gain from lying to you, Joe. Not anymore. Look where I am,’ she said, gesturing to the building behind her. ‘I’ve no career, no husband, nothing. I’ve plummeted to rock bottom so fast, i’m sending up sparks.’
But Joe wasn’t interested in self-pity. ‘The note, Christine. How…why…?’
She looked away. ‘I found it two months after she died. I’ve no idea how it ended up in Stephen’s hands, and even less of an idea why I never questioned him about it. I just hid it away in the study desk drawer with all the other awful things that happened during our marriage.’
‘You should have left him,’ said Joe, accusingly.
‘And have the paparazzi indecently assault my privet hedge with their foot long lenses again? I couldn’t. It had only just recovered from my last marriage scandal.’ There was a beat. ‘How long have him and Maisie…?’
‘Six years.’
She stifled a cry. The odd night with a floozie was one thing but a fully-fledged affaire was a nut-cracking offence. ‘Sweet Jesus, I’m going to bury the bastard for this!’
‘I know a man with a shovel.’
Something in his tone made Christine pause.
‘Why are you really here, Joe?’ she asked him, curiously.
‘I’m rallying the anti-GBA troops and volunteering you for co-commander-in-chief.’
‘You’re goi
ng up against your brother? You?’ Christine sounded unflatteringly skeptical. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, darling, but you haven’t got it in you.’
Joe scowled. ‘You’ve known me for ten years, Christine, and been drunk for most of it, so don’t presume you know the first fuck about me.’
‘I know you’re a man who’s built a career out of defending him.’
‘Then i’ll tear it down and happily so. Stephen’s dead to me. Let me prove it to you.’ He took a step closer. ‘C’mon Christine, what do you say?’
‘You really do sound like a man with a shovel,’ she said, wavering. ‘Tell me, have you something specific in mind?’
For the first time that morning, Joe smiled.
‘I thought you’d never ask.’
Michael watched him swing into the passenger seat.
‘How d’it go?’
‘Promising, but she won’t give us an official nod until she reads the script. I left a copy with her.’
Michael grinned. ‘Then it’s a done deal, that baby’s faultless. Let’s go find one of those cutie-pie English pubs and celebrate.’
‘Take a left at the roundabout. I know just the place.’
Michael crunched the car into gear. ‘For fuck’s sake! You sure they didn’t have any automatics back at the rental place?’ he yelped, swerving to miss a squirrel.
‘Positive, and its fifty points for Squirrel Nutkins.’
‘Who? Man, I wish I coulda seen the look on Christine’s face when you told her about Memoir.’
‘Like all her Christmases had come at once.’
‘New Years Eves you mean. More time at the bar.’
‘I’m not so sure anymore. Christine was looking pretty together. Best I’ve ever seen her.’
‘That’ll be the rehab security blanket. Wait ‘til she’s back in the real world. Still, if we can hold her together enough to see this thing through then that’s good enough for me.’ He jumped as the first pellets of rain hit the windscreen. ‘Mind if I switch on the radio?’
‘Be my guest, but only if the music’s cheesier than a four seasons.’
‘Jesus, Joe, your taste sucks!’
It was bad enough that station was broadcasting a celeb special on Maisie and Stephen, reflected Joe. It was even worse that the stupid presenter had a humungous crush on his brother. The last thing Michael needed to hear, on top of the news that his ex had shacked up with Stephen, was that his love rival was a certified genius who could most likely cure cancer, wipe out Aids and bring about world peace if given half the chance.
A horrible silence lingered long after the bulletin switched to Bryan Adams. The rain was starting to really tip it down now but a white-faced Michael still had the wipers on intermittent. Joe was just plucking up the courage to say something when Michael swerved the car to a standstill, cutting up an old dear on her silver mobility scooter and narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with a bright red post box.
The driver’s door was booted open.
‘That two-faced bitch!’ exploded Michael, jumping out and aiming a hefty kick at the hire car’s side panel. The old dear, thinking he was referring to her, was so shocked she drove her scooter right off the pavement and clipped a holly bush.
Joe jumped out after him. ‘Michael stop, she’s not worth the hire car excess!’
‘SHE IS TO ME! I want the truth now, Joe, and not some watered-down, censored-for- fucking-radio horseshit. How long has Stephen been screwing my girlfriend?’
‘Six years’ said Joe quietly, and for the second time that day.
Michael was dumbfounded. ‘Son of a…. You knew all along didn’t you?’
‘I’m sorry Michael, I truly am.’
‘Who else?’
‘Polly. She walked in on them at the beginning of the…’
‘Polly? Jeez, no wonder she could never look me in the eye. When I think back to all those stupidly long press junkets, all those late nights when I thought she was rehearsing …’
‘We’ve all been played like fools, Michael. You, me, Christine…’
Michael stopped abusing their hire car, sat down on the bonnet and put his head in his hands. The rainwater running in rivulets down his fingers looked like an endless stream of tears.
‘I’m the biggest fool of all’ he groaned. ‘I was gonna ask her to marry me.’
Joe shivered, and it wasn’t anything to do with the weather. ‘I now it hurts like hell now but things will get easier.’
‘That’s just some throwaway line from a movie and you know it.’
Michael had a point. His longing for Polly hadn’t lessoned in the slightest.
‘Think of it as ammunition then,’ he went on, hastily. ‘We have a movie to finance and two days to put together a good enough pitch to seal the deal with Christine.’
‘Ah, your rousing Braveheart speech. I hate to break it to you, Joe, but it really is more convincing when delivered from a horse.’
‘Well, I’ll have to make do with horsepower then,’ he persisted, slapping the hire car’s bonnet.
‘What’s the point?’ muttered Michael, ‘I doubt we’ll get distribution anyway.’
‘That’s bollocks and you know it.’
Michael looked away and frowned. Joe was right. Just then, the rain began to peter out and bright beams of sunshine started nibbling at the edges of the clouds. He stood up suddenly, fumbled in his jacket pocket and pulled out a very small, very exclusive-looking jewellery box.
‘How much do you reckon our Production Office will cost to set up?’ he asked Joe, rolling the box between his fore fingers and thumb.
‘Depends. Soho’s always a safe, but ultimately pricey bet. Still, we’ll have the post-production houses on our doorstep. We should aim small and super tight.’
‘Then this should cover it.’ Michael lobbed the box at Joe. He caught it easily and inspected the contents.
‘You crazy bastard! This thing could buy us a dozen production offices.’
‘Good. I’ll have the pleasure of telling Maisie one day that her engagement ring helped fund the film responsible for irritating the hell outta her boyfriend.’
Joe grinned. ‘Well, when you put it like that…’
They spent the next two days holed up in Joe’s flat, sweating buckets over their budget and tweaking the script until every line flowed like runny honey.
On the eve of Christine’s deadline, Michael was still wrestling with the synopsis for the Start of Picture press release when Joe walked into the room with two cartons of Chinese take-out and a six-pack. He unhooked one of the cans and chucked it at Michael before selecting one for himself.
‘I think I’ve found us a production office,’ he said, taking a slurp. ‘It’s just off Lexington Street. It’s small but should fit five desks easy. Most importantly, it’s cheap.’
‘What’s the catch?’
‘It’s above a fantastic sandwich shop so it’ll mean a lot of overtime at the gym. Still, it looks ok from the outside.’
‘Fantastic,’ whooped Michael. ‘Let’s organise a viewing for tomorrow afternoon once we’ve seen Christine. I’ve always enjoyed a flirt with presumption.’
Joe took another sip and considered his next question carefully.
‘How do you feel about seeing her again?’
‘Who, Christine?’ Michael paused, can to mouth. ‘I guess it had to happen sometime. I was pretty wrecked that night so it’s not like I’m gonna look at her and remember her naked or anything. Do you really think she’s changed? I don’t think I’ll able to handle any tantrum crap this time around.’
‘As I said before, I don’t think we need to worry.’
Michael said nothing as he peeled back the lid of his chicken chow mien. He’d had a gutful of Christine in Morocco and was more than a little dubious that she, like one of her ghastly leopard print dresses, could have changed her spots so drastically. Still, Joe seemed pretty convinced.
‘We need to come up for a name for our new prod
uction company,’ said Joe, hovering up his Peking duck. ‘I was mulling it over earlier and I have an idea. What about Harper Films? A fitting first nod to Tommy, if you like?’
‘Not bad, not bad at all,’ said Michael, testing it out in his head. ‘I’ll register it tomorrow as a Limited Company. I’m sure Christine wouldn’t want her mansion repossessed if our venture goes tits up.’
‘I think she’d be willing to lose a lot more than bricks and mortar if it meant seeing Stephen run out of Soho.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ smiled Michael, raising his beer, ‘and to Harper Films.’
‘Not to mention all the bruised and bloody survivors of the great GBA train-wreck’ added Joe. ‘Here’s to you, me and Christine.’
‘And to anyone else we manage to rescue along the way.’
‘Right. To Danny and Polly.’
‘And Lily and Lucas,’ finished Michael quietly.
Christine was waiting in reception as they pulled up to Serenity Heights the following day. Waving her arms about like a jet-propelled windmill, she flew down the stone steps as fast as her red-soled Louboutins would allow and had her hand on Joe’s door before Michael had put the handbrake on.
‘Joseph, darling, the script’s wonderful, absolutely bloody wonderful!’ she cried, yanking him out of the seat and pulling him into a rapturous embrace. ‘Now, i’ve called my bank manager to let him know I’ll be making an extremely large withdrawal in the next few days, and Freddie my wizard accountant is standing by to help cook us some books!’
Joe stumbled sideways, propelled by the G-force of her enthusiasm. Michael climbed out of his side and did a double take. Who was this woman with the shiny eyes, porcelain skin and classy Chanel Suit? More importantly, what had she done with their drunken old soak of a cash cow? Christine caught him staring at her and flashed him a coquettish smile.
‘Hello Michael, good to see you again. I’m rather relieved to see you’re wearing your clothes this time.’
‘Likewise,’ he said, shocking himself by contemplating a rematch. Christine hadn’t just changed her spots, she had morphed into an entirely different species. Suddenly, a huge weight lifted from his shoulders. The final jigsaw piece of Harper Films was slotting into place.