How to be Famous

by Alison Bond

  Book and spectacles finally located, Linda sat back on the chair and turned Melanie’s palm up to face her. She balanced the book awkwardly on her lap and tried to find the relevant page. Eventually she turned to Melanie’s palm and stared at it for a long while before stopping, removing her spectacles and looking Melanie straight in the eye.

  ‘When were you going to tell me?’

  ‘Tell you what?’ The look in her mother’s eyes scared her, Linda looked concerned and slightly sad.

  ‘You’re pregnant.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Melanie. ‘You need a new book, or new glasses.’

  ‘Look at the red ring around your palm. That’s a clear indication of pregnancy.’

  ‘That’s what your book tells you, is it? Great book.’

  ‘No,’ said Linda. ‘That’s what they told me when I trained to be a nurse.’

  Melanie pulled her hand away and turned it over. She looked at her fingernails, still long with fake tips, a souvenir of the Golden State. Another souvenir growing inside her. She didn’t want to look up and meet Linda’s curious gaze. If she did, Linda would know, she was certain. That’s the thing about family.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she repeated. And whether Linda believed her or knew her well enough to sense that she didn’t want to talk about it, Melanie could not tell.

  Amanda was three hours late and resplendently pregnant, She seemed as if she would burst any second; Melanie could hardly look her in the eye. Little Olivia fluctuated between adorable, helpless babe and screaming terror, each personality confusing Melanie further.

  She spent a restless night in the same bed she’d slept in as a teenager that had now been moved, mattress and all, into the more ‘sensitively aligned’ north-facing bedroom. Sex education lessons from her youth haunted her. Two schoolgirls had fainted when faced with the graphic pictures and all Melanie could remember thinking was how simple it was. If you don’t want a baby then restrain or be very, very careful. It had seemed like such an easy rule to remember. But sex education lessons hadn’t touched upon desire and the crazy things desire will make you do.

  The early sunlight was a suggestion on the horizon when Melanie gave up on sleep altogether. Tiptoeing down the stairs, avoiding the creaking top step with some deep-rooted memory, she crept into the kitchen. She filled the kettle in the dark as quietly as she could and looked out onto the sprawling back garden. The slowly lightening sky made the stars fade softly away as if they were melting. The garden was still cast in gloom. A laughing Buddha by the back step looked like a gargoyle. Rose bushes spiked shadows across the unruly lawn. A single bird bravely sang into the silence.

  It took a moment to realize that the curved shape several yards away was not a statue but Linda, bent into the lotus position and facing east.

  Melanie pulled a stool up to the kitchen counter and watched her mother watch the sunrise. She sipped her tea and marvelled at the calm of the tableau. Her stormy mind was settled somewhat by the slow inevitability of the picture. The sun would rise whatever she did. The world would keep on turning. There was no choice in the matter.

  I want to have this baby. But I’m scared.

  She thought of times in her life when she had been scared. When her father left, when she moved to London, every time she stepped on stage or in front of a camera. And so far, despite the fear, every challenge she had overcome had made her feel a little bit stronger, a little bit less afraid.

  She could see the yellow edge of the sun, already burning so bright that it left a dancing red shadow on her eyelids when she closed them.

  There was Linda, her mother, sat so still that she seemed part of the landscape itself. A constant.

  ‘I’m going to do it.

  And, as the storm in her head finally died down and was silent, she felt like she had made the right choice.

  Melanie went to see her doctor in London. He made her pee into a cup and wait for twenty minutes so that he could confirm the results of her home pregnancy test. Melanie sat in the waiting room and wondered what she would do if she wasn’t pregnant after all. She tried to think how she would feel. There would be a certain amount of relief, but she knew that by now that relief would be tinged with disappointment. She was getting used to the idea. She would be one of those trendy single mums who wore Gucci kaftans on the beach in their third trimester and had big, happy lunches with all their friends and their kids on Primrose Hill and booked an eight-bedroom villa in Tuscany for two weeks every September. She didn’t actually have any friends with children but she was sure she could make some, and if not there was always Amanda.

  ‘Melanie Chaplin?’

  The cockney voice of the nurse broke her from her Baby Gap reverie and ten minutes later she was pregnant, officially, and clutching a stack of leaflets and a recommended reading list. She felt as if she’d signed up for further education.

  The doctor had made a vague reference to the father, which she had dodged, rather neatly she thought. Were trendy single mothers supposed to be embarrassed?

  She didn’t expect anything from the father of the baby, she wasn’t sure that she even wanted anything, but it never occurred to her not to tell him. Melanie had spent half her life missing her father; she could never knowingly inflict that constant absence on a child of her own. It must be Fabien, but she had to make sure.

  Ruling the allegedly spermless Jonathan out of the equation was a good way of putting off telling Fabien Stewart, bachelor number one, the happy news that not only was she carrying his child but, what’s more, she wanted to give birth.

  She couldn’t ask Jonathan on the phone, she wanted to see the expression in his eyes to make sure that he wasn’t lying. She looked through Time Out, trying to think like he would think, and booked a ticket for a special screening at the Barbican, a celebration of Peter Sellers. She was certain he would be there and sure enough he was. She was conflicted between pride in her instincts and the depressing predictability of Jonathan.

  She tapped his shoulder. ‘Hi.’

  Jonathan turned and almost spilled his gin and tonic. ‘Melanie.’ He tensed, like she was about to hit him or something. ‘What are you doing here? You don’t like Peter Sellers.’

  ‘Everybody likes Peter Sellers,’ she said and smiled.

  Jonathan looked confused. Like a fish caught in a net and looking for an escape route. He knew he’d been pretty shitty to Melanie, justifiably so he thought, and certainly wasn’t expecting a smile. But as long as she was being friendly then he didn’t want to make a scene.

  They talked a little and Melanie brought the subject round to children in the least clumsy way she could think of. ‘Amanda’s massive. She’s due any day now. Two kids.’

  Suddenly it became clear to Jonathan. Melanie was seeking some sort of reconciliation.

  ‘Look, Melanie,’ he said, ‘I know you want children.’

  ‘When did I ever say that?’

  ‘You don’t have to say it.’

  To Melanie’s horror he put his arms around her. She started to pull away but didn’t want to force a change of subject.

  ‘I realize it was a big part of why we broke up. That’s the one thing I can’t give you.’

  Right, that and respect, and support, and multiple orgasms.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she said.

  ‘I can’t have children.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ she repeated. She stared into his eyes.

  ‘Melanie, what is this? It’s over. Let me go.’

  Thank you.

  So it had to be Fabien.

  When she got back home there was a single message blinking on her machine and making her feel loved.

  Davey Black.

  I’m in London, he said. Meeting. Wanna grab some dinner?

  It was a sign.

  Davey Black was happy to be in London. He really did have to be here. There was a meeting with some of the European distributors and Davey was supposed to be on hand to make nice. It was just a
lucky coincidence that Melanie was in town so he could have dinner with a friend instead of hanging out with a bunch of marketing executives who would all, no doubt, have serious aspirations to direct. It would be good to see Melanie. He hadn’t seen her for a while. That was all. He wasn’t the type of man to cheat on his wife. Davey had married Mary Ann very quickly but at the time they had both agreed: if they were going to make it in Los Angeles together they were going to have to make it official. Los Angeles was a town of temptation.

  But he wasn’t in Los Angeles.

  Downstairs at Odette’s the mirrored alcoves meant that Melanie saw Davey sitting at a booth before he saw her.

  It seemed odd to see him in yet another environment. Out of the jungle, out of Hollywood. Here, in one of her favourite restaurants, dipping a piece of salty foccacia in a pool of golden oil. He looked good, actually. Maybe after dinner they could go for a glass of wine at Montbretia and get a table on the terrace so that he could tell her how fabulous she was looking in his film.

  She shook the pretty picture out of her head. She was here for a reason.

  ‘How have you been?’ asked Davey as they settled down. The place on his cheek where she’d kissed him was still warm.

  Did he know? She was being ridiculous. To her this pregnancy was everything, to the rest of the world it didn’t exist.

  ‘I’ve been busy,’ she said. ‘Family stuff.’

  ‘Nothing bad, I hope?’

  ‘How’s Mary Ann?’ she said.

  Davey noticed that she ducked the question. He knew nothing about Melanie’s life in England, he couldn’t even remember if she had a boyfriend and was surprised to find how much he cared about the answer. She had asked him a question, right, yes, his wife. ‘Great, actually, really well. She was supposed to be coming with me, but she had a better offer. A photo shoot in Brazil, a major cosmetics campaign. It’s a big break for her.’

  ‘She’s already huge,’ said Melanie, meaning famous but thinking of a fat Mary Ann and liking the mental picture. Let’s see that on the cover of Cosmo.

  ‘Yeah, but she wants to be the very best. She loves the attention. She likes doing everything to excess. She’ll grow out of it.’ He laughed, almost embarrassed.

  The meal was delicious. Good enough to require serious concentration, meaning that nothing more than small talk was required. Davey talked about his film (he referred to it as ‘theirs’), the distribution deal he was here to talk about, the early talk of a possible Cannes debut.

  ‘Davey, can I ask you something?’ Instinctively her hand went to her belly and her resolve strengthened. Melanie and Davey had survived thousands of difficult conversations while they were shooting the film. She had always found him easy to talk to. Nothing embarrassed him. She tried a hypothetical. ‘Imagine you were so drunk one night you couldn’t remember how you got home.’

  ‘It’s a big stretch but I’ll try,’ said Davey.

  ‘But imagine you had a strange memory, no more than a snapshot really, of, well of having sex with someone.’

  ‘You slept with someone and you can’t remember who?’ said Davey.

  ‘I know who, I’m just not sure if we slept together.’

  She searched his face for a response but he was smiling openly at her, amused by what he saw as an indiscretion. His elbows rested on the table, white shirt sleeves rolled up exposing tanned forearms, rippling with muscle. For a second, Melanie felt a rush of sexual heat. As if he had felt it too, the smile left Davey’s face and the warm crinkles around his eyes dissolved. He leant towards her until their faces were only a couple of inches apart.

  ‘Was it good?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Davey burst out laughing. ‘Look at you, you look so deadly serious. You’re acting as if it was the sin of the century. Don’t be embarrassed. So you had a few too many, where’s the harm?’ To be honest, he thought it was sexy.

  Right here, thought Melanie, her hand still resting on her stomach. ‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘would you ask the person you thought it was?’

  ‘That depends, are you likely to see him again?’

  ‘He’s a friend.’ She paused. ‘You really don’t know where I’m going with this, do you?’

  Davey looked at her blankly but as he opened his mouth to speak the penny dropped and he sprang back.

  ‘Me? Me and you?’

  ‘I know it’s stupid, I know. But I had this crazy dream. I had to ask. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Melanie, I have never had sex with you. Believe me, I’d remember.’

  Melanie didn’t know what to say. She was torn between acute embarrassment and an emotion she immediately recognized as disappointment. Where had that come from? Davey was just an infatuation, something safe to fasten on while she wrote off her long-term relationship. When she saw him in Los Angeles there was nothing, so why did she suddenly want him to march her back to his room and rip the bodice of her Marimekko slip dress with brute force? Surely her heart was pounding so loudly he would hear it? She sipped her Virgin Mary trying to regain her composure. There was a part of her that had wanted Davey to be the father, very married Davey.

  Davey turned towards the mirror, the strong outline of his face in profile. With considerable effort, Melanie finally shook the image of fucking him from her mind.

  ‘So, tell me,’ he said, catching the reflection of her eye. ‘Good dream?’

  Somehow, Melanie survived through dessert and coffee. The conversation had embarrassed them both and they knew they wouldn’t see each other again while he was in town. It was too dangerous.

  So the baby must be Fabien’s. No problem.

  She would tell him calmly and confidentially and reassure him that she wanted nothing from him in return. Fabien was essentially a good and warm-hearted man. At the very least he would perhaps provide the child with some security should anything happen to her.

  She could book a flight and be back in Los Angeles in a couple of days. Or she could just call him. That might be the easiest way. Flying might not be good for the baby. Actually, there wasn’t really any need to speak to him at all. After all, what if Honey picked up the phone? There was never any privacy in that house. She could just wait until they recalled her to the Justice set. Max had said any day now so it could be, well, it could be any day. What was the point of an embarrassing mercy dash to tell Fabien news that would probably be quite unwelcome? On the other hand what if her contract fell through, the producers had a sudden change of heart? What if news of her pregnancy leaked out? (Right, because she’d told two people she trusted and she was really that famous.) What if Fabien found out? (Right, because he was really likely to mark the date down on his bedpost next to the countless notches.)

  Maybe she wouldn’t tell him at all.

  Eventually, acknowledging it was slightly pathetic and vaguely teenage, Melanie wrote him a letter.

  Dear Fabien,

  There is no gentle way to tell you this but I am pregnant and you’re the father. What you do with this information is up to you. I don’t know how I could have let this happen, but I am now very happy about it and want to keep the baby. I felt strongly that you should know, but rest assured that I don’t expect you to be involved in any further way, unless you want to. I am happy to sign a document relinquishing you of any and all obligations and keeping this matter confidential on the understanding that you have no formal rights of visitation or custody of the child. I hope we can still be friends.

  Kind regards,

  Melanie Chaplin

  She had written dozens of drafts and she still hated it. She kept a copy so that she could torture herself with its adolescent qualities, its pained formality. She sent the letter by FedEx and woke up in the middle of the night determined to recall it and then changed her mind three times while on the phone to the patient dispatch guy at the end of the line.

  London was wilting in a blaze of early summer. There was no escape from the sticky feeling in the city. Linda called and invited M
elanie to a Buddhist retreat in Yorkshire for a week and after she declined Melanie thought of the house Linda would be leaving empty and she craved the Norfolk space. She would go up to the house and spend time lost in the dark corners within and tangled in the green sweetness of the muddled garden. Away from the phone and the letter box that remained ominously silent.

  The drive up was a dream. The breezeless blue sky was made for open roads and soul music. The coolness of the house was immediately relaxing. The quiet stilled her racing mind. She was scared. Trendy single mum, she kept thinking, trendy single mum. She sat in the gathering darkness of the garden listening to the grasshoppers take over the silence.

  Later that night when she heard the familiar sound of crunching gravel on the driveway, her first thought was that Amanda must have had another fight with Douglas and decided to visit, or that Linda had been cast out by the Buddhists for topping up their green tea with whiskey. And then the doorbell chimed. Neither of them would ever ring the doorbell.

  Fabien stood on the doorstep. It reminded her of the day they first met. In the distance a black London cab was heading off to the main road.

  ‘I got your letter.’ He held out a white envelope.

  Melanie was frozen.

  ‘I can’t believe you wrote your surname!’ he said as he walked past her into the house. ‘I didn’t know personal mail still existed. I would have sent an old-fashioned reply, but then I thought you wouldn’t get it for another week at least and the gist of the letter would have been that we should talk, so I was going to call but then I thought, haven’t been to London in a while, so, I’m here. In…. where am I exactly?’

  ‘Holt.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m going too fast.’

  She couldn’t help it, she laughed. ‘No. Holt. Norfolk.’

  He looked so misplaced standing in her mother’s kitchen, leaning against the chipped work surfaces in his crumpled thousand-dollar suit, backlit through the narrow kitchen window. He looked like an apparition. Linda would be so disappointed to miss him. Melanie must remember not to wipe the bit of counter where his strong hand rested.