‘Great,’ said Barbara. ‘How’s the beer?’
‘It’s cold,’ said Elise.
Barbara patted her corset sides. ‘I’d kill for one,’ she said. ‘But I won’t. Imagine being gassy in this contraption. My tits would inflate even more and they’d have to pull me out of the lighting rig.’
Elise felt mildly stupefied. The surface elements of Barbara’s personality were pressing her down, but it was the sudden news that they were going to be staying in America that knocked her sideways. She gripped her beer bottle. When, exactly, had Connie been planning to tell her this? Provoked by Barbara, had she just made up her mind, now? Elise began to bristle. As Connie’s younger partner, with no discernible talent herself, she felt she had to be always solicitous, alert, smiling – and she was beginning to find it very difficult. She just wanted Connie to look at her with the same levels of admiration she looked at Barbara – to talk to her with the same confidence she spoke to Bill or Matt.
Suddenly, Elise wished she’d taken Matt up on his offer of surfing. To be on the water now, even to be walking along the shore – rather than here, in this airless room with its basket of unwanted fruit and intense lightbulbs. Exhausted, she shuffled to the back of the sofa, clutching the beer bottle tightly.
‘You OK, honey?’ Barbara said, undoing the knot of her white cotton bonnet and revealing a head of rollers. She looked more human, but her face still vacuumed up attention like something supernatural.
‘I’m a little faint, but OK, thank you.’
‘Do you need fresh air?’ said Barbara.
‘Do you need to go home?’ asked Connie.
*
Barbara called for the production manager to get her a car back to the bungalow. Elise protested that she didn’t need it, that she was fine. Connie said she looked pale, and an afternoon by the pool would be better. She gave up trying to protest, and left Connie and Barbara in the dressing room.
‘Is she really OK?’ she heard Barbara say to Connie, through the door. ‘Did she really want to be alone?’
‘She’ll be fine.’
‘Con, you should go with her. She’s just a kid.’
‘If I treated her like a kid, Barb, she’d hate that even more.’
Elise wasn’t really ill, but she’d wanted to get away from Barbara and have Connie come with her. Alone with Connie was where she wanted to be. Wandering the corridor towards the rectangle of light at the end, Elise stepped slowly along the linoleum. She wanted nothing more than to leave – to go back to London, just her and Connie. She felt, with a painful, exhilarating awareness, that the new life she had gripped onto was sliding through her fingers. She stood outside in the sunshine and waited to be picked up, watching the extras filing out of another hangar; centurions from Rome, their helmets glinting in the sun.
*
Elise knew she could not control Connie. She could not know everything about her, and she never could. She did not know whether the words Connie spoke to her were words she’d said before, or words she would say again, to another. There was no anchor here.
When she got home, she went straight to the telephone and dialled Matt and Shara’s number in Malibu. It was Matt who answered.
‘It’s me,’ she said.
‘Elise,’ he replied. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m OK,’ she said. ‘I was wondering – is Shara there?’
‘Shara?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hold on.’
There was a pause, the sound of footsteps. Elise waited. Finally, Shara picked up the handset. ‘Hi, Elise,’ she said. ‘What’s up?’
‘Can I model for you?’ Elise said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘For a painting. Do you need a model?’
There was a pause. ‘Oh – well. I mean, the work I’ve been doing is more abstract, Elise. I’m really sorry, but I’m not using models at the moment.’
Elise felt an inexplicable wall of rage rise up inside her. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. It was a stupid idea.’
‘No – it’s a lovely offer. I’m just sorry that how I’m working at the moment doesn’t—’
‘You don’t have to explain,’ said Elise. ‘I’m really sorry I asked, Shara. I shouldn’t have asked. I guess we’ll see you soon.’
‘Hey—’
But Elise put down the telephone before she could hear any more.
2017
17
The first Monday working for Connie, in the middle of October, I arrived shortly after ten in the morning. She gave me a key immediately, because she couldn’t be bothered to walk all the way downstairs to open the front door every day. As far as I knew she didn’t eat breakfast, because I went straight to the kitchen to make coffee and the place was spotless.
‘I like it from this stove-top pot,’ Connie said. ‘But you must watch very carefully to make sure it doesn’t boil over on the hob.’
‘Got it.’
‘Also, Laura, please open my post for me.’
‘Are you sure?’
Connie blinked at me owlishly. ‘I never get sent anything of much interest, and I can’t be bothered faffing for thirty minutes trying to open an envelope telling me I could get better broadband with someone else.’
It was a second element of her privacy which Connie ceded without a thought. I wondered if she wasn’t bothered much by my being able to walk into her house and open her letters, because the real privacy was in her head, a place I could never access. ‘Also, Laura,’ she added, as if she was reading my mind, ‘I barely get any post.’
*
At one o’clock, Connie came down for a lunch that I’d made. She liked nursery food, apparently: ham sandwiches, carrot sticks, a packet of crisps, easy on the fingers. When I looked in the biscuit tin, I found out one secret at least: Constance loved chocolate.
‘I told the recruitment agency I found something else,’ I said.
‘Ah.’
‘Did you tell Rebecca that you’d – taken someone on?’
‘I did,’ said Connie, finishing the last of her sandwich with acute concentration. I waited for her to stop eating, to place the crust back on the plate, to ask me what kind of impostor I was, to get out of her house for ever. I felt like I was waiting for an axe to fall.
‘She didn’t want to know any more?’ I ventured.
Connie made a small grunting sound. ‘Not until I’m found dead at the bottom of the stairs, three weeks after not returning her calls, would Rebecca ever exert herself for me beyond the bare minimum. Speaking of which, did you see Fiona Wilkins died at the weekend?’ she went on, ripping into a Lion bar.
‘No,’ I replied, pulling out a tray of carrot muffins I’d decided to make. ‘How awful.’
‘She’s been dying for about thirty years. I thought she was already dead.’
Fiona Wilkins; a novelist who was not as good as Connie, but immensely popular and absolutely loaded, thanks to a series of novels based on a nun-detective called Giovanna, battling the Pope and his assassins in sixteenth-century Rome. It had been a long-running TV series. I hadn’t seen the TV version, but I’d loved every one of the books. Fiona Wilkins; who had lived near to Connie, had probably tried to be friends, and clearly failed, miserably.
‘I wish I’d written a nun-detective,’ said Connie. ‘Still, you can’t take your royalties to Heaven. Or maybe you can? Poor Fiona Wilkins. We’re all bloody dying.’
‘You’re not.’
‘I am. Still, she was older than me, at least. Could you make some tea? Did you get yourself a chocolate bar from the tin?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, for god’s sake, Laura.’
‘I don’t like chocolate.’
‘Who doesn’t like chocolate? Did I know this about you?’
‘It wasn’t in the interview,’ I said, and she chuckled.
I turned on the kettle. ‘Do you know she had six children?’ said Connie. She’d finished the Lion bar, and had moved on to a Bou
nty. I worried briefly about the risk of diabetes. ‘Six fucking children. And where are they now?’
‘Probably at her bedside?’
‘And her husband was useless. No wonder every novel was the same.’
‘I liked them.’
‘What?’
‘I thought they were very readable! And well researched,’ I said. ‘And actually they were all quite different.’
‘The nun solved everything in the end?’
‘Yes.’
‘And got into scrapes, but always made it?’
‘Of course.’
Connie sniffed. ‘Repetition does take talent. Perhaps we should send flowers.’
‘I can organize that,’ I said.
‘All right. You do that.’
Connie sighed. She could be an old lady when she was tired. Almost. Her eyes couldn’t keep their brightness, her caustic wit was quiet. I felt suddenly guilty as to why I had sought her out, the answers I was planning to extract from her. And I wondered: how many books were left inside that mind? I realized I would like to read Connie’s version of Giovanna the nun-detective. It would have been spectacular. But it was probably too late.
‘She wrote that dreadful memoir,’ Connie said. ‘What was it called? Writing My Wrongs, or something. Christ. What’s your take on memoirs?’ she asked. ‘Do you like reading them?’
‘Depends whose memoir it is,’ I said, bringing the mugs of tea to the kitchen table. ‘I don’t like the “long life lived” kind.’ I placed Connie’s steaming mug of tea before her.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Please use coasters. I hate watermarks.’
‘Of course,’ I said, hastily laying out two cork coasters. She hates watermarks, but every mug is tatty as hell, I thought.
‘Aren’t they all dreadfully confessional?’ she said. ‘Self-absorbed?’
‘It’s sort of a requirement that they’re self-absorbed, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Not if they say something to the reader.’
‘I don’t think people would identify with what I’d have to share,’ she said.
I gripped my mug. ‘Why not?’
‘Well. I suppose I don’t really mean that. What I really mean is that I don’t want to share.’
‘I’m sure you’ve been through a lot,’ I said. ‘Met a lot of people.’
Connie narrowed her eyes. ‘I’d never write about it. It’s why I’m writing a novel.’
I hesitated, but decided to speak. ‘I suppose there’s the problem you might get sued if you write from real life. Things could come out of the woodwork.’
‘Oh, that wouldn’t happen to me,’ said Connie. ‘Everyone I want to write about is probably dead.’
A shiver went through my stomach. ‘You’re the last one standing?’ I said.
Connie looked at me. ‘Something like that.’
*
She wanted us to move to the front room, to go through her invoices. Connie did not do Internet banking; unbelievably, she was still sending cheques. I built up a fire – Oh, I haven’t had one of these in over two years! – and it felt practically Dickensian. I enjoyed poring over her purchases, the simple bills she paid as a citizen of the United Kingdom: telephone, water, council, gas. I noted with interest that she gave generously to homelessness charities, literacy programmes and guide-dog training. I tried to divine from these facts some clue about my mother – had Elise been without a home once? Had Connie found her on the streets and taught her how to read? Had my mother then gone blind and found the change untenable? Stop, I said to myself. Patience. Realism. Take your time.
Connie, it seemed, liked good wine and good solid shoes, but she didn’t spend her money much otherwise. I looked at her, her face deep in concentration as she tried her best to do a decent signature in her chequebook, and wondered how on earth this situation was going to play out. Was I actually going to sit and take her dictation, like some sort of clerk from the 1940s? I thought of Zoë’s disappointed face when I told her I was leaving the coffee shop; Joe’s and Kelly’s looks of unease as I told them the details of this new job. The woman who knew your mum? Are you sure that’s a good idea?
Of course I wasn’t sure whether it was a good idea. But I knew that despite the precariousness of my deception, one day in Connie’s house felt more exciting and full of potential than three months’ worth of shifts at a coffee shop. When I stepped into Connie’s house, wasn’t I a woman called Laura Brown – who, once upon a time, had worked in Costa Rica and had dreams of returning there one day? Laura had seen a jaguar, Laura had been to a sloth sanctuary. Laura was going to be energetic, confident, a brilliant baker of carrot muffins. Joe was just being disapproving because for once, I had had the crazy idea, I was the one who had dared to step outside our normal boundaries of behaviour.
*
That first week I hoovered, polished, dusted and cleaned, gaining access to all the other spaces I normally wouldn’t go in. In the drawing room I picked up burnished photo frames, the pictures inside them quaint sepia windows onto another time – a mother in a forties blazer, a sprig pinned to her breast. A father, I supposed, in military garb. Connie as an infant, another small boy by her side. Their eyes soft, their minds unfathomable. In Connie’s bathroom I eyed her masks, the bounty of creams and serums; her expensive mascara and lipstick cases that looked like ammunition in a personal war. One morning, I gently dabbed my own mouth with the shades of Apricot Dream and Harlot’s Red – before wiping away the evidence with a piece of loo roll.
I ran my hands over her bathrobe; silk but nearly worn through in places, which simply added to its charm. Then her jewels, carelessly mounded in a large ceramic dish rimmed with a coiling serpent: beads of coral, Mexican silver, Edwardian gold studded with small rubies, silver earrings in the shape of laurel leaves. I felt as if I had been blind – or deprived of some sort of sense, at least – and was learning to see again, to smell, to touch my way into my mother’s past. Yet I had not come across any photographs of an adult Connie, or another woman, and neither could I find any letters or documentation. I held fast to the hope, or perhaps the belief, that I would eventually find something in this house that would lead me to Elise.
The only two places I wasn’t allowed were the bedroom in which Connie slept at the very top of the house, and her office. I don’t think this was because Connie thought I might be a thief. I think it was because these spaces were psychologically off-limits to anyone but her, and I must be seen to respect that. And even if I was a thief, what was I here to rob? Something that had once belonged to me too, but might in the end prove impossible to steal.
We were having coffee on the first Friday morning when Connie asked me about Costa Rica. ‘What attracted you to the place?’ she said.
My skin went cold and my stomach loosened. Then I remembered: I was Laura, not Rose. Laura was not the type to get flustered. Laura had adventures, and skilfully recounted them. ‘The jungle,’ I said. ‘I was looking for jaguars.’
To my astonishment, Connie’s eyes lit up. It gave me a good feeling. ‘Did you find any?’ she said.
‘No. They were very elusive. Lots of sloths, though.’
Connie laughed. ‘And how were the children?’
‘Oh, they were lovely. I miss them,’ I said.
‘Did they like learning English?’
‘They did. Have you – travelled much?’ I asked her.
She seemed to consider the question. ‘I have.’
‘Have you ever lived anywhere else?’ I went on. ‘I mean – out of England?’
‘I have,’ said Connie again, but despite her affirmative, her tone did not invite more response. Perhaps Laura Brown had been too bold.
*
At home, Joe asked me how it was. ‘It’s . . . very different to Clean Bean,’ I said.
‘Has there been any mention of your mum?’
‘Not yet.’
‘You haven’t brought it up?’
‘No!’
‘I thoug
ht you wanted to know?’
‘I do, Joe.’
‘Then—’
‘Just don’t push it.’
‘So what are you going to do now?’
I placed the envelope Connie had given me onto the kitchen table. ‘Cash. Five hundred quid.’
‘Wow.’ He frowned. ‘She goes to the bank to take this out?’
‘She’s not a recluse, Joe. She goes out.’
‘I thought she was like a hundred years old?’
That night in bed, Joe rolled over to face me and started stroking my arm. ‘What are you listening to?’ he said.
I pulled out an earphone bud. ‘An audiobook.’
‘Good?’
‘Yeah.’
He nuzzled my neck and didn’t ask what audiobook. I was listening to Green Rabbit.
I loved her before I even met her, the narrator’s voice was saying. I loved her as an idea, and when she came into my life, she made me more myself.
Joe continued to nuzzle me, and I let him. He must have been thinking about my plea for the rescue of our lost passion, and he moved his mouth over my collarbone, over the starting curve of my breast. I closed my eyes and pulled out both earphones, pressing pause on the story in order to do what we’d done so many times before. As he entered me, I imagined I was made of a different body. Legs I’d had seen so many times in magazines. I imagined that Joe was not Joe, but a shadow in the back of my mind. That this was not South London, but a cool room in a hot country where outside everything was humid. A bed, with a curtain billowing, my life unhooked from any past or present, and the future not even a glimmer. Everything suspended, almost animated, nothing like the real.
I was Rose, but I was Laura. I didn’t know which woman I wanted to be.
18
I did not know how long my being in Connie’s house would work. Connie might press me more to open up about my life, and I would press too, and both of us would attempt to find out more about the other than she was willing to share. Her questions about Costa Rica were innocuous enough, but I wondered if we were embarking on a game that could only have one winner. I had another fear, too – that my father could be completely wrong about Connie. Connie might not know anything about what happened to my mother – Elise could have cut her out, just as she did my father. Maybe Connie was as much in the dark as he was. The only thing to do was stay in the position and see how things unfolded.
The Confession Page 12