Not Without You

by Harriet Evans

  Two days after Sophie Leigh had been to see me, I was standing in the kitchen, opening a tin of soup for lunch and thinking about Don, as I always did. I’d told him about Sophie’s visit, just as I’d told him about the girl who’d arrived on the doorstep the week before. He was quite strange about it, wanted to know what they both looked like, and then at the bottom of his fax he’d written:

  Dammit. I really must see you. I can’t come this way and not see you again. My Rose.

  You see, it was that that was making me so nervous. I hadn’t asked for Sophie to barge her way in here with her strangely direct questions, but she’d come and now she was gone, and in a curious way her coming meant I hadn’t had any choice in the matter. This, this question of seeing Don, it was my choice, my decision. I didn’t want to see him – oh, I did, more than anything, you must understand me – but at the same time, I knew, I knew, that if I did it would be the end of everything. Letters are words, they can persuade you of anything. Actions are what have hurt me, all through my life.

  So until I turned on the radio that Friday morning, I’m afraid I assumed that this drama was really all about me.

  ‘The Metropolitan Police are urgently appealing for witnesses after the actress Sophie Leigh was found unconscious in her hotel room, having been subjected to a severe and vicious attack.’

  The can buckled as it landed on the ground; lumps of glutinous potato, sand-coloured blobs on the cracked linoleum. I looked down in a daze and stepped over them, to turn up the volume.

  ‘She remains in a critical condition in hospital. She was discovered on Wednesday night in the bathroom of her room at the Dorchester hotel by her assistant, Sara Cain, who alerted police. It is understood Miss Leigh was under close guard already because of specific threats made against her by an unknown person. Police are questioning the guards who were absent from the scene, responding to another security breach, when Miss Cain arrived at the room to check on Miss Leigh. Sophie Leigh is one of the most successful actresses working in Hollywood today. Though she was born in a small town in …’

  ‘Rose!’ I shouted. ‘Rose!’

  They went over to a juvenile-sounding reporter who had some rubbish about the ‘Hercule Poirot nature of the crime’ – and I stood there, staring at the kitchen floor without really looking at it. My first thought was, I’m not going to ring them. I could easily just not have heard the whole thing.

  Then I thought of Sophie’s beautiful face, rather bolshie and so funny when she wanted to be, how kind she’d been, how confused she seemed. I was surprised to find myself clutching the table; I found I couldn’t bear the idea of her in pain.

  ‘Rose!’ I called again, and as I did I thought again of that girl who’d come to see us the week before Sophie came back, with the mad, raving eyes that searched over my shoulder, peering into the house. ‘My dad started out at the clinic where they took you,’ she’d said. ‘You hate white roses, don’t you?’ The clinic I was taken to after I lost the baby. Where they shocked me. Who was she? She wasn’t Sophie, I knew that much, but … what could I do? Perhaps it had nothing to do with anything, I told myself. If I rang the police, what would they say? How would I be helping? After all, my involvement with this world today is minimal, and I thought that I preferred to keep it that way.

  You gave her your letters to Don, you gave her your pages about what happened to you. You trusted her, she trusted you. She needs you. Why did you do it if you didn’t want her in your life?

  I don’t know why. I don’t know why. I mopped up the soup, crossly, and opened the cupboard to take another tin out.

  And I looked at the cans, lined up so neatly. Ten a week, half a tin each per lunch, our lives stretching out in front of us in cans. Tomato, potato, Scotch broth soups. I thought about that girl who was so like Sophie and yet never could be. Her eyes, staring at me. ‘I hate them too.’

  ‘What’s wrong, Eve dear?’ Rose said, appearing in the doorway.

  ‘Sophie,’ I said. ‘Sophie Leigh. Someone’s attacked her. They don’t really say how she is.’

  ‘What?’ Rose stood stock still. ‘Why?’

  ‘I think I know why,’ I said. ‘I think I need to go to the police. Will you come with me?’

  Rose rocked back on her feet and her face grew pinched. The way it used to. When she trusted no one, because she’d been lied to and cheated on so many times. Anyone in authority terrified her. For years after I found her, she had nightmares about the police finding her and taking her away.

  I realised then in that moment that perhaps, in many ways, I was the stronger one. Perhaps I always had been. Rose flew out first, and her wings melted in the sun and she fell to earth. I had followed, cautiously, and carried her up in my arms.

  So I took a deep breath. ‘It’s all right. You hold the fort here,’ I said, and we looked at each other and smiled. I walked down the corridor to the hall, where hung my summer mackintosh. ‘I think I might see if the car wants to work, just this once, and take me to the train station,’ I said. ‘I think I ought to go to London.’

  Rose followed me through and out of the door. ‘Good for you, darling.’

  But the car wouldn’t start. I hadn’t driven it for a long time, and I knew it was leaking something rusty, from the bottom. I sat in the car, thinking. If I rang, who would I call? I didn’t know who to speak to. I’d spent so long cutting myself off I’d become really very good at it. And after all, what use would I be to Sophie, I asked myself. Some eccentric old biddy turning up talking rubbish about murderous assistants with crazy eyes. No, better to accept one’s fate and stay here with my little slice of life: the soup and the mice, the rest of the letters and faxes from Don and the memories, and dream about what might have been. I could spare those letters – I had enough. And she didn’t need me. She had lots of people who’d help her. I went inside, ignoring Rose’s expression, and closed the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  THERE’S A GREEN stencil of a flower, like a rose, on the window of my room. That’s all I remember, of the two, three, four? days after the attack. I’ve lost all track of time but whenever I look up it’s there. Sometimes I think I’m awake, sometimes I know I’m asleep and it’s better that way. There are a few other things I recall, with varying degrees of terror or bemusement. The ferocious clang of the pale blue metal bin lid in the hospital room, white cloth and tissues stained blood-red disappearing into its jaws before it snaps shut. A doctor, or someone, talking very loudly right next to my bed, voice blaring like a foghorn into my soggy mind. Someone sobbing, a voice that I know well. I can’t reach out to remember what I feel about the voice and its owner. The pain. The pain closing around me before the cold rush of morphine washes me again in its cool relief.

  My first actual memory afterwards is in the middle of the night. I know it’s night because it’s dark. That sounds stupid, but in hospital for a long time you lose your sense of day and night, hot and cold, who you even are. I wake up, look around, and try to move. But when I do it’s agony. I don’t know why I’m there and I start to cry, howling great sobs. My right side doesn’t do anything. It feels heavy, cold, fleshy. My face throbs. I try to lift my hand up to touch it but I can’t feel skin. I try again, lifting my left hand, and it falls onto a mass of cotton dressing. Like a mummy. I trace with one finger, feeling for my eye socket, my cheekbone, but they’re covered up. I can’t feel anything. Then I remember her, remember Sara’s face over me. I scream, hollering so loud my throat hurts. A door swings open, someone comes in, and soon I’m asleep again.

  I dream about her. I can hear the words, see her face, the bared teeth, the horrible rictus smile.

  ‘You stupid bitch. You think it’s over because you decide it’s over?’

  She kicks me, in the stomach, and I howl. When you see it on film, it never looks that bad. It is agony, and I curl up as tight as I can.

  ‘I decide. Me. I’m in charge now, not you. You understand that?’ She’s so strong. She pulls me up
by my hair, thrusting my head back and forward, so I can hear the bones in my neck crunching and I think she might break my neck. Then she throws me back on the floor and starts talking, her mouth open wide, flecked with spittle.

  ‘You remember the day you went into the studio to talk about Goodnight LA, and you threw a hissy fit because they made you read, and you thought you were too fucking big to audition any more? I bet you don’t remember. It’s just another day to you. Well, I was the girl after you. That’s when I started to get mad. Watching you, staring at the rest of us outside the room like we were dirt, ’cause you’d made your crappy ditzo films and you thought you were a star … You’re not a star, Sophie, you’re just a stupid bitch who got lucky, and I was the girl due to read after you, and I smiled at you but you didn’t remember me. I should have had that part, that movie sucked with you in it, you made it tacky, you make everything tacky, everything you touch, you skank …’

  Her voice is a hissing, rapid monotone. ‘And then that day I saw you in the lobby at WAM and I deliberately elbowed you in the tits, because you know what? You did the same thing to me when you came in for the audition. And you just looked at me like I was fucking scum, like you could have me fired, because you’re the one who got lucky and I’m the girl who should have had the nose job who didn’t get her break and the truth is I deserve it, you’ll never act the way I do … It should have been me. You had no idea who I was, and that’s when something inside me said, This girl needs to be reminded that she’s nothing.’

  She puts her shoe on my chin, pushes my face up. I don’t fight her. I’m trying to gather my strength. Slowly, quietly, I breathe in and out. ‘You were so desperate for company, it’s tragic. You don’t have any friends, do you? How totally sad is that?’ She makes a boo-hooing sound, and laughs. ‘It was so easy to make you believe I wanted to hang out with you. You, you’re like the total symbol of what I hate about this town. You’re no good. I’m better than you! It should …’ She pauses and swallows saliva. ‘It should have been me, not you.

  ‘I could cope when you were on the trash heap making shitty films, because that’s where you belong. But you convinced yourself you ought to be a proper actress, making proper films.’ She’s shaking her head, eyes wide open. ‘How fucking stupid you sound! You! You’re so bad in this movie, and no one’s telling you, because you got them the funding, and they’re too shit-scared to admit you’re ruining it! And you can’t do it again.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I say. I reach out to take her ankle in my fingers and she glares manically at me, the huge whites of her eyes almost swallowing the irises. I think she might explode.

  ‘Shut up, Sara,’ I say again. ‘Shut the fuck up. You’re tragic, you know that? You’re living in a—’ With all the strength I can summon, I try to sit up, but when I put weight on my shoulder I realise something’s wrong. A white shaft of pain drives through me and I fall on the ground again.

  I call out for help, screaming at the top of my lungs, but the water’s still running and it’s so loud.

  She laughs. ‘They’re all downstairs. I got lucky, there’s some drunk guy on the floor below and I told them he was behaving erratically and asking about you,’ she says, stepping lightly on my chest with her foot like a victor, mocking me as I lie on the floor, sobbing quietly. The pain is so bad, I hope I’ll just pass out. ‘No one knows it’s me. I’m out of here, and you’ll never be able to prove it. The CCTV in your room is disconnected, isn’t that weird? I noticed it when I went to check everything was OK in the security booth earlier. You gave me clearance, remember?’ She starts kicking me, short jabs all over my body, laughing.

  ‘That’s what’s so funny. You worked out it was me, and you’re so arrogant you thought you could just have a little word, make Sara go away, calm her down? Yeah, right. You’re going to be so ugly when I’ve finished with you … You won’t act again, and that’s the only way to get rid of you. You thought you liked Eve Noel, didn’t you? You don’t know anything about her. If you did you’d know she hates white roses. My daddy worked in the clinic where she lost her junk all those years ago, he watched her get the shock treatments, he told us all about her, how all she said all day was, “Take them away, take them away.” That’s why I kept sending them to you, I knew you’d never know. I just liked the idea that your idol was crazy in the head, and the thing you thought you knew about her, you were wrong about, because she hated them, and now you hate them too.

  ‘Your face is fucked.’ She stamped on my face again, and I cried out in pain, in huge, huge pain. Not sharp, stabbing needles, like before, but internal, agonising, gnawing, heaving pain, the kind that makes you pass out. She did it once more, wiping her lips with her hands, so the lipstick she was wearing smeared across her face, and her eyes were staring at me. I knew she was mad – even then I clung to that – but it was me who’d sent her that way, I was the trigger, and I couldn’t help thinking as she did it again, and I prayed to just give up and pass out, that she was probably right – I had done something, somewhere along the way, to deserve it.

  But the next time I woke up in my hospital bed three days later, there she was. Standing there, smiling demonically. And when I started to scream again I realised I wasn’t making any sound. Just the quiet beep of the monitor. The hum of the strip lights. The gentle murmur of low voices outside.

  ‘Hello, Sophie,’ she says, and I open my eyes wide, and realise I can only see out of one, and that I can’t move, can’t seem to move my face at all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  SHE STARTS TO walk towards me, with that crazed smile on her face, the huge white eyes, and then her guard slips and I think it saved my life. She glances behind her, just for a second, and I know it on a basic, primeval level: She’s scared. She doesn’t know what comes next.

  I can’t yell so I act. I flick my one good eye behind her towards the door, looking alarmed. Sara turns around again, on edge and I take a deep, painful breath, reach over, summoning up the last little bit of strength I possess, and with my left arm I pull out my drip.

  All of a sudden, things start happening very fast, and because I’m still half out of it, it isn’t until later that we piece it all together. The door swings open. A doctor comes in, and a security guard with two policemen, followed, incredibly, by Eve Noel and Patrick.

  Patrick Drew. I stare at him. He stops at the sight of me.

  The security guard grabs Sara, as Eve steps towards her. ‘There.’ She points at Sara. ‘It’s her.’

  The guard and one of the policemen pull her arms behind her back, and she struggles. I close my eye, so I can’t see if she’s looking at me. I don’t want to see her any more. She starts screaming as they haul her out of the room, her voice high-pitched, like an animal. ‘No! No! No! It’s not fair! Leave me alone! No! LEAVE ME ALONE! It’s not fair!!’

  The doctor is tiny, pretty and flustered, with a halo of back-combed hair that’s escaped her tight ponytail. She presses a button beside my bed and holds up my arm, whipping the stethoscope deftly from around her neck and into her ears. Two people in blue scrubs burst in. I look over at Eve, leaning against a wall, looking pale. Patrick Drew takes her by the arm.

  ‘Would you like to sit down?’ he says.

  As the doctors start hooking me up to the drip again I watch him helping her into a seat. ‘Thank you so much,’ says Eve, smiling at him, as if this were totally normal.

  ‘Eve, what are you doing here?’ I begin, and then I realise the sounds I’m making don’t relate to the words I’m trying to say. I stop.

  ‘It’s OK, Miss Leigh.’ The doctor looks at the monitor next to me and flicks a biro on my arm. It hurts. I jump. She smiles. ‘You’ve been in a bad way, but you’re getting better, you see?’

  I can hear Sara’s voice receding down the corridor, until it’s no more than a tiny, faraway cry. It could be something else entirely. An animal, something in pain, a coyote out in the hills at home. I listen, my eye half closed.

 
My mouth is thick, heavy, stuffed with something, and I can’t feel my face when I reach up with my left hand to touch it. I turn to the doctor. ‘What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I speak?’

  But it sounds like rubbish.

  ‘I’m sorry—’ The doctor smiles politely. The remaining policeman, pathetically young, shifts uncomfortably, as if the raw, shifting emotion in the room is too much.

  ‘Here.’ There’s a voice beside me. It’s Patrick. He hands me a notebook and a chewed pencil. ‘Write it down.’

  I’ve never been more glad to be left-handed. I write, It was her. She did it. What’s wrong with me? Why are you both here?

  But the letters are crazy, wiggling up and down on the page, like I’m drunk.

  The doctor looks at Eve and Patrick, unimpressed. ‘You should go. We don’t have visitors. I need to examine Sophie again.’

  The policeman says calmly, ‘We’ll need to ask you two a few questions, madam and …’ He addresses Patrick. ‘Sir. Can we go somewhere …’

  I bang my hand on the sheets, shake my head. I write down, Please, can’t you just tell me why you’re here first?

  I hold up the pad. Eve turns to the young policeman and says: ‘Let me explain, my dear, and then we’ll go. A couple of weeks ago, Sophie came to see me. I wouldn’t let her in. Then, some time afterwards, another girl purporting to be Sophie Leigh arrived on my doorstep. I live a quiet life but I knew enough to know they weren’t the same person. As you see, she resembles Miss Leigh somewhat but it wasn’t her. No sparkle. Strange look in her eyes. I have no idea why she came.’ She looks at me. ‘I think she was lonely. I think she wanted to prove she was as good as Sophie, she could play her, control her destiny, if she wanted.’ She lowers her voice, and smiles at me. I try to smile back but I can’t. The room is silent; I look at her, so poised and beautiful, and realise she is almost relishing the audience.