‘I told Sophie this when she visited again a few days ago, and then I didn’t hear anything more until this dreadful business was on the news yesterday. This morning I realised I might be able to help and that …’ She falters. ‘I ought to help. I should have come last night, I know.’ She gives me a small, quick glance of apology. ‘I came to London, and my agent met me off the train. She took me to the Dorchester, to inquire as to where the police investigation was based so that I might give them my evidence. While I was waiting in the lobby of the hotel, this young man –’ she gestures to Patrick – ‘approached me, and asked me if I was the actress Eve Noel, which I am.’
The larger, older policeman has re-entered the room. He jerks his head back, as if someone behind has him on a string. I can see him thinking, ‘That’s it!’ The younger one looks a little blank.
‘We fell into conversation. I explained the situation to him. He told me the young lady in question was at the hospital with Sophie. That no one had realised yet it was she who was responsible. We came here with all possible haste. In fact, it seems as if we arrived in the nick of time.’
Patrick nods. ‘How the hell did she get away with it?’ He turns to me. ‘Sophie. Wow. I’m so sorry.’
His kind eyes, his beautiful face: I stare at him, realising I’m probably off my head on morphine and I shouldn’t try to speak again. He feels like a benign presence, here in this brightly lit room, cluttered with steel and plastic and machines that beep. I think back to that coffee, on that sunny LA afternoon, when the biggest concern of my life was appearing in public with a sweat patch under my armpits, and how he thought it was kind of ridiculous. He was right.
I hold out my hand. ‘Thank you,’ I try to say, to him, and to Eve. She nods, then mutters something into her lap and stands up. ‘I have to go, I have an appointment,’ she says. When she looks up, her eyes are full of tears. She kisses my forehead. ‘Thank you,’ she says.
I write down, What for?
‘Bringing me out of myself,’ she says. She looks years younger as she says it. ‘Though I am afraid it has been at great cost to you.’
I shake my head. I look at her. Then I write, You should come back to your old house some day. Come and see me.
She gives the faintest of smiles. ‘Maybe. Maybe I will. I wasn’t very – happy there.’
That’s why you should come back, I write, pleased with myself. She smiles.
I scribble quickly, What about your letters, your stories? I loved the avocado tree.
She shakes her head and strokes my cheek, a tiny gesture but the skin to skin contact makes me glow. ‘Oh, darling girl. Keep them for now. I’ve got more than enough.’
‘Miss Leigh should get some rest,’ the doctor says. I look at her name badge, but I can’t read it; the letters are jumbling in front of me and I realise I’m awfully tired. I had something to tell Eve, something about a phone call I’d made for her, and now I can’t remember what it was. I remember the phone … I remember holding it in my hand, talking and then – nothing.
Eve clasps my good hand. They usher Patrick out after her. He turns and says, ‘I’ll come see you again soon, Sophie. Hang in there.’
Through the open door I look out and see two, three more guards, thronging the narrow corridor, nurses pushing past them on their way somewhere more important, a gaggle of patients, three or four, their mouths hanging open as Patrick Drew walks past, his arm through Eve Noel’s. Then I see Gavin, striding towards the door, and then he catches sight of me. He winces and takes a step back, and I recall Patrick’s expression when he first arrived and understand what it means. That little moment, more than the high drama, the blood, the pain, tells me all I need to know.
CHAPTER THIRTY
AFTER THREE MORE days in hospital, they transfer me back to the Dorchester, as though it’s my home: the release papers have my address as The Dorchester Hotel. I will be there for a few days before I fly back to LA. But I need a place to stay so the police can interview me again, somewhere secure and near the hospital, and the hospital doesn’t particularly want me there if it can be avoided – I’m out of danger, but there’s too much craziness. Two reporters broke in through a ground-floor window, and there’s been an increase in 999 calls asking to be taken to St Mary’s Paddington, people wanting to rubberneck Sophie Leigh and her mashed-in face.
I don’t care where I am, really. I don’t care about anything and it’s almost a relief. I don’t even know if I have a cheekbone left yet, so I’m not going to worry about whether my hair looks OK or if I should call someone back. But I’m lonely. They keep me in splendid isolation, and Sara was right about one thing, I’ve realised. I keep thinking about it: I don’t have any friends. Sure, there’s people I’ve made movies with who I’d have dinner with, but no one I can call and say, Can you come over? I need you. I’m in trouble. They told me Mum was here, when I was under. It’s a blur. I’m sure she’s coming back. Mum was never going to be the kind of person to deal with it all, though, to draw a curtain around me and her, tell everyone else to get lost. She never was, though she did it for the best.
My good eye gets tired and I have headaches if I try to read or watch TV. So I lie in bed and think. I wonder about Casa Benita all the time. I can’t stop wishing I was back there, with my own things, in the sunshine, where avocados grow on trees and the jacaranda flowers in May. I wonder about Deena, if she’s still at the house. Has she nicked anything? I think about her often, in fact. How ridiculous she used to seem to me. ‘We’ve got more in common than you realise,’ she said. And I was horrified, but now I see what she was talking about. I don’t want her to have to make her living that way, then I realise how patronising that sounds. Maybe she likes it? Maybe it’s what she wants. Perhaps when I get back I should just ask her what she wants and how I can help her. Things are going to be different when I get home, whether I like it or not. Perhaps this is my chance to make some things better.
Then I catch myself thinking like that and it makes me slightly nauseous, whether because I sound like one of those fake Hollywood do-gooders I always used to despise, or because I’m secretly so shit-scared of what comes next I can’t bear to think about it. Not yet. So I lie in bed and think about stuff I do like, until my mind wanders again.
I miss the ocean. I miss California. Maybe I just don’t love LA any more. I wish I could move Casa Benita, like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz, lift it up and place it down along the coast, towards Monterey and Big Sur, near a pier or that beach Patrick talks about. Somewhere I could sit and watch the sea, curl up on a sofa when an old film comes on the TV, go hiking. Or back down on the beach, near Venice, my old stomping ground where I spent my first summer in America, that summer I first got to know Sara.
She’s in custody a few hundred yards away, at Paddington Green police station, which is also where they hold terror suspects so it has breeze blocks and crash barriers outside. I find this comforting. She’s saying it’s not true. That we’ve made it up, that she’s being held against her will. That someone else attacked me, that she found me on the bathroom floor, that had it not been for her I’d be dead, that I’ve got a grudge against her and fired her, that she’d come back to fetch her things, she was worried about me, etc. She didn’t have a plan, I know it. I think she just thought she’d freak me out, and then it got out of control. Because she’s mad. She must be mad, to have done that. Her father has lined up two different psychiatrists to interview her, so she can plead diminished responsibility, serve her time in some US facility for rich people. I don’t think she’ll go to jail, and I’m not sure I want her to. She needs help.
I can’t believe I thought I’d be able to sort her out by myself. Idiot. She was lucky too – there was a strange-looking guy on the floor below, some weirdo running around with what looked on CCTV like a gun, so the guards outside my room were right to run off when she came up and told them. Turns out it was some European royal in town for a big party coked off his head and chasing s
ome girl up and down a corridor with a champagne bottle. Idiot.
It’s so crazy it almost works, and she’s so perky and sweet people believe her. That’s the trouble. And there’s no one else to back it up. Sure, there may be other people who thought she was a bit strange, but that’s not evidence, is it?
We’ve got the CCTV footage from the house, first time she delivered the rose – just walked right in and left it on the bed, then drove out again, bold as brass, but it’s hard to prove that wasn’t me. I suppose her confidence is what convinced people, has done all along. So if it wasn’t for Eve, willing to swear in court that Sara came to her house and tried to impersonate me, it’d be a lot harder. Oh, they’d get her eventually, I’m sure. She’s plain crazy. But without Eve it’d be a lot harder. It’s strange, how the two of us are linked. She thinks I saved her, and I know she saved me. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but the day I bought Casa Benita, and connected my life with hers: that was a good day, for both of us.
We came in through the back entrance, but after they’ve got me upstairs and settled me into bed, I realise I can hear the scrum outside – photographers, cameras, rubberneckers, all jostling for a view, a piece of me – from my room. There are helicopters overhead and when I flick onto E! there is a shot of the Dorchester with an inset picture of Elizabeth Taylor and the celebrity reporter saying, ‘Not since Dick and Liz has this hotel had so much amazing notoriety, thanks to Sophie Leigh!’ in tones of total hysteria. Like getting my face bashed in was an amazing career move, for me and the hotel.
I’m exhausted and so I sleep. When I wake up again, I look around the lovely, sunny room. Gavin is next to me, flicking through Gun Mart magazine. And there’s someone else, at the end of the bed. I open my mouth to say something, and then don’t. I can’t remember where I am, or who might be nearby. I swallow, and cough a little, and the person at the end of the bed turns around.
‘Sophie? Oh, great.’ It’s Tina. She gets up. ‘Hi there,’ she says shyly, her eyes scanning my face. She looks different. Lighter, somehow.
‘Hello,’ I say, but it sounds strange again. ‘How are you?’ She nods. She doesn’t understand what I’ve said. ‘Where am I?’ I say. She shakes her head, her expression fearful. I lick my parched lips and say, as clearly as I can, ‘Where am I?’ I feel my lips touching on the ‘m’ of ‘am’, my tongue working. I stare, confused, at the domed brass lamp base, searching for my reflection, and can only see a whirlpool of human flesh.
‘You’re at the Dorchester,’ Tina says. ‘I – ah, I got here yesterday. I figured you’d want me.’ She smoothes the sheets, like a nurse in a film. ‘Artie told them I could come in. You’ll be able to speak soon, it’s just your jaw’s numb and your tongue too. All that swelling, it’ll go down in a day or two, and when it does, we’ll see what to do next.’ She smiles gently at me, and picks some papers off the side of the bed. Gavin turns around slightly and then goes back to reading his magazine.
I can’t find my pad. I pat around for it on the duvet and after a few seconds I say, as clearly as I can, ‘Tina … You look great.’
She shakes her head, politely, but without pity or a slight look of horror like most other people. ‘Sorry, Sophie. I don’t understand.’
I repeat myself. ‘You look great.’ I wind my finger around my face. I touch my lips. It’s so crude, and yet it’s the only way she and I can communicate now, and it’s crazily simple.
She closes her eyes and shrugs. She does look great. Her lips are unremarkable. Her face is … normal. Beautiful, in fact, and the kind of sad weariness she always wore around her only adds to her melancholic beauty.
‘Thanks, Sophie. I’m glad I had it done. It was great to get away. But I blame myself, I shouldn’t have left you.’
‘I think I had it coming,’ I say, but she doesn’t understand me, so I ask, ‘Why did you come back?’ She looks confused.
I repeat it, slowly, and she shrugs her sloping shoulders. ‘I figured you needed someone to help.’
She and Gavin, are here because I pay them to help me. I can feel tears of self-pity welling up in my eyes, and they sting. My muscles ache. I ache all over, in fact. I give a great big sniff and she turns around. I shake my head and reach for the pad she’s holding in her hand.
In the still of the room, the only sound the faint roar outside of people, traffic and helicopters, I write, I’m glad you’re here.
She gives a small smile. ‘Thanks.’
Tina, can you get me a mirror?
‘Um – I don’t know, Sophie.’
I push aside the duvet, the golden silk covering.
‘Give me a mirror,’ I say, as clearly as I can.
Tina smiles. ‘Um – well.’ She and Gavin exchange a glance.
My arm is in a sling, and there’s a massive elastic pad over it. My stomach aches, from being kicked repeatedly. I still can’t feel down one side of my face either. Just the sensation of something not being there and I don’t know what it is.
‘A MIRROR.’ But the side of my face is frozen when I touch it, and my tongue sits heavy in my mouth and she looks blank. Panic suddenly overwhelms me and I start to shout, a strange, howling moan. I rock forward in the bed, backwards, forwards, clutching the sides of my head. What the hell has happened? Why am I here? How bad is it?
She hands me a mirror, from the dressing table. It’s wobbly on the bed, but I hold it in both hands and bring it up to my face. I blink my good eye, and I stare.
At first I can’t even make out what I’m looking at. Then I realise that thing there, that’s my mouth. Tina is standing next to me. I look up at her, at her beautiful, blemish-free face.
‘OK,’ I say. I nod.
‘The doctor’s coming back in an hour,’ she says. ‘With a plastic surgeon. Artie too.’
‘Why’s it like that?’ I point to my jaw. She shakes her head. ‘This,’ I say, jabbing at my jaw.
‘You broke your jaw.’ She corrects herself. ‘I’m sorry. She broke your jaw. And shattered your cheekbone.’
‘I can see that,’ I say sarcastically, but it comes out as ‘I han heeha.’
I can’t stop staring at myself in the mirror, my hair falling into my face. Its greasy but shiny chestnut-brown perfection is almost funny, a doll-like rebuke to the rest of my battered, horrifically ugly face. It’s all on the right side. My eye is black and swollen shut, though I can see a little out of it now. I’m covered in cuts and scrapes, and purple and yellow bruises. One of my teeth is chipped, broken off. It’s my cheek, and all the bone around my eye, that I can’t see. It’s covered in dressing, from the nose to around my ear, and my jaw too. When I touch my cheek, I can’t feel anything.
You wouldn’t recognise me. I don’t recognise myself. Honestly, I look like a monster.
There’s a silence as I stare and stare, and Tina watches me. ‘Facial injuries heal quickly but they always look worse than they really are,’ she says hurriedly. ‘They told me that.’
‘Phantom of the Opera mask, please,’ I say to Tina, and by a miracle she understands me and smiles.
Then she says, ‘It’s nice to see you, Sophie.’
The doctor is old and posh, called Mr Marsden. In fact he’s a maxillofacial surgeon, he tells me, and I write this down carefully on my pad. He’s upbeat, jovial, but slightly ill at ease. His voice is a little too loud and he rocks on his feet, glancing from Tina to Artie, clearly wondering what their roles are. This will all heal, he says. The double vision will go, and they’ll use veneers on the teeth. The clavicle fracture is a clean break and should mend itself with supervision. And it’s pretty simple to fix a broken jaw inside the mouth. No scar visible.
‘There will be some residual damage, perhaps, and it’s somewhat painful, but Sophie, you seem to me to be a brave girl.’
He smiles down at me and I try to nod.
He carries on and I pretend to understand what he’s saying and write it down. We can reconstruct the cheekbone. Something about a vermillion bord
er and how my zygomatic arch is broken. They’ll make a cut in the hairline and use it to elevate the bone.
‘Kinda like she’d be having a mini-facelift?’ Artie says.
I look at him and try to smile at the joke. And then I realise he’s not joking.
‘No, Mr Morgan,’ says Mr Marsden. ‘This is a major operation.’
‘I know, I know. I’m just saying – if you’re in there anyway, would it be something you’d consider as a by-product of the procedure? You see?’ Artie spreads his hands out wide, the old gesture. I’m an open guy. Trust me!
Mr Marsden looks at him, then me. ‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘I don’t know …’ Artie looks baffled: Why would you? I know! ‘Hey, no idea. It’s just a thought, because of her career, people are gonna ask her these things …’
‘Your career?’ Mr Marsden says. He leans forward. ‘I’m sorry. Are you worried about your appearance from a professional point of view, then?’
He smiles at me kindly.
‘She’s Sophie Leigh!’ Artie says. I can hear Tina swallowing repeatedly.
‘I’m sorry—’ says Mr Marsden.
It turns out he’s never heard of me. Artie can scarcely believe it. ‘She’s English!’ he keeps saying after they have tried to explain it to him. ‘She’s from England, she’s your biggest star!’
Not Without You Page 39