FRAUD

by PETER DAVEY

  A limousine was waiting to whisk her away to the official post-awards bash at Grosvenor House. Flashbulbs exploded like fireworks the moment she emerged from the entrance arm-in-arm with Michael Hernandez, her leading man and allegedly current ‘squeeze’. “God Nicola, I loved your speech!” screamed one female sycophant from the crowd who had watched everything on live stream. “It was so honest! And your performance wasn’t crap, it was brilliant!”

  *

  Anne and William Peach, in their respective drawing rooms, had watched the ceremony with mixed feelings. At first they had thought her clearly unbalanced performance was going to do wonders for their cause; now they were not so sure. Dominic was even less sure. Only Ted, relieving himself under a starlit sky, remained in ignorance of what had happened. He found out the next morning when he walked to the recycling centre with a bag full of empty wine bottles. Every single newspaper on the stand outside the corner shop – even the Financial Times – bore a front-page photograph of Nicola in tears. He departed from a lifelong habit and bought one.

  *

  Her refusal to give any interviews and her absence from all pre- and post-awards parties had her more talked about than all the lesser stars who were relentlessly thrusting themselves into the limelight. The major TV channels always reserved a few slots for the BAFTA winners on the day after the ceremony and were at a loss to know how to fill them. They solved the problem by digging up some old footage and interviews she had given in happier times. The media sought to explain her breakdown by publicly psychoanalysing her:

  “I fear what we are witnessing here is a young genius on the brink of self-destruction,” proclaimed one eminent, grizzled psychologist in an interview with Jimmy Flaxman on Newsbeat. “It’s the Faustian conception.”

  “You really think Nicola Carson is a genius?” sneered Flaxman. “She’s just a film star, isn’t she?”

  “No. She’s an artist.”

  *

  Anne had been trying to reach Ted all day, but he seemed to be permanently on voicemail. Exasperated, she phoned Dominic. She was dying to talk about it to someone.

  “What did you think?”

  “I have to say I felt quite sorry for her. She just looked so tiny hunched up on that gigantic stage.”

  “I think that was what you were supposed to feel, Dominic. Anyway, I’ve spoken to Bill and he seems to think, on the whole, that it’s strengthened our case.”

  “I wish I agreed with him.”

  “But, the way that girl’s been behaving, and that fiasco last night, it’s obvious she’s cracking up. That should play right into our hands, shouldn’t it?”

  “Anne, I don’t know much about the law but I do know a bit about celebrity. She turned up among all those glitterati looking like death and yet she still had the entire place wrapped round her little finger. Maybe it was all done for effect, I don’t know, but her performance was pretty much what the public have come to expect from her – the brilliant, volatile young talent who’s teetering constantly on the edge. Anyway, she’s got the whole world talking about her now and she’s won sympathy even from people who didn’t like her before. The next thing we’ll hear is that she’s had a breakdown and gone into rehab. And that’ll be the next chapter in her tragic but amazing life story.”

  “Oh dear. Is that really how you read it?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Anne thought about his words for a while, then added, “By the way, Dominic, I’m so sorry to hear about your America thing falling through. I hope it wasn’t anything to do with us and all our dramas.”

  Dominic was flabbergasted. “How did you know about that?”

  “Ted told me. He phoned you up to find out how you were getting on with the Tom Newcomb business. When he couldn’t get you on your mobile, he tried your landline and spoke to your girlfriend. He said she sounded delightful.”

  After a long silence, Dominic murmured, “Yes. Yes, she was.”

  *

  Ted sat in his caravan, gazing out over the marshes. He had been sitting transfixed for two hours, thinking. A copy of The Times, with its huge front page photograph of Nicola in the throes of her now world-famous crying fit, lay on his lap. Critics were suggesting her performance had been calculated to curry sympathy, to affirm people’s love and admiration of her while she was going through a crisis of confidence. That was rubbish. Nicola didn’t have to pull a stunt like that to affirm admiration and she never would anyway. He looked at the photograph again, focusing on the eyes – on the darkened, grainy hollows that were her eyes. He had seen that look before – the night he first met her in the Queen’s and she had tried, unsuccessfully, to hide it under a ton of mascara. And he remembered how she had burst into tears then as well, on their walk home under the stars, and how he had taken her in his arms to comfort her. He wished he could comfort her now.

  2

  Dominic’s prediction proved correct. It was soon common knowledge that Nicola Carson was a patient at Malvern Hall – a private psychiatric and rehabilitation clinic near Croydon in South London – though what she was being treated for, nobody seemed entirely sure. Was it drug addiction? Schizophrenia? Bi-polar? The tabloid press – their hawk eyes riveted on her since the BAFTA fiasco – also somehow got wind of the impending lawsuit. The tsunami of interest generated by this bombshell would have failed to wash over a toddler’s toes, since everyone assumed it was a joke. But, as with all jokes in the highly conductive world of Wapping and Fleet Street, it went the rounds of all the watering holes: some old nutter down in darkest Sussex, who lived in a caravan and roamed the countryside in search of roots and roadkill, was capitalising on Nicola’s sudden determination to self-destruct by claiming he was the true author of her prize-winning novel Loss and was taking her to court to prove it. It was all bollocks, of course, but it would have made a terrific story when there was nothing much else going on in the world except the usual famines, wars and impending environmental disasters which all their readers were heartily sick of. But none of their litigation-fearing editors dared run with it since there was not a shred of proof.

  *

  At her desk in her office, Anne was thinking yet again about Nicola’s behaviour at the BAFTAs and wondering whether to add it to the handwritten list which lay on her desk and which formed the first page of the folder of notes and other material she had compiled over the previous months. So far it said:

  1) Testimony from Tom Newcomb – famous author

  2) Testimony from me – solicitor

  3) Testimony from Dominic – former editor

  4) Testimony from David – corporate lawyer

  5) Sojourn with Ted in Richmond – opportunity

  6) Time frame

  7) N C’s time in clinic following attempted suicide

  She raised her eyes and gazed through the window for a while. Then she scrubbed out the last item.

  3

  On the morning of February 27th , a letter was delivered to Malvern Hall by special messenger, his instructions being to hand it to the recipient in person and obtain a signature. Dr Lennox, Nicola's psychiatrist and the director of the hospital, was called out of a counselling session. As soon as the messenger had gone, she tore open the envelope and gazed at its contents in bewilderment.

  “What the fuck is this?”

  Dr Lennox took the document from her and examined it. “I’m afraid it’s a writ of summons, Nicola. We need to talk to your solicitor.”

  She looked at once defiant and terrified. “Is this that fucking Horizon Pictures again?”

  “No, this is a private individual – someone called Edward Haymer. It seems he’s bringing a civil action against you for theft of his intellectual property. But you mustn’t worry. I’m sure it’s just some opportunist trying to cash in on your situation.”

  She stared at him for five full seconds, shaking her head slowly in disbelief. Then she dissolved into tears.

  Later that day, Dr Lennox murmured to Maisy, the nurse wh
o had been assigned to their famous patient, “Watch her. Watch her like a hawk.”

  *

  Nicola had a pair of magic shoes. She had bought them in San Francisco. They were red and she loved them and took them everywhere with her because, being magic, they gave her the power to escape whenever she felt trapped or in danger. Not that she had ever used that power – yet.

  They had just been ordinary shoes when she bought them (insofar as Ralph Lauren can ever be ordinary) but they’d been turned into magic shoes by this really clever guy called Jez – a friend of Hal’s who specialised in making unusual props for films. Jez was really sweet and funny and a genius – even though he was enormously fat and had some personal hygiene issues. He had been with Hal since the early days when everything had been done with models instead of CGI. Jez hated CGI. He was a craftsman. He’d made all kinds of really weird stuff in his time. In fact, most of the weird stuff in Hal’s films – monsters from peoples’ nightmares, horrible facial disfigurements, even the odd alien – had been cooked up by Jez and his assistant Bud in their amazing workshop which was like some mad scientist’s laboratory. And he just couldn’t stop making things. When he wasn’t making things for films he’d make things for his friends – and that was how he came to make Nicola’s magic shoes. Although, strictly speaking, only one of them was magic – the left one. The plan had been to provide a covert conveyance for her little ‘pick-me-up’ over the many borders she had to cross in the course of her work. But she had found another, more intriguing use for it.

  It was the afternoon of the day she received the summons. All of a sudden everyone wanted to see her in court. The company producing the film she’d dropped out of were suing her for breach of contract, or something. They were losing a fortune, they claimed. More fool them for throwing a fortune at her in the first place. She’d never asked for it. It was Bill, her agent, who handled all that. She was only one little actress, and a rubbish one at that. There were loads of others they could use. Thousands of others. Millions of others. All better than her. And now there was Ted.

  She had a minder called Maisy who looked like a rubber ball stuffed into a white coat and white silent shoes. She was seriously fat but she made no sound when she moved – she kind of glided around, like this kind of fat, grinning ghost. She was always grinning. She never stopped fucking grinning. Later that afternoon she wanted to have a bath. Maisy told her she couldn’t. But she could have a shower.

  “I want a bath!”

  “I’m afraid you can’t, honey. Not today.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because... there’s a problem with the plumbing.”

  “Yeah right! So how come all the showers are working, then?”

  Nicola knew she was on suicide watch. People could drown themselves in a bath. Although it was bloody difficult. She’d tried it once. The brain may crave oblivion but the body stubbornly fights back. It spasms and chokes and gasps for breath.

  Maisy sighed. “Okay, here’s the deal. If you want a bath I sit in with you. If you want to be on your own, it’s a shower.”

  “I’ll have a shower.”

  Maisy would at least allow her the dignity of undressing in private and that was when she would transfer her precious cargo to the deep pocket of her bathrobe – a bathrobe with no belt with which she could strangle herself but with a razor-sharp blade in the pocket.

  Alone in her room, she dropped the blade on the floor then hastily picked it up and gazed at it, transfixed for a moment by the clarity of its cutting edge, by the glint as it caught the light. Then she slipped it into her pocket.

  She emerged clutching her robe around her and smiling sweetly at Maisy then they walked together the short distance to the shower room. She entered and closed the door – knowing that Maisy would settle down with her book in the corridor – a light came on and there was the low hum of an extractor fan. It was a windowless room with no lock on the door but there was no reason Maisy should disturb her as long as she could hear the shower splashing merrily away. She took the blade out of her pocket, removed the ‘suicide friendly’ plastic dispenser from the soap dish and put the blade in its place. Then she took off the bathrobe and laid it over the back of the chair.

  She turned on the single shower tap. Hot and cold water came gushing out already mixed and the heat was regulated so patients couldn’t try to scald themselves. They thought of everything, the bastards. But in a few moments the little room was pleasantly warm and hazy.

  She stepped into the shower and raised her face, her eyes closed, and allowed the water to splash all over her cheeks and eyelids and forehead, to trickle down into the roots of her hair and over her shoulders. Echoes of sensations travelled up to her brain but she barely felt them, observing them as though from a vast distance. She lowered her eyes to the undulating landscape of her naked body down which the rivulets of water were finding their way through every crevice and valley – smooth, pale skin and puckered purple skin and fine downy hair and coarse, curly hair – and she thought of all the times in her short life that that landscape had been kissed, had been caressed, had been violated. Why, she wondered vaguely, did they call it ‘making love’? It had nothing to do with love. She had lost count of the men she had been with but not one of them had ever made her feel loved. Except one.

  She was suddenly bored with delaying. It was time to go. She knew the pain would be horrific but she was not afraid of pain – not that kind of pain anyway. That kind of pain was just a surge of electrical impulses carrying warning signals to the brain. You had to externalise it, to distance yourself from it as though you were already out of your body. If she did it properly, the pain would only last a second and then she’d be over the threshold, she’d be home and dry, safe at last where no one could get to her – not Maisy, not Horizon Pictures, nobody. Then suddenly, bizarrely, she thought of her father – how he had held her, how he had kissed her and said, ‘I have to go, my darling. It’s very important to me that you understand that.’ It’s important to you that I understand that! I’m seven years old, for fuck’s sake! She examined dispassionately the purple tracks leading down the underside of her lower arm to the little nest of veins under the ball of her thumb and then everything went out of focus. Fuck! She was crying! That was no good! That would ruin everything! She groped for a towel and dragged it across her face. Then she reached out and picked up the blade.

  There came a knock at the door. Then Maisy’s voice: “Everything okay, honey?”

  She hastily replaced the blade in the soap dish and slapped the dispenser over it, fearing Maisy might come in and check on her. Christ, this was all going wrong! She was trembling like a leaf.

  “Yes, of course everything’s okay!” she screamed back. “Fuck off and leave me in peace!”

  She had to act fast. Time was running out. She grabbed the blade, which was now slimy from the soap, dropped it, picked it up then wiped it clean on the towel. She put it down again then took her flannel and wrapped it round her arm, just below the elbow, yanking it as tight as it would go then, with great difficulty, tying it in a knot with her right hand, the other end gripped between her teeth. It wasn’t much use as a tourniquet but it was better than nothing. Then she took a deep breath, clenched her eyes shut and gouged downwards into her soft flesh.

  Why Maisy came in at that moment she would never know. Some instinct born of long experience telling her all was not well, something in the way she had smiled at her on their way to the shower room, something in her tone of desperation mingled with the joy of almost-obtained triumph when she yelled that everything was okay? In a split second her hand had grabbed her wrist, squeezing it with phenomenal strength, immobilising it in midair.

  “Let me go!” she screamed, mustering all her own strength, which was considerable, to release her hand. But Maisy’s pudgy grip could have been powered by hydraulics and was holding her arm rigid while she screamed “Let me go!” over and over again and tried to pummel her thigh with her other fi
st. But Maisy, uniform drenched with blood and water, hair plastered over her head, was delicately prizing open her fingers and removing the blade with her other hand. Nicola, forced to her knees, was still screaming “Let me go!” after the danger had passed. Then Maisy did so, letting her slump down into a swirling pool of her own blood, still crying – no longer in fury but in pleading, sobbing desperation, “Let me go! Let me go! Just let me go!”

  Then everything went black.

  *

  Dr Lennox was deeply shaken. It was his worst nightmare – or rather, his second worst nightmare. His worst nightmare would have been if she had succeeded. To have someone kill themselves on his watch was tragedy enough but Nicola Carson! All eyes were already on her, following the BAFTAs, and the possible consequences for Malvern Hall and for his career did not bear thinking about. And he still could not figure out how she had got that blade into the shower room.

  He spoke to each member of staff individually but made the same speech – a very, very awkward speech since the subtext was that if anyone breathed a word about what had happened it would bode ill for their job prospects. It was not in his nature to make such a speech but he had no alternative. Nonetheless, he was a committed professional and his first concern was the mental and physical wellbeing of his patient. His priority was to prove – while somehow not disclosing the negligence which had occurred in his hospital – that she was a danger to herself and have her sectioned as quickly as possible. It was a step he had dreaded taking and it would only work if he could be sure she would remain under his care, but it was the only way he could protect her from these vultures who wanted to devour her in court. The film company was not such a problem – film companies only cared about money and would probably settle out of court for some colossal sum – colossal sums, fortunately, being the one thing that was not a problem for Nicola. The other suit would be harder to deal with. That was being brought by some individual who believed he had right on his side and was interested only in establishing the fact. But then, late in the afternoon of the day following the drama in the shower, a solicitor phoned asking to speak to Nicola. What he had to say was a gift from Heaven.