The Moonlight Dreamers

by Siobhan Curham

  wildeatheart.tumblr.com

  INTERVIEW WITH ROSE LEVINE

  Today I have a special guest at Wilde at Heart: my friend, Rose Levine. Many of you will have read about Rose recently, online or in the papers, and many of you will have seen a certain photo of Rose. In our interview – the only interview she is giving on the subject – Rose sets the record straight.

  AMBER: Welcome to Wilde at Heart, Rose. First of all, can I ask you why you’ve decided to do this interview?

  ROSE: Sure. I was sick of seeing so much crap written about me by people who don’t even know me and don’t have a clue about what really happened.

  AMBER: What would you like to say to those people?

  ROSE: Here are the facts: I took that photo to send to my then-boyfriend. It was supposed to be private and I regretted doing it almost as soon as I’d sent it. But that’s irrelevant, really, because even if I hadn’t regretted it, it was only ever meant to be private, between me and him.

  AMBER: So how did it get on your Instagram account?

  ROSE: My ex-boyfriend put it there.

  AMBER: Why would he do something like that?

  ROSE: I’d rather not go into that. The fact is, he did it and he’s apologized. End of story.

  AMBER: How did it feel when the photo went viral?

  ROSE: I wanted to die. For real. It felt like the whole world was looking at me and I was trapped under their magnifying glass. And it wasn’t just that they were looking, they were judging me too – even though they didn’t know the full story. Even though they didn’t know me. It was like they didn’t want to know. All they wanted to do was get high on gossip and hate. They’ve been doing it to my mom for years.

  AMBER: Didn’t your parents being famous at least prepare you in some way for what happened?

  ROSE: Nothing can prepare you for that kind of scrutiny. And anyway, I’ve always tried really hard to stay out of the spotlight. I hate all that fame BS. I think the celebrity world is full of fakes and phoneys and I don’t want any part of it.

  AMBER: Some people will still probably say that it was your own fault for taking that photo in the first place. What do you have to say to them?

  ROSE: When I take my clothes off, I have a naked body. Deal with it. Seriously, at first, when it all happened, I actually started agreeing with what those people were saying. I felt dirty and ashamed, but then I realized how messed up that was. I reckon if a spaceship full of aliens were to land on planet Earth right now they’d think they’d landed in the universe’s psych ward. It’s so messed up. Why are we so afraid of naked bodies? We all have one. It’s nothing to feel bad about. And what I hate the most is that women have people in the media constantly telling us that we should look as sexy as possible, but if we actually do, we’re called sluts. I’ve had adults sending me messages calling me a slut. They should be ashamed of themselves. What gives them the right to judge me? What gives them the right to hound my mom, just because she’s getting older? It doesn’t make any sense. We’re all naked underneath our clothes and we’re all getting older. Every single day. GET. OVER. IT. And then get a life – one that doesn’t involve wrecking somebody else’s.

  AMBER: Thank you! So what do you want to do next?

  ROSE: I’m going to get on with my life – out of the spotlight. I’ve never had any desire to be a model, so maybe Showbiz Now would like to apologize for printing all those lies about me? I’m about way more than just my body.

  AMBER: And finally, what is your favourite Oscar Wilde quote?

  ROSE: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

  Thanks so much, Rose, for being my very first guest on Wilde at Heart.

  If you’ve enjoyed Rose’s interview, you might also like a recent post I wrote called: Bullying: Why? You can read it right here.

  Amber

  Chapter Forty

  As Amber walked through the gates of Père Lachaise Cemetery behind Daniel and Gerald, she pinched the back of her hand. She had to make sure that she wasn’t dreaming – this felt way too good to be true. But here she was, in Paris, beneath a porcelain white sky, about to see Oscar Wilde’s grave.

  “Wow! This place is like a town for dead people!” Rose exclaimed. “The tombs are just like streets of little houses.”

  Amber grinned, and corrected herself. Here she was, in Paris, about to see Oscar Wilde’s grave, with the Moonlight Dreamers.

  There was a grassy island right in front of them, with narrow cobbled roads leading off in three directions. Each of the roads was lined with tombs of all shapes and sizes. Rose was right: it did look like a miniature, if slightly surreal, town.

  “It’s beautiful,” Maali gasped, rushing off to take a photo of a nearby tomb adorned with the crumbling statue of an angel.

  “And so peaceful,” Sky said in a hushed voice, turning full circle to take it all in.

  “OK, ladies,” Gerald said. “I’m under strict instructions from my daughter to let you visit Oscar Wilde’s grave alone.” He gave Amber a knowing smile. She felt sparks of happiness inside her. “So,” Gerald continued, “Daniel and I are going to visit Modigliani’s grave – he’s a famous Italian painter who’s buried here. My work is often likened to his, actually, especially my portraits.” Amber inwardly groaned. “Anyway, you have maps,” he said, thankfully cutting his self-congratulatory diversion short. “We’ll meet you back here in an hour. Don’t get abducted, or anything.”

  “We’ll try not to,” Rose said.

  Daniel grinned. “Just give us a call if you get lost. This place can be a bit of a rabbit warren.” He pointed up the road straight in front of them. “You need to head up that way for about five minutes, then turn right.”

  “Thank you,” Amber said as her dads started to walk off in the opposite direction, arms linked. She felt another burst of happiness.

  “Your dads are so cool,” Rose said. “Even the slangbanger. You have to admit he’s pretty funny.”

  Amber nodded. In the weird parallel universe she’d been living in since she and Gerald had had the chat on the stairs, he did seem funny. He also seemed a lot kinder. When she’d asked him if he would pay for her friends to come to Paris too, he’d agreed immediately. He’d even convinced Maali’s mum to let her come, charming her with offers of artwork for her shop and buying several kilos of her burfi.

  As they started walking up the cobbled road Rose fell into step with Amber. “Did you see what happened to your blog post?”

  Amber nodded. She’d published her interview with Rose a week ago and as soon as Rose tweeted the link to it the visitor stats to Wilde at Heart had gone crazy. She looked at Rose anxiously. “Are people being all right about it? To you, I mean?”

  “Yeah, people are being really cool. But I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about your bullying post.”

  Amber felt a shiver run up her spine. “What about it?”

  “Loads of people are sharing it and they’re all saying what a great writer you are.”

  Amber carried on walking, her body one giant firework display of happiness.

  Maali crouched down beside the grave and zoomed into the bunch of withered roses that lay across the inscription. There was something very powerful about their faded beauty. Death intertwined with death. She took a picture and stepped backwards – straight into someone.

  “Oh, sorry!” she exclaimed.

  A young guy with shiny black hair and dark eyes smiled back at her. “English?” he said.

  Maali nodded, her face reverting to its default see-a-boy-catch-on-fire setting. “Oui,” she said, instantly causing her face to flush even hotter.

  “It is fine,” the boy said, in a strong French accent.

  Maali’s heart sprang a pair of fluttering butterfly wings. The French accent was so cute – and so romantic.

  “This grave – it belongs to my great-great-grandmother,” he said.

  “Oh. I’m so sorry!” Maali said. “I shouldn’t have taken a photo. It was
just that the flowers are so beautiful.”

  The boy looked at them and frowned. “Really? I think they are – what is the word? Sad. They have been here too long.”

  Maali shook her head. “I think that makes them more interesting.”

  The boy tilted his head to one side as if he wasn’t sure what to make of this strange English girl and her love of dead flowers.

  Why could she never do or say something normal when it came to boys? “Nice weather,” she muttered lamely.

  The boy looked up. “Hmm, I think it might snow.” Then he leaned down and gently pulled a withered rose from the bunch. “Here,” he said. “For you.”

  “Oh no – I couldn’t,” Maali said. “They’re your great-great-grandmother’s.”

  “She would want you to have one,” he said.

  Maali took the flower. “Thank you. I mean, merci.”

  “You are welcome. It was nice to meet with you.” The boy turned back to the grave.

  “Yes. You too.” Maali hurried back to the cobbled road. The other Moonlight Dreamers were waiting for her.

  “Did you just steal that from a grave?” Rose asked, staring at the flower.

  “No! A guy gave it to me.” Maali felt her face flushing again.

  “Oh, really?” Rose linked arms with her. “So, I guess the tips I gave you must be working if you’re even getting lucky in a graveyard!”

  Maali giggled and shook her head, but inside she felt a glimmer of hope. After things had gone so wrong with Ash she’d become convinced that she’d never meet her soulmate. But this was how it happened. This was how love started, every day, in every village and town and city all over the world. Chance meetings. Stolen glances and random exchanges. “Oh, Maali,” she imagined the French guy exclaiming to her over a bouquet of roses. “Je t’adore!”

  Sky was having trouble taking in all the tombs as she followed the others along the road. There were so many, and they were all so different, and so interesting, that she didn’t know where to look first. It was weird, because ever since she’d lost her mum she’d studiously avoided anything to do with death. And cemeteries had as much to do with death as you could get. When Amber emailed them to say that her dads had agreed to pay for them to come on a day trip to Paris, and that they’d be going to see Oscar Wilde’s grave, Sky’s first instinct had been to say no. But now that she was here, surrounded by death, carved and sculpted into stone, it didn’t feel scary at all. In fact, it felt peaceful.

  A robin swooped down and perched on the arm of a statue. It cocked its head and whistled. Sky smiled. Then she thought of the email Maali had sent her after the first Moonlight Dreamers meeting. What if Hindus were right? What if death wasn’t the end? What if it was just people’s bodies that died, and their souls lived on? She felt something shifting deep within her, as if the shard of pain that had been piercing her heart was finally dislodging. The robin chirped again, then flew off. Sky watched it, feeling lighter with every second.

  Rose leaned against a tree and smiled as Maali took yet another photo of yet another grave. Even though she still thought all of that religion stuff was for chumps, Rose couldn’t shake the overwhelming sensation of wanting to thank the universe, or whatever the hell it was that had caused the chain of events that led to her ending up right there, in that moment. The events of the past couple of months had been hellish, for sure, but she could see now that it had all been worth it.

  Everything she hated had been sloughed away from her life. She no longer had to see Matt and Jasmine and all the phoneys from school – Liam had been home-schooling her with Sky for the past few weeks, and in January she was starting at a new school in Islington. Her mom had sacked Antonio and was seriously thinking about quitting modelling. She’d also been seeing a new therapist, who was getting her to work on her “rejection issues”, and she’d agreed to Rose having a Saturday job in the patisserie. She’d even eaten one of the red velvet cupcakes Rose had made last week, including the frosting. Afterwards, Rose had heard her working out like crazy on the exercise bike, but it was a start. And she was going to be spending the Christmas break in New York with her dad.

  But best of all, by doing the interview for Amber’s blog, Rose had finally managed to rid herself of the curse of the photo. As soon as Amber published the interview Rose had felt a huge weight lifting. She’d had her say. It didn’t matter what other people thought any more, she’d stood up for herself and she could hold her head high. And now here she was, in Paris, with the first real friends she’d had for years, and she was so, so grateful.

  She followed Maali on to the next grave. “It says here that this person was a famous singer,” Maali said, studying her map of the cemetery.

  Rose glanced down at the gravestone. It was shiny dark granite, with a small statue of Christ on the cross laid out across it. FAMILLE GASSION-PIAF was engraved in gold letters at the base. Piaf. Rose frowned. Where had she heard that name before? And then it dawned on her. Edith Piaf, Francesca’s favourite, the singer of “Non, Je ne regrette rien”. Rose looked up at the sky. In spite of everything that had happened and all the pain she’d been through, she still didn’t regret a thing.

  Amber turned into the side road and every muscle in her body tightened. This was it. She was finally going to meet her hero – or see his grave, at least. She’d looked it up online many times. She recognized the huge grey structure as soon as she saw it, and a shiver ran up her spine. The others were still quite a long way behind her. Amber hurried on.

  A solid block of grey stone with a flying sphinx carved into it, the tomb wasn’t the most beautiful in the cemetery by a long shot, but Amber didn’t care. Oscar Wilde was actually buried there. The man who’d saved her life with his words over and over and over again was just a few feet away from her. A Perspex screen had been erected around the bottom of the grave. Gerald had told her this was because fans would come from all over the world to write messages and plant lipstick kisses on the tomb. The grey stone was still covered in kisses in every shade from frosty pink to scarlet, as was the screen. The inscription on the base of the stone read simply: OSCAR WILDE. Beneath that, on a square of black slate, there was a quote from his poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol:

  And alien tears will fill for him

  Pity’s long-broken urn,

  For his mourners will be outcast men,

  And outcasts always mourn.

  A couple of small bouquets of flowers had been thrown over the screen and were lying on the base of the grave. Amber fumbled in her pocket and pulled out the letter she’d written late last night. She hadn’t known then if she’d be able to leave it on the grave, but the Perspex screen filled her with confidence. No one would be able to read it once she threw it over: it would be between just her and Oscar. She stood on tiptoe and quickly pushed the letter over. It floated down and landed on the base of the tomb. She pictured Oscar lying beneath, somehow able to read her words. She really hoped he could.

  “Is that it?” she heard Sky call.

  Amber turned and saw the others heading towards her. She was too emotional to speak.

  “Whoa – it’s so different from all the others,” Rose said. “I love it.”

  Amber felt a strange burst of pride.

  They all stood in a line, looking up at the huge winged sphinx.

  “Isn’t it weird to think that the person who inspired the Moonlight Dreamers is under there?” Rose said.

  Amber nodded. It was weird and magnificent.

  “Well, his body is…” Sky said, looking at Maali. “I think his soul might be up here, with us.”

  Maybe that was the best thing about being a writer, Amber thought. Your spirit lived on for ever in your words.

  A breeze drifted by, causing Amber’s letter to dance.

  “It’s snowing!” Maali cried.

  Sure enough, a huge snowflake floated past Amber’s face and landed on the sleeve of her coat.

  Rose nudged her. “Come on, then.”

&
nbsp; Amber frowned. “What?”

  “We can’t come all this way to see the inspiration for the Moonlight Dreamers and not say the quote.” Rose grabbed hold of Amber’s and Sky’s hands. Maali took hold of Amber’s other hand. The four girls stood in a row and looked up at the tomb. Snowflakes swirled like feathers in the cold air. Rose and Maali squeezed Amber’s hands at exactly the same time and she felt a surge of warmth rush through her. She thought of Oscar Wilde sitting at a lamplit desk on a winter’s day over a hundred years ago, and she pictured him writing the words that would end up tumbling like snowflakes through time to land inside each of the Moonlight Dreamers and change their lives for ever.

  “ ‘Yes: I am a dreamer,’ ” she began, and she was sure that in the stillness of the cemetery she could hear a man’s voice, deep and resonant, echoing hers.

  Dear Oscar,

  I just want to thank you so much for all you have done for me. I know you went through some terrible times in your life and I can’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like to have been sent to jail just because of your sexuality, but if it’s any consolation, your words have made such a difference to me.

  Your writing was there for me at the very lowest points in my life. You made me feel that it was OK to be different – that it was something to be proud of, even. And because of you I’ve found other kindred spirits and I’m not alone any more.

  I only wish that you could have found your fellow Moonlight Dreamers while you were still alive.

  With love and deepest admiration,

  Amber

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Firstly, a HUGE thank you to all the team at Walker Books for making me feel so welcome. In true Moonlight Dreamers’ style, being published by you is a dream come true for me. Editor extraordinaire Mara Bergman, Gill Evans, Ed Ripley, Emily Damesick, Jo Humphreys-Davies, Sean Moss, David McDougall and everyone else at Walker who has shown such overwhelming enthusiasm for this book – thank you.