by Jane Fallon
I saw the new status. ‘Fucking one of my supervisors at Safeguard Insurance, even though he has a wife.’
And I knew. Not only had Amy found out about me and Jack, she must have known for a while. And she was fighting back.
30
At first, I just called the agency to try to find out what was going on. Why was Amy suddenly back in England without telling us – her fiancé and her best friend?
So I dialled Sara Cousins Associates on a whim. I said that I was calling to do some general availabilities for a list I was putting together for a new production. I had googled her client list, too, so I asked about several other actors first, for authenticity, talking quickly so she couldn’t get a word in and ask me anything tricky.
When I got to Amy, I said that I knew she’d been in the US filming Murder in Manhattan but I wondered if she was due a break over the summer. Sara Cousins told me everything. How Amy’s stint on the show had ended, how she was already back in London and looking for work.
I had to stop myself asking questions like, ‘Was she sacked?’ or ‘Has she said anything to you about any problems in her personal life?’ because it was so tantalizing to have a glimpse of the truth but not the whole story. And then Sara started asking me awkward questions like what the production was called, and what company was making it and, worst of all, what was my number, so I made an excuse that something was coming through on the other line and I would call back.
By the time I did, I had my crappy, untraceable, throwaway phone and my story straight.
Now I just have to decide what’s the best outcome. And by ‘best’, I mean what will hurt Amy more. Because if she’s coming for me now, all gloves are off. If she wants a fight, she can have one, although I never would have thought she had it in her. Do I set the whole thing up again at another, non-existent location? Let her replay the same nightmare? Do I never call back, turn off my pay as you go and leave her wondering for ever what happened? No doubt her agent would be googling Sunflower Productions, calling the BBC drama department, ringing all her agent friends and asking, ‘Do you know anything about a new show called Blood Ties?’ Although that seems like more of a punishment for her than for Amy and, in so far as I know, she has never done anything to hurt me.
Or … well, there is one other option. It’s brilliant, if I say so myself. I just have to psych myself up for it.
31
Amy
‘Are you sitting down?’
Sara is on the phone. I can tell that she’s eating her lunch at her desk while she talks to me, which she has a tendency to do. It drives me crazy, the thickness of the words through a mouthful of food. I know the effect she’s going for is that she’s working so hard on her clients’ behalf that she can’t even break for a meal but, actually, all I can think of is my mum telling me not to talk with my mouth full when I was little.
‘No. Why? What?’
I’m food shopping. Simon and I seem to have fallen into a routine without even realizing it, where, on the nights when, by rights, I should be paying for dinner, he comes to mine after work and I cook. Or, at least, I throw something together quickly that we pick at for a few minutes and then we end up in bed. At the moment, I’m browsing the veg aisle, dangling a basket that contains nothing but two bottles of Sancerre.
‘You got it.’
I’m completely confused. I’ve been waiting for news of my rescheduled audition, increasingly nervous as the days have gone by.
‘Blood Ties. They just called …’
I’m aware that she’s still speaking, but everything has gone a bit blurry. I look around for something to sit on. I always thought people were overreacting when they asked you to sit down before they told you big news but, suddenly, I get it.
‘Hold on,’ I manage to say. I put my basket down, head for the automatic doors and plonk myself down on a bench outside. ‘Say that again.’
‘Carrie from Blood Ties called. She said they were trying to reschedule all the auditions but then the director watched episode two of Murder in Manhattan and decided that, actually, he didn’t need to see you after all. You’re perfect for the part and they want you!’
‘Oh my God, Sara. Oh my God.’
‘All ten episodes, with the potential for future series. I asked her if they’d expect an option, and she said someone would come back to me with all the details of the deal –’
‘I’ll sign an option. Don’t put them off me because you think I shouldn’t sign an option –’
‘Of course I won’t, although I think you should be sure that’s what you really want before –’
I interrupt her again. ‘I do. I’ll sign an option for three series. Five. I don’t care. Ten.’
‘Noted,’ she says, in that slightly annoying way she has of acknowledging what you’re saying while trying to get across that she thinks you’re a bit of an idiot for saying it. ‘So, I don’t know what the fees are yet, but she said that they have a very healthy budget. She said it’s going to be the big flagship show for next spring and the BBC want to make sure it has an impact, so they’re spending money.’
‘Who else is in it?’ I’ve just about recovered my composure. This is it. This is my chance to get my life back on track.
‘Well, she couldn’t give me names because the deals aren’t finalized, but she said there are a couple of big people. Do you want me to push her?’
‘No. I don’t care who it is. I don’t care if it’s starring Kim Kardashian. What are the dates?’
I hear her shuffling paper around. ‘Rehearsals two weeks at the beginning of June and then it’s a five-month shoot. So it’s going to take up most of the year. They’re sending you the first two episodes, by the way. Do you want me to wait until you’ve read them –’
‘No! I can’t fucking believe it! Sorry for swearing.’
Sara laughs. ‘You swear away. It’s great news. And very well deserved.’
I heave myself back up into a standing position, a big smile on my face. ‘So can I tell people yet?’
‘Well, technically, I should say wait, just in case they offer something insulting –’
‘I don’t care. I’m doing it.’
She ignores me. ‘… but I think that’s very unlikely, so I can’t see the harm in giving your nearest and dearest the good news. Just don’t go broadcasting it.’
‘I won’t. They really don’t even need to meet me?’
I can hear the smile in her voice, too. ‘They really don’t. Now go and celebrate.’
So, I do what I’m told. I head back inside, find my abandoned basket, dump the two bottles of Sancerre and put two champagne bottles in instead.
Of course, the first thing I do is phone Kat, then Simon, then Chris and Lew and then my mum and dad. It doesn’t even feel strange that I’m not phoning Jack or Mel, that’s how far removed I feel from them. I allow myself a brief fantasy of Mel catching a trailer for a new show. Of her seeing my face. Realizing that, despite everything she’s done to me, I’m still going to come out on top. I picture her eaten up by jealousy. I’m not going to lie: it makes me happy.
Which reminds me, I need to find myself somewhere better to live. I can afford it now and I can’t stay where I am. I had finally called Fiona from the lettings agency about the roof and she had basically told me to go fuck myself.
‘The deal was you took the flat as it was. That’s why I agreed a lower rate,’ she had said haughtily. No sign of the nice friendly woman I’d met now.
‘I thought you meant full of crap and in need of decoration. Not that the place might actually be falling down.’
‘It’s hardly falling down,’ she said. ‘If you’re concerned, I suggest you contact a builder.’
I couldn’t be bothered to argue. Even with all my efforts at painting and prettifying, I knew this was never going to be home.
I contact an agency in Camden and one in King’s Cross and explain that I’m looking for a long-term rental. Even if Blood Ties lasts only one series or
they axe me from the second, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be earning well for at least the rest of this year. I also know that there’s no way Fiona will refund my deposit, but I decide I just have to put it down to experience and move on.
Oscar is a bit of a sticking point but, eventually, both agencies come up with a couple of things for me to view and I begin the tedious process all over again, although this time at least the flats are liveable, in convenient areas, and they appear to have intact ceilings. Three days after I find out I have the job, I sign the lease on a little one-bedroom top floor above a hairdresser’s in Bloomsbury. Well, more King’s Cross, really, but it has pretensions. Walking distance to Kat and Greg’s and the West End. It’s actually a lot smaller than the place I’m leaving, and it’s three hundred pounds a month more, but I tell myself I’ll save a fortune on Tubes and buses. Plus, it’s newly renovated and the sun was streaming through the front windows when I was there. Chris agrees to guarantee it for me, although I hated asking. Sara writes them a letter telling them about my swanky new job, Kat writes a reference, and it’s mine.
I call Fiona back and tell her I’m giving a month’s notice. She sounds a bit put out but I don’t care. It feels as if I’m shedding a skin and a new, happier, more successful me is finally about to emerge.
32
Mel
Once I’ve delivered the good news that Amy has the part, I ask for her home address so I can send the scripts. Because Sara Cousins is a bit antsy about wanting to see them, too (I imagine she has a whole host of other actors she wants to pitch for, once she knows what the parts are. Well, good luck with that!), I tell her I’ll mail her a set, too. Why not? It’s not like it’s actually going to happen. All I have to do now is back away quietly, chuck my pay-as-you-go phone in the bin and leave them all wondering what happened.
I’m not done yet, though. Not knowing what Amy is up to is killing me. For all I know, she’s plotting to hurt me in other ways. Christ knows what she’d be capable of when she’s pushed into a corner. So, on Saturday afternoon, I head to north London, to the address her agent has given me, in the hope that I might get some clues as to what she’s playing at.
I think, in my head, I was imagining there might be a café I could sit in across the road where I could while away an hour or two watching the comings and goings. Stupidly, I got a cab – although I did ask the driver twice if we really were going to the correct address, the journey was taking so long – which set me back the best part of thirty-five quid, even without a tip, which I decided not to give him because surely he must have taken me on some kind of scenic route. And, when I got here, it turned out there really was nowhere to sit other than a greasy spoon on the corner from where you can only just make out the road space in front of her building and not the actual building itself. And that’s only if you sit in the window, which feels way too risky. In the end, I get myself a coffee (Jesus, would it kill Starbucks to open up a branch round here, surely the people of – wherever this is; I have no idea even what this area is called – would fall over themselves with gratitude to have something other than this lukewarm, watery stuff to drink?), pull the baseball cap I have thankfully brought with me over my much too conspicuous hair and plonk myself on a bench at a bus stop some fifty metres up the road on the other side.
I haven’t spoken to her since I found out her secret. In fact, come to think of it, we have hardly spoken for a while. Amy tends to call when I’m at work these days, even though she knows I can’t answer my phone then. There have been a lot of voice messages about night shoots and how hard she is to get hold of at the moment, now I come to think of it. And when I did talk to her last she claimed that she could only audio chat because her reception was so bad – something else that has been happening a lot lately. I never thought to question it.
I try to amuse myself by thinking through all our recent conversations and trying to pinpoint the moment when she found out, but after about fifteen minutes I’m dying of boredom, cold, even though it’s a warm day, and pissed off. When a bus arrives heading south I get on, giving one last glance at the blank windows of what – I assume – is her flat on the top floor.
Jack is just back from the gym when I get home. (Look at me calling it home now – I never really allowed myself to before. It felt too disrespectful. Now it feels as much mine as it ever was hers). Newly showered and smelling of the coconut shower gel he takes with him because he doesn’t like the stuff in the dispensers there. And he’s bought dinner – pizzas and ice cream – so I pour us both a glass of wine and sit at the kitchen table while he unpacks. We’re the picture of domestic bliss.
‘Have you spoken to Amy lately?’ I take a long sip of my wine, try to act as if everything is normal.
‘Actually, not for a few days. We keep missing each other. She’s been doing crazy hours by the sound of it. Do you think she’s okay?’
I hate it when Jack does this. Talks to me about Amy as if we’re both still the two people who care about her the most. As if he hasn’t noticed what we’re doing.
‘I haven’t spoken to her either. She sounds okay on text, though.’
‘It’s ridiculous how many people have seen Murder in Manhattan. Everyone’s talking about it. I feel quite proud when I tell them my girlfriend’s in it.’
Really? He’s actually saying this to me? I want to say, ‘It’s all over. She’s not going to be in series two. That’s her fifteen minutes of fame done. Oh, and by the way, I don’t think she’s your girlfriend any more.’ But of course I don’t.
‘Right.’
‘It’s amazing, isn’t it? When you think about it?’
‘It is,’ I say. ‘Amazing.’
33
Amy
Every day I wait for the post like a First World War wife waiting for news from the front. That distant thud that will tell me the scripts have arrived, or a note on the door saying they’ve been left with a neighbour (although I doubt those two downstairs would agree to take anything in and, if they did, they’d probably use it in a ritual sacrifice). I try not to badger Sara for news of the deal and my start date. I know these things take time and they must be more concerned with confirming the leads at this point. Bored, I google ‘Blood Ties BBC’ and find nothing, which doesn’t surprise me, as Sara said they were keeping it under wraps till production starts.
Simon appears at my door with a ladder in tow. It’s his night to cook – we’ve pretty much given up on restaurants altogether. What’s the point? We’re only going to end up here, anyway, and he works such long hours that our time together is precious. I notice at his feet he also has a bag of groceries. I pick it up.
‘What’s that for?’ I say as he manoeuvres the ladder up the stairs.
‘I’m going to have a look at your roof.’
‘No. Simon, stop. You really don’t have to keep doing this.’
‘Doing what?’ he says. ‘I’m just going to have a look. See if it’s something easily solved.’
‘Even though I’m moving?’
‘Would you stay in a hotel that had water coming through the ceiling? Even for one night? If there’s an obvious crack, I might just be able to lay a tarp over it or something. They’re predicting heavy rain at the weekend.’
He huffs around the last corner to my flat door.
‘It’s very sweet of you.’
‘It makes me happy, so just let me get on with it. You can repay me later.’ He waggles his eyebrows as he says this.
I’ve never even noticed that there’s a hatch leading out to the flat roof in my little hall, but he clearly has because he wedges the ladder in there and heads on up. I take the grocery bag through to the kitchen and start unpacking. Aubergines, tomatoes, couscous.
‘Jesus. I don’t think anyone’s opened this in years.’ I hear a thump as he shoves it and then another as it must come loose and spring open. There’s a welcome rush of air through the flat. It’s still baking hot out, and I can never open my windows more than a
crack because of Oscar.
‘Be careful up there!’ I call, suddenly imagining the whole thing giving way underneath him.
‘Come and look at this!’ he shouts. I wander out into the hall in time to see him heave himself up through the hole. His head pops back down. ‘Come up.’
I hate ladders. Actually, who doesn’t? Whose Tinder profile reads, ‘Huge fan of ladders’? But I really hate them. I once got vertigo standing on a footstool.
‘It’s safe,’ Simon says when he sees me hesitate. ‘And it’s worth it, I promise.’
I climb up slowly.
‘Look at this,’ he says as my head emerges.
The first thing I see is a trellis along the back and part of both the sides, where it can’t be seen from the road. Along the inside are ornate planters now containing long-dead plants that clearly once covered it. Dotted around are smaller pots, their contents also shrivelled. In the middle are two painted wooden steamer chairs with a small metal table between them.
‘Wow. The woman who lived here before must have done this.’
‘And then presumably got too old to keep coming up to look after it. Look at the view.’
I take a look, being careful not to go too close to the edge. You can see the Wembley Arch on one side, the cars on the North Circular on another (not so scenic) and even the sparkly skyscrapers of the city in the distance. ‘It’s amazing. Do you think nasty Fiona knows?’
‘No way. She’d have been charging you twice as much. I assume it’s not really meant to be here and that’s why the old lady made sure it couldn’t be seen from the street. But who’s going to know? The only access is from your hallway.’
None of the other houses in the row has any sign of rooftop life. I assume, like me, the tenants have just never thought to look.
‘God. It’s like my own little world up here.’
‘Wait here,’ Simon says, and he disappears back down the hole into the flat. I peer through the trellis at the world beyond the main road. I can just make out what looks to be a few shops a few streets away, somewhere where I’ve never walked because I haven’t exactly spent a lot of time getting to know my neighbourhood. There even seem to be some chairs out on the street there, a café, maybe.