by A J Waines
I scurry along the walkway to the lift as it glides up the outside of the building. It always reminds me of the bubble inside a spirit-level. Like most of this amazing structure, it’s made with aluminium and glass so that the whole thing is see-through. Everyone can see everyone else ‘reflecting an ethos of truth and transparency’, according to the publicity brochure.
In the basement there’s the cinema and recording studio and in the three storeys above ground are open plan and cellular offices, editing and telecine suites and the DVD library. I’ve never been right to the top – that’s for executives only.
The doors to the lift swish open and the man I’ve been waiting for steps out. He already has a smile on his face and instantly reaches out his hand, as though I’m someone important.
‘Hi, I’m Peter,’ he says. ‘I’m all yours until they fix something downstairs.’
‘Yeah – a minor technical hitch, I’m sure,’ I say with confidence. ‘Follow me, I’ve got the coffee on.’
According to the notes Gloria gave me, Mr Roper is thirty-five, single and straight, is into boats and remote islands – and spends his life with celebrities in film and showbiz. As a former ballet dancer, he certainly appears fit and has a glowing tan.
We stride across the walkway and I notice him looking down through the glass floor to the landings below.
‘You can’t afford to be afraid of heights working here,’ I tell him as a friendly icebreaker.
I hold the door open for him and invite him to sit while I pour the coffee. He helps himself to cream and a bourbon. ‘Oh, my favourite…’ he says, like a kid in a sweetshop. My efforts to go that extra mile were worth it.
He asks me how long I’ve been at the company and what it is I do, exactly.
‘I’m mainly involved with post-production on documentaries, but I’m also designing questionnaires for social media. We’re analysing the TV viewing patterns of 16–24 year olds. There’s no average day here, so it’s stimulating.’
He looks interested so I carry on. ‘I’m trained as an actress, really,’ I tell him, sipping my coffee. I doubt I’ll get the chance for another cup until I finish today. ‘They’re good here. They give me time off to go to auditions. I wouldn’t have taken the job, otherwise.’
‘How are the auditions going?’
I press a crease out of my pencil skirt. ‘Not great, to be honest.’
‘I saw about seventy wannabees read for a film, last month,’ he says, ‘and if I’ve learnt one thing, it’s that you have to have an edge. Something none of the other try-hards have got. You have to second-guess the casting director, too; look deeper, dig beneath the surface of the parts you’re playing and surprise them.’ He looks up. ‘What’s your edge, Beth?’
As he says my name a spark shoots down the back of my neck.
‘Oh…I move well,’ I say, ‘and I’m happy with the way I look. That’s rare, these days, I think. Everyone wants to look like either Kim Kardashian or Keira Knightley.’
He gives an approving nod. ‘What else?’
‘I’m a self-confessed drama queen. I love dressing up and I’m a bit of a chameleon, good at fitting in. I pick things up quickly, remember my lines. I can do a feisty action-girl as well as a meek kitchen maid. And everything in between. My mum says I spend my life in fantasies, making up who I want to be each day. She says I do a really mean American accent and I’m fearless on stage.’ I stand up and do a twirl in front of him. ‘I’ve got a great autograph, too. That’s my edge.’
It comes out sounding cringingly twee, but better than muttering something self-deprecating. You have to put yourself out there in this business. There’s no room for shrinking violets.
He laughs as I sit down again. ‘Well…at least you’ve thought about it. So, why this job?’
‘Oh, mainly to meet the right people. I’m good at networking, at encouraging people to share ideas. I know how to put people at ease and make things run smoothly. Plus, I’m very keen to learn, I’m open, adaptable and I bring my own concepts to the table. I’m game for anything, really!’ I laugh, tossing back my hair. I’ve had to spout it off so many times, it comes out sounding more rehearsed than I intended.
Oh, well. I notice him looking at the way my hair falls on my shoulders.
‘So if I was to ask you what questions you’d ask me at the interview today, that wouldn’t faze you?’
‘Er…it would help if I had some advance warning, but I’d give it a go. Yes.’
‘Fire away, then.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Ask me the kind of questions you’d throw at me for the documentary. You know what it’s about, I take it?’
‘Of course.’
He’s toying with me, but I’m not about to be beaten.
I sit upright and clear my throat. ‘So, Mr Roper, I assume you went to the Dance on Camera Festival in New York, in February?’
His eyebrows go up, looking impressed. ‘I did, yes. And call me Peter.’
‘Okay…’ I glance down at my hands getting my brain into gear. This isn’t easy and he knows it. ‘So, Peter, how do you see choreographic storytelling being developed on screen in the UK?’
‘Mighty fine question,’ he says.
We start batting ideas back and forth. He’s easy to talk to. He’s not trying to trip me up or act all superior. I’m in my element, completely losing track of time until my phone buzzes with another message from Gloria:
Sorry for delay. Margaret has gone home. Taxi gone out to pick up Laurie Felderstone. Can you tell Mr Roper? Keep him occupied for another twenty mins, please.’
I pass on the information.
‘Do you want the grand tour?’ I say, getting to my feet. ‘It’s a shame to be stuck in one room.’
‘Sure.’ He follows me out. ‘You were good. I dare say I won’t get such insightful questions in the interview itself,’ he says, as we reach the lift. ‘I was rather enjoying myself.’
I can’t tell whether he’s being serious or buttering me up, so I pretend I’m thinking about where we should go next.
I decide to take a risk and press level four as we step into the lift. No one’s going to stop me on the top floor if I’ve got a VIP by my side.
We follow the corridor past executive offices until we reach the boardroom. The sliding bar on the door says it’s vacant, so I breeze inside as though I know it like the back of my hand. The room opens out onto a sweeping roof terrace overlooking the landscaped courtyard below.
Peter follows me outside and leans over the glass partition, looking down onto the fan palms, olive trees and raised beds below. The drone of city life together with perfume from lavender and jasmine seems incongruous.
He exhales loudly. ‘You’ve transported me to Bali,’ he says.
‘A bit short on sand, though...and the hammocks are all taken,’ I say.
He looks serious for a moment. ‘Okay. Here’s a question for you.’ He pulls out his phone. ‘I need a photo to go with a magazine interview I’m doing tomorrow. Is this a good one, do you think?’
He shows me a black and white photo of himself wearing a tweed suit. He’s seated with his elbow resting on a table, a finger pressed into his cheek. It looks posed and stiff.
I take the phone. ‘No, not that one – you look too much like the lord of the manor.’
‘Starchy, you mean?’
I smile letting my tongue linger between my teeth. ‘Yep, a little bit.’
I flick through several others. I realise I’m flirting with him and I don’t want this to end.
‘What about this one?’ I say. ‘You look more relaxed in this. Or this. Suave and self-assured with the potential for playfulness, perhaps.’
He throws his head back and laughs, his eyes glistening with coy embarrassment. ‘Okay, that’s enough. You’re making fun of me.’ He crooks his finger at the phone.
I get an instant message from Gloria on mine at that point, asking me to bring Peter to the recording studio.
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‘They’re ready for you,’ I tell him.
‘That’s a shame.’
There’s a potent silence as I walk ahead of him back to the lift. I sense his eyes tracing every line of my body as I move.
‘Are you this forward in every respect?’ he asks, as he holds out his hand for the mobile I’m still holding.
I wait a beat. ‘You’d have to find out,’ I say, stepping inside.
5
Rachel
Thursday, March 9
Beth is frantic and angry when I get back. She has, however, managed to follow my suggestion and is halfway through baking a Victoria sandwich.
‘How could you do that?’ she wails. ‘How could you leave me with…with…?’ She flings a floury hand towards the car parked beyond the front wall. Her hands are shaking and she’s managed to get cake mix in her hair and eyebrows.
‘I’m sorry,’ I tell her. ‘I needed to think. I needed to sort out what we should do.’
‘And what’s the verdict?’ she snaps. ‘What the hell is our next move?’
Ever since she was little, Beth’s been melodramatic. It makes everything about her intoxicating, larger than life. She channels it best when she’s acting. I saw it first when she played Mary in a nativity scene at infant school. Her unexpected interpretation involved dancing across the stage to take hold of the baby Jesus and spinning him around in her arms. The audience burst into spontaneous applause. It’s as though a light went on in her tiny body and she glowed with effervescence.
That’s when she most comes alive – when she’s on stage. Acting is the only thing that really interests her and she aches to be picked for a part in the public eye; a film, TV series, drama, a West-End show.
‘Where did you go?’ she says, picking nervously at dried egg on the side of the hob.
‘To see Russell.’
‘Oh…’ Her eyes drop.
She’s not sure whether to admonish me for wasting time or to ask if I’m okay. She gives me an awkward hug without using her hands.
Russell’s death is the first big thing that’s happened in our lives that Beth and I don’t share in the same way. Even so, Beth has been incredibly sensitive since it happened; preparing light meals, doing extra jobs around the house, answering the phone when she can see I’m not up to it, folding up all Russell’s clothes when I mentioned clearing his wardrobe.
‘Did it help?’ she says finally.
‘Judy Welsh, the elderly widow, died last week.’
‘Why are you telling me that?’
‘I’ll explain later. Get your wellington boots, a thick parka and a pair of old gloves ready for tonight. We’re going out when everyone else is fast sleep.’
Taking the same zigzag route as before, I draw the car into the parking area behind the church reserved for the parish priest, tucked away from the road.
It’s windy when we get out of the car and Beth is chanting, ‘This is mad…this is crazy…’ under her breath, as she pulls her hat down to her eyebrows. I’ve given her clear instructions about what we’re going to do, all she has to do is play her part. She should be capable of that. I nudge her to be quiet and she stops.
First, we take the spades from the boot and hurry inside the rear gate. It’s a cloudy night with no moon poking through to throw a spotlight on our transgressions. I have a small torch, but I know the dips and folds of the terrain well enough from my frequent visits and don’t need much light to see my way ahead. I skirt the benches and a group of low hanging trees with Beth right behind me.
When we get to the correct spot, I whisper a sombre apology to the dead soul whose grave we are about to disturb. I discreetly found out her name from Sarah, the sour-faced woman who does the altar flowers at St Andrews. Judy died at the age of ninety-four – ‘beloved grandma to Lauren and Joan’, her headstone will say. I knew her, vaguely. She came into the pub with her family for Sunday lunch, now and again. In the past few hours I’ve told myself, repeatedly, that as a parent and grandparent, she would understand.
Beth stares in utter disgust as the despicable thing we’re about to do hits her. She covers her mouth and races back to the car. I go straight after her and slide into the driver’s seat, sitting calmly beside her with the lights off, waiting for her to speak.
‘I can’t do this…’ she mumbles.
Okay. Now I have to lay it on thicker than ever.
‘Beth, we need this marriage to Peter.’
That didn’t come out right.
‘Need it? What do you mean?’
It’s time to tell her about our finances. It’s my last hope of steering her towards a plausible reason for blatantly flouting the law, without telling her the truth.
‘Russell, bless him…he left us in a lot of debt.’
She turns to look at me, but it’s too dark to see her expression.
‘He wasn’t dishonourable,’ I go on, ‘it’s not like he threw money away on gambling or anything like that, he just borrowed money from me, always intending to pay it back – but the astronomical bills he spent on my credit cards never got paid off.’
I don’t go into how many sleepless nights I’ve struggled through since Russell departed this world. I lent him nearly everything I had to get a new business in vapour cigarettes off the ground, on the understanding that he was due to inherit a huge sum from his ailing aunt Nora.
But, in the end, it was all down to bad timing.
Nora was in a hospice and had only months to live, he’d said, and everything was due to be paid off just as soon as she passed away. It wouldn’t be long, he’d said. Only the cancer took hold of him when his back was turned – and he died first.
We’d never married – he’d been married before and didn’t want to do it again – so I never got a penny when Nora slipped away in her sleep, just before Christmas.
‘Oh…’ Beth says vacantly. ‘But we’re going to be okay, aren’t we…’? She says it as a statement rather than a question. She still doesn’t grasp the implications. Money for her is still a well, sunk somewhere out of sight that never runs dry.
‘Once the pub reopens, I’m going to have to squeeze in more hours behind the bar,’ I tell her. I’d already been doing double shifts, but I’d have to do more. I place my hand on her knee. ‘And we won’t be able to hang on in Winchester for much longer.’
She shakes her head in disbelief. ‘No way! I had to leave London because I couldn’t afford it and now you’re saying we have to leave here?’
I look at her gravely. ‘I thought you left London to be with me,’ I say.
She looks down. ‘I did…yes…as well.’
I turn to the window so she can’t see how crushed I am.
‘What about the car?’ she says.
Beth passed her test before Russell died and we’d talked about getting a small run-around we could share.
I slowly shake my head.
‘You’re kidding me!’ she says.
‘You’ll have to fit more hours in, too. We’re really going to have to cut back.’ Beth isn’t qualified for anything other than acting and whenever I’ve mentioned the possibility of adding another job to the temporary one she got with the quiz show when she left London, she’s invariably thrown a strop.
She jerks her knee away. ‘But, I have to find auditions, Mum, you know that. I have to keep in the loop and go for anything that comes up. I can’t be washing dishes or serving at tables in the few hours I’ve got free.’
‘That’s why we have to do this.’
I wait to let what I’ve said sink in. I hope it’s enough, because I really don’t want to have to divulge the truth.
Without a word, she opens the car door and gets out. We go back and work quickly, scooping the mound of soil piled over Judy’s coffin into a fresh heap alongside it. It’s recently dug earth, so is easy to shift, but there is a lot of it and it seems to go on forever.
We’re both fit. Beth is at the stage where she wants to look ‘perfect’ and, like
all her friends, is fixated on keeping her stomach washboard flat and creating curves to highlight all her muscles. If she’s not at the gym every day, she’s swimming. Her natural body shape is more Lara Croft than Amazonian woman, but she’s strong and she throws herself into the shovelling with gusto.
When my spade hits wood, a wave of nausea almost gets the better of me. On the drive over, I told Beth to expect feelings of revulsion at our actions and when she snatches a breath, I react quickly. I can see from her terrified eyes that she’s about to scream, drawing all and sundry to the graveside no doubt, so I slap my hand over her mouth. ‘Come on. I know it’s hard. It’s okay. We can do this. We have to.’
I can’t allow myself to admit that we’re taking the biggest risk of our lives. What we’re doing is nothing short of madness and, if we get caught, we have absolutely no leg to stand on. I’m banking on the fact that it’s a dismal moonless night and we are two unidentifiable figures out of sight.
In the next moment, we hit a snag. I haven’t accounted for how heavy the coffin is and how completely embedded it is into the ground. Old Judy Welsh has made her new home here, dug her heels in and isn’t budging an inch. In my mind, I’d foolishly hoped we could get Carl’s body underneath the coffin and re-pack everything as it was, but that isn’t going to be possible.
Instead, we hurry back to the car boot and carry his body inside the rolled-up rug to the graveside. We tip the coffin to one side as best we can and squash him in alongside it, together with the rug and dust sheet.
I loathe myself for every inch of soil I shift, and I’m appalled by the thought that I’m traumatising my daughter in this way, but I can see no other option. She seems to have accepted the reasons I’ve given her. I can only hope she never has to know the truth.
What a blessing, what a miracle, that Peter came along when he did and for him to fall completely in love with Beth. It means she has an escape from our mountain of debt, as well as securing her best chance of making it as an actress.