Vivienne was an actress, as Megs had told me, and – unsurprisingly – it was hard to figure out her age. For several years in the late nineties, she appeared to have been thirty-nine. That, I guessed, meant that she could be anywhere between sixty and seventy now, and probably nearer the latter.
Her CV early on in her career was fairly standard: she’d been to a well-known performing arts secondary school and then done her drama training at RADA. She’d had several minor roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company before getting her big break as Cordelia in a production of King Lear, for which she’d won several awards and a sheaf of glowing reviews. She’d looked, back then, set for stardom.
But at some point it all appeared to have gone wrong. She hadn’t worked at all for the past seven years, Megs had told me, which meant she hadn’t brought in any revenue for the agency, but Megs had kept her on the books for sentimental reasons, as well as because her name was still well enough known for it to be trotted out to impress a certain type of potential client.
Now, though, Vivienne was looking to reboot her career – a tough ask for anyone in any industry, but for an ageing actress vanishingly unlikely to happen. She must be desperate for money, I thought. If I could only figure out what had gone wrong – what had led to her going from playing Desdemona at the National Theatre to doing pantomimes in Blackpool and being the face of a fabric softener on telly – I might be able to come up with a plan to get her earning again.
I typed her name into Google once more, trying to search for mentions of her that were more than fifteen years old, but as the results flashed up on the screen, I sensed that I was being watched and heard a discreet shuffle of feet behind me.
Shit. It’s the builders.
Sure enough, when I turned around, there were Wayne the bricklayer and Shane the carpenter, hovering just outside the room. I’d heard them stop working a few minutes before, I realised – I’d grown so used to the crashes of masonry and whine of power tools that I barely noticed it until it stopped. And now it was ten o’clock.
‘Sorry to bother you, Sloane,’ Wayne said.
‘We can see you’re busy,’ said Shane.
Well, yes, I was. And I was tempted to say so, but I didn’t.
‘How are you getting on down there?’ I asked.
‘Getting there, getting there,’ Shane replied. ‘Just laying the last of the ply, then they can start pouring the floor tomorrow.’
‘We’ll need to get another coat of intumescent paint on them steels,’ said Wayne. ‘Otherwise they’ll never get through building control, on account of the fire regulations.’
But they weren’t here to talk about fire regulations. There was another reason why they were both loitering there, watching me, shoulder to shoulder in the doorway in their high-vis jackets and steel-toed boots.
I sighed and stood up, stretching the tension out of my shoulders, which were all knotted from hunching over my laptop, but still standing defensively in front of the table. Together, Wayne and Shane took a step over the threshold. They looked hesitant – diffident, even – but they knew they were going to get what they wanted. All three of us knew – after all, they always had before, every single time.
It was inevitable; I just had to get on with it.
‘Would you guys like a coffee?’
Shane’s face lit up like he’d thought I’d never ask.
‘Wonderful! Cappuccino, please, Sloane. Two sugars. If it’s not too much trouble.’
‘I’d love a peppermint tea, if you have any.’ Wayne was practically salivating.
I closed my laptop and switched on the kettle and the coffee machine, trying not to let them see my annoyance. After all, as Myles had pointed out so often, this was my fault entirely. I’d made a rod for my own back.
But it wasn’t my fault. I’m Canadian, for God’s sake. We’ve got old-fashioned ideas about courtesy. When the builders arrived on their first day on site I’d offered them a hot drink as soon as they walked in the door and brought it to them on a tray with a plate of home-made choc-chip cookies. They’d acted as if all their Christmases had come at once, and I’d been delighted – I wanted them to like me.
I’d believed, somehow, that by providing baked goods and hot drinks, I’d fuel their endeavours and get the building project finished sooner and more smoothly.
How naïve I’d been. Almost as naïve as thinking I’d find myself up the duff the second I stopped taking the Pill.
‘Just give them a kettle downstairs and let them get on with it,’ Myles had advised. ‘Buy some lump sugar, if you want, otherwise they’ll tread it all through the house. Or don’t – let them bring their own.’
‘But I can’t! They’re guests in our house!’
‘They’re working for us, sweetheart. They don’t expect it.’
But, of course, once I’d started, they did expect it. Every day, if I was home, I made multiple rounds of teas and coffees. I’d become a dab hand at making chocolate fudge cake in the microwave. On Fridays I made platters of smoked salmon bagels.
But all the home baking and fancy espressos weren’t making the blindest bit of difference. The project was still behind schedule. The house was still a chaotic shell. And, to add insult to injury, Wayne and Shane had taken to turning up on Fridays, drinking their tea and coffee and devouring their bagels, thanking me profusely – and then, as soon as I’d left for work, disappearing off to spend the rest of the day working on another project like I was the local Starbucks or Tim fricking Hortons or something.
And when I moaned to Myles about it, he was able to say, quite justifiably, that he’d told me so.
Thanks to Wayne and Shane’s complex and ever-escalating requirements (‘Oh, I’d love the milk frothed just a bit, if you don’t mind’, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve a spare iPhone charger anywhere, do you, Sloane?’), it was late by the time I left for Vivienne’s place.
I’d planned to take the Tube and then a train, or possibly a bus, but that, while being the sensible, environmentally friendly thing to do, would take the best part of an hour. And there, right outside, was my darling, ancient little yellow Mini, which I’d stretched my finances to their limit to buy soon after arriving in London.
Now, I needed to be somewhere my mapping app told me would take twenty minutes by car and forty by public transport and – oh, look – I had a car, and I wasn’t afraid to use it.
Three minutes ahead of schedule, I pulled into a suburban street lined with Victorian terraces on one side and sixties low-rise flats on the other, wondering which kind of dwelling was my client’s. It was an important distinction: if she lived in a house, chances were Vivienne owned it. If, on the other hand, she was a council tenant in a flat or renting privately, her situation might be more precarious.
I found a parking space, checked the complicated rules on the sign above it to make sure I was allowed to leave my car there (I’d been caught out and clamped more than once in my early days of London driving) and got out.
It was a boiling, sunny day, still high summer with no sign of rain. I could feel my T-shirt clinging to my back where it had been pressed against the car’s leather seat, my thighs clammy under my skirt, and I was grateful for the shade of the chestnut tree under which I’d parked my car.
I checked the street numbers, which were made extra confusing by the presence of the block of flats, which seemed, randomly, to be in the hundreds. On my right, though, the Victorian houses went in orderly progression: 36, 38, 40. Vivienne’s was number 62. I crossed the street and walked along the sidewalk, the sun beating down.
Unlike most of the other houses on the street, it didn’t have a freshly painted door or white shutters in the windows. The front yard was bare and paved, the render coming off the brickwork in parched-looking sheets. The door had once been green, but the paint was faded and flaking, the number two missing one of its screws and leaning drunkenly against the six.
As I approached, the door opened and a middle-aged man emerg
ed. At least Vivienne had other visitors, I thought, and then I noticed the British Gas logo on his turquoise and black polo shirt, and the toolbox in his hand.
‘You here for the lady in there?’ He gestured back towards the door.
‘That’s right.’
‘You her carer?’
‘Her…?’ Megan hadn’t mentioned anything about a carer. Maybe her problems were greater than I’d realised. ‘No, I’m just a friend.’
He put his toolbox down next to his van and folded his arms, lowering his voice as he said, ‘It’s bad in there. Really bad. I see plenty of places, trust me, but that…’
‘What do you mean? Bad how?’
He grimaced. ‘You’ll see soon enough, love.’
And he opened the van, swung his gear inside and drove off.
Full of trepidation, I approached the house and knocked. The knocker was an iron ring, stiff with lack of use and rusted in places.
I waited for a long minute. If she didn’t answer, I’d try calling. I imagined the phone ringing and ringing in the silent house, and wondered what I would do if there was no reply.
But, at last, the door opened and Vivienne Sterling stood there, smiling.
In the flesh, it was impossible to narrow down her age. She was tall and rail-thin, her legs as fragile as twigs where they emerged from her denim mini-skirt. Her hair was dyed almost black, but a good two inches of white roots showed at her hairline. Her skin was lined, but not deeply, and was pearl white – the skin of a woman who’d never succumbed to sun-worship or smoking – and her eyes were remarkable, huge and grey-blue. I could see how beautiful she must have been as a young woman. She was still.
But my impressions of Vivienne herself were drowned out by what I saw beyond her – and what I smelled. In the heat of the day, the reek that came out of that house was overpowering. It wasn’t smoke, or cats, or rotting food – it was just dirt. The oppressive stench of a house that hadn’t seen bleach or antibacterial wipes or even a hoover for a long, long time.
‘Darling! You must be Sloane. Do come in.’ Her voice was much younger than her face, clear and actressy, the product of years of training.
‘Hello, Vivienne. Lovely to meet you.’ I extended my hand for her to shake, but she leaned in instead and kissed me on both cheeks. I was almost knocked sideways by a waft of strong perfume, which couldn’t even begin to hide the smell of gin on her breath – a smell that, even now, made me feel frightened and helpless.
She turned and led the way into the house, and it took all my willpower to force myself to take the first step over the threshold. There was a carpet on the hall floor, a long runner extending into the gloom and up the shadowy staircase, but it was almost indistinguishable from the floor on either side of it; everything was thick with dirt. I could see dusty cobwebs festooned in every corner, catching the sunlight from outside. It was impossible to tell what colour the walls had once been. My shoes stuck to the floor as I followed her inside.
It made my own home, dust and all, look like something straight out of Good Housekeeping magazine.
‘Can I offer you a tea or a coffee? I suppose it’s too early for a drop of sherry,’ Vivienne said, although it was clear that, for her, it was nothing of the kind.
I could think of nothing I wanted less than to put anything near my mouth that had been in that house. But, when Vivienne made the offer of a hot drink, I saw her eyes rest on my face and a brief flash of awareness cross over her. She knew. She knew exactly what I saw in her and her home, and what I was thinking.
And she was ashamed.
‘That would be lovely, thank you,’ I said.
I followed her through to the kitchen. The curtains covering a door that presumably led to the garden – I dreaded to think what state that was in – were closed, as was the blind over the window that looked out onto the street. The curtains were dark with grime, the ghost of a geometric pattern barely visible. The metal Venetian blind was so thick with dust and grease I couldn’t imagine it ever opening.
Vivienne flicked on the kettle. There was a clean patch on the switch where her thumb must have pressed, over and over. She took a small box of teabags from a cupboard into the depths of which I didn’t even want to look – not that I could, because the bare forty-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling would have given out very little light even if it hadn’t been filmed with dirt.
Over the reluctant hum of the kettle, there was suddenly another sound, tentative at first, building up to a steady patter and then a roar.
Vivienne looked up from the two mugs she was carefully placing teabags into with a trembling hand. In the angle of her jaw, the tilt of her head, I saw a woman who’d been trained to expect cameras to be always on her face.
‘It’s raining,’ she said.
‘Finally! How long has it been now – six weeks with not a drop?’ It felt comforting to be able to share a bit of weather-related chit-chat.
But Vivienne looked dismayed. ‘I thought we could have our coffee out in the garden. But now we can’t.’
‘That’s okay,’ I soothed. ‘I’m fine indoors, really.’
Now that I’d been in the house a few minutes, the smell was less of an assault on my senses and more a background horror, which made me breathe shallowly. And, of course, all the time I was keeping a polite, bright, professional smile on my face, even though I felt that the dirt might be sticking to my teeth.
Vivienne handed me a mug, which looked relatively clean, with a teabag soaking in its depths. I thanked her and she said, ‘Come through to the front room, then, darling, and let’s have a nice chat.’
I followed her through the dining room, where a table that looked like it had once been polished mahogany was now thick with dust and littered with piles and piles of unopened post, newspapers, magazines that should have been glossy but weren’t, and unwashed plates and glasses.
The lounge was the same: drifts of paper, empty blue plastic carrier bags and gin bottles, discarded clothing, CDs and DVDs in haphazard piles, many of them toppled over, lay on every surface. Only one couch, facing the television, was clear of junk, and here Vivienne sat, gesturing for me to join her.
She had said nothing about the state of the place. It wasn’t because she didn’t notice it, I was sure – it was as if, by ignoring the elephant in the room herself, she hoped I would somehow not notice it.
‘Tell me all about yourself,’ she said brightly. ‘And about dear Megan, and the little one. How are they both?’
Her question wasn’t asked just out of politeness or curiosity, I realised. It was her way of deflecting me from the obvious things I was going to have to ask: what had happened to her? How could she be well enough to work? What could I possibly do to help her?
So I chattered away for a bit about Megs and the baby and answered her questions about myself and how I’d come to move to London.
‘So romantic!’ she exclaimed. ‘You moved halfway across the world for love!’
‘I did.’ I smiled. ‘One of my rasher decisions. But it all seems to be working out okay. I love my job. I love working with such talented people, helping to get their careers off the ground – or to resume them, after a bit of a break.’
This was a business meeting, after all – if I was going to help her, I had to find out when and why things had gone so badly wrong for our client.
‘I haven’t worked for a few years,’ Vivienne said, with what I guessed was meant to be a cheerful laugh but sounded almost hysterical. ‘I’ve been resting, as the saying goes. But I’ve realised that I’m not quite ready for retirement.’
‘Of course, in your business, plenty of people never retire – it’s a vocation as much as a career, isn’t it?’
‘Exactly!’ Her poise recovered, she tilted her head and opened her eyes wide. ‘I feel I still have so much to give. And besides…’
She paused, and I waited for her to carry on.
‘I need the money, Sloane.’ Briefly, the mask slipped and I saw na
ked fear in her face. ‘I’ve been living off savings and investments, and now it’s practically all gone. I’m skint.’
‘Are there any particular goals you have in mind?’ I asked carefully. ‘I mean, are you thinking of stage roles, or television commercials, or film?’
If she got her shit together – like, a lot – she might just be able to cope with a few hours’ filming for a TV ad, I thought.
‘I do appreciate that I’m not the big name I once was,’ Vivienne said. ‘I’m starting again, in a sense. So I don’t mind taking smaller roles at first, just to get my hand back in.’
Which, I supposed, was at least some acknowledgement that she was virtually unemployable.
‘Okay. Let me put some feelers out. I’m sure you know as well as I do that it’s tough out there, but we’ll do what we can. We’re totally committed to doing our best for you.’
And that, as I was sure she knew perfectly well, was my way of telling her that there was no way I could make her any promises.
‘I’m sure you will, darling,’ she said. ‘And I’m so grateful to you for coming all this way to see me. Do drop in again. I don’t get many visitors.’
The understatement of the century.
We stood up and I carried our mugs through to the kitchen, trying not to wince as the smell of gone-off food assaulted my nostrils again. If Megan’s house had needed a bit of a tidy-up, this was in another league entirely. It would take a crack team of cleaners, probably in hazmat suits, to make any impact at all.
I said goodbye, and she kissed me again, and I headed outside, inhaling great gulps of the rain-fresh air. I’d intended to go straight into the office, but there was no way. I drove home – back to the house that had felt so chaotic that morning and now seemed like a haven of peace and order – took a boiling shower and put all my clothes on a hot wash. Even after that – for several days – I kept remembering the smell of that place and imagining Vivienne waking up there, alone, day after day.
And my own dreams were filled with memories I thought I’d put behind me long ago, so I found myself reaching for my sleeping tablets at night, hoping to find oblivion, if not actual peace.
No, We Can't Be Friends: A totally perfect romantic comedy Page 5