Star-Crossed

by Minnie Darke

  She saw the manager come to the edge of the stage and whisper a few words to Verdi, who jumped down into the auditorium. The cameramen powered down their equipment, and before long Nick was alone on the stage. Justine might have stood up then and called out to him. But she only watched him as he studied the open page, his face shifting into various expressions as he read. After a time, he closed his script and walked into the blackness of the wings.

  Behind Justine, the door to the dress circle opened noisily, letting in a wedge of dusty light.

  “Um…hi,” said Verdi, who had clearly just run up the stairs. She gave Justine a strange little wave, her elbow tight to her body, and it was more the gesture of a nervous teenager than of the confident, self-possessed young actor Justine had just been watching.

  “I’m Justine,” Justine said, holding out her hand. “From the Star.”

  Fumblingly, awkwardly, Verdi took her hand and shook it. She said, “I’ve never really done an interview before.”

  And Justine, not wanting to let Verdi know that this was her first proper interview too, said, “I saw just a few minutes of your rehearsal. You two were working so well together. It’s going to be a beautiful performance.”

  “Oh, yeah, Nick’s amazing,” Verdi said.

  Justine’s heart was still full of Shakespeare, otherwise she might not have said anything. But as it was, she couldn’t help wanting to claim something for herself. “I know Nick, actually. We went to school together.”

  Verdi looked intrigued. She leaned in, eyes widening. “Really? What was he like?”

  “Always the performer,” said Justine fondly. “You should ask him about his Toad of Toad Hall. Everyone in Edenvale remembers it.”

  “So, you went right through high school together, and everything?”

  Justine fancied that she could detect signs of Verdi concocting some kind of narrative, making a story for herself out of these shreds of information.

  “No,” said Justine, “Nick’s family went away before he and I got to high school.”

  At this, Verdi’s sparkling curiosity morphed effortlessly into sadness. This girl’s face, Justine saw, was like an Etch A Sketch. She had the capacity to wipe it clean of its expression and replace it with another.

  “Oh,” she said, as if she really were heartbroken on Justine’s behalf. “Did you miss him?”

  Justine’s breath caught. Were they tears, prickling just inside her lower lids? Stop it, stop it, stop it, she told herself. This is what actors did. They made you laugh, they made you cry, they used their faces and their voices and their hands and their movements and they made you feel things. That was their job.

  Now Verdi’s face was doing something new. She looked all of a sudden slightly gleeful, like a mad inventor, or a possessed chef.

  “So,” she said, and she actually put her outspread fingers together in front of her face, and tapped the index fingers together. “Are you two still in touch?”

  “We see each other around from time to time,” Justine said lightly, wondering if this was stretching the facts.

  “Have you met his girlfriend?”

  The words hit Justine hard. Actually, it was just the one word. Girlfriend. She felt her heart sinking.

  “She’s a model,” Verdi explained, quite accurately taking Justine’s silence as a no. “You might have seen her—she’s on all the ads for Chance wines. And Ophelia glasses. You know the one?”

  Justine did not know, but she nevertheless felt her heart drop down through another few fathoms of blue.

  “I’ve known her for a while because when I was, like, twelve, I played the young Laura in a television ad for St. Guinevere’s Ladies College,” Verdi said, raising an eyebrow. “I was, you know, the work in progress, and she was the finished product. But, the amazing thing about Laura is that she actually looks like that—they hardly even have to airbrush her, or anything.”

  And Justine knew that if her heart sank any further it would burn, because it would be at the molten core of the Earth.

  “But it’s kind of weird, I think. I mean, you could sell Nick and Laura as a matched pair—they look so much alike. You know, the dark hair, the blue eyes. It’s like the way, in cartoons, there’s the boy mouse or raccoon or whatever, and then there’s the girl one and you know she’s a girl because of the eyelashes and the bow. That’s Nick and Laura. Don’t you think it’s weird how some people go for partners who look just like themselves?” Verdi said, barely drawing breath.

  “But do you think they’re happy?” Justine prompted, feeling guilty even as she did so. Verdi was only fifteen; it was hardly fair to pump her for information.

  “Well, it’s been a bit on-again, off-again,” Verdi admitted.

  “Because?”

  “You know about Narcissus, right?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, in my opinion,” Verdi said, affecting a maturity beyond her years, “Nick might turn out to be the pool.”

  * * *

  In the week that followed, Justine worked on her profile on Verdi Highsmith until she had learned it by heart. By the time she turned it in, she had also learned the five locations between Evelyn Towers and the offices of the Star where she could study the face of Nick Jordan’s girlfriend, the model, Laura Mitchell.

  It was so tempting to think, Justine considered—early one morning as she paused in front of a large poster in the window of the local optometrist—that blessings must be evenly distributed, and that since this Laura was so favored with thick hair and symmetrical features, she must therefore be commensurately less well endowed in some other area. Intelligence, perhaps. Or charm, wit or kindness. But Justine knew—and would fiercely have argued the point—that this kind of thinking was unfair.

  Brain: Verdi said she’s a bit vacuous.

  Justine: No, Brain, Verdi did not say that. Not precisely.

  Brain: Okay, okay, she intimated it. Same thing.

  Justine: That is sloppy thinking, Brain. It’s not the same thing at all.

  Brain: So, what are you going to do now? Hm? Just going to give up, are you? You don’t think Leo might have a little something to say on surfaces and depths, on true love and false?

  Justine: On the basis of what? The opinion of a gossipy teenager? I think it’s better that we just leave things well alone.

  So Justine turned away from the poster of the beautiful girl in the optometrist’s window and continued on her way. As she walked, she called her mother, who would—Justine imagined—be collecting up the last of her belongings before heading out the door to work.

  “Mandy Carmichael.”

  “Happy birthday, Mumma Bear.”

  “Oh, it’s my beautiful girl! How are you, darling? You wouldn’t believe what your father got me for my birthday. He went and organized, all by himself, for us to go to this cooking retreat in the Blue Mountains. Very exclusive. The focus is on tarts, apparently. Your father thinks this is hilarious. He’s going to fly us there in the Skycatcher, and we’ll have a night at that old art deco hotel, and then we’ll fly back the next day. I mean, it’s hardly sensible to learn to cook beautiful tarts when all they are is more bloody calories and I spend half my life…” Talking to her mother on the phone could be quite a passive activity, Justine remembered, as she walked and listened. All that was required of her was the occasional hm-mm and ah-ha. “…must go, my treasure. Can’t be late. I’ve got bloody performance management meetings all day today. Love you, sweetheart. Mwah, mwah.”

  * * *

  “Got a mo, darl?” Jeremy said, finding Justine at the photocopier just after lunch. “My office?”

  It was four days to deadline.

  “Of course,” said Justine, and there it was again: that little surge of guilt. As she followed Jeremy along the hallway, she thought nervously of the original copies of Leo’s horoscopes
on the document spike on her desk.

  Passing the open door of the staff writers’ room, Justine caught a glimpse of the spot where Roma usually worked. Her computer screen was dark, and the flowers in the vase beside her keyboard had wilted.

  Jeremy’s office was perhaps even a little more chaotic than usual. It looked as if he had been sorting through his books; there were empty spaces on the shelves, and large teetering stacks in various places around the room. The editor sat behind his desk, and it was with some anxiety that Justine took the seat opposite him. But when she looked up, she saw to her relief that he was smiling. Perhaps this was going to be good news, after all. Had Roma’s accident, by any chance, triggered her to have thoughts of retirement?

  “As you know, we had in mind a protest image for the cover of this next edition,” the editor said. “And, as you also know, I do like a good protest picture. Angry faces! Chanting! Raised fists! Yes, I enjoy seeing the populace rise up and make its voice heard.”

  Justine had seen the picture, a photograph taken on the waterfront, of a rally against live animal export, angry people holding placards doused in red paint that dribbled like blood. She had also seen Glynn’s design for the cover: the image enclosed in a border of matching blood red, just a few cover lines and all of them presented in a compressed font at the bottom where they least interrupted the power of the central scene.

  “But after the brouhaha about the Ruthless cartoon last month, I have decided, upon reflection, to go with something a little lighter, a little more joyous, a little less divisive.”

  Jeremy held up a mock-up of his proposed new cover. Where Justine had been picturing red, her first impression was now a cooling green. The magazine’s cover was split horizontally into two panes, each of them filled with an image of the face of Verdi Highsmith against a plain, mint green backdrop. As in the classic drama masks, she was both tragedy and comedy: her mouth in the top image was downturned in misery, and in the bottom image it curved upward for joy. The cover lines were now in a mixture of fonts and pastel colors, whimsical and playful. It was gorgeous.

  Justine’s hands flew to her face.

  “So you see—”

  “Oh my goodness,” Justine said. “The cover story? I’ve got the cover story?”

  “It’s a lovely piece you’ve written. Descriptive, but not overwritten. Perceptive, witty, engaging. I love it, and I think all our readers will, too. And I haven’t forgotten that you had the extra challenge of taking on the assignment at the very last minute.”

  “Thank you,” Justine said.

  “I’m also aware that you spent quite a lot of time on the Highsmith piece, and that this might be why, er, with, um, four days until—”

  Justine interrupted. “I know what you’re going to say. I’m so sorry, Jeremy, that I’m a bit behind with the contributions, but I—”

  “No, no. No apologies required. I was only going to suggest that it might be best, over the next few days, if we were to flick some of your more—as it were—menial tasks to, ah, Henry. Hm? Perhaps we could have him transcribe Lesley-Ann’s column—I notice that’s not yet in the can. And I think there are still the book reviews to come? They just need a tweak, of course, but I think Henry’s up for that. And maybe he could input the stars as well? Hm? What do you think?”

  “That’s all…fine,” Justine said. “I mean, except for the stars…they’re—”

  Her mind raced. Although she had told herself—had come very close to promising herself—that she would leave Leo’s column well alone, she now felt panicked. Even if she didn’t precisely intend to tinker with Leo’s copy, she also didn’t want Henry touching it. The stars were, she had begun to feel, in some sense hers.

  “I mean to say that the stars are on my screen right now, almost done,” Justine lied.

  “Excellent,” Jeremy said. “Excellent. The rest we shall delegate. The stars, I shall leave in your ever-so-capable hands.”

  Half an hour later, Leo’s latest fax was skewered to the document spike in Justine’s office, and the month’s horoscopes had been submitted for layout. And if, in the process of transcription, the entry for Aquarius had been slightly transformed, well, Justine considered, the risk was minimal. Twice now she’d got away with her little sleight of hand. And, if Nick Jordan’s relationship with his beautiful, lookalike girlfriend was entirely watertight and secure, then the horoscope could have no meaning for him. What harm, then, could a few minor alterations possibly do?

  Cusp

  Tansy Brinklow—Aquarius, oncologist, ex-wife of urologist Jonathan Brinklow and mother to teenagers Saskia, Genevieve and Ava, admirer of Diana Rigg (in her Avengers phase) and closet conservative voter—lunched each month with her old friends Jane Asten and Hillary Ellsworth. As was often the case, the restaurant that had been chosen for their June get-together was inconsiderately far from Tansy’s consulting rooms, for neither Jane nor Hillary ever had to worry about how to fit lunch into a workday.

  For all of lunch so far, Tansy had managed to keep her left hand under the table. The soup had posed no impediment to this, and neither had the bruschetta. But then Jane had suggested a cheese plate in place of dessert, and agreeing to that had been a thoughtless mistake on Tansy’s part, she now realized, as there was no subtle way of getting blue Brie onto a cracker single-handed. Sitting with her left hand tucked under her thigh, Tansy was acutely aware of the outline of the brand-new ring on her finger. She had no idea whether Hillary and Jane would like it, or hate it. It was made by an art jeweler, and very different: a huge smoky brown tourmaline, checker-cut and rectangular, set in a confection of rose and white gold. Tansy wasn’t sure if it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, or if it just wasn’t her at all. She had told Simon that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. After all, her manners were impeccable.

  If you were to be allowed only one word to describe Dr. Tansy Brinklow, it would be “polite.” And if you were permitted a second word, it would be “terribly.” Her parents, more British than the British, regarded politeness as a cardinal virtue. Others were tidiness, modesty and good pronunciation (there had been private elocution lessons to protect little Tansy from the lazy vowels of her schoolmates). And although Tansy’s debutante ball was by now a very long time ago, there were ways in which the white satin gloves (with pearl buttons to the elbow) had never quite come off.

  Tansy’s polite, undemanding smile and her polite, understanding nod were so essential to her demeanor that they had—some six years ago—been her first, instinctive reaction to the surprising news that she was about to be divorced. Jonathan had dropped it on her just after they had buckled into their airplane seats, when they were heading off to Fiji for a two-week family holiday, and the girls were safely plugged in to the airplane’s entertainment system.

  “Darling,” he said, taking Tansy’s hand. “I thought perhaps I should tell you now, to give you some time to get used to the idea. When we get back, I’ll be moving out. I’m leaving you.”

  He had thought everything through, he said, and reminded her that when they had bought their new home a few years ago, the ownership had been vested solely in her name. It was obviously easiest and most sensible if she were to keep the family home, while he would retain the inner-city flat and the holiday house on the coast—though she and the girls were welcome to use the beach house at any time, provided she gave two weeks’ notice. As for the liquid assets—and these were substantial—he thought a 60/40 split in Tansy’s favor would be reasonable, given the years she’d forgone an income in order to raise their children. Did she have any questions?

  Questions? They swam and boiled like goldfish in a whirlpool. How long had he been planning this? Putting the house in her name—hadn’t that been a tax thing? Or had he known back then that he was going to leave? Was there another woman? Oh God, was there another man? Was that why they hadn’t had sex for four mon
ths? What the hell? He was leaving her? Why? But she couldn’t catch hold of any one of these questions for long enough to get it out of her mouth, and in any case, this was business class and here was the hostess standing close by in the aisle, smiling brightly, holding a tray of flutes full of preflight Buck’s fizz.

  “Bubbles?” she asked.

  And Tansy had forced a bright smile. “Thank you,” she had said.

  During the entire Fiji holiday, Tansy had felt what she imagined it was to be concussed. She spent long, stunned days on postcard-white sand, watching her girls squeal in the postcard-blue shallows. In the evenings she drank piña coladas and smoked clove cigarettes, neither of which she had ever been partial to, either before or since. And then she had packed everybody’s bags with her usual efficiency and they had all come home, her husband had moved out and Hillary’s GP husband had prescribed something to take the edge off it all. Only it wasn’t the edge that went; it was the depth. In those years after her divorce, Tansy had lived—she later realized—in something like a lenticular puzzle, a strange place where the third dimension always turned out to be an illusion. It was really only in the last six months, since she had met Simon Pierce, that she was beginning to feel things stirring down in the depths she had forgotten were hers.

  Simon was a nurse. A midwife, to be precise. In his uniform of blue shirt and blue pants, with a newborn baby slung over his forearm, he was a heady mix of manly and sensitive. Fifteen years her junior, he owned no house, but lived in a tiny, groovy rented apartment that was walking distance from his favorite bookshop and the city’s best art-house cinema, the Orion. He owned no car, but got about on a Vespa, which, he had confessed, he was still paying off. Tansy was still apt to giggle in shock when she recalled the fact that Simon’s only real asset was a top-of-the-range Italian coffee machine.