What Red Was

by Rosie Price

24

  Zara wanted to hear about Kate’s first set job, and she promised that after they had wrapped she would take her for lunch. It was no small thing, she said to Kate on the phone, and they needed to celebrate properly.

  “We’ve been meeting with developers all morning,” Zara said when they met on Greek Street in Soho. “They’re full of shit, bless them. Promising things they don’t know if they’ll be able to deliver. I’m afraid it’s a slippery ladder you’re climbing.”

  “What were they promising?”

  “Money for projects, big names, that sort of thing. Fortunately”—Zara put on her sunglasses as they stepped across the road—“I’ve got just about enough influence that I don’t have to put up with too much of that these days.” She got out her phone. “Is Max coming?”

  Kate hadn’t said anything to Max about lunch, and because Zara hadn’t mentioned him when they’d arranged to meet she had assumed it would be just the two of them.

  “I’m not sure,” she said.

  Zara was scrolling through her messages. “No, I think Max is busy. Nicole’s in Holborn today, though, so we can drag her away from her desk. And Rupert’s meeting us at the restaurant. You’ve met Rupert?”

  “At Christmas,” Kate said.

  As they walked north, Zara tried calling Nicole: the street narrowed, and Kate fell behind her. Zara was wearing a large cashmere scarf and impossibly white trainers. She was walking incredibly quickly, turning her shoulders as she slipped through the busy street. Kate caught up with her when she stopped outside a small Japanese restaurant.

  “You like sushi, don’t you?”

  “Perfect,” Kate said. Inside, they waited for Rupert and Nicole to arrive. Kate sat opposite Zara and looked down at the menu, flipping backward and forward between its crowded pages. Zara ordered a jasmine tea, so Kate did the same, even though she was hot from keeping up with Zara as they’d walked here.

  “So, a fortnight?” Zara said. “That’s good for a first job. Not too full-on.”

  “A fortnight,” Kate said, “and I learned such a lot. Just from watching, you know? I had no idea how many times they reshoot. I really liked watching the camera crew.”

  “Good, good,” Zara nodded. She was looking at the menu as she spoke. “It’s very important to observe. So many people want to throw themselves in headfirst, take charge straightaway, and they just make a mess of it. Though, of course”—she winked at Kate—“those people are usually male.”

  Kate laughed. “Really?” she said. “That doesn’t seem at all likely.”

  The tea had arrived, just cool enough so she could hold it in both hands.

  “It’s because they don’t have great big ovens pumping out heat,” Zara said when Kate commented that it wasn’t too hot in the restaurant. “The skill is all in the knife work rather than the cooking, you see.”

  Kate was not sure if this was true, but she was grateful to Zara for engaging with her mundane comment. She couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t to do with sexual assault, or trauma, unless she started talking about Gristle again, but Zara had already called the waiter over and started ordering for everybody. Nicole and Rupert both arrived just as the food began to come to the table. Walking through the doorway they made an unlikely pair: he in his worn navy jacket, she in her high-waisted suit trousers. Rupert sat down next to Kate.

  “Delicious,” he said to her. “What have we got here?”

  “No idea,” she said. “Fish, of different kinds.”

  Nicole pulled a plate of sashimi toward her. She couldn’t stay long, she said, dousing the tuna in sauce. Kate watched what she was doing and copied her. It wasn’t that she hadn’t had sushi before, but it was always in a little supermarket-bought box with preassigned sauce, and she usually ate it with her fingers.

  “How is he, the slave driver?” Zara said to Nicole.

  “Who?”

  “David? Daniel? The partner you’re working for.”

  “Oh.” Nicole frowned at her mother across the table. “Duncan. He’s long gone. Left about six months ago. Or I should say he was ‘asked to leave.’ ”

  “He was fired?” Kate said.

  “No,” Nicole said. “Definitely not fired. But his departure was negotiated, shall we say, after he got caught in the stationery cupboard with a trainee.”

  Zara made a loud noise, which Kate took a moment to recognize as laughter.

  “Do modern offices even have stationery cupboards? I thought it was all iPads nowadays. How very eighties of them.”

  “It was quite a big deal,” Nicole said. “They nearly fired her, too.”

  “But she got a promotion instead?” Zara said. She still appeared to be amused.

  “No,” Nicole said. “And she definitely won’t any time soon. I’m not sure it’s entirely fair, actually. He got a pretty tidy severance package.”

  “It’s an abuse of power, isn’t it?” said Rupert. Of the four of them, Kate least expected this observation to come from Rupert.

  “Quite,” Zara said, her tone more serious than it had been a moment ago. Clearly, Rupert’s comment had surprised her as well.

  Nicole stayed to drink the rest of her tea, and before she left she tried to give Zara a twenty-pound note from her purse. Zara brushed it away.

  “My treat,” she said, squeezing Nicole’s arm. “You’ve worked hard for that.”

  When it came to paying, then, Kate reached for her purse in what she knew would be only a nominal gesture: Zara refused to let either her or Rupert contribute, and Kate did not argue because she knew it would be ridiculous to insist on paying for lunch when every week Zara put more than three times the amount in her account to pay for her therapy sessions. Rupert smiled wryly.

  “I would have been very impressed if she’d let you,” he said. “I’ve been trying for years to pay my own way but it’s impossible in the company of this woman.”

  “That’s not even remotely true,” Zara said.

  “It isn’t,” Rupert said, winking at Kate, “but you’re so easily wound up, I can never resist.”

  * * *

  —

  “You should have come to lunch,” Kate said to Max when she saw him that evening, “you would have enjoyed it.”

  “I think it’s nice you hang out without me,” Max said. He was drunk, but fairly steady considering he’d been out with Elias that evening. “She’s helped you, hasn’t she? And Rupert. She’s very…” He paused, unsure of the word.

  “Generous?” Kate offered.

  “Yeah, generous. That’s it.”

  Neither of them said anything for a moment.

  “Rupert was there,” Kate said. “He seemed pretty well.”

  “Oh, good.”

  Max slid out of his chair and opened the fridge. He stared into the bright light, not knowing what he was looking for, or looking for something that wasn’t there. He shut it and opened the cupboard, stared into that, too.

  “He looks a lot like you, actually,” Kate said, smiling. “Same eyes.”

  “Hopefully that’s where the comparison ends,” Max said. He had found a box of cereal in the back of the cupboard, the contents of which he poured out into a bowl. He caught Kate’s expression. “I’m joking, obviously. I love him. Uncle Ru. Cheerios?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Are you sure? They taste almost exactly like cardboard.”

  “I’m going to bed,” Kate said. “I have to get up early tomorrow, I’ve got another set job.”

  “Look at you,” said Max through his mouthful of Cheerios. “I’m proud of you,” he shouted as she left the kitchen.

  He was proud: Kate knew this. He’d told her before, would continue to tell her, how strong he thought she was, the way she kept going. But she wondered, as she brushed her teeth, looking at her reflection in
the bathroom mirror, how he would feel if she had given up after that first panic attack. If, instead of stepping onto the train that would take her home, she had simply stepped off the platform. Would he be angry with her, like he was with Rupert? What Max didn’t understand was that Rupert was in fact stronger than both of them. He had to be, given the depths he had been to, given the fact that he was still standing. There was so much Max did not know: what it was like to have invisible weights around the ankles, a fog in the mind, a clamp on the chest. She looked at herself square in the mirror, as she imagined how she might have cut Max off so that he’d put down that box of childish cereal and really listen to her, really hear not just the optimism but the dark notes, too.

  In the next room, she heard Max bashing around as he put the light on and kicked off his shoes: she remembered the familiar pattern from last year, when they’d lived together at university, how comforting it had been to know that he was home, sleeping just the other side of the wall. That year felt so long ago now. She spat toothpaste into the sink. It was not his fault he gravitated toward the joyful things in life. She should be grateful that he wanted her to rise to his level rather than to come down to hers. But as it was, she felt not gratitude but a deep disconnect. Kate heard the light flick off next door, which meant Max had gone to bed without brushing his teeth, which really was none of her business. She splashed water on her face and dried it, and looked at herself once more in the mirror before turning off the bathroom light.

  25

  A few weeks after Kate’s work on the crash scene was finished, the producers of Gristle threw a wrap party. Lately, Kate and Max had been on different schedules—out on different nights, asleep at different times—but tonight she had invited him to come with her. Kate, anxiously aware of the possibility that Andrew might also be at the party, had drunk most of a bottle of wine before they left the flat. Her tolerance was high; this much wine wouldn’t get her particularly drunk, but it would relax her enough to navigate a crowd of relative strangers.

  “How are you feeling about this?” Max said when they got to the entrance.

  Kate groaned.

  “We’ll be fine.” Max squeezed her shoulder, then checked his watch. “Elias has a work thing but he said he’ll try and come by after.”

  “Elias is coming?”

  “He said he’d try,” said Max brightly.

  This news did not thrill Kate, who tried to avoid spending time with Elias. This could be difficult, since Max saw him most days, and he often stayed on the sofa after they’d been out together, or in Nicole’s bed, if Nicole was staying with her boyfriend. Kate couldn’t help but notice that Max was sharper when Elias was around: a little less kind and a little more destructive.

  “I didn’t put him on the guest list,” she said now.

  “You know Elias,” Max said, choosing to ignore the subtle hostility of this comment. “He always manages to talk his way in.”

  The bar was dark, but not too grimy, not the kind of all-night place Max had given up trying to drag Kate to, and the people in it were well dressed. After months of being on set, early mornings and late nights spent in torn jeans and old sweats, the production team and crew owed themselves a night of looking good. The atmosphere was loose, familiar, most of the people here knew each other well by now: they’d worked too many hours against too many deadlines for it to be anything other.

  “It’s quite busy,” said Max.

  “I’ve taken my body weight in beta-blockers.”

  “Well done.”

  Kate took Max to the bar, where she introduced him to Ben the Vegan and a couple of the crew members she’d be working with on the next film. She surprised herself with her sociability: she couldn’t remember the last time it had been her introducing Max to somebody new rather than the other way round. She supposed that this was the first time in a long time she’d actually been doing something she liked: there had been little incentive to bring Mark Cummins and his penicillin-infested milk home to meet Max when she’d still been at the restaurant.

  “Are you in film?” said Ben to Max.

  Max shook his head. It occurred to Kate that he might mention Zara in response to such a question, but she was unsurprised when he didn’t.

  “I’m actually developing an app,” he said.

  Kate took a deep sip from her drink. It amused her, watching people encounter Max for the first time: his buoyancy always seemed to confuse them.

  “What’s the app?” said Ben.

  “Well,” said Max. “The idea is fucking ingenious, if I’m honest. I just need to get a handle on some of the more technical aspects. But it’s a dating app. For older people.”

  “Oh, that sounds really good,” said Ben generously. “Quite a lot of them have phones, you know. My granny’s all over Candy Crush.”

  “We do have an aging population,” said Max sagely. “The name is my favorite bit, though. It’s called Embers.” Max paused, waiting for Ben to catch up.

  “Like Tinder,” Kate supplemented. “But for people much nearer death.”

  * * *

  —

  It was when Elias arrived, and Max went to the front entrance to attempt to negotiate his entry, that Kate saw Andrew leaning against the back wall, looking like he was deep in conversation with the cinematographer. She smiled at him and took a step in his direction: he looked at her without recognition, and she turned quickly back to the bar, where she ordered herself two drinks and willed the room to implode. By the time Max was back, this time with Elias, it was difficult to tell which of the three of them was most drunk, and they stationed themselves at an empty table near the bar.

  “I mean, it was a charity thing,” Elias said. He was gesticulating as he spoke, unaware of how much space he was taking up, and he hadn’t taken off his coat. “I really don’t understand why they had to throw me out. It wasn’t like I didn’t know anybody.”

  “Was that Nicole’s friend’s thing?” said Max. “Ellie?”

  “Yeah, some bullshit. All because I didn’t have a ticket.”

  “Those tickets were, like, two hundred pounds. For charity. That’s the point.”

  “Yeah, something like that. They had a free bar, though.”

  “Uh, maybe that’s why they threw you out, then?” said Max. Kate laughed, while Elias looked indignant.

  “I’m a valuable contact. A potential investor.”

  “Don’t most people just donate to charities?” Kate said.

  “Well, that’s where they’re going wrong. We need to set up a charity, Max.”

  “Get the app going first,” Kate said.

  “Yeah, the app, fuck.”

  For once Kate was relieved to have Elias there. His conversational dominance made it easier for her not to think about anything else: particularly Andrew. She found it easier, too, not to notice that Max was buying more rounds than anybody else and that he seemed to disappear off to the bar for longer than it took to get a couple of drinks. By comparison with Max, whose eyes had lost focus and whose foot was tapping restlessly beneath the table, Elias appeared surprisingly composed. By the time it was Kate’s third round, the party was thinning out a little, and she went to get drinks while Max went in the direction of the bathroom. Kate leaned on the bar, booze warm in her stomach, swaying absently to the music, and feeling—as she had not felt in some time—that tonight she might actually be able to enjoy herself. As she was about to order, Andrew appeared next to her. Kate tried not to look at him.

  “I didn’t recognize you,” Andrew said. He was smiling, not the half smile from set that had made her feel like he’d heard a joke she wasn’t in on, but full, candid. “You stole my screwdriver, didn’t you?”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Kate said. She saw that he was wearing headphones around his neck, and that he was chewing gum. “In case you run out of conversation?” she
said, nodding at them.

  He laughed and glanced down. It was a warm, deep laugh.

  “Got no pockets. I don’t want to look rude, though.” He looked Kate up and down before taking off the headphones and pointing at the shoulder bag she was wearing. “You can look after them for me.”

  Kate, giddily aware that she was being flirted with, accepted.

  “I’m not giving these back.”

  He bought them both a drink and sat on a bar stool: enough to tell her that he wanted to stay and talk to her. Kate sat next to him. When he asked her name, she pretended not to know his. He told her that he had been working on several projects at once, which was why he hadn’t stayed until the end of the shoot. He was from south London, he’d studied film at University of the Arts London, and his older sisters were both teachers. When she was halfway through her beer, Kate realized that she’d hardly told him anything about herself. But this wasn’t because he was self-involved, in an Elias kind of way: his openness was not a performance, more like an invitation, to which Kate responded, involuntarily, by leaning toward him. His knee touched hers.

  Andrew seemed quite a lot less drunk than most of the people at the party, including Kate, who was now doing her best to give the impression of sobriety. A woman Kate recognized from the crew came over to them and flung her arms around him in a sloppy greeting, but he didn’t introduce her to Kate, nor did he show any signs of wanting to take this new arrival as an out. The woman untangled herself and moved toward the bar, and Kate knew that she had his attention, his headphones in her bag, anchoring him there.

  When Elias came to find her, Kate pretended that she’d forgotten she’d gone to buy him and Max drinks.

  “I thought you’d be with Max,” Elias said, his tone mildly accusatory. “Do you know where he’s gone?” She told Andrew she’d be back and went with Elias to look for him. They found him, eventually, outside the bar, swaying as he talked to the bouncer, who was holding his arms out, pushing him back whenever he stepped too close. Max waved when he saw them.