Her friend’s student
her friend’s student
‘How did he take it?’ Maisie asks.
Her companion shakes her head. ‘I didn’t send it.’
The student at the next table knows Maisie, but she’s been studiously avoiding her eye for the past half hour.
Maisie is doing a PhD, and the student is taking one of her poetry classes.
And even though Maisie is relatively young and relatively cool, at the shallow end of her thirties with vividly dyed red hair, the student would still rather avoid the mortifying prospect of lunchtime conversation with one of her lecturers.
They’re in the refectory, cascading plants tumbling down from the tall windowsills, slats of light filtering on to low tables cluttered with half-finished toasties and old coffee cups.
Maisie is deep in conversation with a woman, short and beautiful and vaguely familiar, with a drastic-looking undercut.
‘Clara,’ Maisie says. ‘You have to talk to him.’
‘How? When?’ this Clara replies. ‘I can’t face it.’
The student pivots slightly, unable to resist the drama.
Clara is still talking, saying that she can’t spend her life watching him suffer, can’t put up with his sadness swallowing everything else.
They can’t wallow together for eternity as if there’s nothing more on this Earth than one, admittedly shit, thing.
‘So you’re happy?’ Maisie says. ‘With the film?’
‘I’m happy with the distraction.’
‘Don’t play coy,’ Maisie says. ‘I’ve googled clips of you. I’ve watched you on red carpets. You’re in your element.’ She beams like a proud parent. ‘I always said you were going to be famous.’
The student takes another look at Clara, tries to work out who she is. Nothing comes to mind.
‘I feel guilty,’ Clara says. ‘Enjoying it. Enjoying anything.’
‘You’re allowed to,’ Maisie says, softly. ‘You’ve worked so hard for it.’
Clara looks at her gratefully. ‘How are you?’ she asks. ‘How’s it all going?’
‘Hard,’ Maisie says. ‘But rewarding. You don’t want to mark some essays on Yeats, do you?’
‘Pass,’ Clara says. ‘Ask Nimesh.’
‘He’s busy, unsurprisingly,’ Maisie says. ‘Still bringing his work home. We’ve got three dogs now, and only one of them has four legs.’
Clara laughs. ‘Taking the move well, then.’
‘He misses London,’ Maisie says. ‘But he’s happy to be nearer his parents. He’s started cooking Sri Lankan food.’
‘Nimesh cooking,’ Clara says. ‘Now there’s a scary thought.’
They both laugh. A silence settles for a moment.
‘It’s nice up here,’ Clara says eventually, her voice distant. ‘I’m happy that you’re happy.’
‘You don’t look it.’
‘I am,’ she says.
‘But…?’
‘Everyone’s left me,’ Clara says, with a sigh. ‘You’re here, speed-running into domestic bliss. Cee never has the time. Augie is god knows where. Ren is in Amsterdam, posting from vegan restaurants, trying to overtake Seb in the tattoo stakes. And I’m still in London, all alone.’
‘You’ve been gallivanting around the world on a press tour,’ Maisie says. ‘And you’re not alone.’
The student is staring at Clara, now, trying to place her. Would it be strange to ask for a selfie if you don’t know if she’s actually famous, and you don’t actually know what for?
‘Not yet,’ Clara is saying.
Maisie leans back in her chair. ‘Is it that bad?’
‘I don’t know what’s happened to us,’ Clara says. ‘That’s the worst thing. I’m so… confused by it. We love each other so much. Or I thought we did.’
‘Sickening,’ Maisie says, absent-mindedly. ‘That’s what Nimesh said, at one of those barbecues, when I first met him.’ She smiles at the memory. ‘Sickening, how in sync you two were. How much you were joined at the hip.’
‘Now that’s you,’ Clara says sadly.
‘You’ve been together for a decade,’ Maisie says. ‘There are going to be blips.’
‘How long can a blip last?’ Clara replies. ‘He never even visited me on set,’ she says. ‘He used to come to all my events. It’s an unspoken thing, that I leave him a ticket. But I can’t remember the last time I looked out into the crowd and saw him there.’
She’s crying, now, and trying to hide it. Maisie gives her a moment, then reaches out and squeezes her hand. Clara dabs her eyes with a napkin.
‘You need to talk to him,’ Maisie says.
Clara lets out a humourless laugh. ‘Do you know Seb?’ she says. ‘Now imagine him since he gave up smoking.’ She sounds defeated. ‘It’s not that he doesn’t talk to me. It’s that he doesn’t listen, if it’s something he doesn’t want to hear.’
‘Did you ask him about being in the next film, at least?’ Maisie says.
‘I did,’ Clara replies.
‘And what did he say?’
‘The same as usual,’ she says. ‘Nothing.’