The moderator #2
He looks at the girl, and it isn’t hard to guess.
Aimi knows the gossip. Ever since the first pictures came out of Clara Cowan and her daughter on the set of this new film, people started putting two and two together.
Jacob Steele has never answered a question about it.
But look at his hair, and look at Nora’s.
‘Please,’ Clara says, quietly. ‘Can we not do this now?’
Nora seems strangely interested in Seb. Seb stares back at the child with something like hatred. He trembles. He looks back at the door, seems to consider running away.
‘Two minutes,’ says the voice from behind the door.
Seb gives Clara a pleading look. ‘Why did you ask me back here?’
‘I didn’t,’ she says. ‘They brought you.’
The handler pokes his head in once again. ‘Does the babysitter need anything?’ He glances at Seb, then Clara.
Neither of them answers.
‘Great.’ He disappears.
Seb looks at Clara, at her child. He starts shaking his head. ‘No.’
‘That’s not what’s happening,’ she says. ‘I wouldn’t.’
‘But you did need someone?’
‘I don’t have anyone,’ she says. ‘Cee, Augie. The snow. She hasn’t even eaten.’ She’s speaking quickly, trying to stay ahead of him. ‘I would never ask you,’ she says, then winces. ‘I mean, I couldn’t.’ She tucks her hair behind her ear. ‘It wouldn’t be fair.’ Her voice cracks on these last words.
‘One minute!’ says the voice.
‘Who are you?’ says Nora.
Clara breathes in sharply. She looks down at her daughter, eyes wide.
Nora, it seems, is not usually a talker.
And though Seb looks like he loathes Clara, like he wants nothing more than to ignore the child, it seems he can’t.
He sighs, closes his own eyes tight, then crouches down.
When he opens them, his face has changed. It’s warm and open.
‘I’m Seb,’ he says. ‘Who are you?’
Her voice suggests she’s weighing things up. ‘I’m Nora.’
‘Nora.’ His eyes flash to her mother. ‘Short for?’
‘Short for nothing,’ Clara says, quickly.
Nora is still staring at Seb, and he looks like it hurts to be looked at.
He clicks his tongue, shakes his head, looks set to say something, but the handler is back, taking Nora’s momentary boldness as an opportunity to push his way between mother and daughter.
Clara tries to stop him, but one minute has become thirty seconds, and everyone is moving.
Aimi suddenly remembers the event, her insecurity over which question to open with.
They’re being mic’d up, and then a confusion of people in black T-shirts are ushering them out of the room and back towards the curtains.
Clara is protesting frantically, but in the chaos her daughter has taken solace in Seb, who has shepherded her along with them, and is once again crouching beside her, holding her steady.
He knows what to do. Which is, nothing. He simply keeps one hand on the girl’s back, no longer paying attention to Clara or anyone else. When Nora looks like she’s about to cry, he points to the mics and the crew and the lights above them, gently begins to explain every detail of the sturdy rig.
‘This can’t be happening,’ says Clara, looking like she’s being led to her own execution. ‘This isn’t your—’ A helpless pause. ‘I don’t have your number any more.’
Seb doesn’t look at her. ‘I have yours.’
‘Seb!’ Clara shouts, as she’s led away towards the stage.
And he must recognise the panic in Clara’s voice, because now he returns her gaze. Now he speaks, surprisingly softly.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says.
The spotlights are blinding, and before they know it, they’re no longer behind the curtains, and people are applauding as Aimi and Clara smile and wave and take their seats under an enormous projector that beams out the title of the film: Malcontent.
Beneath this title, the director sits and transforms into something else: the person the audience know and love, the one they’ve come to see.
It’s fascinating, this metamorphosis. Aimi won’t ask what it’s like to juggle being a director and being a mother, because it’s a cliché. Besides, she’s just seen it first-hand.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she says. ‘Clara Cowan.’
It doesn’t escape Aimi’s attention that Clara’s phone is gripped tightly in her hand, under her leg, throughout the whole thing. It never goes off.
When the Q&A is over, when the applause has died down and the lights have begun to dim, Clara will get straight off stage and, when she finds the green room empty, straight on to her phone.
Then she will be gone, thanking Aimi profusely, apologising profusely, doing everything profusely, leaving in such a hurry that she practically blows the doors open, not even staying for the opening scenes of the film she’s here to screen.
Aimi will take her place in the wings to watch it again, because she’s been tasked with writing a piece about it, and because she now wonders if there’s something she’d missed.
The transformation in the film, from woman to lurching sea monster, is an effective metaphor for motherhood, if not a little messy, a tad overblown.
Ambitious, Aimi will say. And as she daydreams about what she will write, two things connect in her mind, and it strikes her suddenly where she knows Seb from.
He’s a little bit older now, a little bit leaner, a few more worry lines on his face.
She’d assumed, absent-mindedly, that he’d been lost to drink or drugs or the curse of being difficult to work with, that he’d disappeared into the ether like so many once-promising actors do.
But no. He still exists, and he’s still in Clara’s orbit.
His name is Seb Bonami. He’s the other guy from The Sons.