Chapter 43
“And Action!” called Anastasia, snapping her slate board.
Ellie let her eyelashes float down, her gun stroking suggestively between Sophie’s breasts.
She tamped down every scrap of awareness that she had that this storyline was palpably ridiculous — Estella seducing Alison and Hope on the night she saved their lives — and made herself feel it.
Estella’s longing for Alison, to be her — or failing that — to consume her.
She knew, intimately, the part of Estella who got off on having the upper hand — the part of her who’d push a pretty girl to her knees just for the pleasure of making her look up to meet her eyes — and she channelled this now.
She leaned in, as choreographed, her tongue tracing up the shell of Sophie’s ear.
It was a closed set for this, the penultimate sex scene, just she and Sophie and Mia — the new actress on set who was playing the role of Hope — Anastasia, and a skeleton film crew, and for that, Ellie was grateful.
It wasn’t that she was all that worried about getting naked in front of people, no that she’d done before.
What worried her more was her ability to hold all of the emotional complexities warring within her at once.
There were of course, all the basics that she’d need to juggle at the best of times: keeping her scene partners safe and comfortable; the weirdness of being the one out lesbian in a room full of people filming a sapphic sex scene; the awareness of wanting to make it all look sexy; wondering how her body looked from all those different angles. And then, there were the real emotions.
Playing Estella Grant, while furious at Estella Grant.
Playing her character with as much nuance and compassion as she could, despite the absurdities of the script, because she still felt, despite everything, that Estella deserved that.
Performing desire and passion as Estella, instead of as herself, the woman who would just about die to have Estella’s lips on her skin again.
Acting to seduce a stand-in for Alison Hartmann, while knowing full well what it was like when the real Alison fixed you with her withering stare.
Knowing how extremely dimly Alison and Hope would view this series, and this scene in particular.
“Cut.” Anastasia snapped the slate board again. “Eloise, Estella is kissing Hope here to one-up Alison, to show her who’s boss. We’ll take it again from the moment you palm her breast, but this time, I want you to glance sideways at Alison, when you kiss her girlfriend.”
“Got it,” said Ellie, taking on the possibly physically impossible instruction while also trying not to shiver.
Alison Hartmann’s luxurious bedroom was being filmed in a huge soundstage, and the air was frigid.
“We good?” she checked in with Sophie and Mia who both nodded, Mia repositioning herself on her elbows again for the next take.
“Action.”
Ellie disappeared inside Estella again, imagined being her, all that sex and power and the shakiest of moral compasses.
She remembered the heat of Estella’s kiss, the way she’d reached for domination over Ellie, only to shock herself with the depth of her want.
She channelled that secret knowledge now, freed from any ethical grey areas about using it because Estella is, was, and will forever be, a murderer.
“And cut. That was incredible, all of you. Eloise, you’re a fucking force,” Anastasia enthused. “Terrifying and sexy, all in one. Perfection.”
And yet, as Ellie left the bed, it wasn’t satisfaction, pride or even relief in her veins, it was guilt.
What kind of person was she, to actively seduce someone and then use that carnal knowledge to simulate sex on television, in their name?
Against the wishes of the real women she was pretending to fuck?
She stood in her trailer, staring at her reflection in the mirror.
Estella’s golden locks, Estella’s sapphire blue eyes, Estella’s tight red dress and bright ruby lips stared back at her.
Her reflection morphed before her eyes, into the real thing, Estella pale and trembling, her face wet with tears, crying her name over and over the night Ellie had been assaulted.
Ellie blinked, the hallucination fading like her bruises.
Right now, caked in makeup, even the small but livid scar at her temple was gone, yet still, she remembered vividly, Estella shaking with Ellie’s blood on her hands. Ellie covered her face and cried.
That night, she went home to her sister.
Truth be told, she’d been avoiding her family since their return from Gold Hill.
She and Zara were at loggerheads, her sister still defiantly declaring that Estella was right to take out violent men who were a known threat, Ellie furiously opposed to this version of justice.
Estella doesn’t abide by ordinary rules because she doesn’t live in an ordinary world, Zara had cried.
She lives in the same damn world as the rest of us, Ellie had retorted.
It’s not up to her to play judge, jury and executioner.
They’d been tense with each other ever since.
It pressed on their old wounds, the thousands of times Zara had said to her you don’t understand what I’ve been through, while Ellie did her absolute level best to try.
To make matters worse, Arthur’s return to school had also returned his surly, terrifying attitude in full force.
Zara had checked his phone, something that he felt was a deep betrayal of his privacy, but that fight paled in significance with what Zara had found on it.
“The videos he’s been watching,” Zara had wept down the phone to Ellie earlier that week.
“He told me ‘Andrew Tate isn’t that bad! He’s just misunderstood.
’ I’ve confiscated his phone just to make the point, but he needs a laptop for school.
There’s no way to stop him from consuming this shit. I don’t know how to stop it!”
Ellie felt sick and sad, but her attempts to talk to Arthur about it had so far been unsuccessful.
He seemed furious and humiliated all in one, muttering about role models and how she’d never understand.
So that was two for two of her family who thought Ellie was out of touch, and hell, she probably was.
So it was with trepidation that she entered the front door of the Graham house, tired and drained, and yet still craving the familiarity and comfort of two people who loved her.
“Hey,” she said, as she poked her head around her nephew’s bedroom door on the way up the hall.
“Hi,” he said, his voice little more than a grunt. He was on his laptop, and Ellie wondered queasily what he was looking at this time.
“Homework?” she asked him hopefully and he sighed.
“Yes,” he said, as if the very question itself was infuriating. Ellie swallowed her retort.
“Cool,” she said. “I bought dinner.” She held up the bag of Thai food, as a peace offering. He nodded vacantly, his eyes on the screen. She watched him for a beat, then made her way down the hall to the living room.
“Oh thank god,” Zara greeted her at the sight of food. “It’s been a day.”
“I’ll say,” Ellie agreed with a sigh.
“Arthur!” Zara called her son. “Dinner’s up!” When there was no response, she yelled again. “Now, please!”
“I’m not hungry!” he yelled back.
“I don’t care! Come and join us!”
Ellie felt the simmering tension in the room, as her nephew appeared.
He’d shot up recently, she realised, his frame seeming too long, all legs and arms. He served himself silently, without a word of thanks and she and her sister exchanged glances.
He ignored them, pointedly, and started to head back to his room with his full bowl.
“Nope.” Zara stopped him. “You can bear us long enough to eat, thanks.”
Arthur rolled his eyes, like he was quite convinced she was wrong. Halfway over to the couch where his mother and aunty sat, he seemed to freeze. He dropped his bowl down on the couch cushions, the curry almost spilling, and strode over to the guinea pig enclosure near the back door.
“What—” Zara started, but Arthur made a ragged sound in his throat. He reached down into the hutch and stood frozen, with his hand inside, his eyes wide and shocked.
Ellie was on her feet immediately, and when she got to him she saw what he’d seen. Genevieve was on her side, unmoving, stiff. Arthur’s hand was on her, but he drew it back like he’d been burned. Ellie gently touched the little golden creature and found that she was perfectly cold.
“Oh my god,” she said. “Oh, Genevieve.”
Arthur made a sound like he was choking. “No,” he said. “No.” He shook himself. “No, Aunty Ellie,” he pleaded. He looked about five years old. His narrow shoulders went up to his ears, and he started to shake. “No, please, I want—”
Just like that he crumbled, right before her eyes, and Ellie let him fall into her arms. It had been Ellie who’d bought him the two guinea pigs, Genevieve and Lynette, eight years ago.
Arthur had been six years old, wide-eyed with glee.
Ellie remembered Zara saying gentle hands to him, to temper his excitement, but the truth was he didn’t need the reminder.
He’d been so soft with them, carefully making sure they both got their equal share of the carrot sticks in his hands, whispering to them about how cute they were.