Fourteen
Now
The premiere of The Winter King was a sensory assault. The Leicester Square pavement had been covered in a thick, midnight-blue carpet, flanked on either side by towering barricades that barely managed to contain a horde of film fans.
Molly stood in the staging area just behind the security perimeter, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps.
She looked down at her dress—a sleek, navy-blue velvet number that Karen had picked out for her.
It didn’t require the posture of the Soho green mistake, thank god, but it was incredibly heavy and slinky, hugging her curves like a second skin.
‘You’re doing great, babe. Just look at her, not at them,’ Karen whispered fiercely.
‘You didn’t need to come to this.’
‘I’m just here for support.’
‘You thought I wouldn’t turn up, didn’t you?’
‘No!’ Karen lied. ‘Don’t be silly. Now go and knock ‘em dead,’ she said, giving Molly a final, aggressive pat on the hip before disappearing into the crowd of publicists.
Molly turned her head. Ashley was standing three feet away, talking quietly to a woman with a clipboard. She was wearing a tailored, double-breasted cream suit buttoned to the collarbone, nothing underneath but, presumably, a bra. She looked like she had been born for this.
Ashley looked over, catching Molly’s eye. A sympathetic smile touched her lips, and she walked over.
‘You ready?’ Ashley asked, her low voice cutting through the dull roar of the crowd.
‘I’d rather be doing my tax form,’ Molly muttered, her mouth dry.
Ashley extended her arm, a classic, old-school gesture. Molly slid her hand into the crook of Ashley’s elbow.
You’re an actress playing a role. This is fully within your wheelhouse.
They stepped onto the midnight-blue carpet.
The wall of sound hit them first—a collective, deafening roar from the crowd as they recognised Ashley. Then came the lights. It wasn’t like the sporadic flashes outside the Soho restaurant; this was a continuous, blinding sheet of white lightning.
‘Ashley! Look left!’
‘Molly! Over here! Together!’
‘Ashley, give us a smile! Molly, look at Ashley!’
Molly fixed a wide, brilliant, theatrical smile onto her face, blinking rapidly against the white spots dancing in her vision. She felt Ashley’s arm guiding her forward.
They reached the main press board, a massive wall covered in the logos of luxury watch brands and streaming services.
The photographers here were stacked three-deep on stepladders.
It was a kind of chaos that Molly had spent her career avoiding.
But here she was now, selling herself like the prop she’d become.
‘Turn to your left, ladies! Perfect! Now look at each other!’
Molly turned her head toward Ashley, her smile widening. Ashley turned too, her dark eyes locking onto Molly’s. Ashley’s gaze dropped to Molly’s lips, then back up. And something in her eyes slipped.
I missed you, echoed in Molly’s head.
Molly’s heart did a violent flip. She panicked. The crowd was too loud, the lights were too bright, and Ashley was too close.
‘Right, let’s keep moving!’ Molly said aloud, her voice entirely swallowed by the din. Desperate to break the suffocating intimacy of the moment, she took a confident stride forward to head down the rest of the carpet. Ashley did as she was told, heading onward at a pace.
Molly followed, forgetting about the length of her dress. Molly’s heel caught the back hem of it, hard.
There was no graceful way to recover. With a short, sharp ‘Oof!’ Molly completely lost her footing. She didn’t just stumble; she launched forward in a spectacular, slow-motion dive.
At that moment, Ashley turned, no doubt drawn around by the noise of the clown show happening behind her.
Molly, still falling, flailed her hands wildly, looking for anything that could save her. She felt the hard edge of a nearby camera lens that was there and gone. She kept falling, kept flailing. And her fingers caught the front of Ashley’s tailored cream suit jacket.
But Molly didn’t stop; she kept falling down, down, taking the jacket buttons with her, and Ashley was dragged violently forward by the sheer momentum of Molly’s descent.
A horrified gasp went up from the crowd. The machine-gun clicking of the cameras reached a psychotic speed.
Molly hit the midnight-blue carpet face-first, her arms sprawled out like a fallen skydiver.
For three seconds, the entire British film industry seemed to stop breathing.
Molly lay there, her cheek pressed against the rough, industrial carpet, and she thought, ‘Great. I’ve embarrassed myself completely and irrevocably.’
But it was somehow worse than that.
Because surrounding her were three large, ornate buttons.
No, no, no…
Molly forced herself to look up at Ashley, who’d managed not to go down with her. But it might have been better if she had. Because she was standing there with her cream jacket, now buttonless, pulled wide open to reveal a very generous view of her chest. She was looking down at Molly, agape.
Molly let her face fall back into the carpet with a groan.
Five Years Ago
Molly had never quite worked out how to describe the house without sounding like she was apologising for it.
It was a cavernous old four-story terrace in an unfashionable bit of North London, the sort of place that collected people who were on their way to better things, but not quite there yet.
Every square inch was spoken for: an art student, a trainee nurse on night shifts, Deacon the tube violinist, a recently divorced trucker, a girl who did crafts on YouTube, and an actress trying not to fuck it up with the most intriguing person she’d ever met.
The lounge downstairs was a story of neglect. Stains that had long since given up being identifiable, much less remediable. A sofa so warped it had become an accidental recliner. Molly didn’t bother taking her in there.
She led Ashley up two flights, taking the stairs two at a time to move quickly through the public areas. The house narrowed as they went up, like a pyramid of broke-as-fuck Londoners, with Molly at the acme.
Not that Molly’s room offered much respite from the chaos.
Clothes everywhere, mugs littered every surface.
A cheap bookshelf that looked ready to give out at any moment.
The bed looked like it had collapsed at least once and been Frankensteined back into use with nails and hope.
And there was the Cate Blanchett poster—lopsided, slightly peeling at one corner—having survived more than one move.
Molly glanced at Ashley standing in the doorway, that careful half-smile that people wore when they were deciding whether something was charming or a fire hazard.
‘Home sweet shithole,’ Molly said. She didn’t want to apologise for herself. Somehow, it felt better to say, ‘We got this far honestly. Take the rest and do what you will.’
Ashley stayed by the door a second too long. Hands in her sleeves.
‘You want a drink?’ Molly said.
‘Yes,’ Ashley said.
Molly nodded and found a bottle and two mismatched glasses. One had a chip near the rim. The consummate host, she gave that to herself.
Ashley stepped further into the room but didn’t sit. Probably because she didn’t know where to.
Molly moved things. A shirt off the bed. A mug off the floor.
‘It’s a bit… yeah,’ Molly said.
Ashley gave a small shrug. ‘It’s fine.’
Rain started lightly outside.
‘The bed is sittable. Just don’t move too quickly or it’s a quicksand situation.’
Ashley smiled and perched on the edge of the bed. The bed dipped slightly under Ashley’s weight. The mattress made a soft complaint.
Molly passed a glass over. Their fingers touched for a second too long. Not enough to comment on.
‘Sorry, it’s cheap wine,’ Molly said, sitting half a foot from Ashley on the bed. Not because she didn’t want to be closer, but because she did.
‘It’s fine.’
They drank.
The conversation became easy again. They’d gone through enough in one evening to ensure they had plenty to get them started.
The audition. The gig. The waiting room, the toilet cubicle.
Ashley expressed further certainty that Molly was about to be cast as a lead in a sitcom.
Molly poopooed it. She’d seen smiling producers before.
She wasn’t interested in her next rejection. Only in Ashley.
Molly pushed her to do most of the talking, and happily, Ashley did. Molly, a natural talker—or perhaps more accurately, a natural entertainer—liked it this way. She liked listening to Ashley. Watching that exquisite mouth move, hearing how she saw things, hearing about her life.
‘So, people never know who he is,’ Ashley finished. ‘It’s made him bitter.’
‘Your dad was in Rubix, and no one recognises him?!’ Molly asked, astounded. They were a prog-rock dad-band. Not Molly’s cuppa but she knew them.
‘Technically, he wasn’t really in it. But he was the main session musician, the go-to backup guy.
Eventually, I think he felt he pretty much was in the band.
And then they broke up, and they all went onto other things.
And he was just a guy who used to play in Rubix sometimes.
I think it came as a shock to him. He thought he was a rock star.
But if you don’t compose or write the songs, you’re just a guy who can play guitar.
And now he works in a kitchen showroom on a ring road. ’
‘Shit,’ Molly breathed. ‘And now you’re a musician? What does he make of that?’
‘He passive-aggressively implies I’m gonna fail,’ Ashley said with a sigh.
‘Because he feels like he did and he can’t separate you from him?’ Molly said without thinking.
The second it was out of her mouth, she thought, Too much, you improperly socialised swine.
But Ashley laughed easily. ‘Yeah, that’s about it.’
Phew.
‘So, why do you live with him?’ Molly asked.
‘It’s cheap.’
‘You can’t live with your mum?’
‘Not an option. After she divorced my dad, she got serious about her career, and now she’s a senior regulatory auditor for maritime shipping.’
‘What does that mean, exactly?’ Molly asked.