Chapter Eighteen
Miranda
Miranda drives in silence while she hears Evelyn’s life story, still a bit shocked at herself for deliberately swerving in the road, with an elderly passenger beside her, no less. Back in the day, her dad had taught her to drive (a fairly testing experience for them both), and he’d been so keen to impress upon her the weighty responsibility of a driving licence that on her very first lesson, before she’d so much as heard the words Mirror-Signal-Manoeuvre, he had intoned sternly, ‘You are now in charge of a two-tonne killing machine. You need to remember that fact every single time you get behind the wheel.’ Yes, Dad, she had replied meekly, but later hadn’t been able to resist doing stern-faced impressions of him to her siblings that became a running joke between them for months on end. ( You are now in charge of a two-tonne killing machine: your bumhole! )
She can only imagine what he would say about her impulsively wrenching the wheel over like that in a burst of pique, how the blood would drain from his face in appalment.
Sorry, Pops, she thinks, keeping her hands at ten to two on the wheel like he’d first instructed her. She’s had a couple of messages from her parents by now, nice chatty ones about the cat, and the neighbours’ new granddaughter, which has left her feeling less of a total outcast. You take care of yourself now, her mum had signed off last night. You’ll get through this, and we love you. Miranda can’t lie, she’d burst into tears when she read the words; she has been feeling so alone lately. Thanks, Mum, she’d replied. Ipromise I’m going to sort everything out.
She puts them out of her mind and tunes back in to Evelyn’s stories about the fabulous-sounding Rose. Gosh, she thinks, will anyone ever fall madly in love with me the way that Evelyn and Rose seemed to love one another? She’s dated a lot of shallow pretty boys in her time, but there’s never been any depth. Never any real love. ‘You need to love yourself first, Miranda,’ she’s been told by every therapist she’s ever had, but she hasn’t even been able to manage that. It figures that the hotel barman wasn’t interested in her either the other night, she remembers mournfully; he was probably able to detect the toxic streak running through her. One Star, Would Not Recommend, that’s the signal she seems to be giving out.
She sniffs surreptitiously. Get over yourself, Miranda . ‘So, you coming back here, is this like a tribute to Rose?’ she asks.
‘Um. . .’ Rather uncharacteristically, Evelyn hesitates. ‘Yes, you could call it that,’ she says. She swings her head away to look out of the window, and Miranda gets the distinct impression there’s something she’s not being told. ‘Anyway,’ she goes on, ‘enough about my wife. Tell me more about the show you were acting on. Did you like it there?’
Miranda slows as she passes a cheerful-looking mutt that appears to be taking itself for a walk. ‘ Amberley Emergency ? Well. . . it’s not something I’d have watched in my own free time, put it like that, but it was a regular acting job with decent pay, so in those terms it was pretty good.’ She’s been in touch sporadically with Todd, but hasn’t been able to face asking how they’re working around her absence in the script. No doubt her character has suddenly gone on holiday, or perhaps has been taken violently ill. She imagines the writers, some of whom she has clashed with previously, enjoying the task of having to write Miranda’s character out altogether. They’ll probably give her the most horrific, revolting death, including a scene where the other characters discuss in hushed tones how awful it was to hear that Doctor Kelly died of a freak case of the bubonic plague, covered in suppurating boils, or whatever other ghastly end they dream up.
‘Would you go back if they begged you, do you think, or have you got your eye on another project now?’ Evelyn wants to know.
Miranda snorts, because it doesn’t exactly work like that in her industry. ‘Oh yeah, I’ve got my eye on a leading role in a Hollywood box-office smash, playing a smart, brave, incredibly nuanced heroine,’ she replies sarcastically– and probably kind of bitterly too, let’s face it. ‘But back in the real world,’ she adds, in case Evelyn has missed the point, ‘there sadly is no other project on the horizon. So yeah, if they begged me– and chucked Bonnie Beresford off the cast– then, for the sake of my mortgage, I’d probably have to crawl back on set. Ugh.’ It’s not a great thought, however badly she needs the money.
‘Bonnie Beresford is the one you—’ Evelyn begins cautiously, then breaks off, as if she isn’t quite sure how to say ‘slapped in the face and shoved up against a wall’.
‘She’s the one,’ Miranda confirms, gruff-voiced. ‘Although Ithought we weren’t talking about that any more.’
‘Sorry,’ Evelyn says meekly. ‘Ooh, by the way, have you seen all that stuff in the news about Frank Neale? You know he’s staying at our hotel, don’t you?’
‘What stuff?’ asks Miranda, who has been on a self-imposed news and social media blackout for two days, since she saw the sickening press release about that smirky twat, Giles Shelby, landing the lead role in a massive new Netflix thriller. Not now, Satan, she’d thought, and immediately deleted her apps.
‘Oh gosh! So much stuff! There’s a Panorama programme coming out later this month and it’s all about what a sex pest he was in the nineties and early. . . Inever know what to call that decade,’ Evelyn says. ‘The noughts? The two-thousands? Then, anyway. Lots of women have come forward with stories of harassment, and other nastiness.’
‘God,’ says Miranda. ‘Ihate to say it but it’s not a huge surprise.’ At least this will send her plunging down the news agenda for a while, she thinks, wrinkling her nose. ‘Iwas wondering why his wife always looks so unhappy whenever I’ve seen her around the hotel,’ she goes on. ‘They must have known this was coming.’
‘Poor woman, Iagree. Did she have any idea he was that kind of man, do you think? Surely she wouldn’t have stayed with him and put up with that, if she’d been aware?’
Before Miranda can reply, the navigation app on her phone pipes up. ‘In two hundred yards, turn left at the junction,’ it orders.
‘Got it,’ murmurs Miranda, temporarily shelving Frank Neale for a proper deep-dive chat later.
‘Fiskardo two kilometres,’ Evelyn comments, pointing at the sign. ‘We’re nearly there.’ She reaches down and picks up her small tan-coloured handbag, then cradles it on her lap. ‘Nearly there,’ she repeats under her breath.
Miranda shoots her a questioning look, but Evelyn is staring down at the bag and it’s hard to tell what’s on her mind. ‘Everything all right?’ she asks as she slows at the junction. ‘What are you planning to do when we get to Fiskardo anyway? Is there somewhere in particular you’ve got lined up to revisit? Evelyn?’ she prompts when there’s no answer forthcoming.
Evelyn takes a few moments to reply. ‘I’m not sure,’ she says vaguely, her hands tightening round the bag.
Miranda glances over at her again, before she has to focus on a junction. ‘Um. . . Are you okay?’ she asks once they’re through the other side. ‘Ifeel like there’s something you’re not saying. Imean, you don’t have to tell me anything , obviously, but if you want to, then. . .’
‘I’m fine,’ Evelyn replies, then gusts a sigh. ‘Or rather,’ she goes on, ‘I’m like you: trying to be fine, pretending to be fine, not always succeeding. We’re a right pair, aren’t we?’ There’s another pause, and then: ‘Ithink today might be. . . difficult,’ she says, her voice unusually flat. ‘And Idon’t know if Iam brave enough to do. . . what I’m supposed to be doing.’
Wow, that’s all very cryptic, Miranda thinks, but she doesn’t push for further details. ‘Okay, Ihear you,’ she says. They’re nearly into the town now and she needs to concentrate on finding somewhere to park. ‘Let’s just get to Fiskardo,’ she suggests, ‘and then we can take it from there.’