FEBRUARY 2003
THE WAR OF THE NOMINATIONS DWINDLED TO A TRYST. The expected flood nonexistent.
We were ignored by the Critics’ Choice Awards and the various Guild awards were a clear snub—though they’d never quite warmed to me anyway.
Even when I won my Oscar, I lost the preceding SAG and wasn’t even nominated for the PGA.
But those awards were normally such clear predictors of the Oscars that even if Ruchi hadn’t warned me of their prejudice against me, I didn’t dare hope for a nomination this time around.
So it was the BAFTAs.
America and its awards wanted nothing to do with us, but the British Academy called us home. The BAFTAs stood like a monolith: London was where we began, after all. A battle on home territory—and wasn’t that part of my tale too?
Maldon, but push it fifty miles to the west.
Strip it of its honor. Make it a conquest. And there we were, preparing to fight on the screens that made us.
Whenever I was forced back to England for premieres or filming, I was in and out as quickly as possible, like it couldn’t stick if I barely touched down.
But this was it, the final battle, the one to win.
I didn’t avoid the memories, I embraced them.
I flew into London early to spend a few days retracing the city.
I walked the bridge to Langstone House. I toured the CADS campus.
I strolled the streets of Bethnal Green.
I made calls—booked nights catching up with the British actors I’d filmed with over the years.
Was it always so easy? Company this ready to find?
Or were they just desperate to share in my spotlight?
We flocked to spas and bars and one very cheap pub in Shoreditch that I remembered was popular in my student days, shocked to find this my first time stepping foot in it.
We went thoroughly unrecognized for the whole evening until we rolled into the kebab shop next door and the man at the counter shrieked with recognition before piling us with gyros.
Still, even while I chased the past, I’d opted stay out in Richmond to be on the edge of the city, away from its relentless buzz. Deciding I didn’t need a taxi that night, I ran all the way from the station to the hotel in the frigid rain.
I nearly collided with Harper as she left the elevator.
“Dear god, Nadine,” she wrinkled her nose. “At least wear a waterproof eyeliner if you’re going to be out in this.”
“I wouldn’t venture into it if I were you, you might disintegrate.” I reached to push my sopping hair back. Harper appearing where she shouldn’t was so common that it took my intoxicated mind a moment to catch up to the absurdity of her presence. “What are you doing here anyway?”
“A true mystery.”
“You know what I mean. Of all the hotels …”
“It wasn’t intentional,” she snapped. “Trust me, if Joel finds out you’re here he’ll be livid. We’re mostly staying at his—he still has a house in Berkshire. But we figured it might be useful to stay a little closer for the actual ceremony.”
I wasn’t sure why she was explaining herself—but Joel’s potential ire seemed to have her on edge.
She snapped back to herself. “Wear something bright tomorrow, won’t you? I’d love to see you looking up to me from the crowd when I collect my award.”
———
Amos brought my dress to my hotel room before the ceremony.
A delay in alterations meant I hadn’t tried it on yet, and I gasped as he unveiled it.
It was longer than I’d expected—ever since my shift in public perception we’d been leaning into how fun I was now, how occasionally reckless.
But this was fun, in an elegant whimsical sort of way.
“Alexander McQueen,” Amos said, as I reached for the beads.
They were what had delayed us, and I could now see why.
The whole thing was layered in dozens of tiny navy beads, even the heart-shaped bodice, but where it dipped into a mermaid tail the beads shifted to silver, roiling stars dripping into entire galaxies.
It made me think of a scene from In Your Own Way, where Rita dreams of waltzing in the stars but can’t keep from sinking through the clouds.
The whole dress felt just like that: a dream that could find no stable footing.
“It doesn’t have pockets,” I said.
“Oh, give me this one,” he snapped, then laughed. “It’s not going to break your rib cage like some dresses I could mention.”
Well, at least we were joking about that now.
“Thank you,” I said quietly. “It’s perfect.”
My hair was twisted up into an elegant knot, my ears studded with cascades of silver, and I was told my car was ready.
I saw Harper then, only briefly but still, here without the cameras it felt private, even if it was a hotel foyer, people jotted about, her own husband moving to the other side of the car door.
“Behave tonight. We don’t need the press,” Joel barked before his door shut.
But Harper hovered outside a second longer. Her lips were a wine-dark red, and she wore plunging green satin that skimmed her every inch. She caught me, startled for a moment, and then smiled. Just like she always did.
And I thought to myself then, like I knew what was coming, that Harper would smile to the very end.
———
Caleb Krause was nominated in the supporting actor category for his work in Sunken Bride, and he was so thoroughly delighted he ran across the red carpet, cutting up other people’s interviews to sweep me up by the waist and spin me.
“We did it Heywood! We’re here!”
I did not point out that I had been here before. Bless him—it felt like decades ago that we’d been sitting beside each other at the Oscars.
Caleb had been trying so hard to break out of the comedic sidekick roles he kept being given, and I was genuinely very happy for him to be rewarded for doing so.
Moreover, his joy was infectious and allowed me to admit just how much I wanted this too.
I wanted every award, of course, but this felt … definitive somehow.
Almost like we had an unspoken agreement to put this all to rest.
This rivalry, born out of many things but not least Harper’s boredom, and finally I felt she was bored of me too.
She had a husband now, a name that carried itself.
I was more accomplished, but she was worth more.
Maybe that was where we ought to leave things.
It had been a year of such little effort from her. Maybe it was time to bury this.
I wanted to let her go, and I wanted to act out to clutch on tight, but most of all I wanted the final ovation; I wanted the curtains to fall with me on the stage and her in the shadows.
I wanted to win.
The lights were too dim, focused on the stage. I knew who I was with a camera and a bright light on me, in the dark, I fumbled. I plummeted.
I wanted.
I didn’t know when I would stop being so terrified of this hunger within.
Applause. Lights. Music. Laughter, as the host’s voice blurred.
Categories, awards, winners, applause, Harper’s laugh carrying above the others, plucking some cord within me that chimes and chimes and chimes.
“And the winner is …”
An intake of breath.
“Nadine Heywood.”
I came back to myself, the edges of me slotting together from where they had slipped away, and then I was on the stage, the award pressed into my hands, and the lights found me, the camera locked.
I looked everywhere but at Harper as I made my speech.
I was letting her go.
———
“Come on, Nadine, please,” Caleb begged, clutching his own award like he was worried someone might snatch it from him. “We won together.”
I was not sure where this assertion came from, but evidently he believed it, or why would he be wasting his time after achieving a dream like this begging me to come celebrate it with him?
“Look,” he finally sighed, sensing I wouldn’t budge. “You’ve got my number. Call me if you change your mind.”
And then something shifted in the man who had been there through my worst loss, the pothead who laughed with me during the Oscars, the man who had hugged me on the carpet mere hours ago: His gaze sharpened and something in me pulled in response.
His gaze flicked to my lips, only for a second, before meeting my eyes again. “I’d really like to see you there.”
“Thank you,” I managed, and I looked up, around, wondered if it was just to avoid his gaze and then realized it’s because I was looking for her, to see what she made of this little exchange.
But Harper was already gone, slipped quietly away.
I went back to my hotel room. I didn’t want to be party-girl Nadine, not tonight.
If I’m honest I wanted to go to a bar with Harper, maybe Langstone House for old time’s sake, and I wanted to clink my glass against hers and raise a toast to all that we had achieved and acknowledge whatever we were losing here too.
But that obviously wasn’t an option. Harper had a life outside of me. I had this hotel room and Caleb’s number saved in my contacts.
I couldn’t get the dress off alone, had to phone Amos and have him unfasten the buttons down its back.
I wondered if Joel did this for Harper. I thought of her fingers trailing down my back as she laced me into that metal dress.
Amos left quickly, and I let the dress pool around me before taking off my makeup, unpinning my hair—all so tedious, all so ruinous, the Nadine that had taken hours to create falling away.
I stared at the trophy while the bath ran, and I thought about ordering room service, food or wine, and it all felt so sad, so underwhelming.
My breath hitched, trying to halt the tears I felt brewing.
That maybe this wasn’t worth it. That maybe none of this was worth it.
A sharp rap sounded upon my door, and I pulled my robe tighter about me and opened it.
There was Harper, makeup smudged but hair pristine, her bottom lip plump and wavering.
She wore that hunk of turquoise around her neck again, like luck might have been enough to best me. Or to save her.
It was specked with blood.
The rest of her was drenched in it.
“I didn’t know where else to go.”