Chapter Twelve
Claudia
Nick’s gone absolutely ballistic.
Ana’s gone ballistic.
Felix has too.
But Nick …
I’ve never seen him this angry. Not even during our worst rows last year.
It’s just gone ten on Friday morning, a week to the day since we started shooting, and everyone is meant to be taking a breath before we dive back into another six-day run of filming tomorrow.
I should be sleeping. I haven’t managed a decent night of it since the one I spent up in Iris’s room.
Each time I’ve climbed into my and Nick’s bed, I’ve felt like I’m heading into battle against my own insomnia, and the more tired I’ve grown, the more intimidating that battle has turned, whilst my mind – my unruly, wild mind – has become increasingly uncontrollable, the less sleep I’ve got.
And I really don’t want to dwell on how deeply unhinged I by now feel, so I’d be glad to have this excuse not to, if everything happening wasn’t such an utter, sickening nightmare.
It was yesterday lunchtime, first thing LA time, whilst Emma and I were on the control tower soundstage shooting Iris and Clare’s first shift, waiting for Mabel’s Fury to return from Italy, that the tabloids started going live with the clinic’s leaked files.
In fairness, there’s been plenty of disgust directed at those tabloids since – with journalists from the BBC, to Sky News, to the Associated Press, issuing statements condemning the publication of such private details, right down to my son’s weight – but none of that can change the fact that the worst loss of my life has been laid bare for the world to see.
Extracts of my records have been dissected all over social media (what the hell’s a misshapen uterus?), whilst scores of polls have sprung up on Twitter, with users across the globe voting on whether Nick or Felix was really the father, and who, out of the two of them, might have made the cuter kid.
Nick spent most of last night on the phone to his lawyers in LA, who are even now building a case against the clinic for gross negligence. His parents have kept trying to call him from Montana, but he’s refusing to pick up to them.
‘Not until I’ve got something useful to say,’ he’s told me, but I don’t think he’s waiting for that at all.
I think he’s terrified that if he talks to them and lets their concern in, for even a moment, he’ll break down.
Because incensed as I don’t doubt he is about the clinic’s leak, I know he has also, without question, been crushed by the suggestion that anyone but him could have been our tiny little boy’s daddy. I’m crushed by that.
I’ve gone ballistic about that.
It’s what I’ve been on the phone to my lawyers about: getting all those hideous polls, and their accompanying comments, taken down.
‘So, you’re fighting each other’s battles, keeping yourselves from thinking about your own,’ said Mum to me on the phone yesterday evening.
Unlike Nick’s parents, she’s within driving distance, so I had to pick up to her.
She’d only have descended on me here otherwise, probably bringing Phil and my sisters with her.
The three of them have all called too, Phil petrifying me by saying how much he wants to get commenting himself, remind everyone that Nick and I are both human beings with human hearts.
(‘Under no circumstances do that,’ I told him.
‘You’ll only give them more ammunition. And we’re not human, not to them. You know that.’)
‘Does anyone know who’s behind this leak?’ Mum asked me.
‘Apparently not,’ I said. ‘They’re not even sure it was someone inside the clinic. It could have been a hack … ’
‘Well, that would certainly be convenient for the clinic. No blame on them that way. I hope your OB’s apologised.’
‘Of course she has.’ Fiona called me within minutes of the first headline hitting. I was oblivious, filming. Everyone on set was oblivious. Nick, who arrived looking grim, was the one who asked Ana to call a break and took me aside, behind the cameras and lights, breaking to me what was unfolding.
‘I’m so sorry, Claude,’ he said, and didn’t hug me, even though it felt, in that moment like it was all either of us were thinking about him doing.
There were so many people there, though, most of them with their phones out, catching up on the news, glancing our way.
Their attention made me think of Imogen’s note at the end of The Bomber Boys, about Iris and Robbie’s relationship.
As with all great love affairs, theirs largely played out in private. How nice that must have been for them.
‘I’m sorry too,’ I told Nick, but I spoke numbly, still not really feeling … anything.
I didn’t want to feel.
I realise now that that’s why I insisted to Ana and Emma that we continue working.
‘Are you sure?’ said Ana, when, turning from Nick, I called out to her that we should carry on.
‘I’m sure,’ I said, making for the stage.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ said Emma, joining me.
Unlike Nick, she did reach out, laying her hand on my arm.
Her touch was gentle, her round eyes full of compassion.
All of a sudden, I felt my own burn. It was like her sympathy resensitised me, because in a rush, the full enormity of what had happened started to hit me.
I couldn’t let it in.
‘I do have to do this,’ I told Emma, my voice swollen with the pressure of my mounting tears. ‘I can’t face being me.’
‘What about Nick?’ she said, looking over at him, making for the exit with his head bowed, avoiding everyone’s stare.
It was even harder not to cry, watching him go.
‘What about him?’ I said, averting my eyes.
‘I think he might need you to be you.’
‘I can’t,’ I repeated, hating myself for how selfish I was being, yet unable to help it. The temptation to retreat back into Iris was too strong. ‘Please, can we just get going?’
She hesitated.
‘Please, Emma … ’
‘All right,’ she said, with a slow nod. ‘If it’s really what you want.’
‘It’s really what I want.’
‘Ok.’ She squeezed my arm. ‘So, let’s go.’
And we went.
I went.
It’s as though she disappears, that source who spoke to The Screen said.
That’s not what happens, though.
I don’t disappear – how could I? – but I do feel myself slipping, more completely every day, from the realms of my own grief-weary consciousness.
When Emma and I were filming yesterday – adjusting our headphones, issuing instructions (absolutely pancake; I love that line) – I remained aware of the cameras and crew and bluescreens, of course I did, but I didn’t focus on them.
I looked through them, at memories that can’t be memories, of a slowly ticking clock, static in my ears, and an endless night that was dark and frozen and lit by a full moon.
Those memories, or illusions, or whatever they were, are with me still now, nestled in my mind’s eye: yet another layer of lunacy in my teetering stack.
And that source was right about it being disturbing.
It’s got so there are times that I don’t feel so much that I’m breaking down, as breaking apart.
And I haven’t even told anyone, which is making me feel madder yet.
But I can’t talk about it. I can’t. I’m still clinging to the hope that it will all somehow stop.
Except yesterday, I chased the madness, for as long as I could, because as much as it frightened me, the idea of returning to the present scared me even more.
I had to come back to the here and now at some point though, and when I did, I went straight to my trailer.
I’m honestly not sure how long I stayed there, shaking, crying, googling stress-induced hallucinations – and, before I could stop myself, my miscarriage.
But eventually I got a hold of myself enough to return Fiona’s call.
I had to talk to her. She was incredibly kind to me when it all happened, and very upset on the phone.
‘In pieces, actually,’ I told Mum.
‘Probably worried about what this will do to her reputation.’
‘Fiona’s not like that.’ She wasn’t. I’ve been in this business long enough to know when someone’s being genuine, and Fiona’s guilt felt raw and sincere. ‘I don’t actually want to sue the clinic. She’s the one who’ll pay, and it’s not her fault.’
‘The clinic will have insurance,’ Mum said witheringly. ‘Don’t worry about them. Worry about you. And Nick.’ She paused: frowning, I could tell. ‘I wasn’t trying to say that you shouldn’t worry about him before. That boy’s as lost as you.’
‘He’s a thirty-five-year-old man, Mum,’ I said, but with a sigh, because I knew she was right.
He’s been lost since his hopeless race to get from New York to LA in time to be by my side in the delivery room.
I’ve never properly faced up to that before now.
I knew he was sad, of course I did. If he hadn’t been, he’d never have spent all those nights trying to escape his feelings in bars, or by going to the lengths he did to prepare for this movie.
But I realise now I haven’t let myself absorb just how broken he’s been.
I don’t know why it’s taken all this time, and all of this hideousness, for me to finally do that.
Maybe I was too angry before – that old crutch I’ve been using of fury in place of grief.
Or perhaps I was just too scared of how much it would hurt to feel Nick’s pain as well as my own.
It’s hurting me now, doing that.
It’s hurting very much.
And the worse I hurt, the guiltier I feel, because no matter what he, or Fiona, or Mum might say about none of this being my fault, it was in my body that it all happened.
‘Be kind to yourself,’ Mum said to me, before she hung up. ‘No more of these lone walks in the woods, please. And don’t forget that the hateful voices might be loud, but it’s the kind ones that are strong. There’s much more goodness in this world than bad, Claude, I promise.’
Is she right?
It hasn’t felt much like it, these past twenty-four hours.