Chapter Sixteen
Claudia and Iris
I tried to sleep too, but I couldn’t, so I left Nick a note, grabbed a spare blanket, and headed upstairs – in part because I was just too upset to go on lying next to him.
We’d argued a lot that evening, about a whole load of things, from his insistence on pressing ahead with the lawyers, to a cryptic text I saw pop up on his phone from an unnamed number, asking him if he’d changed his mind yet (‘Changed your mind about what?’ I asked him.
‘It’s nothing,’ he said, swiping the text away), to his pause before agreeing with Tim that he thought I was the cat’s pyjamas (‘It was like you weren’t sure,’ I said.
‘Seriously?’ he said. ‘You believe that?’), to his suspicion that I wasn’t being open with him about what had gone on with Tim after I went back to his room for my phone.
‘Nothing went on,’ I said, reluctant, for obvious reasons, to get into Tim’s warning that Felix is in love with me, let alone how, looking at his photo of the crew, I saw Robbie come to life, let alone how much I was still spinning out over that, and my moment in Bettys Bar.
Let alone how crushed I’d felt when it had been over.
‘He was half asleep. He told me my eyes are like Iris’s. ’ Windows to your soul. ‘That’s all.’
‘That’s not all. You’ve been acting weird ever since.’
‘I’m sorry you think I’m weird.’
‘I said you’ve been acting weird.’
‘I suppose if I was the cat’s pyjamas … ’
‘Jesus Christ, Claude. I think you’re the cat’s pyjamas, ok?’
I hated that we’d ended the day like that, when only a few hours before we’d been holding hands. It was like a brief window had opened, making that possible for us again, and somehow we’d slammed it shut.
But that wasn’t the only reason I went upstairs.
After days of being too intimidated to return to the attic after dark, I felt myself drawn, irresistibly, up there.
Perversely, I wanted to discover if I could see those flares again, hear those planes.
Ever since I’d left Tim, I’d been replaying my slip back to Bettys on repeat, and was craving more.
I needed another fix.
I saw no flares that night though.
I heard no planes.
No matter how intently I stared down at the set from the attic window, it remained silent, bathed in the fluorescent glow of Jeff’s security lights.
Dejectedly, I wrapped myself up on Iris’s bed, and dreamt dreams that began as scenes from the movie, then took a turn, filling with other actors, different lines, crowds in a pub, smoke in the air, the taste of boiled sweets, and homemade apple cake.
When I woke, I felt disorientated, giddy. It was as though I’d returned from a journey on which I’d left half of myself still travelling.
All day long on set, I continued to feel that part of me missing, except for during shooting, when, as Iris, I became secure in my own skin again.
Safe.
Off-camera, I know I was quiet, I’m aware I was withdrawn, and Nick wasn’t the only one to throw a frowning look my way when, in our breaks, I sat apart from everyone, grappling with my dislocation at finding myself back in fifty per cent, worrisome, past-tense me.
She’s another escape route for you, Mum said to me of Iris, back on Parliament Hill. A fresh golden ticket to a different mind, a different world.
Iris’s mind doesn’t feel different any more though.
Her world doesn’t.
There are times when she feels more me, than me.
‘That doesn’t sound entirely healthy,’ said Emma, when I confided in her about that much.
‘It’s helping,’ I told her.
‘Is it?’ she asked, dubiously.
‘It really is,’ I said.
And, on-camera, it really has been. That day in Bettys, as Iris, I joked with Felix, I chatted with Emma, I teased and smiled with Nick, kissing him for the first time in longer than I’m ok thinking about – pressing my body against his with my nerves firing, and his heart hammering against mine – and what we canned was great, I know it was all great.
‘Circle it,’ Ana said, over and again, and I enjoyed myself.
There was this one moment whilst we were all jitterbugging – Felix with me, Nick with Emma – when Emma landed on Nick’s head, with such comedic inelegance that none of us could hold it together, and I laughed.
I laughed so much. It felt good. They were such fun scenes.
Caught up in them, swept up in Iris, I forgot everything else.
I wasn’t lonely, I wasn’t scared, or failing. I was happy.
‘You looked happy,’ said Felix to me, when, the day finished, we walked behind Emma and Nick, back to our trailers. ‘What about now?’
‘Now?’ I turned, meeting his dark gaze, and, thinking of all the long weeks we’d been at odds, found a smile, because he was there, with me. ‘Now, I’m glad we’re talking again.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’m glad about that too.’
Only, he didn’t seem glad.
He seemed … edgy.
Preoccupied.
‘Are you ok?’ I asked.
‘Me?’ he said. ‘Yeah, of course. I’m fine. Just tired from swinging you around all day.’ He summoned a smile of his own.
I made mine bigger.
But we were both acting, and not particularly well.
He wasn’t ok, I could tell.
We still weren’t.
Not completely.
There was still this lurking reticence between us, and I hated it.
The filming at least has continued to go well all week.
Magically, as The Screen’s source has said.
Really, that part of things no longer worries me at all.
It feels absurd, actually, that I ever struggled to believe I’d be able to make myself into Iris, when every day I’ve found myself morphing into her more completely than the one before.
It’s being here that’s made that happen, I have no doubt about that.
Back in rehearsals, Iris was purely a character to me: an elusive, ungraspable character; lines on a page, and nowhere to be found in that soulless LA room.
She was here.
All along, she was here: in her cottage; out in the woods.
Up in her bedroom.
‘I don’t want you to keep sleeping there,’ Nick said to me on Saturday morning, after our first night apart. ‘I’m afraid of what it’s doing to you. Where it might take us … ’
‘This isn’t about us,’ I told him. ‘It’s about the movie. This is a job. I want to get it right.’
‘You are getting it right. There’s something else going on. Something else taking you up there … ’
‘No … ’
‘Yes.’
‘No.’
‘Then stay down here tonight. Please.’
I planned to.
But that night, after he fell asleep, I lay beside him, full of frustration that he’d once again called his lawyers, and sadness, so much sadness, over our kiss in Bettys Bar, and all the incredible moments we’ve now shared as Iris and Robbie, so effortlessly, when it just keeps being so bloody hard to be us.
I became sadder yet thinking about how great he was with all the kids in Heaton, then, those women he was photographed with in those bars, who maybe he really didn’t so much as look at, not even that one who kept cropping up. Maybe she was just a fan.
But what if he had looked?
What if I set him free to do that in the future, and give her, or someone like her, a chance?
Might he end up happier than I can ever make him?
Restlessly, I kicked off my covers, and stared at the ceiling, picturing the attic above.
I glanced sideways at Nick, then – wide awake and fearing I was on course to spend the rest of the night that way – caved to temptation, slipping from our bed, and creeping back upstairs.