Chapter Twenty-One #3
‘Seriously, Claude, it’s fine. I’ve always known it’s just friends for us. I realised that when we auditioned for The Go-Between.’ Fleetingly, a smile lifted his leaden expression. ‘It was you telling me about your laxative commercial.’
In spite of myself, I smiled too, replaying his laughter. ‘You snorted Sprite out of your nose.’
‘You acted constipated for an ad that got pulled.’
‘At least it did get pulled.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘small mercies.’
And, as we fell silent, our smiles fading, I looked across at him – my friend, my brilliant friend, for all these years – feeling worse than ever for the pain I’d caused him.
You turned so cold, so fast.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said again. ‘I was thoughtless. Self-obsessed.’
‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘But you were also in hell, and I shouldn’t have flinched.
Not the way I did.’ He exhaled. ‘I’ve been feeling like I’ve stumbled into Tim’s story, becoming this point on a triangle I’ve never wanted to be part of.
’ He gave me a weary look. ‘I hated having to convince Nick of that. I hate that I ever came between you.’
‘If it hadn’t been you, it would have been something or someone else.
’ Such a miserable truth. ‘I really am sorry, Felix. It’s been scaring me that we’ll never get back to how we were.
’ I frowned, thinking of the niggling tension that had persisted between us, like an unshakeable virus, reappearing every time I’d started to hope it might have gone away. ‘I love you way too much for that.’
‘I love you too, you idiot,’ he said. ‘But … god –’ he closed his eyes – ‘I’m the one who’s sorry.’ He pulled in a breath. Shook his head. ‘I have to tell you something.’ He sounded so suddenly abject, I genuinely feared he might be ill.
My trepidation grew as he jerked to his feet, pacing the small room, all too obviously summoning the courage to go on.
‘Felix,’ I said, ‘what’s wrong?’
Warily, he eyeballed me.
‘Just say it,’ I said.
And, with a pained grimace, he did.
‘I’m the one who’s been speaking to The Screen,’ he blurted. ‘I’m their anonymous source.’
I didn’t react.
I couldn’t.
I felt stupefied.
So, this was why he’d been acting the way he had?
Not because of me, at all, but because he’d been hiding … this?
Oh my god, I thought.
Oh my God.
‘The reporter, Kate, called me a couple of hours after we had that row in your trailer,’ he said, ‘reminded me I owed her a favour.’ He talked on, telling me that not every photo taken of us in Sicily was from when we were acting.
There were others too, which The Screen have been sitting on, of us having dinner at this little place we used to go to on the rocks.
‘Obviously we weren’t doing anything wrong,’ he said, ‘but they looked fairly intimate, and I knew they’d fuel the fire, so when Kate showed them to me back in August, I convinced her not to print them and said in return I’d help her out with the inside track on this shoot.
’ He tugged his hand through his hair. ‘I didn’t think about what I was promising.
I just wanted to kill those photos. When she called again, I should have told her to forget it, but I was still really angry over everything with you, not thinking straight, and I couldn’t see a way round it. So, I … talked.’
‘Right,’ I said, the anaesthesia of my shock already fading, anger taking over as I replayed everything Kate had written. ‘You talked. Nearly got Emma fired. Said Nick’s casting was a publicity stunt. That I might … shatter, was it?’
‘She twisted my words. Paraphrased, left stuff out … ’
‘Yes, that’s what they all do.’
‘I’m sorry. I am … ’
‘Felix …’ I was incredulous. ‘… you told them Nick and I were sleeping in separate rooms.’
‘No.’ His face hardened. ‘That wasn’t me. They had no quote for that. The word is, was all they said. Kate must have got it from one of the staff. I refused to comment when she asked me … ’
‘You refused to comment?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why couldn’t you have said it wasn’t bloody true?’
‘God, Claude, I don’t know. I screwed up.’
‘You one hundred per cent did,’ I snapped.
And yet, even in the hot haze of my fury, I understood why he’d done it.
I was grateful that he’d done it.
I didn’t need to see those photos of us, dining by candlelight on the shores of the starlit sea, to know I never wanted them to get out.
I just couldn’t bring myself to say that to him. Or admit to myself what a hypocrite I was, for still being so mad at Nick.
I was too caught up in my own righteous indignation.
‘Does anyone else know?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘You need to tell them.’
‘I will.’
‘When?’
‘Soon. Just … please,’ his eyes implored me, ‘let me do it in my own time, ok? Let it come from me.’
‘Fine,’ I said, grudgingly. ‘Don’t take too long though.’
‘I won’t.’ He exhaled, sat back on Clare’s bed. ‘I can’t tell you how glad I am that I’ve finally told you. Even if you hate me forever, at least you know.’
I won’t hate you forever.
Again, I didn’t say it.
I wish now I had.
I wish I’d told him I could never hate him, and that it was all right, he’d done what he had with the best intentions.
But I remained silent.
Cold.
‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated. ‘I really didn’t come up here to drop this all on you.’
‘Why did you come?’
‘Because it’s killing me, seeing you and Nick in all this unnecessary pain.’
‘That’s not my fault.’
‘It’s not Nick’s either. Fine, he let his defences down, screwed up too, but only because he’s a really decent human and probably wasn’t imagining anyone would stoop so low as to do something like this. So, give him a break, hey?’
I didn’t agree to do anything.
I asked Felix to leave me alone.
And, with a sigh, he did, whilst I remained in the attic, furious at myself and him now, as well as Nick, but still Nick most of all, growing evermore incredulous, the angrier I got, that he’d been so careless as to let Chelsea near him, for long enough that Elodie had snapped her picture.
It was Elodie who got his number off Hannah’s phone. Chelsea’s been texting him ever since – Nick’s shown me her messages – asking to see him again, I bet I’m a lot more fun than Claudia, eventually threatening to go live with her photo unless he gave in.
Have you changed your mind?
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked him on Saturday.
‘I almost did,’ he said. ‘The night we got here.’
I remember it.
It was after Ana’s welcome dinner. He grabbed me as I came out of the bathroom.
What is it? I asked him.
I’m glad you’re here, he said, that’s all.
‘I couldn’t bring myself to make you more unhappy,’ he’s now told me. ‘And I was scared, Claude, that you wouldn’t believe it had been nothing. You’ve been so convinced I’ve got it in me to cheat. All I’ve wanted is for us to have this time here to have another go.’
‘It was Nick, wasn’t it, who gave you your BAFTA for The Go-Between?’ Ellen says, her voice pulling me from my miserable thoughts.
‘You saw that?’
‘Yes. I was on the edge of my seat for you.’
‘You were?’ Through my upset, I manage a smile, touched. ‘Thank you.’
‘I imagine it was a very happy night.’
‘It was.’
Nick had won best actor the year before, for his part in a 1920s underworld thriller, so was on stage to present best actress. He grinned as he pulled the card from its envelope and leant towards the mic, announcing my name.
We hadn’t met before. Felix hadn’t yet had the chance to introduce us.
But we’d had our eye on each other, even then.
I’m in awe of you, Nick said into my ear, his hand closing around mine as I joined him on the stage: his touch, his voice, making my already racing heart pump.
‘You nearly tripped over,’ says Ellen.
‘I did,’ I agree. ‘He caught me.’
‘You both laughed. You couldn’t stop. You could barely get your acceptance speech out. Every time you looked back at him, it set you off … ’
‘Yes,’ I say, heavily.
I feel no urge to laugh now.
I want to cry.
We were friends first, for years. I used to tease him, actually, for his playboy ways.
I know he was never untrue to his girlfriends, he just had lots of them, and I suppose I must have been jealous, because I’d roll my eyes and accuse him of being a brat-pack poster boy, which he was always infuriatingly amused by.
(‘It was either laugh or cry,’ he’s since said.) Then, three years ago, we wound up on the same flight to London from LA, got drunk in my suite, and that was that.
‘It used to be really easy between us,’ I say. ‘Then it got so … hard.’
‘I do understand,’ says Ellen. ‘I was let down once. Very badly. By a man who wore a USAAF uniform, and used to take me to Bettys.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, taken aback, as much by the intimacy as her corroboration of what I told her I saw back then.
And I am sorry.
I don’t like to think of her hurt.
‘It was decades ago,’ she says. ‘I’ve had time to heal. But, Claudia, you’re very raw. You’re not in a good state at all. So please be extremely sure, won’t you, before making any decisions about what your life should look like.’
‘I have no idea what my life should look like,’ I say, and, expelling a ragged breath, tip my head forwards, sinking it into my hands.
My scar still hurts. I run my finger over it, remembering Nick kissing me in my shower cap, and have to bite my cheeks to keep them under control.
‘I love him,’ I say. ‘I love him so much. But I can’t give him what he needs.
And it feels like we’ll never be able to be us.
We’ll always have the press watching, waiting for us to slip up.
And lately … lately … ’ I swallow. ‘Lately, it’s seemed like all we’ve had is bad.
I can’t sentence us to a lifetime of that, and I can’t see our way out. ’
‘So, you’ve been finding another one. Retreating into Iris.’
I don’t respond.
‘Things were by no stretch easy for her,’ Ellen says. ‘They were hard. Insurmountably hard, in the end.’
‘Do you know what happened to her?’ I ask.
This time, she’s the one who doesn’t reply.
Slowly, I raise my eyes back to hers.