Chapter 12
Twelve
I WAS NEVER THE favourite. I knew that early on, as only siblings can.
‘Chloe, Shannon,’ Mum called from the patio door, ‘dinner in ten minutes.’
We were two halves, two peach stones grown within a single fleshy womb. Our parents pinned back our hair with lavender and pink bows so they could tell us apart, so alike were we.
It happened in the garden. I’d been unwell.
‘Give it here,’ my sister said, trying to yank the lavender bow from my hair. ‘You’ve been sick all day. Now it’s my turn.’
I gave in and unclipped it. ‘I’m not faking,’ I mumbled.
‘I know,’ she said haughtily, unpinning her own and handing it to me. ‘But you’ve had Mum to yourself and had ice cream and watched telly all day, and now I want a go.’
I watched her fasten the bow in place; the transformation was immediate. I stifled a mucusy cough. My twin was the sick one now.
‘There,’ she said, combing her fingers through her hair and kneeling on the rough stone slabs that surrounded the pond. ‘Now, come here.’
I obeyed her.
She had an old jam jar. ‘Look at this,’ she said, rolling up her frilly sleeve and lowering the jar into the pond. ‘We did frogspawn today.’
I inched away from her, afraid of the milky, jelly-like globules floating on the surface of the water. A blackbird hopped across the grass.
‘Are you scared?’ she asked, grinning like a cat and holding the now-full jar up to the light.
The bird flew away. ‘No,’ I said, trying not to stare directly at the jar and what looked like a thousand swirling eyes.
‘You are.’ She brandished it at me and I reared back. She laughed. ‘Don’t be such a baby. They can’t hurt you.’ She stood up.
I copied her. ‘What are they?’
‘Eggs. One day they’ll turn into frogs.’
‘How?’
She shrugged. ‘They just decide one day.’
I dared myself to go closer. ‘They look yucky.’
I took a step towards her and we both peered inside the jar.
She squeezed her hand below the rim and poked the alien substance.
But then she gave me a sly look and, without warning, grabbed my wrist. I tried to yank my arm away but she pulled me towards her, hooked a finger into my blouse and poured the contents of the jar down my front.
I felt cold pond water gush across my chest and stomach, the slimy, gelatinous eggs sliding down my skin.
She laughed and I pulled myself away from her, hot tears burning at the corners of my eyes.
‘I HATE YOU!’ I screamed. ‘I HATE YOU, SHANNON!’
She was still laughing, more now, bent double at the waist.
That was the first time I felt the glass descend, the darkness clouding my vision.
I ran at her.
‘GET OFF ME, CHLOE!’ she yelled.
We tussled and tumbled in the grass like cubs before she, always the stronger one, managed to pull herself away from me and clamber to her feet. That’s when it happened. That’s when she tripped.
I heard a crack.
‘Shannon . . .’ I said, sitting back on my haunches and panting. ‘Shannon?’
She was lying on her front, limp like a doll, her face in the pond.
I climbed to my feet and nudged her side with my toe. ‘Get up, silly.’
Her head bobbed on the crimson water.
‘Shannon,’ I said, louder this time, the panic finally starting to build in my chest. ‘Stop it now or I’ll tell Mum.’
The phone rang inside the house. ‘Hiya – yeah no, I’m just doing their tea. What time will you be back?’
‘Shannon,’ I hissed, my eyes welling up. ‘Shannon, stop it.’
But she didn’t move, and slowly it began to dawn on me; my sister was dead.
‘Girls, did you hear me? I said your tea’s ready,’ I heard Mum call. ‘And I’d like you to both use the loo and wash your hands this time, please.’
I saw the bow, my bow, still attached to her hair, floating on the surface of the water like a lily pad.
‘Girls?’
I heard footsteps behind me then, Mum’s flip-flops slapping the path.
I remained where I was, frozen to the spot.
‘Chloe?’ Mum said, her voice trembling.
Slowly, I turned around to face her. But she wasn’t looking at me.
‘Chloe – OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD—’
She fell to her knees and heaved my sister’s body from the water.
‘CHLOE – OH GOD OH GOD. SHANNON’ – she looked at me – ‘GO INSIDE AND GET THE PHONE, NOW.’
I did as she said, running away as fast as my legs could carry me, never once stopping to correct her. I couldn’t bear to tell her the truth, that her favourite child was dead.
But now, looking back on that terrible day, remembering the haunted expression on my mother’s face as she wept over the body of my sister while I stood a few paces away, stunned, scared, and hurriedly adjusting my costume, I can’t help but wonder if there’d ever been favourites at all.
ONCE I DECIDED I wanted to be someone new, someone other than Shannon Bell, I became like a child again, wobbling around on my new feet, still finding out how to sit up, to roll, to talk.
I remember meeting up with Jolly and feeling like a dog who’d learned to stand up on its hind legs – unnatural and faintly ridiculous, but teetering vertically nonetheless – and Jolly asking: Are you OK?
You seem different. Not bad different, but just different.
And later: I like it. I don’t know what’s happened to you, but I like it.
I told him I was thinking of changing my name, that Shannon felt like a sack of shit around my neck, strangling me, a dead weight, that I wanted something different.
Jolly thought it was a good idea. He said that people made up stage names all the time.
That if I wanted to get back into the industry it might be a good idea, that it might give me a fresh start.
‘I like Viola,’ I said.
‘As in Twelfth Night?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s as good a name as any,’ he replied.
VIOLA CUT HER HAIR. Viola dyed it red. Viola quit her job. Viola joined a gym. Viola wore new clothes. One day, a couple of weeks later, a shiny plastic card arrived in the post for her. Viola Bell. Equity member.
Viola boxed up the dead; a lavender bow, a pink one; a fragile copy of Jane Eyre; a flower girl, in pieces, the separate shards, refracting different-coloured selves.
Viola did everything she could. She attended press nights, she went to workshops, she wrote to directors.
Viola was confident. She was smart. People warmed to her.
Viola auditioned for a short film. She got the part.
She played a ghost, someone who had died long ago, who existed on the edges, afraid to leave.
She only appeared in the final scene, but after the modest premiere, chattering audience members in the bar agreed that the actress had made her mark.
The short-film director was impressed. He said she ought to meet his brother. He was producing a play as part of an independent theatre festival. It was a one-woman show and Viola would be perfect for it.
The reviews were good. The writing was patchy in places, but Viola Bell brought the script to life.
A casting director saw the show. He suggested she audition for a film he was working on.
She didn’t get the job, but the casting director sent feedback.
He said it wasn’t a big thing, nothing really, barely worth mentioning at all, but she should soften her accent in future auditions.
Done. Unless the brief asked for it, Viola never spoke with her natural accent again.
She got more auditions. She attended more press nights. She did more workshops.
She lived in her overdraft.
She climbed out of her overdraft.
Soon there wasn’t enough time to fulfil the hours at her temp job. Soon Viola felt less like a she, and more like an I.
WHEN I WOKE UP in the mornings, I couldn’t help but marvel at my new reflection, at the play of light across my cheekbones and the familiar stranger in the mirror.
As each month passed, the mental preparation to leave the house, to put on a costume and play my new role, became easier and easier. Just like when I’d transformed from Chloe to Shannon, after a year, moving in Viola’s skin was as simple as breathing.
More auditions followed. Another short film. Another play. Jolly wanted to spend more time together. He wanted to know how I was doing it, what my secret was. I don’t have any secrets, I replied. And I didn’t. I was a blank canvas, painting myself anew.
My hair grew. I cut it again. I maintained my appearance with absolute precision.
I never let the colour fade from my roots, never let my skin turn grey.
I sought out sun and exercise. I went to bars.
Vodka and cranberry, but hold the vodka.
No one noticed. Everyone was too wrapped up in their own stories, their own irresistible rise and fall.
I met people. I made new friends. One recommended me to their agent.
In his cramped office in Chinatown, he signed me on the spot.
I got more auditions, more roles, until one day an email landed in my inbox telling me to be at the American Church at 11 a.m. the next day for a meeting with Pamela Swift.
I read the breakdown for the role. The audition was for a BBC drama about a young woman whose father dies, leaving her to run the ailing family farm alone. I was auditioning for the lead.
When I arrived, I followed signs to the staircase.
FIELDS OF HOPE CASTING – THIS WAY
An eager assistant greeted me. She took my name, my agent’s details, and handed me four pages of sides.
‘Have a read and make sure you’re familiar with them. Don’t worry, you probably won’t read through all of them in there. It’s just to get a sense of the character.’
I nodded and took a seat by the window. I flicked through the papers.
I could hear voices in the other room, an actress exclaiming wildly, Ms Swift’s impassive purr.
Footsteps echoed around the stairwell. Another young woman appeared in the waiting room.
The assistant repeated the same spiel and handed her the same sides.
The girl smiled nervously at me. As she sat down, her eyes darted around the room. New grad, I thought.
The door opened and the actress emerged. She swung her bag over her shoulder and dumped the sides on a chair, before clomping out into the corridor and down the stairs. Another assistant, dressed in black, poked her head around the door.
‘Viola?’
I stood.
The room was long. At the far end was a trestle table littered with CVs and headshots. Behind it, Pamela Swift sat hunched over a laptop. The assistant smiled anxiously and scurried over to join her.
‘Viola, is it?’ Ms Swift said, glancing up.
‘Yes,’ I replied. She didn’t recognize me.
‘Brilliant. Have you, err, had some time to look through the sides?’
I nodded.
‘Excellent.’
I went through the scene with the assistant reading in for the father character, and Pamela Swift staring at her laptop screen.
When I finished, she took off her glasses and dug a lump of mascara from the corner of her eye.
‘That was great, really great. Err, now, I’m going to ask you to do something.
I wonder, please, Viola, if you could tell me a memory – it can be any memory, it doesn’t have to be relevant to the script.
It’s just so I can get a sense of you as a person. ’
I heard a high-pitched ringing sound in my ear.
This was it. This was the moment. Viola was ready.
I was ready. The room suddenly felt smaller, darker.
There might as well have been a spotlight above my head.
Take a deep breath. In – out. All the hurting and twisting, all the contorting myself into something new, pink and wriggling, and here it was.
The moment I knew everything was about to change.
‘So I guess the memory that first springs to mind is of my dad. When I was a kid, maybe five years old, he went through this farming phase. He bought a load of Jersey cows and a couple of acres.’ I smiled to myself.
‘He had no idea what to do with them though. In fact, he ended up selling them at a loss and the land went to developers. I guess you’d call it a midlife crisis or something now.
Anyway, after all that, he left my mum, moved in with his secretary, started a whole new life, new kids, everything.
’ I paused. ‘But that time, that time when we had the farm, that time was good.’ I took a breath.
‘I remember he had a tractor, this big useless thing. He’d bought it new from the suppliers.
It was green and shiny and didn’t have a speck of dirt on it.
The seat leather still smelled brand new, not a crease on it.
It was ridiculous really. He shouldn’t have bought it.
I don’t think he even knew what to do with it.
He’d just climb up and sit in it, then ride around the fields all day.
I’d get up into the seat with him and we’d drive around, waving at the neighbours, dog walkers, anyone we saw, and he’d say to me: Wave, Viola.
Smile, Viola. We’ve got to show them we’re busy, that we know what we’re doing.
’ I shook my head. ‘People must’ve thought he was an idiot. ’ I paused.
Ms Swift was looking directly at me. She tapped her colleague’s wrist, and the assistant began searching through the mess of papers for something.
‘Idiot or not, I thought the whole thing was wonderful.’ I took a deep breath in, feeling the wind on my face, the sun on my neck, the warmth of this imagined bear-like figure with his big safe arm around me, his great paw resting on my bony knee.
‘I remember nestling into his side as we crossed the fields. Doing the rounds, he’d call it.
We’d check the fences, check the cows, make sure everything was the same as the last time we’d been around.
’ I stopped and cleared my throat. ‘Back then, with his arm around me, high up there on the seat, I felt invincible, like I was at the centre of the universe. When we passed people and they waved, I thought they’d come out to see us especially.
I thought my daddy was respected and important.
I thought he was somebody.’ I looked up, my eyes shining.
‘Together, I thought we could do whatever we wanted, that he’d always be there to protect me, and that if we were together, everything would turn out fine.
I thought we’d drive across those fields together forever.
Just me and him.’ I clenched my fist and fought back tears.
‘He left pretty soon after that. I was still young. I didn’t see him for a few years.
He had his new family then, you see, his new daughter.
’ I shrugged. A sigh. ‘At least we had that time though.’
Pamela Swift stared at me, transfixed. The assistant tapped her on the shoulder.
She blinked, returning to the room. She coughed and picked through some papers.
‘That was, err, really magical, Viola – it is Viola, isn’t it?
Thank you for sharing that with us today.
’ She touched the assistant’s hand, who promptly scribbled something down.
‘Can I just double-check we’ve got your agent’s details right, in case we need to get in touch with you again? ’