Epilogue
I STILL DREAM about them.
Sometimes I’m Victoria, snorting coke off a coffee table or sitting in a locked cubicle with my head bowed in silent prayer.
Sometimes I’m lying in the warm grass of a summer’s night, a constellation of glow-in-the-dark stars burning above my head.
Other times I’m Shannon, back at the cafe again, my vision blurring as I slide a mop backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.
Sometimes I’m at school, a teenager lurking in the lunch hall with a copy of Jane Eyre tucked beneath my arm, staring at a feedback sheet where the words Face disappears have been carelessly erased.
Sometimes I don’t know who I am, but I’m standing in a garden, holding a small girl’s hand and watching our reflections double in the water.
One time, I dreamed we were all there, together.
That night I’d been at an awards ceremony, the third or fourth of the season.
And the award for Best Actress goes to . . .
They said my win was irrefutable, glorious, a triumph. Everyone was kissing my cheeks, hugging me close for pictures – Viola, over here! V, how marvellous to see you! – buying me drinks, offering me lines. I couldn’t very well say no to them, could I? Not on my special night.
Stefano happened to be there too. He’d been involved in the shoot for one of the Best British Film nominees.
He wasn’t acting any more. He was an intimacy coordinator now.
His appearance surprised me. I remember seeing him from across the room and, emboldened by my win, cornering him, saying well done to him, that the scene by the fountain was mesmeric, brutal, terrifying, that he deserved to win.
Well done. I kept repeating those words, like a curse – well done, well done, well done – and marvelling at how he’d managed to coordinate everything to his liking with such utter fucking perfection.
Later his girlfriend, some nepo hanger-on I recognized from the tabloids, toppled my statuette reaching across the table for her purse.
Apparently I said something to her about Stefano.
I don’t remember. Apparently security were called, discreetly, and I was taken to a different part of the hall.
I do remember looking over my shoulder though, and seeing him comfort her, his face a picture of baffled innocence.
Not long after, I stumbled and fell on my way to the bathroom.
A light flashed. I tried to shield myself.
Someone ripped the camera from the man’s hand.
Then my publicist found me, whispered angry words in my ear – You do this every time, every fucking time, V – and before I knew it, I was being bundled into a car.
The housekeeper was gone when I arrived home.
I don’t know how – I blacked out – but I somehow found my way to bed.
I came to maybe an hour later. My mouth was dry as a birdcage.
A bank of lilac feathers sat ruched around my face.
I was still wearing my gown, my necklace and my lucky earrings (cornflower-blue teardrops).
I groaned and, without warning, puked down myself.
I reached for some water, and the ceiling waltzed above me.
That was the night I dreamed of them.
We were in a forest clearing, sitting around a white table.
At the centre of the table was a vase of blue lilies like the ones that had greeted me in Lamia, Victoria’s house in Hampstead.
Apart from a little girl playing in the undergrowth, it was just the three of us: Victoria, the eighteen-year-old Shannon and me.
I was still wearing my awards gown, red hair piled on my head, my makeup pristine.
Shannon was dressed in drama school black, and Victoria was in her cream overalls.
A crown of branches swung lazily overhead, casting dappled sunlight across the starched linen. The air was sweet with honeysuckle and the soft decay of the forest floor.
Time slowed. Everything slowed.
I turned my head and looked at the two of them.
Shannon was staring ahead, a small frown knitting her brows together, her expression solemn and hard to read. Victoria was smiling at Shannon, but in a blank, lobotomized sort of way, her grin fixed, her eyes gelded of their sparkle.
We talked, slowly – I don’t remember about quite what, but I remember the feeling of it, like no time at all had passed, like I was speaking with old friends, which I suppose in a way I was.
We chatted away, the same old nonsense and truth and putting the world to rights.
Then evening approached; the air began to turn cooler; creeping shadows appeared on the forest floor.
And now this, I do remember. I asked them, both of them, if they were happy to be here.
I never specified where here was, I didn’t even know myself, but they seemed to understand all the same.
Shannon stared at the table, then smiled.
I hide and I disappear, she said. Victoria placed her hand over Shannon’s and nodded in agreement.
I heard a child’s laughter.
Shannon glanced at Victoria and they shared a look, something private and other. Something I wasn’t meant to see or understand.
I opened my mouth to respond. There was something I needed to say to them, something important, urgent. But the light was fading, the crimson curtain of night drawing shut, and suddenly these two young women, my oldest, dearest friends, seemed to me so very far away.