Chapter 4
Chapter Four
ISLA
‘I’d like to accept this award from the Academy for my role as chief spider-catcher in a world left without men to do the work.’
I bow dramatically to an audience of dust motes floating in the grey morning light. The jar in my hand contains today’s sole achievement: one medium-sized house spider, currently pressing its body against the glass as if calculating the precise physics of revenge.
‘Don’t give me that look,’ I tell it. ‘You’re the one who decided my shower was an appropriate venue for an eight-legged peepshow.’
The spider doesn’t respond. Obviously. Though right now, it’s providing better conversation than I’ve had in three days.
Three days. That’s how long I’ve been in Sea Salt Bay, and so far, my greatest accomplishment is capturing this spider without screaming loud enough to alert the neighbours.
That, and finishing off Maggie’s ancient box of Cornish Tea, dust and all.
I even put a spoonful of sugar in one cup.
Someone call the police. My standards have fallen considerably.
I open the door and place the jar on the path, knocking it gently over and then running back in to shut the door before my eight-legged companion can follow me back in.
I’m proud.
It’s showing real growth as a human. I saw it.
I caught it. I set it free. Sounds a bit like that therapy app.
If only it were possible to do the same with memories.
Instead they are impossible to catch at 2 am when they steal into dreams and turn them to nightmares. And letting them go… Not a chance.
My phone buzzes for the fourth time this morning. I know who it is without looking. Piper, my lovely if slightly scary assistant, has left increasingly frantic messages since I shut Maggie’s front door behind me on arrival.
I love Piper, she’s my sharp-fringe-toting, green-juice-serving, schedule-aligning, keeping-me-real woman.
Right now, though, she’s not quite grasping the urgent message I left five days ago, whispered from within the depths of a restaurant toilet, in full panic attack, I might add, with my makeup sweating down my face, that said, ‘I need to get off-grid.’
I think she thought off-grid would be twenty-four hours in a spa and then a well-timed brunch in front of the paps.
But I can’t. I just. Can’t.
A text illuminates the screen: Isla, darling, please call back. Richard needs to know where you are.
Another one: The Vogue photoshoot can’t be rescheduled again. They’re already being incredibly accommodating after everything…
And another: People are talking, Isla. We need to control the narrative here.
Control the narrative. That’s rich. Like the narrative hasn’t been out of my control since the moment I walked into Marcus Vale’s office and found him with that young actress on her knees.
It’s the image that wakes me up.
The one I wish I could put in a jam jar and place on the path outside so I can watch it run away so I can forget it.
The problem is, I can’t.
I tried to lock it away. Tried to ignore it. For weeks. That led to me calling my assistant from a locked bathroom cubicle with my makeup running off my face.
It was the look on his face when I walked in that did it. What do they call it? A trigger.
That was my trigger; his expression – not shame, just irritation at being interrupted. Like he wasn’t in the wrong. Like that was normal behaviour.
And then I looked at her. Jemima Collins. Barely an adult.
As I stood there, still, frozen, muscles not moving, brain not comprehending. I saw her.
I gag, my stomach squeezes, and I run to Maggie’s kitchen where I lean over the sink, sweat prickling cold across my forehead. When I place a trembling hand on the back of my neck, strands of my hair are stuck to clammy skin.
Am I upset for her? The woman, the actress?
Or am I upset for me? For the nasty secrets it didn’t just unbury – that would be too quaint a verb.
That moment, me standing in the doorway, my mouth an open O of shock – it took a JCB digger to things I’d left long buried.
Things that for my entire adult life I told myself were okay, but that moment, that scene re-painted the past for me in new colours that turned my stomach.
I thought I’d moved on. I thought that by separating myself from Marcus Vale, one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers, I’d left it all behind.
I hadn’t. I’d just been running with my shoes tied together, and you can’t outrun the past like that.
So no. I don’t know how to control the narrative.
I pick up the phone, hovering my thumb over the screen before dropping it back onto the kitchen table with a clatter.
The cottage feels smaller today, as if the walls are gradually inching closer.
I’ve cleaned the kitchen, organised Maggie’s spice rack by colour (who needs that many different types of paprika?), and read half of a water-damaged Agatha Christie I found behind the sofa, which is easier said than done when every time you blink you see an image burned into your retina that you’d happily use bleach to erase.
I should start packing up Maggie’s stuff, after all, that was my excuse for venturing into this place I haven’t been too in so long, and I need something to focus on besides my imploding career and the constant urge to check if my name is trending on social media.
I have people who could have packed up for me.
Piper was on it. Babes, don’t waste your time.
But I sat on it, this nagging unfinished question mark I didn’t have the bandwidth to unpick until a jet landed me at Newquay and the taxi that smelled of onions brought me to the peeling front door of a place that once was more than a summertime home.
The therapy app I downloaded encourages journalling. Three pages, first thing in the morning. It clears the mind, puts things in perspective … apparently.
But I can’t write a line.
Outside, rain patters against the windows, a gentle percussion that would be soothing if it weren’t for the leaky spot above the back door that’s been dripping into a saucepan with metronomic persistence. Plink. Plink. Plink.
The sound drives me to the back door. Maybe I could fix it? How hard could basic home maintenance be? I’ve played characters who’ve built entire houses from scratch.
Twenty minutes later, I’m balanced precariously on a chair, holding a tea towel against the ceiling and realising that acting like you know what you’re doing and actually knowing what you’re doing are two very different skillsets.
Water seeps through the cloth and onto my upstretched arm, running cold fingers down to my elbow and dripping onto my face. Perfect. Just perfect.
My phone rings again, this time with Richard’s special ringtone – the Imperial March from Star Wars. My agent isn’t known for his subtlety.
I let it ring out, watching water slowly soak through Maggie’s ancient tea towel.
When the voicemail notification pings, curiosity gets the better of me. I climb down, dry my hands, and press play, putting it on speaker so I can continue my futile battle against the leak.
‘Isla. Richard.’ So not Darth Vader then.
Oh good, I wasn’t sure. ‘This disappearing act has gone on long enough. The trades are speculating. Your absence is being noticed. You made your point when you paused talks on the Winter Brothers project, but going dark like this is career suicide. You do want a career, don’t you?
Money. Attention. All those things I know you love so much. ’
I wince at his choice of words. They’re punches to the gut – well-aimed and deliberate.
Richard only came on board after the scandal broke – one of those crisis agents Simone, my publicist, found, all big smiles and bigger promises. But I don’t think he cares how broken I am, just how fast he can repackage me.
‘Marcus’s people are on damage control. The press are starting to dig, and if you won’t give them anything, they will start to make it up.
And you know how they like to paint successful women as the evil witch.
You need to be seen, Isla. Preferably looking unbothered and professionally engaged.
I’ve arranged lunch with Vanessa Morton next Thursday to discuss the Hayes biopic.
She specifically asked for you. Don’t throw this away over personal grievances. Call me.’
Personal grievances. That’s what we’re calling sexual harassment and predatory behaviour now? Such a splendid male narrative for female pain.
He said he could protect me.
He said he would make me a star.
He said he would be a father figure.
I swipe at my face, my fingers coming away damp and it having nothing to do with the leak from the roof, and then delete the message and throw my phone onto the sofa harder than necessary. It bounces and lands screen-down on the floor. I don’t check if it’s cracked. Part of me hopes it is.
I think about the postcard I found from Maggie about Kit’s wife being ill. Not known at this address. How many other connections had Marcus severed?
How many times had he ‘protected’ me by cutting away the threads that might have led me back here? It wasn’t just control of my career – it was control of my entire life, wrapped in the guise of management.
The house is suddenly airless, claustrophobic, like all the oxygen has been sucked out. I need to move. To breathe something that doesn’t smell of damp and memories.
My running shoes are still in my suitcase, unused since a charity 5K in Central Park where I was photographed looking ‘worryingly thin’ according to one particularly vicious tabloid.
The truth was simpler and less headline-worthy – I was exhausted from sixteen-hour shooting days and three months of existing on coffee and anxiety while I tried to decide what to do.
I went for truth, the moral high ground, for supporting other women who had been sexually marginalised in the name of show business.
The anxiety didn’t go away after. It sits like a demon on my left shoulder.