Chapter Fifteen
Miranda
Miranda is already slightly regretting having said yes to the offer of a drink from over-friendly Evelyn (clearly her Diet Coke addiction got the better of her in a weak moment). Then, when the woman herself knocks on the door accompanied by none other than the handsome bartender, he of her embarrassing failed seduction, she almost shuts the door in both of their faces. Is this a wind-up? Some kind of joke? Apparently not.
If the bartender is one to bear a grudge, he doesn’t show it, at least, merely greeting her politely and asking where she would like the tray of drinks. (Christ, are those shots ? she notices, eyebrows jerking upwards. Is Evelyn trying to get them both hammered or something?) ‘Just here, please,’ she says stiffly, indicating her chest of drawers, then hurriedly closing one of the drawers where a froth of underwear and bikinis is spilling out. ‘Thank you,’ she mutters as he sets down the tray, trying not to think about how politely he rejected her abysmal flirting. Cringe.
‘ Efcharisto , Konstantinos,’ says Evelyn, fumbling in her purse to give him a couple of euros. ‘For your trouble,’ she says, putting them into his palm.
He makes a little bow. ‘My pleasure,’ he says and then, while Evelyn is putting her purse away, he winks at Miranda as if this whole awkward situation is hilarious.
She blushes bright red and turns her face away, but not before catching his smile. Thankfully he departs, leaving Miranda feeling unusually hot and bothered. To mask her fluster, she picks up the tray and leads the way through her suite. As well as the wicker loungers on her balcony, she has an indoor seating area with two comfortable sofas and a large coffee table. With the air-conditioning running, it’s pleasantly cool, and more private than it will be sitting outside, she decides. ‘Is this okay for you?’ she asks, placing the tray on the table and gesturing to the sofa nearest to Evelyn. ‘Have a seat. What are we drinking anyway?’
‘Well, you have your Diet Coke, as requested,’ Evelyn replies, lowering herself carefully into the cushions. She’s changed into a long pale-blue dress and white pumps, and looks surprisingly youthful as she crosses one leg over the other. Maybe that thing she said about dying was a joke, after all. ‘But Itook the executive decision to order a couple of ouzos as well, because. . . well, you know. It seems to be turning into that sort of day. Although don’t feel you have to have yours, obviously, if you’d rather– oh. . .’ She trails off, looking amused, as Miranda promptly takes hers and knocks it back in a single gulp. ‘Okay,’ she goes on. ‘Well, in the spirit of fairness, Ishould do the same, right? Bottoms up!’ She tips her own shot similarly down her throat, then sets the empty glass down and blinks a few times. ‘Oof,’ she says with a little shudder. ‘Now that’s what Icall a sharpener. But anyway. Are you all right? That looked rather an unpleasant experience for you, down by the pool.’
‘Yes,’ said Miranda. She screws up her face, already wishing she hadn’t reacted quite so dramatically as to hurl the young woman’s phone in the pool. If this gets back to Helen, she’ll be toast. ‘Iwish Icould say it was a one-off, but I’ve had a lot of that sort of thing lately, unfortunately.’
‘Oh gosh, how awful,’ Evelyn says, clasping her gnarled old hands together. Her bare arms are brown and freckled, Miranda notes, and her eyes, when Miranda raises her gaze to them, are periwinkle-blue and full of compassion. Miranda has to look away; she isn’t always that good with people being nice to her.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Evelyn continues after a moment. ‘Ipromise it will go no further. Sometimes it’s good to speak an experience aloud, if only so that you’re not hanging on to it inside your body.’
Miranda doubts that this theory would survive any scientific examination, but she knows what the woman means. Does she want to talk about what happened? Not particularly. But the ouzo feels as if it’s already roiling through her bloodstream, taking the edge off her inhibitions. ‘Well,’ she stalls, then, in the next moment, finds herself confessing, ‘Everything’s gone wrong for me lately. Like– catastrophically wrong.’
Evelyn nods in understanding but doesn’t comment further, and there’s something about her sitting there so still and calm that prompts Miranda to keep talking. ‘I’ve been sort of banished here, in disgrace. Exiled, to reflect on all of the terrible things I’ve done,’ she goes on.
‘Good heavens,’ Evelyn says. ‘Idon’t know whether to be more intrigued, impressed or scared for my life. Do carry on.’
Is she being facetious? It certainly feels as if she isn’t taking the situation– or Miranda– seriously. Rather haughtily, she replies, ‘Oh. Well, I’m an actor. Miranda Vallance?’ There’s not a flicker of recognition on the older woman’s face. ‘I’m in Amberley Emergency ? Doctor Kelly?’ Still nothing. It’s always a pin-scratch against Miranda’s ego, that kind of blank response, but– silver lining– she won’t be in for a flurry of questions about her co-stars, at least. ‘Anyway,’ she continues. ‘I’m on a sort of hiatus after. . .’ She stares down at her knees. ‘Well, Ibasically got into a fight with one of the other actors.’
‘Gosh.’ Evelyn puts her drink down. ‘An actual fight?’
‘Yeah. I’m not proud of it, but I. . . pushed her around a bit.’ There’s a long pause. ‘Hit her.’
MIRANDA’S ‘MOMENT OF MADNESS ’
the tabloids had shrieked when the photos surfaced the next day, along with blurry but identifiable CCTV stills of Miranda shoving Bonnie against a Soho door front, grabbing her by the throat, slapping her face.
‘Mirrie! Are you all right?’ her dad had asked on the phone when the story broke. ‘What’s going on? We’ve had Imogen round, saying all sorts, she’s very upset. And now this in the papers. . . ?’
‘That sounds pretty ghastly,’ Evelyn says. ‘I’m not surprised you needed to get away from it all.’
Her kindness is almost harder to take than the judgement and fury Miranda has had heaped on her by others, and their voices jangle in her head like a disapproving Greek chorus in counterpoint. (‘Never speak to me again!’– that’s Imogen. ‘This is not acceptable behaviour, Miranda!’– there’s good old Geoff. ‘Greta’s going to put you in touch with a counsellor specialising in anger management strategy; Istrongly advise you to book some sessions’– thanks, Helen but fuck off. And you too, Greta, for that matter.) The thing that nobody has taken on board, when they’re all shouting at her and telling her how dreadful she is, is how upset and hurt she is about it. Yes, and how bloody angry too. How could Bonnie have been such a snake?
‘Mmm,’ is all Miranda mutters now though, sipping her Coke.
‘And then for that woman to try and film you like that. . . well, Ican see how it must have felt like the last straw,’ Evelyn goes on.
Miranda stares glumly down into her drink. There have been a lot of last straws recently, even she has to admit. Maybe she should actually have looked into the email Greta sent about anger management rather than furiously deleting it as soon as it arrived. Her rage keeps boiling up from out of nowhere; it’s like being in charge of a massive flame-thrower. As a result, she’s been starting one bonfire after another around her life. With a shudder, she finds herself thinking of the video of herself, shouting and incoherent, that went all over TikTok; and, worse, the thousand-plus comments that accumulated underneath.
God, she’s proper minging without TV make-up, isn’t she?
Absolutely lost it ??
Imagine waking up and being Miranda Vallance.
Yeah, imagine. Right now, it’s not great. She really hopes there won’t be further repercussions from what she did down at the pool– that nobody else was filming her, that some other wannabe won’t take it upon themselves to juice up the anecdote and hold it out to the press vultures like a hunk of fresh meat. Usually in posh restaurants or hotels you get left alone; people don’t want to appear uncool by hassling you. She’d complain to the management about the lack of privacy she’s been afforded if she hadn’t made such a scene herself with the other woman’s phone. The last thing she wants is to draw any more attention to her own burst of temper.
Evelyn seems to be taking her reticence for suspicion. ‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘Imeant what Isaid earlier– that your secrets are safe with me. Chances are I’ll be dead soon, so if you want to get anything off your chest feel free to let rip.’
Miranda winces at her phrasing. The last time they had spoken to one another, down by the pool, she had pegged Evelyn as a sweet, cake-baking grandmother, she remembers; a far cry from such macabre talk. ‘Um. . . are you okay?’ she asks. ‘I’ve never known anyone be so candid about. . . well, about death before. Or so accepting. But maybe I’m wrong?’
Evelyn sips her drink, considering. ‘Iwas not remotely “accepting”, as you put it, when my wife died,’ she says, and Miranda must have shown her surprise at the word ‘wife’ because Evelyn’s mouth twists in a sudden smile. ‘Ahh, you weren’t expecting that, were you?’ she asks, looking pleased. ‘You’d written me off as some benign old nana, hadn’t you, baking scones and helping out at church fetes? Ican see it all over your face, don’t deny it.’
Even Miranda can’t act her way out of this one. ‘You got me there,’ she admits, putting her hands up. ‘Guilty as charged.’
‘Good. Ilove confounding people’s expectations,’ Evelyn replies. ‘Although Isay “wife” but, with ours being a civil partnership, we were technically supposed to call one another “civil partners”. Sod that, we decided, we’re each other’s wives and that’s that. But anyway, she died eight years ago, and Iwas devastated. Went off the rails myself, actually, got arrested for throwing a brick through a shop window one night when I. . . well, lost my shit, as young people say.’
‘Evelyn!’
‘Iknow! What a hoodlum! Iwas off my head for a while,’ she says with a meaningful look at Miranda, ‘so Iknow all about overreacting in a moment of rage; you can become completely consumed by your feelings, can’t you?’ Then she looks faraway, emotions passing fleetingly across her face. ‘But I’ll tell you what really helps afterwards,’ she goes on. ‘Saying sorry.’
Miranda snorts. Oh, here we go. And now for the moral of the story, she thinks. ‘It’s not that simple,’ she replies.
‘Well—’ Evelyn begins, but Miranda cuts her straight off.
‘And I’m not sorry anyway,’ she says stubbornly. Well. . . not entirely, she amends in her head. She’s sorry for her thuggish behaviour, and regrets losing her temper so spectacularly, yes. But after what Bonnie did, she actually wishes she had smacked her a bit harder. She’s not sorry about that at all.
This time it’s Evelyn who looks away first. ‘Ahh,’ she says, then she shrugs. ‘Fair enough.’ There’s a moment’s silence, and then she finishes her drink before hauling herself up to her feet. ‘Oof,’ she says, standing still for a moment as if the blood has rushed to her head. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ she goes on. ‘Very nice to talk to you, Miranda. Don’t let the bastards get you down, as they say. For what it’s worth, I’m glad you threw that girl’s phone in the pool, served her jolly well right.’
‘Thank you,’ says Miranda, following on as Evelyn proceeds slowly towards the door. ‘And thanks again for the drinks. That ouzo really hit the spot.’
‘Didn’t it just? Ineed a lie-down now to recover.’ Evelyn opens the door. ‘And after that, I’m going to look up the programme you said you were in, give it a whirl.’
‘That’ll have you dozing back off in no time,’ Miranda says, but she’s pleased, nevertheless; her fragile ego appreciates the thought. ‘Bye, Evelyn.’
She closes the door, smiling to herself because, duff advice about saying sorry aside, her self-invited guest has somehow taken the sting out of the pool incident. And she’s had to rethink her image of Evelyn being a pinny-wearing grandmother too– make that an ouzo-necking, brick-throwing, death-prepping lesbian. And do you know what? Good on her.
Drifting back through her spotless empty suite, she wonders what to do now. She can’t plod sheepishly back down to the pool, that’s for sure. In fact, she’ll probably never go there again after today’s shenanigans. What with that, and her failed flirtation coming back to bite her, the hotel is starting to feel as if it’s closing in around her, like a net. She came here to get away from everything, and she definitely hasn’t achieved that. Although the holiday is still young, she reminds herself, grabbing her phone and opening up the browser. Plus she has plenty of money at her disposal. Perching on the end of the bed, she taps away at the screen. Time to make some plans.