Chapter Twenty-Nine
Allie
The video on the screen is blurred and grainy.
But, all the same, it’s clear to see. It’s a bar.
Dark, with strobed red lights. The music, loud and fast, and there’s a long table in the murk.
Chairs and chairs of people surround it, some people stand, leaning over, talking into ears, some people dance.
It’s a party that would’ve, just hours before, been dinner and drinks.
Now, it’s a sticky, glass-littered mess.
Julia laughs from behind the camera, tells everyone to wave.
Some do. Milo doesn’t. He sits at the table, squashed next to a woman with a high, blonde ponytail.
He’s talking in huge gestures and over-the-top facial expressions.
His light grey shirt is open at the collar, his hair a wreck, all over his face.
The blonde is nodding and smiling. She then holds her hand out and . . .
The camera pans out.
‘God, dude, you’re partying hard,’ Jameson laughs, but I can see regret on his face.
I can’t look away. Nobody speaks.
Back on the screen, Julia pans. The room is just fuzz, like a frame full of black sand art.
Dark, shadowed figures, a distant bar, is that?
I’m not sure, but there are low hanging lights that are just smudges on the screen.
I find myself considering how far camera quality has come in just two years, despite the fact that something about this scene is making me feel shaken.
Uneasy. Because Milo is clearly inebriated.
I recognise it the way anyone would, but I see it on a deeper, bedrock-dwelling level.
Dad. Dad would show up looking that way.
Hooded eyes. Spaghetti limbs, too heavy-seeming for his body . . .
Then the camera seems to linger on Milo. And . . . there it is. My phone – it’s in his hand. Why on earth does he have my phone at a party? It’s lit up, and he’s grasping it. He’s leaning into the blonde, he’s . . . showing her something.
I turn rigidly to the side. Milo is watching the screen, statuesque and serious. He doesn’t appear to be breathing. ‘Who is that? The blonde?’
‘A . . . I . . . a journalist. She came over. They . . . ran a piece on Tilly? The director?’
I remember that.
I remember Sierra, the assistant, going to collect her from the airport. She was meant to bring my phone that day. We were meant to switch back. Then the data outage. We set up the whole phone secretary arrangement, not wanting to wait for the journalist to get another flight, two days later.
I’m sure I remember this party being mentioned in one of Milo’s interviews too. The pizza restaurant one. Is that the same journalist? Didn’t she mention a party in Romania, losing her shoes?
‘Milooooo,’ Julia laughs on the other side of the phone. ‘Helloooo.’
‘Juliaaaaa,’ he slurs, and . . . he is wasted.
Totally wasted. He said he didn’t drink.
I specifically remember him telling me he didn’t.
‘Make sure you’re recording this,’ he grins into the camera.
‘Crazy shit, but I feel like I’m in love with this woman.
Seriously.’ He bursts out laughing. At first, I think he’s talking about the journalist, or Julia.
But . . . my phone. It’s hanging from his hand.
Lit up. Unlocked. My photo is on the screen.
My coffee selfie. The blonde next to him waves at the screen and laughs.
‘This . . . this is my gesture!’ He laughs.
‘This is my gesture for you, Allie Lake. It’s— Oh, hold on.
’ He turns the phone over in his hand. ‘This is her work. Her beautiful work . . .’ He drops the phone.
Everyone cheers. He stands up and stretches his arms high.
Everyone cheers and laughs. My phone is on the table. Its light still on.
Oh, God.
He’s a mess.
Unrecognisable.
I feel like my chest is caving in. Why is my phone out with him too?
Julia moves away, Milo picks up the phone, and now someone else is next to him. ‘Helene!’ he shouts. ‘Come join us.’
Helene. The writer. The one who wrote the film’s screenplay.
I remember now, all these names. Julia played his wife on the movie.
Helene was the writer who used to drive Milo insane.
‘I’ve got an ego, but this woman, Allie,’ he’d laugh down the line.
‘Seriously, if someone told her to give a kidney for an award nomination, mine would currently be on the black market. Well, after she’s had my lines out of me. ’
On the screen, Julia is talking, panning the camera to other people. I find myself craning my neck, to see around her body, as if that would ever work.
My eyes are glued to the phone on the table. My phone. A bright blob in the background. Constantly lighting up. I wonder if my messages are coming through now. My excited messages about seeing him tomorrow.
He told me he’d missed me when he got back from the dinner, that he found himself wanting to talk about me. I remember that. Then he disappeared for a bit. Popped up the next day – just after noon. Then the leak went live.
He told me he went home, left my phone at his apartment, as we’d always agreed.
The camera swoops past Milo again, and she – the writer woman – was she holding it? I don’t know. I will with everything the camera to go back.
‘Say bye!’ squeals Julia and then – darkness.
The room falls silent. The light of the computer screen, back on Jameson’s emails, casts us all in a pale, frightened blue colour.
I feel nauseous. I feel like I’m going to be sick. Because my phone was right there, for everyone to see, for everyone to take and look at and snoop. Because of Milo.
‘Fuck,’ Milo is saying. ‘Oh. God. I . . . No,’ and his hands come up and over his head. ‘Allie,’ I hear him say. ‘Allie, can we . . .’
But I’m already in the corridor. I’m already walking away.