Epilogue
Almost three years later …
WHAT NOBODY TELLS YOU about awards ceremonies, Maggie thinks, as she and Gray sit in the back of their limo waiting for the cars in front to pull forward, is that there aren’t enough loo breaks.
She reaches across the seat and pulls up the sleeve of his suit to check his watch. Nearly seven. They were supposed to be in their seats in half an hour, but before then, they have to get out of this car and walk the red carpet. That’s another thing nobody ever tells you: ‘walk’ is a generous way of describing it. What you actually do, she’s learned, is lurch up the red carpet, being guided from one reporter to another by a runner in a headset. That’s why she started to wear plimsolls for these events. Heels weren’t worth it, and although the snooty fashion critics had slammed her (as had her mother, very disapproving having seen the pictures in the Daily Mail ), Maggie didn’t care. They weren’t the ones who had to stand and smile for hours.
‘You OK?’ Gray asks, turning from the window to look at her.
She nods quickly. ‘Yeah, fine, just …’
‘It’s gonna be great. You look sensational, all we have to do is fight our way through this lot and find wherever they’ve put us. It’s way less glamorous than it looks on TV.’
‘I’m not worried. Or not that worried. I just need to pee.’
From the front, Maggie sees the driver’s eyes slide to his rear-view mirror.
‘And that’s why I love you,’ Gray says, laughing and squeezing her knee. ‘One of the reasons, anyway.’
‘Hey, hands off, pal, you’ll crease the Dior,’ she replies, flicking his hand away.
Maggie’s not worried about the palaver of the ceremony. Not really. This year they’ve already done the Globes, and the BAFTAs, and the dozens of lunches and dinners and meetings with suited executives and producers that form part of the awards circus. She’s met stars, her favourite of which was Tom Hanks (who’s taller in real life than she imagined), and Meryl Streep (smaller but just as charming). She’s been lent dresses by Gucci and Emilia Wickstead (and Dior for tonight, an emerald green, one-shoulder gown that swishes and swirls satisfyingly around her plimsolls as she walks), and diamond drop earrings and pearl bracelets, that were delivered to their hotel room in a bulletproof briefcase, carried by a security guard who looked like a nightclub bouncer. Maggie’s swallowed more Champagne, she suspects, than anyone else at the ceremonies (‘that’s my girl,’ Jamie said, when she reported this back after the Emmys), and cackled with laughter on the way home while inspecting the contents of the goody bags (gold-leaf shampoo from the Globes; a voucher for upper-arm liposuction from the Emmys).
So by now she gets the ludicrousness of it all. She gets why Gray calls it a circus.
But she is worried by Gray’s desperation to win an Oscar tonight, given that the odds aren’t wholly in his favour. The Recluse has picked up multiple awards over the season – for best actor, for cinematography, for direction and for best costume. But it hasn’t landed the one Gray most wants: best original screenplay. Not yet, anyway.
He didn’t tell her what he was writing for several months. Actually, Maggie didn’t notice that Gray was writing to begin with. She was too busy overseeing the restoration of the chateau, interviewing new staff and designing the menus. Having turned the single bedroom next to Phil’s (now theirs) into his office, at first Maggie thought he was in there holding meetings with LA, reading scripts, sorting out his divorce and all the admin that comes with moving to a different country.
It was only after Gray had finished a first draft that he asked her to take a look, almost embarrassed, as if he’d done something he shouldn’t have.
‘What is it?’ she’d asked, and he’d emailed her a script.
It didn’t have a title but it was the story of the Duc de Miradoux; from his birth in a chateau just outside Marseille, to his death, quite alone, in the chateau he’d built for his young wife before she died.
Gray had uncovered various facts about him that Maggie never knew. That the duc had paid for tuberculosis drugs for the village when an epidemic struck in 1883; he’d paid for Narnesse’s first maternity nurse, dramatically lowering the baby mortality rate; he’d paid for several local boys’ commission into the navy, which brought more money to local families. It was a story, ultimately, about finding love in a place rather than a person, and Maggie cried when she finished it. Not just because it was so carefully written but at the journey coming full circle: Phil had bought the chateau as a ruin because she’d wanted to bring it back to life, and now everyone would know its story.
The Recluse had taken almost two years to make, shot at a chateau an hour away from Le Figuier. Gray played the duc, in a performance for which he’d won the BAFTA, but he craved recognition for his writing. He’d won awards for acting before (there was now a whole box of them in the attic at Le Figuier because Gray believed having them on show was bad luck), but this was his first screenplay.
Obviously, Maggie wants him to win, but she also knows that the world won’t stop if he doesn’t. Writing the film in the first place, and making it together, that was the celebration. She and Gray had sat up late at the kitchen table working on the dialogue and the characters, deliberating over the locations, and he’d constantly sent her pictures from set while she oversaw the hotel. And finally, after months of debate, they agreed on the title together. Winning a shiny gold statue simply to prove that others liked their project? It would be nice, but she wasn’t as bothered as Gray. Taking the risk in the first place, that was what matters, she thinks, as the car slows to a halt. That is what Maggie understands more clearly now about life than she did when she was younger.
At the sensation of his fingers over hers, she turns her head from the crowds outside.
Gray opens their passenger door and steps out before reaching back for her. ‘Ready?’
She is ready, she thinks. She’s exactly where she should be.