‘Yes. I was on the edge of my seat for you.’
‘You were?’ Through my upset, I manage a smile, touched. ‘Thank you.’
‘I imagine it was a very happy night.’
‘It was.’
Nick had won best actor the year before, for his part in a 1920s underworld thriller, so was on stage to present best actress. He grinned as he pulled the card from its envelope and leant towards the mic, announcing my name.
We hadn’t met before. Felix hadn’t yet had the chance to introduce us.
But we’d had our eye on each other, even then.
I’m in awe of you, Nick said into my ear, his hand closing around mine as I joined him on the stage: his touch, his voice, making my already racing heart pump.
‘You nearly tripped over,’ says Ellen.
‘I did,’ I agree. ‘He caught me.’
‘You both laughed. You couldn’t stop. You could barely get your acceptance speech out. Every time you looked back at him, it set you off … ’
‘Yes,’ I say, heavily.
I feel no urge to laugh now.
I want to cry.
We were friends first, for years. I used to tease him, actually, for his playboy ways. I know he was never untrue to hisgirlfriends, he just had lots of them, and I suppose I must have been jealous, because I’d roll my eyes and accuse him of being a brat-pack poster boy, which he was always infuriatingly amused by. (‘It was either laugh or cry,’ he’s since said.) Then, three years ago, we wound up on the same flight to London from LA, got drunk in my suite, and that was that.
‘It used to be really easy between us,’ I say. ‘Then it got so … hard.’
‘I do understand,’ says Ellen. ‘I was let down once. Very badly. By a man who wore a USAAF uniform, and used to take me to Bettys.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, taken aback, as much by the intimacy as her corroboration of what I told her I saw back then.
And I am sorry.
I don’t like to think of her hurt.
‘It was decades ago,’ she says. ‘I’ve had time to heal. But, Claudia, you’re very raw. You’re not in a good state at all. So please be extremely sure, won’t you, before making any decisions about what your life should look like.’
‘I have no idea what my life should look like,’ I say, and, expelling a ragged breath, tip my head forwards, sinking it into my hands. My scar still hurts. I run my finger over it, remembering Nick kissing me in my shower cap, and have to bite my cheeks to keep them under control. ‘I love him,’ I say. ‘I love him so much. But I can’t give him what he needs. And it feels like we’ll never be able to be us. We’ll always have the press watching, waiting for us to slip up. And lately … lately … ’ I swallow. ‘Lately, it’s seemed like all we’ve had is bad. I can’t sentence us to a lifetime of that, and I can’t see our way out.’
‘So, you’ve been finding another one. Retreating into Iris.’
I don’t respond.
‘Things were by no stretch easy for her,’ Ellen says. ‘They were hard. Insurmountably hard, in the end.’
‘Do you know what happened to her?’ I ask.
This time, she’s the one who doesn’t reply.
Slowly, I raise my eyes back to hers.
‘You said the novel made you angry,’ I say. ‘Was it because of the ending?’
She remains silent.
