‘You don’t have to do this,’ said Emma, joining me. Unlike Nick, she did reach out, laying her hand on my arm. Her touch was gentle, her round eyes full of compassion. All of a sudden, I felt my own burn. It was like her sympathy resensitised me, because in a rush, the full enormity of what had happened started to hit me.
I couldn’t let it in.
‘I do have to do this,’ I told Emma, my voice swollen with the pressure of my mounting tears. ‘I can’t face being me.’
‘What about Nick?’ she said, looking over at him, making for the exit with his head bowed, avoiding everyone’s stare.
It was even harder not to cry, watching him go.
‘What about him?’ I said, averting my eyes.
‘I think he might need you to be you.’
‘I can’t,’ I repeated, hating myself for how selfish I was being, yet unable to help it. The temptation to retreat back into Iris was too strong. ‘Please, can we just get going?’
She hesitated.
‘Please, Emma … ’
‘All right,’ she said, with a slow nod. ‘If it’s really what you want.’
‘It’s really what I want.’
‘Ok.’ She squeezed my arm. ‘So, let’s go.’
And we went.
Iwent.
It’s as though she disappears,that source who spoke toThe Screensaid.
That’s not what happens, though.
I don’t disappear – how could I? – but I do feel myself slipping, more completely every day, from the realms of myown grief-weary consciousness. When Emma and I were filming yesterday – adjusting our headphones, issuing instructions (absolutely pancake;I love that line) – I remained aware of the cameras and crew and bluescreens, of course I did, but I didn’t focus on them. I looked through them, at memories thatcan’tbe memories, of a slowly ticking clock, static in my ears, and an endless night that was dark and frozen and lit by a full moon. Those memories, or illusions, or whatever they were, are with me still now, nestled in my mind’s eye: yet another layer of lunacy in my teetering stack. And that source was right about it being disturbing. It’s got so there are times that I don’t feel so much that I’m breaking down, as breaking apart. And I haven’t even told anyone, which is making me feel madder yet. But I can’t talk about it. Ican’t.I’m still clinging to the hope that it will all somehow stop.
Except yesterday, I chased the madness, for as long as I could, because as much as it frightened me, the idea of returning to the present scared me even more.
I had to come back to the here and now at some point though, and when I did, I went straight to my trailer. I’m honestly not sure how long I stayed there, shaking, crying, googling stress-induced hallucinations – and, before I could stop myself, my miscarriage. But eventually I got a hold of myself enough to return Fiona’s call. I had to talk to her. She was incredibly kind to me when it all happened, and very upset on the phone.
‘In pieces, actually,’ I told Mum.
‘Probably worried about what this will do to her reputation.’
‘Fiona’s not like that.’ She wasn’t. I’ve been in this business long enough to know when someone’s being genuine, and Fiona’s guilt felt raw and sincere. ‘I don’t actually want to sue the clinic. She’s the one who’ll pay, and it’s not her fault.’
‘The clinic will have insurance,’ Mum said witheringly. ‘Don’t worry about them. Worry about you. And Nick.’ She paused: frowning, I could tell. ‘I wasn’t trying to say that youshouldn’tworry about him before. That boy’s as lost as you.’
‘He’s a thirty-five-year-old man, Mum,’ I said, but with a sigh, because I knew she was right.
He’s been lost since his hopeless race to get from New York to LA in time to be by my side in the delivery room.
I’ve never properly faced up to that before now. I knew he was sad, of course I did. If he hadn’t been, he’d never have spent all those nights trying to escape his feelings in bars, or by going to the lengths he did to prepare for this movie. But I realise now I haven’t let myself absorb just how broken he’s been. I don’t know why it’s taken all this time, and all of this hideousness, for me to finally do that. Maybe I was too angry before – that old crutch I’ve been using of fury in place of grief. Or perhaps I was just too scared of how much it would hurt to feel Nick’s pain as well as my own.
It’s hurting me now, doing that.
It’s hurting very much.
And the worse I hurt, the guiltier I feel, because no matter what he, or Fiona, or Mum might say about none of this being my fault, it was in my body that it all happened.
