But first, I’ve got to get through this damn lunch.
Chapter Thirteen
We’re quiet as we progress up the driveway, Nick, Felix and I matching our pace to Emma’s, all of us preoccupied with our thoughts.
It’s a clear morning, with a glaring winter sun that bounces off the deep frost that’s set in overnight, icing the surrounding meadows with white. The sheep, clustered together for warmth, are motionless. Everything feels very still. Not even a breath of a breeze disrupts the frigid air, and the cold feels like a solid, immovable thing.
Emma’s brought a KeepCup of herbal tea with her. I eye her, resting her lips on the rim, breathing in the steam that rises over her face, and feel really angry that Blake’s insisted she do this. But then I guess we’ve all been forced through worse in our time. Much worse. And Emma’s tough. Far tougher than I suspect a lot of people give her credit for, with her doll-like appearance and track record of playing the nice girl.
She started out in this business as a Disney Mouseketeer, and already had three movies under her belt by the time Felix and I met onThe Go-Between: teen romances, which she made into box office smashes, playing the pretty, ditzy heroine. That’s noteasy work, not at all – I’ve personally tried and failed at it – but I can see how it could get old, when you’re doing it on repeat.
‘Which I of course did for the best part of fifteen years,’ Emma said to me, back in September, when we were getting to know one another during rehearsals. ‘I wanted to change things up, so bad, but my agent kept telling me I needed to stay in lane, be grateful I was still getting cast. You know,at my age.’
He apparently blew up last year when she changed lane anyway, accepting a part Ana referred her for, playing one of five people left on earth in a dark dystopian love story.
‘Career suicide, apparently,’ she said.
It was that movie, though, that she won her Oscar for, as best actress in a supporting role.
And Imogen saw it, loved it, and went straight to the casting team for this one, strongly suggesting they consider Emma for Clare. (‘That’s a hill I was willing to die on,’ she’s told me. ‘Just as you had to be Iris, Emma had to be Clare.’) Emma’s agent was happier about that. The buzz around this adaptation was at fever-pitch, even then.
He’s less happy now, however.
Emma told me earlier that he called last night, having spoken to the studio, and suggested she ease their cost concerns by reducing her fee.
‘He said it would be a nice gesture,’ she said. ‘Nice.Like I care about any of them thinking that way about me. I asked him if he’s ever asked one of his male clients to make a nice gesture like that, and he got all indignant, so now I guess I really do have to find a new agent.’ She shrugged. ‘Whatever. It’s overdue.’
I’ve recommended her my agency.
They’ve never advised me to be nice.
Turning from her, I look ahead to the woods, thinking of Iris and Robbie’s cottage. But then, I’m always thinking abouttheir cottage on some level. And now I’m thinking aboutThe Screen’s article again too, narrowing my eyes on the woods’ trees, wondering who, if not Blake, has been observing me heading in and out of them. Clearly not anyone who gives a damn about me – or certainly not enough of one to think to check if I’m ok before running toThe Screenwith their supposed concerns over my mental health.
‘What have you been doing in the woods?’ Nick asked me, last night.
‘Just getting away from it all,’ I said, and didn’t mention the cottage, because I still haven’t told him about it.
I wish I had.
More than ever, I wish I’d just been honest with him about it from the get-go, but if it felt hard to do that back on Sunday when I first found it, it feels impossible now I’ve kept it from him for the best part of a week.
And I truly don’t know how I’d even begin trying to explain how often I’ve been drawn back to its ruins, going whenever I’ve been able to snatch a moment, just to sit by that gatepost, with tears pouring down my face, and my fingers touching the grooves of Robbie’s name.
It’s too … irrational.
Too deranged.
Honestly, I can barely admit to myself that it’s something I’ve been doing.
He knows I’m keeping something from him, I have no doubt about that. I’ve seen his anxious looks. It’s come to me, sinceThe Screen’s article, that a lot of people have been throwing them my way this week – Felix and Emma included – and I hate it. Hate that I’ve let myself become a worry.
Again.
I have tried to stop going to the woods. Every time I’m there, I hear those murmurs, carrying through the trees’ swayingbranches: the voices, and that laughter, which doesn’t seem to belong entirely to this world, and might almost, if such a thing were possible, be echoes from another.
But such a thing isn’t possible.
Rationally, I know that.
