‘The strangest thing just happened to me,’ she said to Clare, once it had. ‘I can’t make any sense of it.’
Chapter Sixteen
Claudia and Iris
15 November 2018, Day 13 of the shoot
&
April 1943
I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen.
I can’t make sense of it – there is no sense – but I’ve felt it coming.
That’s the first thought I have when, down on the floor of the frozen base, all of us so nearly at the end of our first night shoot, eternalizing the last April departure of 96 for Essen, I open my eyes to the fraught faces of Ana, Nick, Naomi, Felix, and Emma peering over me.
Then, I let my eyes fall shut again, because my head really hurts, and it’s all too much.
But all week long, ever since I stood in Tim’s lounge watching him sleep and somehowfoundmyself back in Bettys bar – there, actuallythere,all of it so strangely familiar, my heart bursting with love, filling Iris with my fear – I’ve felt as though I’ve been moving through my days and nights with a wall up ahead of me: hidden, unavoidable, but assuredly waiting for me to crash into it, like I’ve just crashed now.
I don’t think I’m going to be able to work any more tonight.
That’s the second thought I have.
The third is that that’s a real shame, because we were set upand ready for action, and it’s going to cost a lot of money to restage this shot.
Over in LA, someone is about to have their day ruined.
That’s my fourth thought.
My fifth is that what’s just happened could not have been more public, and I’ve failed, absolutely, at keeping my composure in front of everyone.The Screen’s anonymous source, who’s been leaking more gossip to them all week – about the scenes we’ve filmed, and Ana’s daily calls with the studio on our progress, and the ongoing discord over the ending – is going to have a field day.
The sixth thought that hits me is that I just hallucinated again, except I don’t believe it was an hallucination.
I’m no longer convinced anything I’ve been experiencing has been fabrication.
The seventh thought I have is that it might finally be time I asked someone for help.
The eighth is that that person should probably be Nick.
And my ninth thought is that I’m not sure it can be Nick.
I’ve pushed him away so much this week, I no longer know how to pull him back.
It was last Friday, after we returned from seeing Tim, that I spent my first night back in the attic. Nick crashed out as soon as he’d hung up on another call with his lawyers (he’s been having those all week, with the net that the clinic – who’ve now confirmed that my files weren’t hacked, but leaked by a cash-strapped intern – have offered to compensate us with money that we don’t need, won’t compensate for anything, and which I don’t want a cent of); I tried to sleep too, but I couldn’t, so I left Nick a note, grabbed a spare blanket, andheaded upstairs – in part because I was just too upset to go on lying next to him.
We’d argued a lot that evening, about a whole load of things, from his insistence on pressing ahead with the lawyers, to a cryptic text I saw pop up on his phone from an unnamed number, asking him if he’d changed his mind yet (‘Changed your mind about what?’ I asked him. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, swiping the text away), to his pause before agreeing with Tim that he thought I was the cat’s pyjamas (‘It was like you weren’t sure,’ I said. ‘Seriously?’ he said. ‘You believe that?’), to his suspicion that I wasn’t being open with him about what had gone on with Tim after I went back to his room for my phone.
‘Nothing went on,’ I said, reluctant, for obvious reasons, to get into Tim’s warning that Felix is in love with me, let alone how, looking at his photo of the crew, I saw Robbie come to life, let alone how much I was still spinning out over that, and my moment in Bettys Bar.Let alonehow crushed I’d felt when it had been over. ‘He was half asleep. He told me my eyes are like Iris’s.’Windows to your soul.‘That’s all.’
‘That’s not all. You’ve been acting weird ever since.’
‘I’m sorry you think I’m weird.’
‘I said you’ve been acting weird.’
‘I suppose if I was the cat’s pyjamas … ’
