The sun began to slip out of sight, disappearing behind the so-called mountain as I stood in the pool, staring at a tiny puff of a cloud and watching as it turned from white to peach to pink against the powder-blue sky.
‘You can do this,’ I muttered, reaching for the notebook and pen sat on top of my towel. I tapped the pen against the paper, hoping to shake some sentiment loose. If I were Bel, what would I say to Ren? If I were beautiful and confident and knew he was impatiently waiting to read my words, what would they be? It wasn’t just a letter, it was the beginning of a love story, something he could tell their grandchildren about, the way his grandparents had shared their story with him. A vision of an older Ren popped into my mind, three little boys splashing around in his kidney-shaped pool, and sitting on the grass by this salt-and-pepper version of my green-eyed, nice, hot neighbour was a young girl with my blonde hair. She clapped as he pulled out a stack of letters, tied with a red ribbon, slid the first one out of its envelope and read to her.
My pen moved across the page.
Ren.
The very first time I saw you, everything changed. I knew in that moment I’d been living underwater, holding my breath for far too long and watching the world pass by, out of sight, out of reach. Your green eyes brought me to the surface. When you smiled, I remembered how to breathe. All my words escaped in that exhalation and slowly, one by one, I have searched for them, gathering them in my heart so I could put them in this letter, hoping to come close to describing the way I feel.
I never believed in love at first sight until now.
‘That’s not bad,’ I whispered as I read my own words back. ‘Pretty much exactly what Bel said.’
A shiver ran down the length of my spine and I pushed the pad and paper away, clear of the pool, slipping deeper into the water until I was in up to my shoulders. Imaginary Ren and his fantasy grandchildren faded away, the little blonde girl replaced with a beautiful brunette. It looked better, more believable.
With a deep breath in, I dipped all the way under water and opened my eyes to watch the sunset, submerged.
CHAPTER TEN
All I wanted from my Friday was peace and quiet.
Bel was too busy pretending to be a burned-out but still impossibly beautiful mother of two in an advert for car insurance to trick me into another near-death situation and Suzanne was still threatening the lives of half the population of Seattle, which left me blissfully alone with only three things on my to-do list.
Eat, sleep and deliver the letter to Ren.
I was looking forward to one of those things much less than the others.
Putting pen to paper had put ideas in my mind and I couldn’t seem to shake them loose. All night long, I’d tossed and turned, the false memory of Ren and the little blonde girl chasing me everywhere I went, and when sleep finally found me, my dreams were even worse. In one, I was a waitress, serving Ren coffee in a black-and-white diner, and in another I was a mermaid, he was a merman, and we did unconscionable thingsin both of them. No matter how many times I told myself they were only dreams, they didn’t mean anything, it was impossible to push the thought of MerRen bending me over a coral reef out of my mind.
‘They’re just dreams,’ I said, blinking down at the book in my hands and trying to remember anything that had happened in the last ten pages. ‘You can’t control your dreams.’
No matter how many hours I spent watching videos about lucid dreaming on TikTok.
It made sense. You write a romantic letter about a man, you’re bound to have some residual romantic thoughts, like using a Lush bath bomb and finding glitter all over the house for weeks on end. And I couldn’t stop thinking about the letter itself. Was it too much? Not enough? Had I lost the knack? I’d always been so proud of my work but the thought of anyone reading the words on the piece of paper I’d folded three times, slipped inside an envelope and left waiting on the kitchen counter brought me out in a nervous rash.
Eventually, I gave up on the book and swapped it for the remote control and turned on the TV. I had set myself up for the day on Suzanne’s sofa, with snacks, cushions and her cashmere blanket. It was time to replace the pictures in my head with pictures on the screen and I knew exactly what I wanted to watch.
‘Come on then, Myrna Moore,’ I said, pulling upThe Waitressand pressing play. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got.’
The movie was fantastic. Myrna was magnetic on screen; every time the camera came near her, she was all I could see, and the moment it was over, I startedthe film over again, googling Myrna’s name at the same time. The first photo I found was a portrait in black and white, the planes of her face turned towards the light, blonde hair styled in soft waves around her head, glowing like a halo. She looked like a doll with her eyes softly gazing at something off camera and her heart-shaped mouth curved into an almost smile. Mona Lisa had nothing on her. The second photo was a still fromThe Waitress. Even in her unflattering uniform and sensible shoes, she radiated an untouchable kind of glamour. A few more taps on a few more links uncovered an absolute treasure trove: Myrna at the Oscars, Myrna on Catalina Island, Myrna and Liz at the premiere ofCleopatra, Myrna and Marilyn drinking martinis at Musso & Frank’s. And then I was introduced to her husband, Wally Steadson. He wasn’t anything special to look at and he had to be a good twenty years older than her, but from the look in his eyes, there was never a man more in love than Wally on his wedding day. The first photo was of their courthouse ceremony, Wally in a suit, Myrna in a sexy little dress, then Myrna and Wally on their Palm Springs honeymoon, Myrna and Wally in Las Vegas with Elvis. Myrna and Wally laughing in every single picture. Then it all changed. There was one single image of a black-clad Myrna climbing into a car at the Forest Lawn cemetery after Wally’s funeral and after that, nothing. She disappeared. I couldn’t find a single photograph of Myrna taken after 1965. She never acted in another film, was never pictured attending another event. It was as though she’d vanished, not just from Hollywood but off the face of the earth altogether.
‘Myrna Moore, the mystery,’ I whispered as my eyes drifted back to the huge flatscreen TV to see the woman herself raise one eyebrow and smile back at me from sixty years ago.
It was early evening by the time I dragged myself out of the house and round the corner to deliver Ren’s letter. To her credit, Bel had only texted me fifteen times to ask if he had it, what he’d said, how he’d looked when I gave it to him and whether or not he was shirtless at the time. I could only put it off for so long.
There were so many different types of houses in Los Feliz: Spanish villas, modernist blocks, craftsmen bungalows and so many more I didn’t even know how to describe. As I strolled down the hill and around the corner, I realized I’d never really seen the front of Ren’s storybook cottage. It was tucked away amongst the trees with a steeply pitched roof and timber framework, and all that was missing was Goldilocks and or the Three Bears. The front of the house was painted the same deep forest green as the back, but it clashed beautifully with the vintage cherry-red flatbed truck parked on the street outside, and even though it was gorgeous, I couldn’t help but think he ought to consider trading it in for a horse and cart.
I opened his squeaky gate and made my way up a front path picked out in irregularly shaped paving stones, hopping from one to the next. I felt like Gretel, only without the obnoxious brother and the propensity for eating other people’s houses. Even though it would have been quicker for me to climb down the garden stairs for the hand-off, this felt more proper. It alsomeant I could shove the envelope through the letterbox and run away. I held my breath as I approached the front door, stealth personified. Post and run, no need for me to see Ren at all. I’d added Bel’s number to the bottom of the letter so he could call her once he’d read it and my work here would be done. Very, very, very carefully, I lifted the flap of the letterbox, slid the envelope inside and listened as it landed with a dull thud.
Mission accomplished.
‘Phoebe?’
The front door opened with a tell-tale creak.
Mission buggered.
‘Oh, hello!’ I turned around with a face full of cheerful bluster. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’
