‘Mushroom and tahini chocolate mousse,’ says Cee, as she serves up the final course. ‘Trust me.’
They do. And like everything else Cee turns her hands to, it works by the force of her own volition. Emily knows that next in Cee’s sights is her own restaurant, her own Star. For now, an evening without disaster is enough. Once the plates are cleared away and the kitchen is cleaned down, the whole thing becomes a lock-in, and Harry takes Raff home to bed so that Cee can get diligently drunk with the rest of the staff, an open bar courtesy of their uber-rich owners. Augie is drinking from a highball glass, talking deeply with one of the young waiters. Then he’s rising from his seat, encouraging the waiter to dance, roping in all the other waiting staff, too. Outside this crowd are Seb and Clara, talking quietly to one another, taking the opportunity to sneak off and smuggle their drinks through the balcony window. Emily isn’t a dancer, so she stays at the sidelines. Besides, it’s in her nature to be nosy. It feels as if they’re inviting her to listen in.
‘Why is it always balconies?’ Seb is saying on the other side of a fluttering curtain.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I have a feeling that we’re going to talk about something deep,’ Seb says. ‘I’ve had the right amount of drinks. And we’re out here.’ He takes a sip. ‘Try me.’
Clara laughs. ‘OK, then,’ she says. She takes a while. She softens her voice. ‘What was your sister like?’ she says. ‘You never talk about her.’
Emily can tell that this is a big one. If Seb is startled, he doesn’t let it show.
‘Can I tell you the truth?’ Seb says. ‘I can barely picture her. The real her, not the her in photos. Bouncy hair. A smile without her front two teeth. I feel guilty, for not remembering more. But when you’re thirteen, you don’t take notes. You don’t think anything is ever going to be taken away.’
‘You’re brave, you know,’ Clara says. She glances back through the curtains. Augie, lording it over the dancefloor. Cee, in stitches at the sight. ‘I don’t think I could have handled it.’
‘I didn’t have a choice,’ Seb says. ‘My parents were grieving, too. They used to fight. I think they only stayed together for my sake.’ He sighs, scratches his beard. ‘Ellie’s room was exactly as she’d left it. For ages. And she had this doll, which was a baby, and I kind of adopted it. Fed it and dressed it and tucked it in at night. It was stupid. I was already seeing this therapist, and when my parents caught wind, they all thought I was regressing. So they did Ellie’s room up, put the doll away with the rest of her things. Stuck a drum kit in there instead, because they thought it would help my anger issues.’ He pauses, seems unsure whether to continue. ‘But I didn’t have anger issues. I just wanted my little sister back.’
‘You care for other people,’ Clara says. ‘It’s all you care about. Some might say it’s a fault. I think it’s your best quality.’
There’s a silence. Emily looks down into her drink, feels the warm breeze from the window behind her. Out there is theslam of cab doors and the crush of sirens, the constant pressure of an entire city. In here, clinking glasses and a murmur of easy conversation, a world away from it all.
Clara speaks again, but only after a while. Her voice is almost a whisper. ‘You’d be a wonderful dad.’
a fan
Right now, it’s hard not to feel like real art is under attack. Every poster on the walls is for a franchise film about superheroes. Every song on the stereo in the theatre lobby is either a fist-pump EDM anthem or a stomp-clap ditty by men with banjos and beards. And yet, when everything else seems like it’s being dumbed down, there’s still hope, because there are still visionaries. Clara Cowan is delivering a talk here tonight. For this particular fan, it feels like the culmination of an obsession that started a long time ago.
Clara Cowan is not famous. Not yet, at least. But when she is, this fan will say: I was there first. Cowan’s future followers might be surprised to hear that the director started out as an artist, that she once had a blog on Tumblr called ClaraScuro, posting scratchy black illustrations, snippets of experimental stop-motion and stilted puppetry. In the interplay betweenClaraandScuro, light and dark, it’s clear that at some point the darkness won. That’s when each picture started to gain more reblogs, each video more views. Nowadays, people like Cowan can become famous simply for being, and for being someone others would like to be. This follower, this fan, imagines thatCowan is a lapsed ballerina, perhaps of Russian heritage. That she drinks vodka martinis without even flinching, and turns off auto-capitalisation on her phone so that every sentence starts in the lower case. Cowan’s Instagram feels tortuous, less a feed than the feeling of being drip-fed. She hides things, obfuscates her personal life. But to create in the public sphere is to belong to the public. So, the fan knows that Cowan has a sister with a baby, that she has an adorably snaggle-toothed dog. That there’s sometimes a tattooed hand on the other side of a table, and that it belongs to Seb Bonami, an up-and-coming British actor whom you might have seen in something, though you can’t remember what. A face one might one day recognise, closed-mouthed and uncomfortable with the camera trained on him, sitting in a rented tuxedo at the back of a ceremony room while Clara Cowan makes a speech.
In the lobby, an announcement is made, and the throngs of people begin to move towards the auditorium. It’s a short-film festival, and though Cowan doesn’t have anything new out this year, her two existing shorts were so well received that she’s been asked back to screen them, back-to-back, and then be interviewed about them on stage. First, there wasA Vulgar Explosion of Colour and Sound: the story of a couple whose relationship is doomed by a cosmic event that turns the world inside out. Senses are thrown into disarray, and things that once seemed sure become anything but. They transform before each other’s eyes, shift colours like chameleons. To her, his skin feels as soft as silk. To him, hers becomes as coarse as sandpaper. ThenStrings, which blended live-action and puppetry to disorientating effect, spinning a surprisingly subtle narrative aboutthe insidious ways in which a woman is manipulated by the masculine world around her. When she first saw it, the fan felt as if it was made for her and her alone. It wasn’t. Cowan won her first prize forStrings. She’ll win more.
The fan makes her way towards the double doors. Inside, she watches those shorts again. Then the lights come up and there is Cowan, arriving on stage in a pair of tailored trousers, a men’s shirt cinched at the waist. Her hair is shaved on one side. Occasionally, when she’s deep in thought, she’ll run her slender fingers across the shorn side of her skull.
‘Something that seems to connect both of your films is the idea that the domestic is a veil for something more sinister,’ the moderator says. ‘Do you think that’s a fair analysis?’
‘I had a privileged upbringing, but not a happy one,’ Cowan says. ‘I assumed everyone else’s house had a pantry, and that everyone else was miserable, too.’ She touches her head. ‘I think that’s why I’m unnerved by the idea of happy homes filled with happy families. I’m still not sure they genuinely exist.’ Several people around the fan are nodding. Several are shaking their heads. ‘I’ve always felt abnormal for that,’ she goes on, ‘and I think my art is a reaction to that abnormality. The happier things get, the further inwards I go.’
‘So you’re battling with yourself?’
‘Always,’ Cowan says. ‘I doubt myself constantly. And I doubt the intentions of others. I’m thirty-one now, and it feels like the conversation has suddenly shifted. It’s all anyone talks about, so it’s impossible not to think about it.’ A pause. ‘I think about it all the time.’
The moderator’s face seems to say: about what?
‘We spend our lives being elbowed out of the way,’ Cowan says, trying to clarify. ‘But there has to be more to us than this, this journey from dutiful daughters to doting wives to downtrodden mothers. I’ve never been any of those things, and I never plan to be.’
A smattering of laughter.
Cowan shrugs. ‘I want to be my own person. Is that so crazy?’
his cousin
Lucrezia and Seb have known each other their whole lives. But when you haven’t seen each other in six years, family really can feel like strangers.
‘Piacere,’ she says, extending a hand to Clara. ‘Call me Rezia.’
Rezia and her family have crossed half a continent for Zio Enzo and Zia Helen’s fortieth wedding anniversary. It would take such an occasion, to make them travel all the way to Leicester. Last time Rezia saw Seb, he was already talking about this girl like he knew he’d spend the rest of his life with her. Back then, his hair had still been floppy, and Rezia was still able to reconcile him with the skinnyragazzinowho’d make visits out to Salerno back when they were kids. Seb is easier to talk to since Clara. Less prone to moody silences, more likely to engage with a group conversation in settings like this. Rezia remembers a night out in Naples as teenagers, Seb crying on her shoulder about Ellie. He’d never spoken to her about that night, or his sister, ever again. When Rezia had come to Leicester as a self-confident seventeen-year-old, she’d attended one of the band’s first gigs in this very pub, on the same street as Zio Enzo’s fish-and-chip shop. Afterwards,she’d slept with Ryan, then spent several months fielding his tearful phone calls about wanting to fly out to Italy and ‘make things official’. Time has a habit of surprising you. Now Seb is happy, and Ryan is happily married, and Nimesh can’t stop introducing everyone to his new girlfriend, or talking about his new girlfriend whenever he’s not talkingtoher.
