‘I hate this,’ the woman says.
The man turns. ‘I hate it, too.’
She shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Not just this. Us. Every touch feels like a transaction. Every conversation feels like a fight.’ Her voice is strained. ‘I’m in the middle of filming, Seb. My first film. And that should be the happiest thing in the world, but all I think about is this, and so I hate that, too.’
‘I’m sorry,’ the man says, quietly.
‘I don’t want you to be sorry,’ she replies. Her voice is wavering. ‘I just want us to be the way we were. You used to lift me up, to support my work. Until it started to get in the way.’
‘I still—’ He can’t finish the sentence. ‘This isn’t forever.’
The woman’s voice is sharp. ‘If it works, it is the very definition of forever.’
There’s a long silence. Into it, the woman begins to cry. She does so softly, the shadow of her shoulders bobbing up and down. The nurse fiddles with her scrubs, wishes she’d left when she had the chance. The man is hesitating, as if he’s not sure his reassurance is wanted. He reaches out the silhouette of a hand, places it on the silhouette of a shoulder. She lets him. She puts her own hand over his, leans towards him. He kisses her on top of her head, speaks gently.
‘It will happen,’ he says. ‘We just need to be patient.’
The woman stiffens. She shifts away from him, so he withdraws his hand slightly.
‘Please, Seb,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘I can’t keep doing this,’ she says. ‘I can’t keep being tested and prodded and poked.’
The man’s voice is desperate. ‘We can’t just give up.’
The female shadow bats his arm away. ‘We?’ she says. ‘You’re never the one in the fucking stirrups.’
The woman stands, now. She comes near the curtain, her proximity rippling over its sky-blue surface. Her partner is much taller than her, but light and perspective play tricks. Behind her, he seems small.
‘You heard what the doctor said,’ he says. ‘We have options.’
‘I don’t want options,’ she says. ‘Even if it works, I don’t want this to be the story of how it happened.’ She tilts her head. ‘Do you?’
‘Then we just keep trying as we are,’ the man continues, on his own track. ‘No pressure. It’ll sort itself out.’ He doesn’t sound sure. ‘It could still happen for us.’
‘You don’t genuinely believe that?’
‘I don’t know what I believe,’ the man says. His voice tightens. ‘I don’t care how it happens,’ he says. ‘I just don’t know what I’ll do if it doesn’t. You have your film, your career, and I have—’ Again, he can’t finish his sentence. His voice is smaller than his shadow. He sounds far away. ‘If I don’t have this, then I don’t have anything.’
The female shadow stands for a moment. Then she crosses to him, and two shadows become one.
‘You have me,’ she says. ‘Why can’t that be enough?’
her editor
Sometimes the calm comes after the storm. Britt had only visited the set ofAn Enormous Mindonce, and she’d left feeling like she’d survived a hurricane. Clara seemed to thrive in it, serene and unflappable against the blustery Scottish wind, battered by a cast and crew always needing everything from her. First on set in the mornings, last woman standing at the fishermen’s pub where they headed every day after they finished filming. And yet, Britt knows for a fact that the edit suite is where Clara is happiest: in the soundproofed silence, loading and tagging and sifting through a great storm surge of footage, answering only to Britt and to the voices inside her own head. They talk quietly, if at all. What’s unfolding on the screen speaks for itself.
They’re debuting the film at Tribeca. Then they’ll take it to Prague, and after that, Edinburgh, a homecoming of sorts. So many flights to be taken, so many meetings, in person and over the phone and through the screen, with distributors, with interviewers, with everyone. They’re calling Clara one to watch, and they don’t even know what’s coming. Britt has read Clara’s second script. She was in the room, at thatmeeting of the core team, when they discussed the film it’s going to become.
‘It’s even better than the first,’ Britt had said.
‘It’s going to be a phenomenon,’ Agathe had added.
‘And you’re sure it has to be Seb?’ Nico had asked, a frown on her face. ‘I reckon we could get Oscar Isaac for this.’
‘I wrote it for Seb,’ Clara had said, in a voice they all recognised as her most decisive. ‘It can’t be anyone else.’
