‘I loved the film,’ Aimi says, even though she didn’t. Clara looks like she needs some talking up, so Aimi isn’t exactly going to tell her that it wasn’t her best.
‘Sorry?’ Clara says, as if she’d briefly left the room. ‘Oh.’ A weak smile. ‘Thank you. That’s kind.’
There’s a knock at the door. The handler enters first, looking pleased with himself. Then, after him, the man from the audience ducks under the doorframe. He has tattooed hands and black eyes that bore into Clara’s back. He looks familiar. He looks furious.
‘Problem solved,’ the handler says.
Clara seems frozen in place. She looks like she’s stopped breathing. Then she turns, quickly, to face him. Aimi can no longer see her face, but she is keenly aware of the silence. Clara and this stranger stare at each other for a long while, neither of them speaking. Even the chatter of the audience outside seems to have subsided, as if everyone in the whole theatre is watching them on a screen, waiting to see who will blink first.
‘Three minutes,’ says the voice behind the door, and the spell is broken.
‘It’s really you,’ says Clara, quietly. ‘You’re here.’
The man looks to the handler, now disappearing through that same doorway.
‘I didn’t seem to have a choice,’ he says.
Another silence. The man seems like he wants to say something else, but he doesn’t know what. He notices Aimi, loses his nerve. Clara is just as speechless, so they stand for a moment, looking angry, looking lost. Then the man spots Nora, concealed as she is in the fabric of her mother’s wide-legged trousers.
‘Who’s this?’
‘What?’ Clara looks down, as if she’d forgotten her daughter was there. ‘Oh, this is—’ But she stops, as if realising something. She begins to stutter. ‘Wait, Nimesh hasn’t…?’
‘Another one of Cee’s?’
‘Oh god,’ Clara says. She sounds breathless, light-headed. ‘You know what? Go back to your seat. You shouldn’t be here.’
The man looks affronted. He looks back at the door. ‘I didn’t want—’
‘Please, Seb,’ Clara says, her voice strained. ‘Go. Enjoy the film.’
Seb searches Clara’s face, and then studies what little he can see of the girl behind Clara’s legs. It looks like he’s working something out, but the moment is cut short when the handler returns, poking his head through the door.
‘All sorted?’
Aimi can see Seb’s colour draining. The handler hasn’t noticed. He’s busy staring back through the door, towards the stage and the audience beyond.
‘Thank god for this guy,’ he says, before turning to Clara. ‘For a minute, I really did think you were taking your daughter out there with you.’
Then he disappears again, leaving a dreadful silence behind him. Aimi tries her best to be invisible, moving over to the table, busying herself with a water bottle, a screw-cap that won’t budge. Nora is no longer in hiding. She’s peeking out at this big and silent man, trying to get the measure of him. Seb seems to struggle to get his next words out.
‘Your—’
‘I thought someone would have told you,’ Clara says. ‘I thought you’d know.’ Her words peter out. ‘Fuck.’
‘Fuck,’ repeats Nora, from behind Clara’s legs.
‘I didn’t think…’ Seb begins, but tails off. His fists are clenched. ‘How?’ he says. ‘Who?’
He looks at the girl, and it isn’t hard to guess. Aimi knows the gossip. Ever since the first pictures came out of Clara Cowan and her daughter on the set of this new film, people started putting two and two together. Jacob Steele has never answered a question about it. But look at his hair, and look at Nora’s.
‘Please,’ Clara says, quietly. ‘Can we not do this now?’
Nora seems strangely interested in Seb. Seb stares back at the child with something like hatred. He trembles. He looks back at the door, seems to consider running away.
‘Two minutes,’ says the voice from behind the door.
Seb gives Clara a pleading look. ‘Why did you ask me back here?’
