Seb gestures around the dark room in which they’re all now standing. It still smells of the last patrons’ drinks, and the place hasn’t been open for almost a year.
‘How did you even find me?’ Seb sighs. ‘Maisie?’
‘Nimesh.’
‘I’m going to kill him.’
Clara shakes her head. ‘So, what?’ she says. ‘You’re staying? Buying a bar?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Well, I’m sorry for interrupting.’
The estate agent isn’t sure who looks angrier. Clara, or Seb. At least the little girl seems to be enjoying herself. She’s found a still-functioning set of disco lights in the corner.
‘I don’t know what you think we are,’ Seb says. ‘But I don’t think we’rethis.’ He sounds almost desperate. ‘This is my life. You can’t just turn up unannounced.’
‘Are you fucking serious?’ snaps the woman. She remembers her daughter, lowers her voice. ‘You’re the one who leaves whenever he wants. Or stays, then keeps it a secret.’
The estate agent sighs, props himself up. They could be here for the long haul. He wishes the optics above the bar weren’t empty.
‘It wasn’t a—’ Seb grits his teeth. ‘I’m trying to do something, here. To work something out for myself. I still have money from the film.’ His face darkens. ‘Though you could probably buy this place outright. The famous Clara Cowan.’
She scowls at him from the sticky dancefloor. Her daughter is still in sight, illuminated by multi-coloured lights.
‘Cut the silver-spoon bullshit,’ Clara says. ‘I’ve worked hard for what I have. Every hatchet-job review still hurts.’
Seb shrugs. ‘No one is forcing you to be a director.’
The woman’s eyes glint in the darkness. ‘So I should be like you?’ she says. ‘Do nothing with my life?’
Seb flinches. The little girl is standing up now, making her way back towards them.
‘There are different kinds of happiness,’ Seb says. ‘Different kinds of fulfilment.’
‘But you’ve never been happy,’ Clara says. ‘You never allow yourself to be totally happy, because that would mean allowing yourself to be totally sad, too. You’d rather temper everything. Close yourself off to all of it.’
Seb says nothing. Clara takes a measured breath.
‘This is pointless,’ she says. ‘I just—’ She searches for the words. ‘I expected it from the critics. Not from you.’
‘You shouldn’t expect anything from me,’ Seb says. Then he walks out of the door.
Traditional-style pub on a lively side street with an upstairs function room providing a potential second revenue stream. Original carpets.
The estate agent lets them into the next venue, busies himself with the light switches as the dust settles. Seb goes on ahead, quietly contemplating the moth-eaten curtains and the dark wood panels. And though Clara offers no opinion, she and her daughter are still present. They traipse around the space, Clara crouching intermittently for the child to whisper into her ear.
‘Does she like it?’ Seb says, his hand upon the glossy wooden bar. He doesn’t look at Clara.
She won’t look at him, either. ‘She thinks it’s haunted. She’s asking about ghosts.’
Seb nods slowly, casts a glance around the cobwebs in thecornicing. His eyes settle on the rusted mirror behind the bar, in which he briefly makes eye contact with Clara. Her mouth parts slightly. Then she looks away, her daughter tugging at her jacket, trying to drag her towards something she wants her mother to see. When Clara looks back at the mirror, Seb is still looking at her.
‘They weren’t all bad,’ he says. ‘The reviews.’
‘Stop it,’ she says, averting her eyes.
‘Stop what?’
