‘Are you coming?’
As if it was ever a question. Seb leaps up, and she jumps into the lake, and he plunges in after her. The sound of gasping, of breath catching.
‘That water looks cold,’ Ren says.
‘Nice cold,’ Ivana says.
Ren sits, leans over and kisses her. ‘It’s nicer up here.’
Ivana runs a finger over Ren’s shoulder, which is already turning pink. ‘You shouldn’t be out in the sun.’
Ren rests her head on Ivana’s shoulder. ‘Why do you take such good care of me?’
As if that was ever a question, either. When they’d first met, Ivana had had the sense that Ren didn’t know what it was like, to be looked after. She has seen photos of a younger version of her wife, her dark fringe swept over one eye, always looking so unsure of herself. Clara was Ren’s best friend, before Ren had moved abroad, but she was not always the best of best friends. Ren says that Clara has often had a blind spot when it comes to her nearest and dearest, failing to recognise that they have lives of their own that continue without her after a door is closed or a phone call is ended. Lives that are worth something, even when Clara isn’t in them. It had been during those years without Clara that Ivana and Ren had met. Of course Ivana sees that meeting through rose-tinted glasses, but it would look like the plot of a movie to anyone. Not the kind of movie that Clara would direct, but one of those schmaltzy Christmas films that Ivana’s mother watches back in Rijeka. Ren with her practical pixie cut and overalls, running her own floristry shop in Amsterdam, content that she was becoming exactly who she was supposed to be. And Ivana bursting right into it, the overworked attorney in heels and a pencil skirt and a hurry, looking for a bouquet to gift to a long-standing client and knocking over a display with herhandbag. Both of them, crouching to recover it, then locking eyes. Ivana has always been clumsy. Ren has never been good at maintaining eye contact.
Their eyes meet again, now, over the cluttered table in the dining room of a candlelit cabin. Nimesh can’t seem to help himself from starting to tidy before everyone else has finished eating. Seb’s food was delicious, and a half-drunk Maisie keeps enthusiastically declaring so. Priya is down for the night, after a battle. Even Finn and Nora have stopped trying to climb out of their bunks and join the adults. Ren launches into conversation with Clara, and Ivana can picture them as young women at university back in London. She’d noticed Clara on the balcony earlier, in a quiet moment, drawing something in a sketchbook, and there had been something so peaceful about the image. She can’t imagine Ren falling out with anyone, but sometimes you have to blow something up to expose its foundations. Strip everything back to its roots, the gardener in her wife might say. Then it can grow back stronger.
‘It’s not a good name,’ Nimesh is saying, when Ivana tunes back in. ‘And you know I loved the guy.’
Seb looks affronted. ‘What’s wrong with a bar called Jasper’s?’
Ivana’s had a few drinks, too. She’s feeling bold. ‘Sorry, Seb,’ she says. ‘He’s right. It’s not a good name.’
Seb clutches his chest as if wounded. Ren laughs, then taps her glass.
‘A toast,’ she says. She looks to Seb. ‘To a new bar.’ Then, to Clara. ‘A new film.’ To Maisie and Nimesh. ‘A new baby.’ Finally, to Ivana. She nuzzles in. ‘And a new wife.’
Clara raises her glass. ‘To new beginnings.’ She’s addressing everyone, but her eyes are on Seb. ‘And old friends.’
After the plates are cleared away, they fire up the ancient stereo system and they laugh and they play games and, eventually, they dance. Then, like people who woke up at the crack of dawn to travel here, they flop on to sofas and, eventually, after nightcaps, peel off towards their bedrooms, their beds. Nimesh and Maisie are down the corridor, nearest the kids. Ivana and Ren bid Seb and Clara goodnight, hear the click of two separate doors on two separate sides of the kitchen, then brush their teeth side by side in their en suite. Ivana is only planning to head back out for a glass of water. But when she opens their bedroom door, she has the perfect vantage point for what’s about to happen. She watches, and she sees.
A door on one side of the kitchen clicks open. Seb emerges from it, still dressed, rubbing the back of his shaved head with one hand. Ivana pulls her own door slightly closed, hears another click as a second door opens. As Seb stares towards this other door, the door opposite his, he does not notice Ivana. He sees only Clara, emerging in pyjama shorts and an oversized T-shirt, looking only for him. They forget themselves. They are drawn together. Seb crosses the room towards Clara, and Clara meets him halfway, and they crash into each other by the dining table. He picks her up by the hips and she wraps her bare legs around his waist and they kiss, hungrily, impatiently, against the table behind them, knocking over candlesticks and flowers in the process.
‘We shouldn’t do this,’ she says, her voice muffled by his mouth.
‘No,’ he replies. ‘We shouldn’t.’
Ivana, open-mouthed, closes the door softly. She grins to herself as she slips into bed beside her wife. Ren can’t ask what she’s smiling about, because she’s already wearing a padded silk eye-mask, already halfway to sleep. On the other side of the wall next to them, Ivana hears Clara’s door clicking shut again. A moment. Then, the thump of a back against the wall, the sound of clothes being torn off and thrown to the side, of mouths meeting, of hands exploring places at once familiar and entirely new. Seb groans with relief. Clara cries out like someone who has waited too long. Ivana muffles a giggle, and elbows Ren like a schoolgirl, and whispers in her ear that she won’t believe what’s happening on the other side of the wall.
Ren reaches up one sleepy hand, puts a finger to her wife’s lips. ‘Shhhhhh,’ she says, with a dreamlike smile. ‘I’m trying to sleep.’
an exec
Gregg arrives on set as he does everywhere: in a hurry. He leaps over someone laying cable, refuses to be deterred by the runner who runs after him, suggesting he might be more comfortable watching the next take on a small screen somewhere else. He has places to be, someone to see. Agathe told him off for coming today. No one wants a studio bigwig hanging around. You’re a bigwig, too, he’d told her, because he knows when people are trying to fob him off. He swerves a swinging camera rig, ducks under a dipping boom mic, thinks about dodging bullets. Clara’s new script is ambitious. He isn’t entirely sure it will work, but then, one person’s favourite film will be someone else’s hate-watch. We can only see the world through one set of eyes, and Gregg’s eyes have been rolling with dollar signs ever since that email pinged into his inbox.
When Clara Cowan sends you an email, you sit your ass up and listen. Or, you read. That’s how Gregg had felt, that day Agathe’s assistant had forwarded his assistant the email she’d been sent by Clara’s assistant. He’d drained his adaptogen tonic, made a call to send an email to set up a call. Gregg thought Clara had given up on directing. But one blip wouldn’t makeanyone forget the veritable sack of awards won byThe Sons, or the fact thatAn Enormous Mindhas gained even more of a cult status since it’s been rediscovered on streaming. EvenMalcontenthas its fans. Gregg would have given Clara the rights to whatever IP she wanted, if he thought it would bring her back into the fold. But that’s not how Clara works. When she turned up out of the blue, she already had an entire script, already stamped with a name.
That was months ago, and now they’re here, Gregg’s carte blanche written large all over this hard-to-secure slice of central London. Clara insists on shooting on location, in natural light, even though Gregg would rather have built a replica of this square on the backlot. He might already have one. He asks a script supervisor if she’s seen Clara, but she’s already shaking her head, so he frowns, carries on, tries to peer over a gaggle of schoolchildren who might just be extras dressed as schoolchildren, dodges out of the way of an animal handler getting a semi-famous dog in the zone for his big scene.
‘There she is!’ Gregg says, to no one in particular.
A set-dresser gives him a strange look. One of the grips takes a few cautious steps away.
Clara is at the centre of it all, talking to Agathe. Neither of them have seen him yet, and they remain deep in conversation.
‘I guess I’m just waiting for him again,’ Clara is saying. ‘I don’t know what he thinks. It’s more complicated with Nora in the picture.’
Gregg reaches them, neckline damp, struggling to catch his breath. The two women raise their eyes, then their eyebrows.
