Inside it is dark, soft light coming through the gaps in the tiles. The whole place is strung with cobwebs and dust, long vines of ivy snaking through the cracks in the brickwork. There is the cord of wood that Frankie had chopped before I’d arrived, covered in a tarp. Beyond that are stacks of boxes, soft and water-stained. I open the nearest one and a slew of old 45 singles slither out onto the floor. As I move forward my foot nudges something and I bend down to look closer. It’s a stack of videotapes, four in total. They are carefully labelled. I carry them into the sitting room, pulling the one labelled ‘Marigold! Series 1-2’ from its sleeve.
The theme music is as I remember, that same piano rising and falling, that jolly English voice chiming, ‘It’s time to meet the Marigolds!’, but when the title card comes up it reads Two and Six and there we are, Frisky number one and the five of us children waving at the camera. There’s my on-screen sister Bonnie, a girl I can’t remember, goofy-looking, wild hair tied up in a scarf. A different girl then. The mother is an actress I don’t recognise and so is Mikey. Joey was right. I press my hands together and realise I am shaking. What’s happening to me?
My phone is ringing and ringing and ringing. The morning sun is too bright. I reach my hand out from beneath the covers and pull the phone back under.
‘Stella, I am sorry, I am so, so sorry.’
‘Marco? Where are you? Are you here?’
‘Oh, baby. Oh, Stella.’
‘Marco, what is it? You’re frightening me. Where are you?’
His voice sounds panicked, almost breathless. He is pacing, I can tell. I sit up.
‘I need you not to worry, honey. I need you to promise you won’t worry.’
‘Marco, for fu—’ I check myself. Swearing doesn’t suit you.
‘I don’t know how it happened, I swear.’
I wait. My heart has picked up a neat little rhythm in my chest, running hard.
‘About a week after you – you went into hospital I lost my phone. Only for a day or so. Do you remember?’
I tell him no, I don’t.
‘I just thought I’d left it at the office. I wasn’t too worried. In the end I found it down the side of the sofa at your flat. It was barely hidden at all. I was surprised I’d missed it the first time because I thought I’d looked there. I thought I’d looked everywhere.’
‘Go on.’
‘I just – I want you to know – okay, so. Okay. Do you remember those photos we took?’
I close my eyes. I remember. Of course I do. But I thought he’d wiped them.
‘I’m so sorry, Stella. I don’t know how this has happened. I meant to delete them, I swear I did. But listen, it’s just going to be one of those things, you know? People will talk about it for a few days and then—’
‘I can’t believe I let you talk me into taking them.’
‘You hardly needed much persuading.’
I stare out of the window to the cliffs and the sea. Glassy sinuous waves rolling to shore. ‘Are they going into the papers?’
‘They’re already there. Printed today. Alice called to warn me. I mean – they’ve pixelated them. You can’t see everything.’
‘Well, then that’s okay then, isn’t it? You didn’t take any pictures of my face.’
A pause, so slight. An intake of breath.
‘Marco, you promised—’
‘Listen, after your second drink you were willing to do anything. You said you didn’t mind. I mean, I thought you were enjoying it.’
I try to think back. The memory of that night is dense and blurred. How strong were those drinks he was making?
‘Fuck,’ I say, forgetting myself, forgetting to mind my language. ‘Fuck.’
‘I thought I ought to tell you before you saw them yourself. Got a nasty surprise.’
‘Carmel,’ I say flatly.
It was Carmel. It must have been. I can even remember telling her about them. She’d tsked and pretended to be shocked but I know Carmel. She’s unshakable. I, however, am not, and now I feel a seismic shift inside me, the collapse of everything I thought I knew and trusted. Marco sounds doubtful.
‘I don’t know, honey. Does she need the money that badly?’
‘Paris is expensive.’
‘And after your overdose made—’
‘It wasn’t an overdose; I keep telling you. Why now though? Why wait all this time?’
‘I suppose your profile has been raised just enough after your overd— your hospital visit – to make these pictures more profitable. More lurid.’
‘What’s the headline?’
‘Oh, don’t. Don’t do this to yourself.’
‘I want to know.’
I hear a rustling over the line. ‘Uh – “The Honey of Honeypot Lane”. Underneath that it says, “Katie Mari-Bold Is All Grown Up”.’
‘I’m so embarrassed.’
‘Don’t be. You look beautiful. Scratch that, for a woman your age you look amazing.’
I don’t know what to say to that so I say nothing.
Before he hangs up he asks, ‘Are you mad at me?’
‘I don’t know, Marco. I don’t know. I need to think.’
I toss the phone onto the floor and bury my head into my pillow and scream and scream.
I don’t leave the house that day. I want to cocoon myself indoors. I pull all the blankets from the cupboards and pile them onto the sofa where I sit eating yogurt and watching old reruns of Friends. Marco calls and calls. Joey Fraser leaves me three voice messages, and I do not listen to a single one of them.
Frankie turns up, calling through the letterbox. ‘I know you’re in there,’ he shouts. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ I think of him waiting outside his truck for a mangy stray dog that would die without his help. ‘I’m a persistent bastard,’ he’d said. He arrived at ten fifteen and when I look out of the kitchen window a little after one o’clock he is still out there, reading a book, sitting in the garden. Next to him is a small package of sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper. I sigh. I can’t go on like this. I know that. He looks up when I open the front door.
‘Hello.’
‘Hi!’ He lifts his hand but does not stand up. Instead he goes back to his book.
‘What are you reading?’
He lifts the cover to show me. Stephen King. An old one, by the looks of it. Well read.
‘Is it good?’
‘Yup. Do you like him?’
‘I prefer the films.’
I sit next to him on the bench. The old stone is cold.
‘You shouldn’t hide away. You’ve nothing to be ashamed of.’
‘It hurts.’
Frankie nods.
‘It’s the betrayal. She was meant to be my best friend. She was meant to be one of the good guys, you know?’
‘I know.’
‘I mean – what would they pay? A couple of hundred quid? I’m nearly forty. I haven’t been on television since 1993. I’m hardly newsworthy. I would have just given her the money. Double the money. I’d have found it somehow. She just needed to ask me.’