‘Come on,’ he says quietly, ‘I’ll hold your hand.’
It is busy in the Star Inn and other than a few curious heads turning towards us as we enter my presence creates little fuss. Perhaps not everyone saw the papers, I tell myself, or maybe they simply don’t care.
‘Let me get the drinks,’ Jackie says, and disappears towards the bar. Marco and I find a table and he pulls my chair out for me. He nods approvingly as I sit down.
‘I’m glad you wore that dress,’ he says.
I look down at myself. It’s one he’d bought me back when we’d first got together: rich navy-blue, long-sleeved, fine-knit. It’s modest. Carmel used to call it my Amish dress. (That pain again when I think of her, like a slingshot.) It had been lying on the bed waiting for me when I’d come out of the shower.
‘Did you bring it with you from my flat?’
‘Not your flat, not anymore. No point paying rent when you’re not living there. I’ve packed up your stuff and taken it to mine. Most of it you won’t really need.’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask as Jackie hands me a drink – apple juice and ice, a little bent straw. ‘I don’t want you throwing anything away. That’s mine. It belongs to me.’
‘Food looks nice,’ Jackie says brightly, handing us both menus. ‘You don’t want to hang on to that old stuff, love. This is a fresh start for you.’
‘But I thought—’
‘We should have a toast,’ Marco says, sliding his hand over mine, pressing it onto the table. ‘To new beginnings.’
They lift their glasses and look at me expectantly. I raise my own and smile, thinking: What is happening here?
‘You fired Frankie,’ I say as I open the menu.
Marco nods, adjusting his tie.
‘You were right to,’ Jackie says, eyes gleaming. She is already halfway through her wine. ‘If he’s lying about one thing who’s to say he’s not lying about everything?’
I stare at my drink, amber-coloured, frosted with condensation.
‘What if it wasn’t him?’ I say suddenly. I feel Marco stiffen in his seat.
‘But you said—’
‘I need to talk to you about Joey Fraser.’
‘What about him?’
‘He’s been coming to the café. Asking about me. Calling me at the house. He wants to do a Marigold! reunion.’
Marco is turning his glass by the base. He fixes me with a stare. ‘How much is he offering you?’
‘It’s not the money—’
‘Yes, but how much?’
‘He said he’d been offered twenty thousand.’
Marco whistles. Jackie looks shocked and sits back in her seat.
‘I hope you’ve said yes.’
‘Well, no, I—’
Jackie and Marco share a look as though they’ve made a bet. Tenner says she’s lost her mind. Twenty says she’ll be institutionalised before December. I take a sip of my apple juice, so cold it hurts my teeth.
Marco takes my hand, squeezing it. ‘You should rethink. It’s money for nothing, honey.’
‘I don’t want to see him again. He was a horrible kid, and he’s turned into a horrible man. Did you know he told me my mother was the reason for all the cast changes, all my lines? He’s still bitter twenty years later. He’s pathetic.’
Jackie looks down into her drink. She doesn’t lift her head when she next speaks.
‘Your father put up with a lot from your mother, Stella. We used to wonder who your career was really for.’
‘What?’ I snap.
Marco is moving his hand beneath the table, creeping up my thigh towards the warmth of me. He squeezes painfully and I gasp, eyes wide. He leans back in his chair.
‘Listen, Stella. Jackie and I have been talking . . .’ They exchange a glance full of conspiracy and I feel my pulse quickening. I try to smile.
‘We both think you’re going to need a little more time.’
‘Time for what?’
‘To work on yourself, love,’ Jackie says, stretching over the table to put her hand over mine. Ugh, I think. She says stuff like this all the time, since she married the tennis coach. ‘Chase Happiness’, ‘Be Your Own Guru’. There is a sticker on her car that says ‘The only “BS” I need is Bags and Shoes’.
‘I don’t want to work on myself, Jackie. I want to go back to London.’
‘What would you do there, sweetie?’
‘Well,’ I say, suddenly enthused, ‘I’ve been looking at interning in a gallery for a while, just to find my feet. And Marco, your PA, Alice? She knows a lot about art, she might have some contacts she can—’
I see their faces. First one then the other. The good humour, falling away like ice melting. Beneath it a stone-cold impasse.
Jackie’s eyes switch to Marco behind me. When she talks it’s as if I’m not there.
‘I thought you said she understood?’
‘I thought she did,’ he says quietly, before turning in his seat to face me. ‘Stella, do you remember what Doctor Wilson said?’
I look at them both, their wide-open eyes as smooth as pebbles.
‘You had a breakdown, Stella. That’s why you’re here.’
‘But I’m better now!’
‘Honey. Honey, no, just listen to me. Last night you stabbed me in the arm.’
‘I didn’t know it was you!’
‘Okay then – what about this person that you say has been coming into the house? Have you seen them? Have they taken anything? Do you remember what you did to Carmel? To me?’
‘Marco—’
‘I can’t—’ He looks pleadingly at Jackie, rubbing the side of his head. ‘I thought you understood. There’s nothing for you in London anymore. Except pain. Regret.’
‘What Marco’s offering you, Stella, is a rent-free house in a beautiful part of the country. Have you any idea how much properties cost down here? And you could go to St Ives or Newlyn if you want galleries so much.’
The way she says it is so dismissive it hurts me.
‘But I don’t want to live down here. I don’t want to live in that cottage. It isn’t mine.’
‘But it will be when you’re married,’ Jackie says, smiling. ‘And then you never have to leave.’
I stand up. I can’t listen to any more of this.
Jackie nods drunkenly, as though this is what she expects. ‘There you go, running off. It’s your answer to everything, isn’t it? Just like your mother.’
Outside, black clouds scud overhead like the sails of a doomed boat. I stand in the darkness blinking back tears. God. I pull Marco’s cigarettes from my pocket and light one. I’d swiped them from the table while Jackie had been talking, my chest suddenly aching for nicotine. That kick to the back of the throat is still as sweet as it was when I was fifteen. I hear the door of the pub open, and I don’t look up. Hear the noise spilling out, the warm amber light on the pavement. Still I don’t look up. The heavy tread of footsteps in the mist. A shape, a figure approaching. I don’t look up because I don’t need to. I know who it is.
‘I didn’t know you smoked.’