‘Get away with you,’ said Connie. ‘I’ll buy it.’
‘No,’ said Shara. ‘I want you to have it.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
Elise mooched around the studio, feeling she should leave them in peace. She thought about when she’d turned twenty-one, and she and Connie had had a picnic on the Heath, near the spot where they’d first laid eyes upon each other. Among a pork pie and cold sausages from the butcher, Connie had even made a chocolate cake. Elise recalled the unprecedented sensation of being cared for, finally – mixed with an overflowing lust despite the Blytonesque picnic hamper and bottles of ginger beer that Connie had packed. For her next birthday, Connie had bought them tickets to see Much Ado About Nothing at the National Theatre. ‘So you can have a night off and be ushered to a seat yourself,’ Connie had said. Penelope Wilton had played Beatrice and Michael Gambon was Benedick, and Connie and Elise had laughed and held each other’s hands in the dark.
Elise felt, now, an irrational surge of hate for Connie, to be so trapped by her. She would like to be thirty-eight, and be given paintings by American friends. She would like to go driving off in a car towards West Hollywood. She would like to live by the beach in Malibu. Instead, she was watching it all happen. None of this was hers. And Connie could take away the little she had, in an instant.
2017
13
I sat in the living room of our flat, staring at the scrunched-up Post-it note where I’d written the number for Deborah Clarke’s literary agency. Hi, I’m a huge fan of Constance Holden! That wouldn’t work – that was the last sort of person Constance’s representatives would let anywhere near her. I didn’t imagine Deborah Clarke was still working, given the amount of time that had passed, and I thought that might play in my favour – but nevertheless, whoever now worked for Constance was unlikely to pass on any details. Hi! I think Constance may have had a hand in my mum’s disappearance, I’d love to talk to her – think she’d be free?
I thought, briefly, that I could tell the truth. Give the name of my dad, say that I just wanted to put the pieces of my early life together. Imagine that – just being honest. I never seriously considered it. All I could think of was my dad telling me to go carefully with her, that she was strong where my mother had been weak, and that Constance might not even want to talk to me about Elise Morceau.
I would make up a name, I decided. A quiet, simple identity, that could easily be lost on the Internet. Laura and Brown, a ubiquitous enough pair of bookends between which a real life could hide. Of course, it was tempting to give myself an exquisite alias, Miranda, Isabella, Penelope, tied up with a surname like Storm or Montgomery, but that would have been rather risky. I looked up the agency website. They had one assistant, Rebecca Forrester, and luckily, in these days of such transparency, her email address and phone number were right there.
I was Laura Brown, and I wanted to write a letter to Ms Holden. Where might I send it? I pressed the digits on my phone and waited. After three rings, someone picked up. ‘Clarke and Davies, Rebecca speaking, can I help?’ said a woman with a flustered voice.
‘Hi, Rebecca.’ I sounded foolish, informal. I panicked, and my mind went blank. ‘It’s about Constance.’
‘Oh, thank god you rang me back,’ she said breathlessly.
‘I—’
‘Hold on a sec.’ There was a rustling sound on the other end of the line. ‘Have you got anyone yet?’ said Rebecca. ‘She’s getting quite impatient.’
‘Impatient?’
‘Well, don’t say I told you that,’ this Rebecca went on. ‘But she’s turned down all your other candidates and we don’t really know what to do next.’
‘No, of course,’ I said, feeling vertiginous.
‘So have you got anyone? We need someone urgently.’
My mind was working as fast as it could. I had no idea what this Rebecca was talking about, but I knew that to deny her what she wanted could lead to myself being denied too. ‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Fantastic. Can you send me her details?’
‘Can I send you her details?’ I repeated, trying to buy time to get my thoughts in order.
‘Ye-es?’
I tried to pull myself together. ‘Sure. Sure. I’ll email you?’
‘Yes,’ said Rebecca, sounding slightly impatient. ‘Are you able to do it now?’
‘Of course I am. One thing – I’m working from home. It’ll come in from my personal email. From—’ I stopped. On the small dining-room table was a bottle of McIntyre’s Hot Sauce, left there because Joe hadn’t tidied it away. ‘It’ll come from [email protected].’ My head was pounding. ‘Is that OK?’
‘Sure,’ said Rebecca. ‘I’ll look out for it. Call you back after I’ve read it. I’ve got to jump into a meeting now.’
‘Actually – would you be able to reply by email instead? It’s just, I’ve got a sleeping baby here and she wakes if the phone rings.’
Fuck, I thought. What the fuck am I doing?
‘No worries. Let’s be in touch soon,’ said Rebecca. She was sounding more and more harried, as if she had fifty-five other things to think about that day. She hung up the phone.
I’d started something, but I wasn’t sure what. It needed water and light. I was astonished at how quickly I’d made up the lie. I flipped open my laptop and began to construct a CV for Laura Brown. I couldn’t believe I was doing this, but here I was, fluently making it all up.
Laura Brown was my age. She’d studied at the same university as me, same subject. As tempting as it was to give her an unusual, high-flying career history, I figured it would be better to keep as much as possible in the non-fiction realm so I didn’t get caught out as a physics graduate who’d won a junior Nobel Prize, or as someone who knew how to translate Russian novels.
That said, I upped her degree class to a first.
Then it dawned on me that in my shock at how quickly I’d concocted this charade over the telephone, I didn’t even find out what the candidates were candidates for. I’d have to guess, in which case everything might come crashing down before I’d even started. Care work for Constance? Secretarial? This was ridiculous. I took a deep breath. Let’s go for a mix, I thought, feeling more alive than I had in months.
Laura Brown had done some charity work and volunteering, three years working in a bookshop, and she’d worked as a teaching assistant in Costa Rica. It was astonishing to me how quickly my fabrications came. I could find adjectives to describe Laura quicker than I could for myself. She was diligent, enthusiastic, positive, had great attention to detail. And yet she took long walks in her spare time, just like me.
In the end, the fake CV wasn’t the problem, it was making the fake email account. I was heading deeper into the forest towards Connie, this would look terrible if I was caught – but I didn’t want to leave a trail of breadcrumbs. I prayed that no one already owned the [email protected] account. I was in luck, if anything about this scenario could be called lucky.