Barbara collapsed on the wooden chair. ‘So are you two decided yet whether you’re gonna come with us to the Catskills?’
Neither woman said anything, and Barbara laughed. ‘Oh, jeez. It’s like that, is it?’ Elise wanted to hit her. ‘Lucy’s right.’
‘Lucy Crenshaw?’ said Connie. ‘What’s it got to do with her?’
‘We were just wondering,’ said Barbara, looking at Elise. ‘We thought you might have had enough of it here.’
Connie took another swig of her beer. ‘Why would you think that? We’re staying.’
‘Great,’ said Barbara. ‘How’s the beer?’
‘It’s cold,’ said Elise.
Barbara patted her corset sides. ‘I’d kill for one,’ she said. ‘But I won’t. Imagine being gassy in this contraption. My tits would inflate even more and they’d have to pull me out of the lighting rig.’
Elise felt mildly stupefied. The surface elements of Barbara’s personality were pressing her down, but it was the sudden news that they were going to be staying in America that knocked her sideways. She gripped her beer bottle. When, exactly, had Connie been planning to tell her this? Provoked by Barbara, had she just made up her mind, now? Elise began to bristle. As Connie’s younger partner, with no discernible talent herself, she felt she had to be always solicitous, alert, smiling – and she was beginning to find it very difficult. She just wanted Connie to look at her with the same levels of admiration she looked at Barbara – to talk to her with the same confidence she spoke to Bill or Matt.
Suddenly, Elise wished she’d taken Matt up on his offer of surfing. To be on the water now, even to be walking along the shore – rather than here, in this airless room with its basket of unwanted fruit and intense lightbulbs. Exhausted, she shuffled to the back of the sofa, clutching the beer bottle tightly.
‘You OK, honey?’ Barbara said, undoing the knot of her white cotton bonnet and revealing a head of rollers. She looked more human, but her face still vacuumed up attention like something supernatural.
‘I’m a little faint, but OK, thank you.’
‘Do you need fresh air?’ said Barbara.
‘Do you need to go home?’ asked Connie.
*
Barbara called for the production manager to get her a car back to the bungalow. Elise protested that she didn’t need it, that she was fine. Connie said she looked pale, and an afternoon by the pool would be better. She gave up trying to protest, and left Connie and Barbara in the dressing room.
‘Is she really OK?’ she heard Barbara say to Connie, through the door. ‘Did she really want to be alone?’
‘She’ll be fine.’
‘Con, you should go with her. She’s just a kid.’
‘If I treated her like a kid, Barb, she’d hate that even more.’
Elise wasn’t really ill, but she’d wanted to get away from Barbara and have Connie come with her. Alone with Connie was where she wanted to be. Wandering the corridor towards the rectangle of light at the end, Elise stepped slowly along the linoleum. She wanted nothing more than to leave – to go back to London, just her and Connie. She felt, with a painful, exhilarating awareness, that the new life she had gripped onto was sliding through her fingers. She stood outside in the sunshine and waited to be picked up, watching the extras filing out of another hangar; centurions from Rome, their helmets glinting in the sun.
*
Elise knew she could not control Connie. She could not know everything about her, and she never could. She did not know whether the words Connie spoke to her were words she’d said before, or words she would say again, to another. There was no anchor here.
When she got home, she went straight to the telephone and dialled Matt and Shara’s number in Malibu. It was Matt who answered.
‘It’s me,’ she said.
‘Elise,’ he replied. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m OK,’ she said. ‘I was wondering – is Shara there?’
‘Shara?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hold on.’
There was a pause, the sound of footsteps. Elise waited. Finally, Shara picked up the handset. ‘Hi, Elise,’ she said. ‘What’s up?’
‘Can I model for you?’ Elise said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘For a painting. Do you need a model?’
There was a pause. ‘Oh – well. I mean, the work I’ve been doing is more abstract, Elise. I’m really sorry, but I’m not using models at the moment.’
Elise felt an inexplicable wall of rage rise up inside her. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. It was a stupid idea.’
‘No – it’s a lovely offer. I’m just sorry that how I’m working at the moment doesn’t—’
‘You don’t have to explain,’ said Elise. ‘I’m really sorry I asked, Shara. I shouldn’t have asked. I guess we’ll see you soon.’
‘Hey—’
But Elise put down the telephone before she could hear any more.
2017
17
The first Monday working for Connie, in the middle of October, I arrived shortly after ten in the morning. She gave me a key immediately, because she couldn’t be bothered to walk all the way downstairs to open the front door every day. As far as I knew she didn’t eat breakfast, because I went straight to the kitchen to make coffee and the place was spotless.
‘I like it from this stove-top pot,’ Connie said. ‘But you must watch very carefully to make sure it doesn’t boil over on the hob.’
‘Got it.’
‘Also, Laura, please open my post for me.’
‘Are you sure?’
Connie blinked at me owlishly. ‘I never get sent anything of much interest, and I can’t be bothered faffing for thirty minutes trying to open an envelope telling me I could get better broadband with someone else.’
It was a second element of her privacy which Connie ceded without a thought. I wondered if she wasn’t bothered much by my being able to walk into her house and open her letters, because the real privacy was in her head, a place I could never access. ‘Also, Laura,’ she added, as if she was reading my mind, ‘I barely get any post.’
*
At one o’clock, Connie came down for a lunch that I’d made. She liked nursery food, apparently: ham sandwiches, carrot sticks, a packet of crisps, easy on the fingers. When I looked in the biscuit tin, I found out one secret at least: Constance loved chocolate.
‘I told the recruitment agency I found something else,’ I said.
‘Ah.’
‘Did you tell Rebecca that you’d – taken someone on?’
‘I did,’ said Connie, finishing the last of her sandwich with acute concentration. I waited for her to stop eating, to place the crust back on the plate, to ask me what kind of impostor I was, to get out of her house for ever. I felt like I was waiting for an axe to fall.
‘She didn’t want to know any more?’ I ventured.
Connie made a small grunting sound. ‘Not until I’m found dead at the bottom of the stairs, three weeks after not returning her calls, would Rebecca ever exert herself for me beyond the bare minimum. Speaking of which, did you see Fiona Wilkins died at the weekend?’ she went on, ripping into a Lion bar.