movie star was so beautiful, why wouldn’t he want to drown in his very own swimming-pool-blue eyes? Of course with Hugh, it wasn’t narcissism exactly. There just didn’t seem that much of a gap between him and the world, a gap that cashed out as any kind of need. Ah, that need, that fucking need, Quentin. To work.
‘Have you ever read A Little Princess?’ she addressed Lallie, smiling her smile.
‘A Little Princess, A Little Princess, ooh, I’m not sure we’ve read that one, have we, luvvie?’
Lallie chewed her toast.
‘No.’
‘She’s not much of a reader,’ confided Katrina. ‘Too much to do.’
‘Well, I’ll make sure you get a copy.’
And then she pitched it, aware that as long as there was a ticket to Hollywood on the table, she could have said it was about a kid giving blow jobs for peanut-butter sandwiches and the mommy would sign her daughter up. It was tempting, but Quentin stuck to the truth. Weirdly, A Little Princess was a book she remembered well from her own childhood. Particularly the ending, when the dad came back. Or was that the one about the trains? It didn’t matter: in a movie the dad would end up coming back for the girl, since that was obviously what everyone would be rooting for.
If she did say so herself, Quentin did a good job. She knew, because Lallie switched her attention from cutting exact triangles from the white of her egg to listening to her. The story began to live in her face. She loved the ending too, Quentin’s version. Katrina was also excited, if only for her own reasons. They were all still talking about it and asking questions when Lallie’s tutor came to find her. The tutor was a hesitant woman in her forties, too fat for her fussy purple blouse. Quentin knew as soon as she saw her she had a drink problem. Holding it together, maybe not yet starting until after lunch, but in another ten years she’d be a wreck. No wonder. Nice career, hon.
‘Off we go! Fractions today.’
Lallie took her time drinking a glass of milk, enforcing her status as the tutor hovered, unconfident of taking a seat. Quentin didn’t suggest she did, and it clearly didn’t occur to Katrina, who operated only out of commitment to the cause of Lallie. Finally, Lallie got up.
‘I’ll get you a copy of the book,’ Quentin told her.
‘Ooh, we’d love that, wouldn’t we, hen?’ said Katrina. ‘I’ll have to read it and all.’ At last, she included the tutor. ‘She’s talking about our Lallie being in a film, in America. The Little Princess. You know, from a book.’
The tutor smiled indefinitely, revealing mottled teeth. ‘Lovely.’ She scooped Lallie along. ‘Isn’t it set in England, though?’
‘Well, they’ll set it where they like, won’t they? Doesn’t have to be in England.’
For a moment, Quentin was apprehensive that Lallie and the tutor would go and leave her to Katrina’s mercies, but after a moment to stub her cigarette with all the vehemence of grinding it into the tutor’s eye, Katrina headed off with them. Maybe she sat in on the lessons? As soon as they’d gone, although she had been desperate for them to go – hey, she could do Garbo herself – Quentin felt the drop, another of those time spools. Maybe another cup of coffee. The coffee here was weird, with a gross kind of skin that clung to your lip, like algae bloom on a stagnant pond. When she glanced around, she was surprised to see the room was empty except for the older woman in the corner, and that all the other tables had been cleared.
‘I think there’s someone in the kitchen, would you like me to knock?’
The actress waved her baton of folded newspaper at the door behind her shoulder. Quentin could see she was nearly done on the crossword.
‘Oh, that’s OK—’
But the actress – she should know her name, probably – was already leaning over and calling through an opened gap: ‘Excuse me, service?’
Over Quentin’s ‘No, really, it’s not a problem’, the woman said she fancied another cup of tea herself. Then, tilting the cup, observed that perhaps it had been coffee? She was no Hugh, but the thespian self-confidence was better than nothing. When the waiter came, smelling of cigarettes, Quentin ordered the drinks and invited the actress to join her.
‘Vera Wyngate.’
Quentin introduced herself. She recognized Vera now from what she had learned to call the rushes. She looked really different with her own