of Oz all over again,” she says. “It took me a while, but I think I’ve just about forgiven you for stealing a part that should have been mine at school.” Her words sound a little slurred. I never knew she’d auditioned for the part; she must have hated me, especially given I was in the year below. Alicia was always queen bee and always got her own way.
“I … I had no idea that you—”
“Of course you didn’t.”
“No, really. If I’d known, well, I think you would have been terrific.”
Water doesn’t melt witches in real life, best to kill them with kindness.
She laughs. “I know I would, but it really doesn’t matter to me now. It was over twenty years ago! You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here tonight…”
You probably just invited yourself like usual.
She doesn’t wait for a response, which is good, because I can’t come up with a polite one.
“We’ve been keeping it a secret, but I don’t think he could stand to be apart any longer, I know I couldn’t. He’s here somewhere. It can be so hard maintaining a relationship when you’re always away filming, but I don’t need to tell you that. How is your husband?” She looks around the room. I really have no interest in meeting her latest boyfriend. I’m about to make my excuses and walk away when she speaks again. “Jack, darling, come on over here and say hello to your co-star.”
I feel physically sick.
Jack emerges from a huddle of men in the corner of the room and strolls over in our direction. She snakes her skinny arm around his waist as soon as he’s within touching distance, but he only looks at me, as though he knows he’s standing next to Medusa. She kisses him on the cheek, watching for my reaction the whole time, her red lips leaving their mark. My smile is in serious danger of sliding off my face, and holding it there is exhausting.
“Now, I know those pictures in the papers weren’t real, but I can’t stay too late to keep an eye on the pair of you tonight, so don’t go getting any funny ideas. I need my beauty sleep for my audition for the next Fincher film tomorrow,” she says. My face gives me away for less than a second, but she sees it. “Oh, you have an audition too? You didn’t think you were the only one, did you? Bless, always so sweet and naïve.”
“I’ve just seen someone I just must say hello to, will you excuse me?” I say to them both, with the best smile my face can manage.
I walk away without waiting for either of them to reply. I find myself in a red room this time—red walls, red furniture, my red shoes scurrying across a plush red carpet—unable to stop thinking something that I shouldn’t. The thought is only on loan, a temporary rental that I already know I will have to give back sooner or later. I mustn’t hold on to it. But for now, for just a little while longer, I permit myself to indulge the idea. I get myself another glass of champagne, the words repeating themselves over and over, loud and clear inside the privacy of my own mind:
I wish Alicia White was dead.
Forty-one
Essex, 1988
We have carpet.
Brand-new red carpet all over the flat, except in my bedroom, which already had pink carpet, and in the kitchen and the bathroom, which both have a new floor with a name all of its own. It’s called lino, and I like to skid across it in my socks. Maggie says the carpet is red so that I can practice being a film star, but for now my favorite thing to do is to slide all the way down the stairs from the flat to the shop on my bottom. John laughs at me and does it, too, yelling he’s going to race me down the apples and pears. He does that a lot, makes up silly rhymes that mean something else. Apples and pears means “stairs.” Dog and bone means “phone.” Sometimes I don’t know what he’s talking about, like when he says brown bread—we only ever eat white. Maggie looks over the banister at us racing down the stairs and takes a picture on John’s camera.
“Eejits,” she says, but she smiles, so it’s okay. I hear her put on the TV upstairs, leaving John and me laughing, but then there is a knock on the outside