by Alice Feeney
“Aimee, don’t be scared, sweetheart,” says John. “We’re going to give the man what he wants and nobody is going to get hurt, I promise.”
“You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.” The man’s breath smells like the pub on Sundays.
“Maggie, go and fill a plastic bag with whatever is in the safe, and give the man what he’s asking for.” John’s eyes seem to have forgotten how to blink, and they look different somehow, darker.
Maggie disappears. I hear the sound of the safe opening, then her high heels on the tiled floor as she comes back again, holding a plastic bag full of bundles of notes. She hands it to the man with one hand, and when he reaches to take it, her other hand comes out of her pocket holding a gun. She shoots, and this time, she doesn’t miss. I fall to the floor, and when I look over at the bad man, half his face is missing.
Thirty-eight
London, 2017
Ben was fired two years ago.
That’s the last thing I hear before standing up and walking out of the reception of the building he used to work in. The boy who broke the news is still speaking to me, but I can’t hear him anymore, the voices inside my head are far too loud, drowning everyone and everything else out. The questions they keep asking terrify me, because I’m no longer sure I know the answers. How can my husband have lost his job two years ago and I didn’t even know? It must have been just after we met. What has he been doing all this time? Where has he been going when he was pretending to go to work? Where was he getting money from?
I should have asked what Ben did wrong. What constitutes gross misconduct?
I’m starting to think that I don’t know the man I am married to at all.
Maybe I don’t know myself as well as I think I do either.
Did I kill my husband?
Did I take the gun from under the bed and shoot him?
Did I drive to a petrol station and buy lighter gel to try to hide the evidence of what I’d done? Why was it in the bin, and why is there CCTV of someone who looks like me buying it?
I don’t remember doing those things, but I’m no longer sure that is sufficient proof that I didn’t. I feel more lost and lonely than ever before. Who can I trust if I can no longer trust myself? When life holds up its final mirror, I hope I’ll still be able to look.
My phone beeps and I stare down at it. Jack’s name is on the screen.
What time are you getting to the wrap party tonight? I’m missing you already! X
I had forgotten about the party.
I can’t possibly go to that now, I can’t go anywhere.
I grasp the truth of that, realizing I can’t go home now with police swarming about the place. If they have found … something, then what if they arrest me? It doesn’t matter that I haven’t done anything wrong, it matters how it will look to others. Unpleasant rumors are like leeches: they stick. I swing awkwardly between the options like a broken hinge and conclude that I only have two. I can run and hide, proving to myself and everyone else that I am guilty of something I cannot remember. Or I carry on as though none of this is happening. If I don’t go to the wrap party, I’ll be missed. Not in a sentimental way, but there will be repercussions. Bad things have happened to me before, and I’ve always found a way to get through them.
I just have to act normal.
Faced with the option to sink or swim, I choose survival. Every. Single. Time. I’ll teach myself to breathe underwater if I have to.
I did not kill my husband.
I tell myself that as I walk into the department store and as I ride the escalator to women’s fashion. I tell myself again as I select a size-ten black dress from the rack and take it to the fitting rooms. And again, when I ask the shop assistant to remove the tags because I want to wear the dress now. I ignore the puzzled look on her face when, after paying for my purchase, I pass her the clothes I had been wearing before and ask her to put them in the bin.
I am not crazy.
When you plait truth and lies together, they can begin to look and feel the same.
Back on the ground floor of the department store, I stop at my favorite cosmetics counter and pay for a makeover.
“Look up for me,” says the woman applying black liner to my eyes. “Do you know you look just like that girl in that TV show … anyone ever tell you that?”
“All the time.” I tell my face to smile. “Wish I was!”
“Don’t we all. Look down.”
I stare at my feet and notice my trainers. They don’t go with the rest of my look, so once my face is taken care of, I hurry to the shoe department. I start to feel a little paranoid that other people might recognize me now that I’m all dressed up like the on-screen version of myself. I stare at the endless rows of footwear and spot some red shoes on the shelf, outshining everything around them. They remind me of a pair I wore in a school play once. I’m fairly sure they don’t go with the black dress, but I try on the display shoe anyway, standing like a flamingo in front of the mirror. It’s perfect.
While I wait for the assistant to bring me my new shoes, I observe the hordes of shoppers, all hoping to score their next consumer high. I feel sure that people are staring at me now. Who knows how many of them might have read Jennifer Jones’s online article or, even worse, whether the news has leaked about Ben and what he accused me of. When the assistant finally returns, a queue of people are waiting, accompanied by a chorus of tutting and synchronized rolling of eyes. She apologizes for the delay and retreats back to the stockroom before I’ve even taken the lid off the box.
I slip the brand-new red shoes onto my feet and take another look in the mirror. Something about them delivers a sense of comfort I can’t explain, then I think of Ben again. He knew how much I loved shoes and bought me a designer pair every birthday and Christmas we were together; something I could afford, but could never justify spending on myself. He would always choose a pair that I had secretly wanted, he knew me so well. It was kind and thoughtful, and he delighted in watching me unwrap them. Every marriage is different, and no marriage is perfect. It wasn’t all bad between us.
I snap back to the present, see the enormous line of people snaking behind the tills, and again feel the eyes of others on me, like a weight on my chest making it difficult to breathe. I take one last look at my reflection, then swallow my fear down inside me like a pill. I decide to do something I’ve never done before, and walk out of the shop without paying, leaving my trainers and that version of me behind. If I’m about to be accused of murder, a little shoplifting can’t hurt me too much. I’m terrified of the police and what the future has in store for me, but that woman I just saw staring back at me in the mirror, she’s not afraid of anything or anyone.
All I have to do is remember to be her from now on.
Thirty-nine
Essex, 1988
“You just have to remember who you are,” says Maggie.
She holds my hand tight the whole time the police are in the shop, as if she is scared of letting me go. I was worried that maybe everything was my fault because I opened the back door when I knew I wasn’t supposed to, but I only wanted to help the man find his dog. I didn’t know that he didn’t really have one.
Maggie wears her kind face the whole time the police are here, even if it does look a little bit broken. She said before they arrived that we all had to act a little bit, and that it was very important for me to learn my lines. She made me say them over and over in my best English accent.
I had three to learn:
1. The bad man tricked me to open the door.
2. The bad man had a gun (not a knife) and pointed it at me.
3. Dad (John) gave him the money, but the bad man still wouldn’t let me go, so they got in a fight and the gun went off.
I’m not allowed to say anything else at all. I have to say I can’t remember, even though I can. I must not talk about Michael, the man who says he is my uncle; I don’t know why they think I would. I must not say that the gun was Ma
ggie’s, or that she was the one who shot the bad man. John said it was important to “stick to the script” because of Maggie’s record. I don’t know which one he means, she has lots; she likes listening to music.
The police have been here for hours. The lady who asks me questions says that I’m a “very brave girl” and gives me a lollipop, but I don’t want it. I don’t feel brave, I feel scared. Maggie’s kind face seems to follow them out the back door, no matter how much I wish that it wouldn’t. I don’t know what time it is when they leave, but it’s dark outside, and I know it is late. I wonder if we’ll still have dinner, and I wonder if it will be something with chips. But then I remember that we don’t have a Deep Fat Fryer anymore, not after what happened to Cheeks. Maggie threw it away.
She picks me up, carrying me through the shop, with my legs wrapped around her waist and my arms wrapped around her neck. She smells of her number five perfume and it makes me feel safe. The screens in the shop are still on, but the volume has been turned right down, so that silent horses are racing and jumping over fences like secrets. Looking over Maggie’s shoulder, I can see that there is litter all over the shop floor, but she doesn’t tell me to sweep up tonight; instead she carries me all the way upstairs to the flat, through the kitchen, into the green bathroom, and puts me down in the bath.
“Take your clothes off,” she says, so I do.
I always do what I’m told now.
Maggie disappears for a moment, then comes back holding a box of Flash powder, which is what I pour in the mop bucket before cleaning the floors each night. “Sit down,” she says. Her face looks strange. It’s twisted a little the wrong way, and looking at it makes my knees feel wobbly. She puts the plug in the bath, then turns on the hot tap and waits. The water is cold on my feet at first, but by the time it reaches my ankles, the water is warm. A bit too warm.
“Can I put in some cold please?”
“No.”
“The water is hot.”
“Good.” She pours some of the powder onto a wet flannel, before pouring the rest into the bath until the whole box is empty. The water is burning my skin and I try to stand up, but she pushes me down. “Close your eyes.” She starts to scrub at the skin on my face awful hard; it feels like the powder is scraping my cheeks right off. I scream, but Maggie doesn’t seem to hear me, she just keeps scrubbing and the water keeps burning. “You have blood on your hands, you need to get clean.” She scratches away at my arms, my legs, my back. The water is so hot, and the flannel hurts so much, that I’m screaming more than I have ever screamed before. The noise coming out of my mouth doesn’t even sound like me. I hear John banging on the bathroom door, but Maggie has locked it so that he can’t come in.
When she puts me to bed, all of me hurts.
She doesn’t kiss it better, or kiss me good-night.
My skin is red and my throat is sore from screaming, but I am quiet now.
I am alone in the dark, but inside my ears I keep hearing the last thing that Maggie said, as though she is whispering it, over and over. She has locked me in my room and taken the bulbs out of the light in the ceiling and the lamp next to the bed, even though she knows I get scared. I am hungry and thirsty, but there is nothing to eat or drink. I close my eyes and I put my hands over my ears, but I can still hear her words:
That man is dead because you didn’t do as you were told. I didn’t kill him, you did.
She says I killed him, so it must be true, Maggie doesn’t tell lies.
I killed my mummy and now I’ve killed the bad man.
I keep doing bad things without meaning to.
I cry because I think I must be a very bad person, and I cry because I think Maggie doesn’t love me anymore, and that makes me feel sadder than anything else in the whole world.
Forty
London, 2017
The wrap party is being held at a private club in the heart of London. Even as a child I hated parties. I never had anyone to talk to and I didn’t fit in. I’ve never known who to be when I’m supposed to be me. I don’t want to go tonight, but my agent says I should and, given everything that is currently going on, it seems wise to do as I am told. He doesn’t seem to understand that social gatherings, with people looking at me all night, fill me with the most horrific and inexplicable fear.
Perhaps I’m just scared of what they might see.
I think about the version of me I need to be tonight, then flick a switch and turn her on, hoping she’ll stay with me for as long as I need her to. She doesn’t always.
I pass a McDonald’s and remember that I haven’t eaten. I double back and order a Happy Meal, hoping it might work in more ways than one. I choose the same things I used to as a child thirty years ago: chicken nuggets and french fries to take away. I don’t get far. I don’t even open the box. I see a homeless girl lying in a doorway on a folded-up piece of cardboard and I stop. I know that could have been me. She looks cold and hungry, so I give her my coat and my Happy Meal, then carry on towards the tube station.
I stare at the floor of the train carriage, avoiding eye contact with my fellow travelers, pretending they can’t see me if I can’t see them. When I was a little girl, I was always afraid that I might disappear, like the little girl who lived in the flat above the shop before me. I still don’t have children of my own, despite wanting them so badly, and time is running out for that dream. The only way I can now live on after I die is through my work. If I could star in the perfect movie, a story that people would remember, then a little bit of me might continue to exist. Someone once said that people like me are born in the dirt and die in the dirt, and I don’t want that to be true. The Fincher audition might save me, and if I get the part … well, then maybe I won’t have to be scared of disappearing anymore.
I get off the tube and fight my way to the surface, walking up the escalator, through the barriers, and up the stone steps, until I am in the open air again. I’m cold without the coat I gave away, but it feels better to be above ground and I remind myself to breathe.
It’s just a party.
I let go of the me I need to be for just a moment and lose her in the crowd. My fear turns the volume and my terror up to maximum. I stare down at my new red shoes; it’s as though they have become stuck to the pavement. I wonder if I click my heels together three times, if I might magically vanish, but there’s no place like home if you’ve never had one, and I was only ever pretending to be Dorothy in that school play all those years ago. Just as I’ve only ever pretended to be Aimee Sinclair.
The closer I get to the venue, the worse it gets. I haven’t slept for days now, and it feels as if I’m losing my grip on reality. I lean a trembling hand against a wall to try to steady myself as the rush-hour traffic roars past. A black cab races by, then a red double-decker bus seems to charge straight at me, its windows morphing into the shape of evil yellow eyes in the darkness, and even though I know it can’t be real, I turn and try to run away, pushing through the crowds of pedestrians marching in the opposite direction. It’s as though they link arms and deliberately try to block my path. I cover my head with my hands and close my eyes; when I peer out between the fingers I’m hiding behind, it feels as if the whole world is staring at me. The canvas of multicolored faces starts to twist and blur with the streetlights and traffic, as though someone has taken a paintbrush to this scene of my life and decided to start again. When I lower my hands, I see that they are the same color as the bus, dripping in what looks like red paint. Or blood. I close my eyes again, and when I next open them, the world has reset itself to normal. I switch her back on and force my feet to start walking in the right direction once more.
I can do this.
We are all capable of the most fantastical fiction in the aid of self-preservation. A shield of lies can protect from the toughest of truths.
The club wears a disguise, hidden inside a terrace of three Georgian town houses within an elegant square, a short walk from Soho. I cloak myself in a cocoon of forged con
fidence, then press the buzzer. The huge, shiny black door opens, revealing yet more eighteenth-century architecture and an overly opulent design within. It’s certainly atmospheric. A man with a tray of champagne glasses is standing at the bottom of an elaborate circular stone staircase. I take one and enjoy a quick sip, hoping the alcohol might help neutralize my anxiety a little. I remind myself that I’m the lead actress in the film we’re here to celebrate working on, and that I deserve to be here, but inside my head the words sound like lies.
The film company has hired the whole place, all three floors. I memorized the entire layout before I came by looking at the venue’s website. I find that helps when I’m this scared of an event; knowing what a place is going to look like before I get there. I wander through the rooms, each one decorated in a different but distinctive style. I feel like a guest at a club I’ll never be a member of in more ways than one.
I nod and smile when people wave in my direction, and exchange my empty champagne flute for a full glass at the bar, before wandering through to another room. The walls in this one are blue, and I like the color, I find it calming. Then I see her strutting towards me like a trainee catwalk model, and any brief sense of serenity evaporates.
Alicia White should not be here.
“Aimee, darling, how are you?” she purrs, and kisses the air on either side of my cheeks.
She’s wearing a red flouncy dress that looks as if it might literally take off, and heels I’d never be able to walk in. She’s all tanned skin and bone, and I look even bigger and paler than I am standing next to her. With her hair looking scarily like mine now, it’s as though we’re the before and after in some fucked-up slimming contest. I’m the before.
“I’m great. It’s so good to see you. Again.” I mirror her fixed fake smile.
It is not good to see her, it never is. She shouldn’t be here, she’s not in the film. It makes no sense, as if she just invited herself along to piss me off.
