by Julia Gray
Then, in a flash of silver kimono and white-gold hair, Bel fell into my arms.
‘Oh, Nora,’ she said.
She did not smell of alcohol, which was interesting and unusual. Her voice was subdued. She clung to my neck as though to save herself from drowning, and although she had clearly been crying for a long time, she was not crying now.
‘Come in,’ I said, leading her into our flat. OtherNora watched from the mirror as I closed the front door behind us. I offered Bel tea, juice, water, explaining that we did not have anything stronger in the flat, but she said that she didn’t want anything.
‘So this is where you live,’ she said, looking at the framed costume prints above the sofa, the view over the Thames from the balcony.
‘Very small,’ I said.
‘It’s cool. Just how imagined it would be. A kind of fairyfolk dwelling.’
‘I’m just making dinner,’ I said. ‘Are you hungry?’
She looked at the chopped-up vegetables without enthusiasm. ‘I may never want to eat again,’ she said. There was nowhere to sit in the kitchen, so she pulled herself onto the counter and perched there, kicking her legs like an ungainly, kimono-clad beetle.
‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. I was sure there were still some Romanian goodies in one of the cupboards. Bel could never resist sweets. Rummaging through old plastic bags and multi-packs of juice, I unearthed a garish packet of something that promised additives and sugar.
‘Here,’ I said. ‘You might like these.’
She tried one. ‘They’re disgusting.’
‘How did you know where to find me?’ I asked her.
‘Cody knew,’ she said. ‘He’s back. He’s waiting outside.’
Of course: he’d dropped me home a couple of times. I wondered if Bel had ever been told the arrangement between Cody and her father. Now didn’t seem like the time to enquire.
‘Darian said he told you what happened,’ she said.
‘He told me you missed your exam,’ I said.
‘How could I have been so stupid?’ she said, voice flat and dull.
‘It could’ve happened to anyone,’ I said. ‘You, me, Darian, anyone.’
Bel shook a clump of sweets into her palm and ate a few, wincing at the sweet-sour taste. ‘I just don’t know what’s going to happen now,’ she said.
‘Surely you can re-sit the exam.’
‘Not that … with Dad. With Jacaranda. He is so mad at me, Nora. He said it was the final straw. I nearly missed the lunch with Gabriel and that was bad enough, he says, even though I never said we were out partying – and you wouldn’t have said anything, would you, honey?’
‘Of course not,’ I said, hoping that Anton hadn’t told Bel that he knew that she had, indeed, been out partying. ‘I just told him we had a couple of drinks.’
‘He says he needs to think about it all. He says he doesn’t know if I can be trusted. Nora, if I can’t play that part I think I will die.’
It seemed callous to continue deseeding a red pepper while she was talking. Wiping my hands on a tea towel, I sat down at the table and took her hands in mine. It was surprising how calm she seemed to be. Maybe she’d taken something, a tranquilliser of some kind; I think Cody kept them in his glove compartment.
‘Don’t say those things,’ I said automatically. ‘And look. If the worst comes to the worst, there’ll be other …’
‘No, there won’t. There won’t be other opportunities. Not like this one. This is the film I’m meant to make. Do you want to know something really bizarre, really hard to explain? I don’t remember my mother. I look at pictures of her and I hear anecdotes about things we did together, the four of us, and I see videotapes and … Nora, it’s like I’m looking at a group of people I don’t even know. I was eight when she died; I ought to remember so much. But it’s like it’s all gone.’
Uncharitably, I found myself thinking that perhaps if she had taken fewer mood-altering chemicals over the years, her memories might have remained intact. But surely that was unfair: I could also sympathise with what she was saying. I understood about not remembering. I couldn’t remember my father’s face at all, and it caused me great sadness.
Getting up, Bel wandered around the kitchen, opening cupboards and drawers. I realised that the recycling bag was right there, in the corner next to the bin. What if she suddenly emptied it, looking for an egg box or a yogurt pot? Bel had been known to do stranger things. Rarely do I feel out of control, but that was a true moment of existential – and irrational – panic. Whatever happened, she mustn’t see the ripped-up exam timetable. At least it was ripped up, but still …
She was talking, and I hadn’t even been paying attention.
‘Playing Clementine,’ said Bel. ‘When I found out Papa wanted to make the movie, I just felt like it was my chance to be Mama for a while. Close to her. In her shoes. And by being her, maybe I’d remember her … or maybe it wouldn’t matter whether I remembered her or not …’
She looked around her for more distractions. Then, to my relief, she wandered into the living room. My stage outfit was draped across the sofa, encased in a dry-cleaning bag. She swept it aside and threw herself across the cushions, wriggling around as her cat sometimes did. She still had her trainers on; I itched to ask her to take them off – Evie loved that sofa. Thinking of Evie reminded me that dinner was still unfinished. Taking a fine-blade knife, I made quick work of an onion and a clove of garlic; then I lit the gas (a bubble of Old-Norian fear burst with an insouciant pop as the flame jumped up) and heated oil in a pan. Through the hatch cut in the kitchen wall, I kept an eye on Bel as I cooked.
‘Do you want the TV?’ I said.
‘Don’t care.’
I turned it on for her; it was the news, which must, for Bel, have had all the oddness of science fiction. She lay on her back, one foot in the air, rotating her hands in front of her as though performing some kind of meaningful religious rite.
‘I’m so sorry, sugar,’ I said, adding more vegetables to the pan, and then tomato purée. ‘But I think it’s all going to be all right, you know. You’ve worked so hard these past months. I’m sure he’ll overlook it. And you’re perfect for Clementine. He knows that.’
‘You really think so?’
‘I’m sure of it.’
Her face popped up suddenly in the hatch. I thought that no one in the world had such an expressive face. It was as though it came with its own stage lighting.
‘Nora,’ she said. ‘Maybe if you went to talk to him …’
‘Oh, Bel, I don’t know.’
‘Please.’
Suddenly I was back on the carpeted stairs in Rosewood Avenue, looking down on that same lit-up face as she asked me to be in her play.
‘You don’t understand how important it is,’ she said.
But I did understand. I understood from her point of view, and I understood it from her father’s too, which was something she had probably not considered. Another thing I understood: she hadn’t even offered to make me a pedestal. That was how important it was. Beyond pedestals.
I was about to say something when the key crunched in the front door.
‘Mum’s home,’ I said. ‘Honey, do you think you could take your feet off the sofa?’
She jumped up rather huffily, just as Evie came in, her arms full of silky fabrics and her hair wound into an elaborate bun.
‘Hello, Norie. Hello again, Bel,’ she said. ‘What’s your costume doing on the floor, love?’
In the kitchen, sotto voce, I told her that Bel had arrived unannounced, needing counsel, and I didn’t know if she was staying for dinner. Evie seemed relaxed, pouring herself a cranberry juice and offering to take over the pasta sauce.
‘Is everything all right?’ she said in French.
‘I’ll explain later,’ I replied, keeping my voice low.
Evie went into her room with her bundles. In the living room, the TV warbled away; the news had been replaced by some kind of celebrity gam
e show, and I imagined that Bel was now sprawled on the floor, watching in childlike silence. But something about the vibe of the flat made me look through the hatch, and I saw that she was no longer there. She might have been in the bathroom or gone into my room, I supposed. Then I saw movement on the balcony. Turning down the flame, and leaving the pasta water to simmer, I went out to find her.
She’d climbed onto one of our folding chairs and was holding onto the rail with one hand; the other was aloft in a kind of regal wave, although whether it was to the birds, the planes, or the angels, I didn’t know.
‘Jus’ admirin’ the view,’ she said, and for the first time I heard how messy her syllables were, how indistinct.
‘Honey,’ I said, hoping Evie wasn’t going to look out of the window. A suddenly-appearing gallop of Evie might be enough to prompt Bel to do something elaborate, uncalled-for, and fatal.
‘Woah,’ said Bel. ‘It’s quite a drop, huh? I wanna see if I can see Cody.’
Bending at the knees, still keeping hold of the rail, she leaned forwards. I was so paralysed by fear that I felt actual pain. And still I said nothing, and still she leaned. I didn’t know whether to reach out a hand to pull her back, or say something hard and jarring, to jolt her. And another thing. Because these are the Chronicles of Nora, and because I’ve sworn to tell the truth, as much as I am able, I will confess that for a moment something inside me wondered what would happen if she fell …
It seemed like many minutes. Her sleeves shimmered like the fins of tropical fish; Big Ben tolled in the distance.
Then I said: ‘I’ll talk to your dad.’
‘Really?’ Securing herself with both hands, she twisted around to look at me.
‘I don’t know what help it will be, but I’m happy to try. Now, angel, my mother has a thing about heights, so please, be a good girl and climb down? She’ll have conniptions if she sees you on that chair.’
Once Bel was back inside, I bolted the balcony door and even though the game show was a riot of noise, it was my shattered pulse that clattered loudest of all.
She did stay for dinner, and ended up eating two plates of rigatoni. We ate at the fold-out table in the living room. Bel went back into the kitchen once, to pick up her bag from the floor, but she was there for only a second and I knew she had not looked at the recycling in the corner. When, finally, she was gone, driven home by faithful Cody, Evie tactfully asked me nothing about her visit, presuming that it was Private Girl Stuff.
That night I had trouble going to sleep. When I did, the flowers were waiting in the darkness beneath the tightrope. I had no shoes, and through the skin of my feet my bones showed up, luminous and whitish-blue. The rope kept going slack for a moment, and then tautening again, and it took every ounce of balance that I had to stay upright. No matter how far I got, placing one foot after another, I could never escape those flowers. The air smelled smoky; there was a fine wind coming from somewhere, as if a door had been left open, a door leading into – or out of – the darkness.
The rope became two ropes, side by side, with rungs between them, like a ladder. And then the ropes became train tracks. The darkness domed above me. A screech of hot metal signalled danger in the tunnel ahead. I could hear them now, two trains, travelling at right angles, swift and unstoppable; I could feel the air crumple as they collided with a creak and groan and burst of oil and fire …
And then Evie was there, holding me by the shoulders.
‘That sounded,’ she said, ‘like a Very Bad Dream.’
It was a while before I was able to speak.
Evie went to the kitchen and made hot chocolate. Returning with two mugs, she sat on my bed, her spider-legs bent underneath her. ‘Was it Dad?’ she said.
Slowly, I said, ‘In a way.’
I never used to dream about him,’ said Evie. ‘Now I do, all the time. Ever since that night in Petra’s studio.’
‘Me too,’ I said.
Silence followed this. If you haven’t by this point already guessed, I shall say it now: Felix Tobias committed suicide. It wasn’t anything that could have been accidental, either. He woke up one morning, behaved very much as normal, as I’ve told you before, and then left our flat just as he usually did, on his bicycle. But instead of going to the library, where he usually spent the early part of his day, he took a train to Rouen, and then a bus to the outskirts of a small village near the sea, where our run-down cottage stood. Whether he’d planned what he was going to do, or whether he decided once he was there, nobody can say. In the kitchen, there was an old gas oven. He did not leave a note. I cannot fill in further details. He was found the next morning by a neighbour.
Perhaps now you will wonder less why I made up so many different accounts of his death. The true one was impossible – unbearable – to tell.
‘D’you think you’ll be able to sleep?’ said Evie.
‘I think so.’
‘Stage fright,’ she diagnosed. ‘That’s what you’ve got.’
‘I know. Stupid, though. I mean, it’s just a school play,’ I said.
‘Not a big-budget movie, you mean? Like Jacaranda.’
‘Right.’
She kissed me, and then said: ‘You really like that girl, don’t you?’
A strangely difficult question.
‘You don’t like her at all,’ I said, deflecting it.
‘It’s not that I don’t like her,’ said Evie. ‘It’s that I don’t trust her. You know who she reminds me of?’
‘Who?’
‘Me,’ said my mother. ‘In the dark days.’
7
Opening Night dawned crisp and swimming-pool-blue. Megan and I texted each other with girlish glee: It’s opening night. What a phrase: it was almost holy. It conjured images of velvety skies, star-spangled; it was the beginning of the Arabian Nights, the first of a thousand and one stories, each more potent and magical than the last.
Evie’d been booked for a last-minute job out of London, well paid. She’d need to leave mid-week. She was distraught about this, but I told her not to worry: she’d seen both the dress and technical rehearsals, and, besides, it would put me off to have someone I loved so much watching me. This had a ring of truth to it that she bought immediately. A good-luck card from Nana sat on my bedside table; I wished that she were well enough to travel.
Azia asked for tickets for the Friday performance, saying she might bring Zubin with her. I wasn’t sure about Darian. I’d not heard from him at all since he’d called me to tell me about Bel’s exam.
That only left Bel.
I’d called her late on the Wednesday night. She sounded sleepy and low, just as she’d been when she came round to my flat the previous week.
‘Sugar,’ I said, ‘I have an idea. Has your dad come back from Ireland?’
‘This morning,’ she said.
‘Well, how about this,’ I said, keeping my tone tentative. ‘How about if he comes with you to see the play, either tomorrow or Friday? It’ll probably be desperately dull, I know, but … here’s what I’m thinking: you could make your excuses for a few minutes, and it would give me a chance to speak to him just after? What do you think, darling?’
I waited while she considered the plan. I knew she’d want to improve on it – to make it her own – and that was fine, because it could certainly take improvement.
‘Pretty good,’ she said. ‘But I think better if I don’t come. I’ll make an excuse at the last minute, before we leave. Then Papa can drop you home and you’ll have a chance to talk properly.’
‘D’you think he’d really come by himself?’
‘Oh, but he loves amateur productions,’ she said. ‘And he adores you! He’ll want to be supportive.’
‘Does that mean you won’t be coming at all?’ I said.
‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world,’ she said huskily. ‘Just put me down for the second night. Isn’t Azia coming then? I’ll come with her.’
As I ate the breakfast – rye bread, honey
and banana – that Phyllis Lane preferred on show days, I wondered what Anton Ingram would think of my performance. What he thought of the production – Mrs Tomaski’s artistic touches, the other girls, the set and even Evie’s excellent costumes – didn’t matter. All that mattered was what he thought of me. It was of indescribable importance. But I couldn’t allow my nerves to get the better of me. Again and again, I returned to Phyllis’s breathing exercises, to her pencilled Buddhist mantras, to stay calm.
‘Flowers,’ said Evie, interrupting my reverie. ‘They just came.’
It was a bouquet of yellow roses, wrapped with lilac ribbon and cellophane.
Phyllis Lane loved to be sent flowers on Opening Night, or the first day of filming. She liked tulips, agapanthuses, lilies. For years, ardent fans would send her jacaranda seeds, although it was well known that jacaranda trees are hard to grow in this country. Looking at the bouquet that Evie was now arranging with dexterity in a vase, all I could think of were the Chakra Flowers of Doom, and the way they waited in the dark pit under the tightrope. A thought came to me, fully formed and utterly horrifying. What if, when the lights went down, the flowers were there? It hadn’t happened in rehearsals. Both the technical and the dress rehearsal had passed, as they say, without a hitch, although a superstitious thespian might say that it’s good luck for a dress rehearsal to go badly. It would surely be just my luck if the flowers came back, and the unwieldy, all-enveloping darkness that yawned like a void, just as Anton Ingram was watching …
‘You OK, Norie?’ said Evie.
Slowly I breathed in through my nose – one, two, three, four – stretching the air like bread dough, and then out through my mouth. I did this twice, three times.
‘Fine,’ I said.
‘In the language of flowers,’ said my mother, ‘yellow roses mean friendship. Must be from a friend of yours.’
But the roses were from Petra and Bill. I didn’t have that many friends.
Sarah Cousins had kind, confidence-boosting words for all the cast members in her form. She was too fair to exclude me. At registration, she gave to each of us what she called ‘a little care package’ – nail polish, an emery board, fizzy bath salts – in a shiny gift bag. It was just the sort of gesture she was known for making.
