Who’s That Girl?

by Celia Hayes

  “Dave…”

  “Did you go to bed with him?” he asks. It sounds like an accusation. With his mouth tightly shut and his eyes raging like a tempest, he pushes me towards the bedroom, trying to tear off my dress as we go.

  “No,” I say, not trying to stop him.

  “Why were you wearing his shirt?” He lifts up my skirt and, without giving me time to protest, grabs hold of the sides of the blue thong I wish I’d never put on. “Answer me, Sam!”

  “We were in his bedroom, but nothing happened,” I say, but my explanation doesn’t seem to calm him.

  “Because I arrived in time to stop you, right?”

  He’s probably right. It was only because he turned up in time. We both know it and the only answer I can give to him is my silent admission, veiled with shame. I look away so as not to have to face it. Dave suddenly leaves my hands and moves away from the edge of the bed to take his shirt off.

  “Dave,” I say, watching him as he strips, to try and make him understand. “we have to talk.”

  “Later,” he decides for both of us before pushing me down onto the bed and standing between my legs. “We need to clear up a couple of things, Sam.” His hands return to my thong and pull it off. “First.” His hands come back to me and clutch my hair between his fingers. “If I say, ‘Sam, get dressed’, you go and get dressed. Right?”

  I don’t say anything.

  “I said, ‘right?’”

  I ought to slap him, but instead my heart is beating like crazy. There’s no hope for me. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, I find myself nodding.

  “Good. Second.” He bends down and rubs his lips on my nose. His voice grows hoarse and his touch more gentle. “If I say, ‘Sam, get undressed’, I want the same reaction.”

  His scent is so inviting, and his hands are the thing that take me closest to paradise, but…

  “Is that all?” I wonder, looking at the ceiling, because if I look at him I’m done for.

  “I don’t suppose I need to add that I want to be the only one who can claim these rights.”

  “And are we still friends?”

  “Apparently not…” he declares, sounding deflated.

  “So what are we, then?” I ask him, already knowing that I will regret it, but equally tenacious in my masochism.

  “Whatever you want, Sam, you choose: friends, lovers, partners…” he says lazily, kissing my neck.

  “What… Whatever I want.” I knew I should have kept my mouth shut. He’s so great at the practical part and so lame on the theory.

  “Okay, get off me.”

  “What’s the matter? What is it now?” he moves away and looks at me as if I had gone mad. “I’m telling you that it’s all fine with me and that I accept everything – what the hell’s the problem?”

  “What’s the problem? Are you actually asking what the problem is?”

  “Yes, I am!” he growls.

  “Dave, if you don’t let me go, I will not be responsible for what my knees do.”

  This turns out to be an infallible tactic, because he backs off immediately.

  “What the hell are you doing now?” he says, following me around the room and watching as, for the second time, I bend down to pick up the most beautiful dress I’ve ever worn from the floor of a room that will never be mine. I’m amazing, really. I’m capable of being a failure on all fronts – that’s real dedication.

  “I’m getting dressed,” I say, stating the obvious.

  “Stop…” he murmurs, unconvinced.

  “No,” I whisper, not looking at him.

  “Stop!” He sits on the edge of the bed and tries to hold me.

  “Dave, get off me.”

  “No, not until you answer me. I call you non-stop for two days, and for two days you completely ignore me. I had to race to the Ritz to find you in the arms of another guy and wearing his t-shirt, and to stop you from making the biggest mistake of your life I even took a punch in the face. And now that I’m telling you that I’ll give you what you want, you’re leaving?” he protests, genuinely not understanding what’s wrong. In his anger, he gets up and grabs hold of me, the dramatic difference in height between us making me feel even smaller than I really am.

  “I can’t handle this, I can’t,” I mutter in profound frustration. “You… you are the most selfish, vainest, lowest, most cowardly person I have ever met!”

  “What?”

  “Exactly. You’re ‘giving me what I want’? You?” I snap. “Who asked you to, Dave? Who asked you for anything?!”

  “But wasn’t it you who said…” he stammers, looking at me in confusion.

  “I said that I wanted someone to love me, not someone to ‘give me what I want’. I don’t need your pity, Dave. I don’t need your compassion and I’d like to remind you that you got punched because you offended someone who, unlike you, actually cares about me. And if I were a little smarter and you hadn’t turned up at that moment, I’d be in his bed right now and would have avoided making what was really the biggest mistake of my life, which was coming here to see if you were okay and hearing you say ‘we’re whatever you want’, because it makes no difference to you.”

  “Fantastic!” he exclaims sarcastically, picking up his shirt from the floor. “Just great – now I’m the bad guy…”

  “Yeah, and maybe one day you’ll realise that, but for now you’re too wrapped up in yourself to notice that there is a whole world around you,” I add, leaving the room.

  “Hold on, I’ll drive you home,” he mutters.

  “I don’t need you to!” I shout, slamming the door in his face and walking across the living room, hoping he’s not stupid enough to try and stop me. Absolutely furious, I look for my shoes, put them on without breaking my stride and head for the door, probably without drawing breath.

  “Oh very mature. Very mature, really,” he mutters behind me, pretending to be calm to try and show that he’s the reasonable one of the two of us.

  “Oh, look who’s talking!” I explode. He can’t really believe I’m going to fall for that. Some tricks might work fine with Madeleine, but not with me. I’ve known him too long and I know him too well. “And while you were planning this magnificent declaration, I was sitting crying in a taxi,” I murmur, trying to hold back my tears and cursing myself, “hoping that nothing had happened to you. Why did you just leave like that, without even telling me if you were okay. But what do you care? When have you ever cared about someone who wasn’t you?”

  “Sam… Sam, wait, calm down a minute.” He comes over to me, and his usual arrogance is gone for the moment. “Sit down.”

  “No.”

  “Sit down,” he whispers, pulling me to him. But it’s a mistake, because I can’t bear to feel his hands on me. It hurts. It hurts a lot.

  “No, Dave, I don’t want to sit down, I don’t want to stay. Don’t you get it? I don’t want to have anything to do with you any more!”

  “Can you explain why you always have to act like this?” he says, losing his temper again and running his fingers through his hair. “Why is nothing ever good enough for you?”

  “I’m going, Dave. Say hi to Tom for me,” are the last words I say, as I look into his eyes, before saying goodbye for good.

  “At least come back to work!” he shouts as I leave the living room, but there is nothing at this time that would make me go back.

  “I’m sorry, you’ll just have to find yourself someone new to exploit. I’ve decided to have a change.”

  “By becoming a curvy model? Don’t make me laugh,” he says, as mockingly as ever.

  “Bye, Dave,” I say.

  “All your stuff is still in the office. If you really want to go, you could at least do me the favour of clearing out your desk!”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll come by and pick everything up this week.”

  Chapter 36

  Lost in Pacific Avenue

  “The dress. The dress.”

  “No, the bow should go m
ore to the right.”

  “We need more hair lacquer.”

  “You’re making me anxious.”

  “Where’s Phoebe? Where the hell is Phoebe?” shouts Lou. “I asked her to bring me the hairspray. How do you expect me to work without hairspray?”

  “Lou…” I moan, staring at my reflection in the mirror.

  “What is it?” he sighs as he fixes my fringe.

  “I look like an elephant.”

  “We’ve already discussed this, you do not look like an elephant – elephant are grey.”

  “Okay, then – I’m a purple elephant.”

  “Sam, this dress is gorgeous, you look amazing and your make-up is wonderful. The only thing that isn’t working is this hair, but I can’t perform miracles and Phoebe has vanished with the hairspray!”

  “Tim, please,” I say, giving Lou my most candid look, “find Phoebe or I’ll have to take this dress off because it’ll be covered in blood.”

  “Okay, I’m going… Otherwise we’ll have to fight over the body,” he says, rushing off to save both of us. As usual, the room is packed with technicians and workmen, but tonight is the last night and the anxiety is winning out over the stress. There are only five of us left in the competition, and so the few of us still hoping to win are trembling with fear while the others still have to wait around to appear in the coronation ceremony but know they’re already out of the running. I’ll let you imagine the atmosphere for yourselves – nobody is talking to anybody else any more. Some have been crying, others have felt ill, and one of them even fainted because she hadn’t eaten for three days for fear of not getting into her dress. When they told me that, I couldn’t believe it – I thought this was going to be was different. I mean, come on, isn’t a Beautiful Curvy contest supposed to help us to accept ourselves? But no. I’m surrounded by unhappy, insecure people who are fighting a continuous battle against the bathroom scales. There’s no way out.

  “Will you stop chewing your damn nails?” Lou scolds me, yanking my hand out of my mouth.

  “I can’t help it. I don’t even know how I got this far.”

  “The acting part went really well. I still can hardly believe it, but you managed to string together a set of one-liners without causing any permanent damage to the jury. From here on out, it’s all downhill.”

  “You sure know how to console a woman, Lou.”

  “Hey, how about keeping still for one minute?” he shouts in my ear, stopping brushing my hair as he does.

  “Mmm-hmm…”

  His voice goes back to being normal, almost gentle. He doesn’t look at me, just at my hair, pulling at a lock from time to time. “Just to change the subject for a minute… you should talk to Al.”

  “I know.”

  “He was pretty crestfallen this morning.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “It wasn’t nice what he did,” says Lou with a shrug, “but put yourself in his shoes – it can’t have been an easy situation for him to deal with.”

  “I’m not angry with him, Lou,” I say, and it’s true. Because Al hasn’t made me suffer – or maybe because I have hurt him so much that it would be unfair of me to be. “I was just a little shaken last night.”

  “It would do him good to hear you say that in person. He really looks like he’s in a pretty bad way.”

  “Okay, I’ll go and see him.”

  “This is the best I can do,” says Tim, appearing with a large green can.

  “Let me see – Boom Style? What the hell of a kind of brand is Boom Style?”

  “The only one around, so make good use of it,” replies Tim, and so saying, he throws it to Lou and passes me a copy of The Chronicle. “This is for you, gorgeous: page seven. I’d read it, if I were you.”

  “Seven? Why page seven? That’s the personals.”

  “Fourth from the bottom. I put it on Twitter.”

  “I want to read it, too!”

  “You worry about my hair, Lou, we only have five minutes.”

  “Five? Only five? Why didn’t anybody tell me?”

  “I’m telling you now!” replies Tim, throwing up his arms in frustration, before shouting to everyone, “Move it, move it! I want to see Sienna Moore by the side of the road begging for long-lasting foundation tonight.”

  “Breathe, Lou – just calm down and breathe,” I say, opening the newspaper distractedly. It feels a bit strange finding a copy in my hands again. I’m trying to move on, but it’s been such a huge part of my life for so long, I’m really struggling to accept that from today it will be just another daily newspaper to browse while I’m having coffee, and those names in bold under the articles are just strangers and not the people I’ve spent the last three years of my life with. “Are you sure it’s on seven page?”

  “Fourth line from the bottom,” Tim says, biting into a donut.

  “Yeah, keep going with the carbs and you’ll be advertising diet bars before long.”

  “You’re just envious of my sculpted abdominals.”

  “It’s what you’ve got in your brain that worries me.”

  “Oh, ssh! I can’t understand anything with all this yapping.” I flip the page back and forth a few times, not noticing anything out of the ordinary. There is a message from Angus who is looking for a Brazilian with a green card for love without any hassle from the immigration office, then there is Christo, an ‘eighty-two year old with attractive pension and great medical insurance seeking forty year old’ and Tanya, a specialised physiotherapist, ‘home visits only, hygiene guaranteed…’ But I don’t see what any of this has got to do with me – the last time I let someone touch my neck I was in a neck brace for three months. “I don’t understand, Tim.”

  “Fourth line from the bottom.”

  “Which column?”

  “The last!”

  “The last… the last… the last… this one?” I ask, pointing, while I read:

  Yesterday, in Pacific Avenue, the newspaper lost one of its most trusted employees. Her name is Sam Preston, and she’s an intelligent, capable, unselfish woman and an excellent journalist. She disappeared at two forty-five in the morning without leaving a trace, and since that moment, the newspaper has been in total chaos. The computers refuse to co-operate, the printers don’t work and the whole editorial staff is at its wits’ end – especially me, because for me she was not just an anonymous employee but a trusted friend and a special person I knew I could count on in my hour of need. But most of all, she was Sam, my Sam, the only person able to make me think straight and realise when I’m going over the top and the only one who knows how to make me feel special even though there’s not really anything special about me. It’s impossible not to recognise her – she’s a beautiful woman with long, chocolate coloured hair and big eyes. If you happen to find her, please contact our switchboard as soon as possible. We are all anxiously awaiting her return.

  Dave Callaghan, Deputy Editor of The Chronicle.

  “Two minutes!” They pull the newspaper from out of my hands, and yank me up from my chair.

  “No, wait a… a moment.” I desperately try to retrieve the newspaper, but someone else pushes me away, a girl with earphones leads me to the exit and from that moment on it’s all just a succession of hands grabbing at me and pushing me about. Because now, we are anonymous faces in search of fame and only those who survive deserve to be treated with respect.

  “Hey, come on, hey!”

  “Look over there. Stop…” The flash of a camera blinds me. “One more.”

  “Ready?”

  “Yes, bring in the next one,” and suddenly I’m on the set at the end of the catwalk.

  “Two hundred and four. It’s two hundred and four’s turn, where is she?”

  “Outside, she’s on her way.”

  “Two hundred?”

  And in the meantime, I stand there, a hostage of my destiny, with a Maroon 5 song playing as background music and the voice of a speaker who is describing my elegant purple dress.
<
br />   And then there’s him, Dave, in my mind. With each step I take, a word of that article, of last night, of that first time on the carpet. What if I told you that at this moment, I couldn’t care less about the competition any more? Because right now, I just want to be there, at The Chronicle, to get my hands on him – and strangle him!

  That is no way to behave. You can’t act like that and the next day put that ad in the newspaper. How the hell am I supposed to react?

  But anyway, I really don’t have time to think about all that now – I need to concentrate on trying not to kill myself as I set off unsteadily on my heels, blinded by the lights and the camera flashes, at the centre of a catwalk that has shown me what the world out there is like while I insisted on staying shut up indoors.

  Come on, Sam. Just a few more seconds…

  I take a deep breath, pull my tummy in and take one last turn, showing off for the cameras as though I’d been born in the spotlight. It all lasts less than a minute, just long enough to reach the end, pause for a second and then turn round. How many times have I done this over the last few days? And yet every time it feels as though it were the first: the same embarrassment, the same ridiculous awkwardness. There are people who get used to the spotlight right away but I think I’m part of that small minority who will always feel a fish out of water, whatever bowl you decide to put me into. But I give it my best shot and after I have demonstrated my incompetence on the catwalk, I join the others and try and hide behind the floral decorations. At that point, it’s the presenter’s turn, as a flashing red light on a monitor set among the audience warns us. T.J. Steel – they couldn’t have chosen someone more flavour of the month.

  “Welcome back!” he cries as he takes the floor and launches into a convoluted explanation of the concept of Curviness and the importance of psychological support during each stage of growth, which is actually just a pointless list of advice, buzzwords and cool sounding statistics taken from industry magazines. And along with him come the nutritionists, investors and representatives of companies that produce low-fat products, all equally prepared to support the fight against eating disorders. Nobody, however, mentions how much each of them is getting paid to appear, or the incredible amount of publicity that just being here is giving them. What a disappointment, it’s a real shame. The original idea wasn’t bad at all, but the idea was Al’s, so it couldn’t not have been good. It’s all the rest that leaves something to be desired.