I didn’t return the smile. No way. My face stiff and expressionless, I dropped down into the plastic seat in front of her. Incredibly, her fingers reached out for mine and clutched them tight, as if this was still a reality where we’d hold hands across the table.
“Oh, Michael, I know you won’t believe me, but it is so lovely to see you again. I’ve missed you, I really have. And I apologise. I’ve thought about it since we spoke this morning, and I did behave abysmally the last time we met.” She gazed down as if nervous. “I have these episodes, Michael. You must have noticed that about me. I’m not always in control, I sometimes don’t know what’s the right thing or wrong thing. And that night was one of those nights. I feel so bad that you were caught up in it, really I do. Please believe me when I tell you I apologise, that I’m so very sorry. And please believe me when I say I’ve missed you, I really have. It’s been a long time since anyone made eyes at me the way you did.”
Her fingers gripped mine, and I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t tempted to just hold on. That I didn’t want our hands to be entwined and that spark between us to flare up again. Even visibly tired and worried, she was still amazingly beautiful. My mind couldn’t help slipping back to a bedroom in a different season, our two naked bodies rolling around on purple sheets.
There was an unmistakable flash of hurt in her eyes as I firmly pulled my hand back and dropped it beneath the table top.
The café was a picture of inelegance. Formica tables and chairs, chipped cups, forks you needed to wipe down with a paper napkin before you used them. The smell of old oil in the fryer permeated the air.
A chubby blonde teenage waitress, her chest nearly bursting the round buttons of her pink uniform, asked what I wanted. Diana had already ordered herself a pot of tea. I did the same.
“You left me for dead, Diana.” My voice was colder than I’d ever heard it before.
Her eyes widened. “No I didn’t, Michael!”
“A few more punches in the wrong place and I’d have been a cripple. A few more after that and I’d have bled to my grave from the inside. I’d have been a goner. Not that you cared either way, you just left me there for the cleaner to find.”
She shook her head. “No, that’s not right. Gray said it was all in hand, that Romesh knew exactly what he was doing.”
“Your boyfriend’s hired thug knows what he’s doing, does he? And that makes it okay, does it?”
A snap of rage rose unbidden to my voice as I uttered the word ‘boyfriend’. I could see by the way her eyebrow arched that she’d picked up on it instantly.
“Oh, Michael, jealousy has to be appropriate, you know that? We had our thing, we had a lot of fun, but that was then and this is now. I really can’t condone any jealousy from you. Particularly when the fact is, Gray isn’t my boyfriend. Nothing of the sort, he’s my…” She hesitated for the correct word. “Companion, I suppose. But whatever he is, you have no right to be jealous of me. I mean, can’t we just wish each other the best? Can’t we be friends?”
“Friends?” I spluttered, incredulous.
Diana stared down at her half-drunk cup of tea, the faint lipstick smudge at the rim somehow making it seem cold and long abandoned.
“I would like that, Michael, I would like that very much. A friendship between us. The two of us wishing each other nothing but the best. I know that –” her voice eased to a whisper “– after those dreadful photos you sent to me, that surely can’t be your intention, but I would love if we could let bygones be bygones and just move on.”
Again I stared at her, slack-jawed, disbelieving.
“I’m in a good place now.” Her tone picked up volume again, and her words got faster. “Or at least I think I am. I think I can see a way to a good place from where I am. The route looks clearer than it has in a long, long time. If I work hard, if I play my cards right, if I’m lucky. I was cocooned for so long, you can’t know what this means to me. Please, Michael. You’re a young man at the cusp of life. Can’t we just have a gentleman’s handshake and move on? Please.”
“You threatened me with a gun, Diana. You wanted to kill me. You did actually leave me for dead.”
As if on cue, tears slipped from the corners of her eyes. I didn’t believe in them.
“That night, I told you, I was crazy. It was a dreadful evening. I lost control of myself. I had problems for a long time, Michael. I thought I was on top of them, that I’d conquered them, but that night, the very worst of me came forth. And I am sorry about what happened to you, really I am. So sorry about what I said to you, what I did to you. I’m not asking you to forgive me, necessarily, but it would be wonderful if you could try to understand. Understand what I’ve been through as well.”
I almost smirked. “You must know I can’t forgive you, that I don’t understand.”
With a sigh she sat back on the hard plastic seat and wiped her eyes with the side of her thumb, one after the other.
“So tell me what you want, then. Why did you send me those awful frames from those dreadful films?”
I answered her question with my own. “Did the Great Gilbert not mention a burglary at his house the other night? The night of the big party?”
She shook her head from one side to the other slowly, sadness welling up within her. “I did think I saw you that night, Michael, I genuinely did. But then I thought it must be a ghost in the air.”
“It was me. Getting what I wanted from right under your nose.”
She sniffed. “Things are complicated between Gray and me. I don’t have any real handle on how to understand him. I know you think I left you for him – I’m sure that’s what’s going on in your jealous head – but that’s not the case at all, Michael. I don’t think I even like Gray and I know he doesn’t really like me. Not properly. There’s no real bond. We’ve made this film, we smile together in front of the tabloid cameras, but I don’t think there’s anything in the future for us. I know he doesn’t want me for his next film. That’s okay though. My age might count against me, but people are interested and I’m sure I’ll get work elsewhere. So, the future…” She trailed off, smiled a little sadly and then sat up in the seat, raising her shoulders determinedly. “What is it you want, Michael? Please just say. It’s torture for you to keep me lingering like this and I never marked you down as a cruel man.”
“I want what I wanted that last night I saw you. I want you to go to the police.”
Her eyes widened, startled and confused simultaneously. “But why? We’re all in the clear, aren’t we?”
“The police are still hunting for his murderer. It’s too big a deal for them to shut down. Only the other day The Mirror was speculating that his death was all part of a blackmail plot. The police will have to arrest someone eventually, Diana, they are going to charge someone, and that someone is unlikely to be you. When that happens, I’m going to find it incredibly hard to live with myself. I guess that you’ll probably be fine. Gilbert too. But I can’t just let the two of you get away with it while some poor sod has his life torn apart. That’s why I needed the film. That’s why I got you here today.”
She shook her head, convincing herself. “It won’t come to that. There’s no evidence against anyone else.”
“If the police think they have the right person, they’ll find the evidence. You and I both know that. But if I go to them, they won’t have to look very hard, will they? If I go to them, I can give them all the evidence they need.”
“You’d do that?” she gasped. “After all we meant to each other?”
“I didn’t mean anything to you, Diana. You used me, that was all. You used me to get what you wanted and I was a lust-struck fool who let myself be used. I was a fucking idiot, but that’s over now.”
She gave one dismissive shake of her head and her jaw tightened.
“This is about power again, isn’t it?” Her voice shot up, and a few of the other customers glanced over their shoulders at us. “As it always is, this is about bloody
power!”
“What?”
“I hurt your feelings, didn’t I, Michael? You think I left you for another man and this is your revenge, isn’t it? You don’t really care about Raymond or some so-called justice, you just care about you and how I hurt your feelings. Poor, lonely, unhappy Michael Mallory, feels his heart break for the first time in his life and, rather than take it, wants to do something about it. He wants to infect everybody else with his unhappiness!”
She slammed her hand on the table, rage boiling into her voice. “So you have some leverage? Well done, you! Join the club! All my life, I’ve had men trying to get power over me. My whole life there’s been some man trying to control what I did, trying to make me into his kind of woman. There was my father pushing me onto the stage, so he could submerge his failure in my success. My guardian trying to mould me like a cut-price Svengali. Carlisle betraying something that was intimate between us, to make some money, to punish me for not being faithful enough to him when he’d fuck every starlet who glanced at him. Raymond using me as someone to laugh at. Even Timmy, even he controlled me. I could have made my comeback years ago, when I was still young and could have had my pick of parts. There were offers that came my way. But Timmy persuaded me it would all be too much for me, that I should have a quieter life. He wanted to be married to me, but he didn’t want to be married to an actress – but what am I if I’m not an actress?
“All of you, trying to get some little hold on me and then using it to get me to do what you want. But what about me, Michael? When does what I want become a factor? I know what happened was bad, I understand that, I’m sorry for it. But after all I told you, all I showed you of the real me, I would have thought that you at least would have understood the extenuating circumstances. That you’d have some appreciation of what I’ve been through. I’d hope for that, but it’s a hope too much, isn’t it? You’re another one, aren’t you? Another bastard who just wants me to be what you’d have me be. You think I used you, don’t you? That I didn’t care for you at all. But I did, Michael. I cared for you so deeply. Even so, I still had to do what I had to do. Rather than see that though, rather than see things from my point of view, you want to control what happens to me. Just like Timmy. Just like Carlisle. Just like Gray!”
“I’m not like…” I tried to interject.
She cut me off with a scream. “You’re exactly like that. Exactly! Lord knows why Gray kept those dreadful films. It’s another one of his games, I guess, something to hold over me and twist into me one day. Use them against me just like you’re using them against me. To try and hurt me, to try and destroy me! So you can smash apart any modicum of happiness I manage to get for myself!”
It was like her body was crumpling in on itself. Her shoulders were slumping, her elbows were squeezed together, a hundred extra lines had etched themselves into her face – she was so ugly and beautiful at exactly the same time.
“I just wanted to be happy, Michael. Is that too much to ask? But every time I’ve reached out for happiness, some man has slammed his boot down hard on my hand and crushed my fingers.”
She was properly crying now, screaming at the top of her voice. The whole café was reverberating with her emotions. One final crowd she was playing to.
“Today, I’m supposed to be happy. I worked so hard, and right now I’m supposed to be happy! From the outside, people probably imagine I am. But I’ve realised that Gray will never let me be happy, not truly. Knowing he kept those films makes that nagging suspicion so cruelly real. I’m just some plaything to him, one he’ll discard some day soon. That’s all! And you, Michael, sitting there all moral like you’re from the Bible or something. Did you know Carlisle? Did you know Ray? You didn’t know what they were like, you don’t know what they did. How dare you sit there and judge me? How dare you?”
Her whole body shuddered as she took a tear-filled gasp, and when she spoke again it was in a whimper. As if, despite all her defiance, something crucial inside her finally had broken. “I just wanted to be happy, Michael, and I thought if I got back into films and was a star again that I’d be happy. But I’m not. I’m fucking not! I’m still unhappy and it’s not fair! It’s just not fair!”
Conscious of all the eyes on her, of all the eyes on us, I reached my hand out. All that time I’d spent really hating her, and in the end it was impossible to deny how much I cared for her.
“Don’t touch me!” she shrieked. “Don’t touch me! I don’t want you anywhere near me any more, I just want to be left alone!”
Smashing her teacup onto the floor as she went, she leapt up and marched furiously to the door. The buxom waitress and a pensioner with a ginger comb-over practically had to jump out of her way as she went.
The door was ripped open and slammed shut so furiously it rattled the pane of glass.
Slowly, feeling as if this was a foggy dream, I pulled myself up and wondered whether I should follow her. Obviously she didn’t want me to, but surely I couldn’t let her go in that state. Even though I’d no idea what I could say that would even begin to mollify her, I had to try. If only to somehow prove I was a better man than any of the others in her life.
I don’t know how long it took me to move, but I was still halfway to standing when she glared back at me through the window with a face so hurt and broken it will haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. Then Diana Christmas, forty-two-year-old former film star and red-headed beauty, stepped deliberately into the road, right into the path of a speeding yellow Transit van.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It was like every passionate molecule of life within her was extinguished instantaneously. The van driver barely had a second in which to think about braking, and her body was hurled without grace high into the air. It seemed like a collection of wooden limbs tied together on a string, not a real woman at all. Not any more, anyway.
Her skull smashed at velocity into the Upper Street tarmac, sending out a Jackson Pollock of red and grey. But she was dead before that. I firmly believe she was dead the very instant the van hit her, that a large part of her had died even before she stepped out onto the road.
The police held me longer this time. There were too many witnesses to our argument. More than once they suggested, forcefully, that whatever it was I’d said or done led directly to her killing herself. “Manslaughter” was mentioned again and again, menacingly, accusingly, as the crime it would be best that I confessed to.
So stunned was I that it took a few hours of questioning before I got the facts remotely straight in my head and was able to give them a version of what happened that stood up to inspection. Even though they had never really believed me the first time, I asserted that I’d indeed had amnesia after Raymond Wilder was murdered. But – and this was the important part – my memory had come back and I’d remembered that it was Diana Christmas, my lover at the time, who’d shot him. Appalled by this revelation, I went to confront her, hoping she’d turn herself in. But rather than face justice, she had – shockingly and horrifyingly – chosen to kill herself.
It was nearly true. The story I told them was so very nearly true that it held up remarkably well.
They dug around a bit and realised they’d missed the fact that when I arrived at Motspur on the fateful evening, the guard had noted down I had an assistant with me. The guard was even able to describe her somewhat. His description was only two words, “dolled up”, but it chimed enough with everything else I told them. Interviews were held at Classic Cinema Monthly. Yvonne, the secretary, was most forthcoming with her deduction that Diana Christmas had seduced me; while I found out that, apparently, the day I met Diana and didn’t return to the office, McTavish had joked to the whole office that the two of us “were probably rutting like rabbits!”
Even while I was still being held at the police station, the story that Diana Christmas had killed Raymond Wilder made it to the press. Predictably, over the next few days, they romanticised it. Portrayed it as a dark, tragic love story – full
of passion and jealousy – played out over two and a half decades. Magnificently beautiful monochrome photos of the pair were dug out of the archive and slapped onto the front page of every broadsheet and tabloid in Britain.
Diana’s name was in lights one final time, brighter and higher than it had ever been before. It was her dread, I think, that nobody would remember her. That when she passed, her name would be preserved only in a few dusty old black and white movies, her memory only treasured by the odd cineaste like me. Now though, she had fame beyond her wildest imaginings; she had immortality.
Finally the police had to let me go. There were too many witnesses to say that we may have argued, but I didn’t in any way push Diana in front of that van. That she had done herself in.
Besides, I’d given them the killer for the Raymond Wilder murder – wrapped it up nicely for them, with a glittering bow.
You’d have thought they’d be grateful, but their snarls didn’t slacken once.
So I went home, back out of London, unemployed again. Returned to Mum, with only my guilt for company.
Who knows what Diana would have done if I hadn’t forced her to meet me that day? Her unhappiness sheened every inch of her and I wasn’t responsible for all of it. She muttered about Grayson Gilbert, screamed about how much she’d had to put up with. Clearly she was on edge, so perhaps she was always on course to suicide at some point.
But it was impossible to ignore the fact that she killed herself after meeting me. After I went to her with my self-righteous fury and tried to make her take responsibility for what she’d done. She may very well have been on the window-ledge already, but it was me who gave her the final push. And that’s the thought which twisted up my insides.
Diana Christmas Page 14
