The Tall Man

by Phoebe Locke

  Jamie’s parents weren’t in, she’d lied to Leanna about that. They were visiting family somewhere for the day, his little brother taken with them, and in a couple of hours, the small gathering he was given permission for had sprawled predictably out of control. The pool was full of people, all splashing and laughing and drinking, girls on boys’ shoulders, boys holding each other under. Every edge of it was lined with girls, sitting with their legs dangling in until every now and again a boy came and pulled one of them in with a scream and a splash. Muhammed from her Maths class had brought his decks round and set them up on a picnic table near the house, with a huge set of speakers that vibrated every time the bass kicked in, plastic cutlery on the table rattling. People were dancing on the grass, their drinks spilling, sofas and chairs pulled out of the house and marooned on the grass, legs sinking into the soil. Two boys were having a fight with the ketchup and mustard bottles, arcs of red and yellow flying through the air and splattering on the pale patio stones.

  The Donnollys’ huge chrome barbecue had been taken over by two boys from her form, Kenny Wu and Justin Staniland, while Ona Fitzgerald and Casey Lafountain from her English class watched and criticised, wobbling on their wedges.

  ‘Hey, guys,’ Kenny said, glancing up and seeing them. The smoke from the barbecue spiralled in front of his face, his sunglasses steamed up. ‘Want a sausage?’

  ‘Nobody wants your sausage, Kenny,’ Justin said, elbowing him.

  ‘Soft and juicy,’ he said, waggling his eyebrows.

  ‘I’m gonna pass,’ Amber said. ‘They look pretty raw. You get some kinda tapeworm from raw pork, right?’ She shot a look at the half-eaten sausage in Casey’s hand. Casey squealed and dropped it immediately.

  ‘I really want a burger,’ Billie said from over her shoulder. ‘Do you get worms from burgers?’

  ‘Nah.’ Amber eyed the smoking, black remains of the burgers. ‘I reckon they’ll be fine.’

  Justin slapped one into a floppy-looking bun and handed it over to Billie with a wink. He liked her, Amber could tell, but Billie blushed and looked away. Amber wondered if she was looking for Jake. She had forgotten to ask if he had ever replied to the message she’d convinced Billie to send him, though she hadn’t really thought that he would. He was probably too busy wondering why Amber never replied to the messages he sent her.

  ‘So what’s been happening?’ she asked the boys, trying to catch a glimpse of her hair in the rainbow lenses of Kenny’s sunglasses. ‘Urgh – who is that?’ A girl emerged from behind the shed, vomiting a spray of orange down the fence and then staggering against it.

  ‘Oh, that’s Deena Jordan’s cousin,’ Kenny said. ‘Someone spiked the punch.’

  ‘Oooh.’ Amber scanned the garden again – there it was, a big glass bowl with murky pinkish-orange juice inside. ‘Come on, Bill.’

  They made their way round the pool, careful not to get close enough to the grabbers and the splashers. Billie took a bite of her burger and pulled a face. ‘It’s really burnt.’

  ‘Yeah, no shit, Sherlock.’

  ‘Hey, guys!’ Jenna appeared out of the crowd. ‘You’re here!’ And then, in the same breath, ‘Ohmygod, Billie, your dress is adorable – you look so cute!’

  ‘Thanks!’ Billie flushed again and tugged at the fabric like a child, though Amber could tell Jenna hadn’t meant it as a compliment. She ignored her and pushed through the crowd to the table. The punch was even more dubious up close, with several blades of grass floating on its surface, but she ladled some into two plastic cups anyway. She pressed one on to Billie, who looked at it suspiciously, both it and the burger held awkwardly in front of her without making the journey to her mouth. Amber took a big gulp of her own. Despite its colour, it tasted of vodka and orange juice and not much else. She took another sip, noticing (without caring) that she had forgotten to get Jenna a cup. That didn’t seem to matter though; Jenna was unsteady on her feet, eyes glazed as she looked around.

  ‘This is so cool,’ she said, flipping hair out of her face, and Amber smiled. She didn’t think it was all that cool – in fact, it was kind of a mess. Noisy and dirty and childish. She tried to imagine what Leo would think if he was there, and then she remembered that she didn’t care what Leo thought about anything (such a lie!). She sighed and drained her punch. This was supposed to be the perfect thing; getting drunk and being silly and wearing a bikini, all eyes on her. Glossy and sunny, music video cool. Instead it was all ketchup on the patio and grass in the punch, boys burping and the constant explosion of chlorinated water as yet another person cannonballed into the pool. Jamie himself was nowhere to be seen – probably escaped upstairs with Katie Barrow, his sort-of girlfriend – and that was a shame too, because she’d always wondered what it’d be like to kiss him.

  She went back and filled her cup again, accepting an extra slosh of something clear from Kenny who had apparently abandoned his post at the barbecue.

  ‘Sick dress, Banner,’ he said, staring at her, and she knew then that he was very drunk. Kenny was like most of the boys in their year; he treated Amber like the sun. Like he liked having it around but it was dangerous to look directly at it.

  Wary of getting burnt.

  ‘Thanks, Kenny.’

  She glanced back at her friends. Billie was still looking anxiously at her drink, and Jenna, laughing, put a hand on her arm and said something in that insistent, screechy way she did, until Billie, nose wrinkled, put the cup to her mouth and gulped the rest of it down in a rush. Jenna crowed triumphantly and turned away, bored already.

  Amber filled another cup and went back over to them.

  ‘Need a refill?’ she asked Billie, handing the new drink over, and this time, Jenna glanced down and pouted.

  ‘Hey, where’s mine?’

  Amber shrugged. ‘You have legs. I only have two hands. Get your own.’

  Jenna stared at her, her face set hard, and Amber felt something stir inside her. She couldn’t work out if it was fear or excitement, but she’d learned long ago that they were similar enough that usually it didn’t matter.

  ‘What is your problem?’ Jenna said after a moment, her mouth twisting, and the thrill turned sour. This was not how things were supposed to go. And words were still coming out of Jenna’s sloppy, drunk mouth. ‘You’ve been such a bitch for months now.’

  Amber kept her face straight. ‘I’ve always been a bitch, Jen. Did you only just notice?’

  Jenna laughed, too loud and sharp, people around them turning to look. Billie took a step back.

  ‘Oh God, I am so sick of you!’ Jenna said suddenly, louder still, her breath yeasty and hot. ‘You better watch out, Billie. You might be her favourite right now but she’ll chew you right up and spit you out – you won’t last a week.’

  ‘You’re drunk,’ Billie said quietly. ‘You should stop talking now.’ And Amber loved her.

  But Jenna was laughing again. ‘She’s a bitch!’ she yelled. ‘You wait! She’s a crazy fucking bitch, just like her mother!’

  Everyone was looking, the music still blaring and the water shushing against the sides of the pool and nobody talking. And Amber, coming to in a kind of blur, realised that she didn’t have to stand there. She scrumpled her plastic cup and tossed it aside, then drove a fist right into the centre of Jenna’s face. It didn’t hurt, even when she heard knuckles crunch against nose; even later when her hand was red and swelling. Instead it sang through her, that feeling, as she watched Jenna stagger back, blood pattering on the mustard-spotted patio. She staggered back, and she stared at Amber, and nobody did anything.

  Nobody ever did anything.

  27

  2018

  Amber doesn’t go far. Greta, snapping out of her stunned paralysis, runs through the crowds, panicked (already imagining what Federica will say if they don’t return to the hotel with their star in tow) – but there she is, sitting on the edge of an oversized stone plant pot, watching Greta with her arms crossed in front of her chest, phone cl
utched in one hand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Greta says, when she’s close enough, and Amber gets up with a toss of her hair. She glances behind Greta at Tom, who’s just caught up, camera slung round his neck like one of the paparazzi who so far have not found them here, and simply says, ‘Let’s go.’

  It’s only when their taxi pulls up to the hotel that Greta realises the bag containing her blue dress is lying abandoned under the table in Nando’s.

  Amber doesn’t come down to dinner and when Greta goes to knock on her door, she answers in a dressing gown, a fug of fast food and TV sound behind her. Her new purchases are flung in various positions across the bed, a supersize paper cup on the bedside table next to abandoned ketchup packets.

  ‘No offence,’ Amber says, her hair slowly unwinding from a knot she’s wrestled it into at the top of her head. ‘But I just want to be by myself.’

  And so Greta goes back down to the restaurant, which is empty save for a couple in shorts and Buckingham Palace T-shirts, and then, before she can sit down, she changes direction and goes into the hotel’s small and sticky bar. Another windowless room, several of its spotlights need replacing – the effect, though, is generally softening, casting a favourable (non)light over the peeling wallpaper with its satin-effect stripes; the cube stools in their faux-leather.

  She buys a glass of wine and chooses a spot in the corner of the room; the light from a muted TV dancing across the shiny table. The wine tastes faintly metallic but it’s cold and she drinks quickly, watching the silenced news reporters delivering the headlines. She tries not to think of Amber upstairs. Soon, this shoot will be over; soon, she can look for new work. She can tell stories she wants to tell, the kind of stories she wanted to work in filmmaking for. She thinks of the day she found out she’d been given a place at Goldsmiths, that she’d be moving to London. She’d been sure then that she’d work in fiction, remembers telling her friends from school that one day she would work on films that changed people, changed the world. Remembers calling up her boyfriend Marc and telling him, the words spilling out uncontrollably, Greta unsure whether to laugh or cry. I’m doing it, she kept saying. I’m going to live in London. It was only when he went quiet that she realised she’d also be leaving him behind. That the thought hadn’t even occurred to her since she’d opened the email. He added her on Facebook last year. She looked through photos of his wedding, of his two baby boys. So good to talk to you, he’d written after they’d exchanged a couple of messages. How’s it all going?? Seems like you’re doing amazing.

  It’s not too late, she reminds herself. She saw a post on Facebook about a screenwriting class the other day – one of those tailored ads – and was surprised at how deeply it appealed to her. Perhaps she should take it as a sign. Maybe the stories she actually wants to tell are her own.

  And yet she can imagine, even now, the people at parties who will rave about how much they love this project, how they love ‘that bit’ where Miles cries or when Amber does that creepy laugh. They’ll ask her what it was like to meet them and she’ll think back to these sleepless nights, the echoing cries of a child ringing in her ears, the feel of breath on the back of her neck when no one is standing there. Do you believe in the Tall Man? they’ll ask her and maybe, by then, she won’t feel like saying yes.

  She finishes her wine and orders a new one. A businessman, jacket over one arm, takes a seat at a table in the opposite corner to hers, paper and pint in front of him. The barman carries on polishing glasses, his own half of beer at his elbow. And she drinks, and she tries not to think about the Millers or the Banners or blood spreading on a forest floor.

  ‘Want another?’ She glances up and Tom is at the bar, gesturing at her empty glass as if they’ve been here all night together, as if this is merely another Friday at the local. But she does want another, and so she nods.

  ‘You upset her,’ she says, when he puts the drink in front of her.

  He pulls out the stool opposite her and sits, setting his gin and tonic down on a coaster. ‘I know,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I could have filmed her myself,’ she says, tongue slow on some of the words, ‘You didn’t even have to come.’ She takes a sip of the new wine, and then, petulantly, adds, ‘I know you don’t like her.’

  He considers this, his eyes on the newsreader above her. ‘I don’t,’ he says eventually, and then he repeats her own words from a week ago back to her. ‘Am I supposed to?’

  ‘She’s only a kid,’ Greta says. ‘Why did you have to try and make her feel bad? Why am I the only one who can see that she already does? Why am I the only one who can see that she can hardly live with herself?’

  ‘Maybe because you’re the only one who wants to.’ His voice is gentle but that only annoys her more.

  ‘Yes, exactly!’ She puts her glass down. ‘Everyone else wants her to be bad because it fits better with the story.’

  ‘I don’t want her to be bad. But that doesn’t mean I can pretend I see any good in her.’

  ‘Do you realise how horrible it is to say that about a teenager? Especially one who’s had such a . . . fucked-up start to life.’ It feels good to swear. She wonders why she doesn’t do it more often.

  ‘That’s it though, Greta. Yeah, she’s had this life that none of us can claim to understand – she’s done a thing that none of us can even start to comprehend – but you’re projecting on to her, you’re imagining how you would feel in her place. That isn’t what’s sitting in front of you. She isn’t like you. And she isn’t like the Miller kids, either.’

  She doesn’t answer.

  ‘You’re starting to feel too much for her, mate. I can see it.’

  A headache pulses at her temples. ‘I don’t want to talk about this,’ she says.

  He smiles sadly at her, nods. ‘What would you like to talk about?’

  She takes another gulp of wine. The businessman finishes his pint, the dregs foaming against the glass, and stands up to leave. ‘You,’ she says. She looks at Tom. ‘Let’s talk about you.’

  He laughs. ‘All right. What would you like to know?’

  ‘You met Federica on Bleak House, right?’ The wine is making her confident, the words easy.

  ‘Yup. But actually I’d met Millie before that. I was camera assistant on some awful reality series about freshers’ week, and she was there doing research for one of her books. Federica hooked her up.’ He takes a sip of his drink, the ice clinking. ‘I was pretty much the only one who talked to her; that whole crew was full of arseholes. So, when I ended up on Bleak House, I mentioned Millie to Federica and then all of a sudden she was my best mate.’

  Greta nods. ‘Yes, I remember her telling me that now. That Millie liked you.’

  ‘You know what’s going on there?’

  ‘With Millie? No. It seems serious this time though.’

  ‘There was that woman in Cannes . . .’

  She drinks some more wine, surprised at how little is left in the glass. ‘I think there’s always been other women. I don’t know. I don’t understand their relationship; Millie isn’t like that.’

  She pauses, her cheeks heating. She feels guilty, talking to him about Federica this way: another surprise.

  ‘Has she even thanked you for taking charge in LA?’ he asks, tipping back the last of his drink.

  ‘Yeah. Well, kind of. I guess I should be flattered she trusts me.’

  ‘I think there’s a fine line between “trusts” and “takes advantage of” in this particular case.’

  She points at his empty glass, ignoring the comment. ‘Want another?’ She gets up from the table before he can reply. She doesn’t want to think about the many ways in which Federica Sosa and Amber Banner are probably taking advantage of her. The ways in which they trust her, either.

  At the bar, she checks her phone – nothing from Federica all day, and nothing from Luca either. She wonders if she should send Amber a text, tries to imagine something casual, friendly, some
thing that doesn’t immediately translate as Just checking you’re still locked in your room. Instead she flicks through emails, things she’s read and forgotten to reply to – a chain between old university friends about getting together for dinner or drinks, Lisette asking whether Hetty and Greta think it might be a good idea to switch internet provider. It’s happening again, the same way it did with the Millers – her life fading into the background, feeling like a fiction, a triviality. The story is everything, Federica likes to say, but that’s what Greta’s afraid of.

  She takes the drinks back over to Tom, who’s also been checking his phone. ‘Nothing from Luc,’ he says, as she sits down. ‘Wonder where he’s been all day.’

  ‘I hope Elke’s OK,’ Greta says. ‘She’s due soon, isn’t she?’

  ‘Next month, I think.’ He tips his head back to drain his first drink. Greta glances up at the TV, where the news is finished, the weather girl waving expansively at a section of coastline.

  ‘So, what’ll you do after?’ he says. ‘When this is done?’

  ‘I’d like to go visit my parents for a while.’ She tips the glass, watching the wine rush up it, then moves it to her mouth. Delaying. ‘And then I’d like to go back to fiction,’ she says, placing it carefully back down. ‘No more documentaries for a while, I think.’

  He nods. ‘I get that. So back to America then?’

  ‘Maybe.’ She tries to imagine herself back in Dearborn. Married with two baby boys. ‘I’d like to travel at some point too. What about you?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about going away, actually.’ He stares into his drink. ‘I’ve saved some money. I mean, I know we get to go to some great places, but I want to look at stuff without being behind a camera for a change.’

  She glances up at him. ‘Yes. To just see. I’m so tired of looking for the shot, looking for the story. I want to see. To appreciate things without wondering what the best angle is.’ She’s drunker than she realised, embarrassed at how earnest she sounds.