I Know Who You Are(73)
“I can’t have lunch with Fincher now!”
“Yes, you can. Take the leap, Aimee. You’ll only fall if you forget you can fly.”
Sixty
Maggie feels as if she is falling.
Time is running away from her and she’s no longer sure she can catch up. She’s worked so hard, for so long, to make things right. She deserves for things to go back to how they should always have been. It’s what would have been best for both of them; she just has to make Aimee see that. She can’t wait any longer for the girl to figure things out for herself. Maggie turns the final page of her Aimee Sinclair album, having reread all the newspaper and magazine clippings she has collected over the years. It was almost full anyway, perhaps it is time after all.
The shade Maggie has spent her life hiding in just got darker. She can feel it, the lump inside her chest. She has a pain there now that she never noticed before, as though she were always able to feel the cancer growing inside her, but pretended not to. We all avoid the truth when we think it might hurt too much. She feels the lump with her finger, not knowing how she could have missed it when showering; it’s huge. She feels a sharp pain and pulls her hand away, realizing that this particular discomfort is in her finger, not her chest. The splinter from the firewood is still buried beneath her skin, despite several attempts to remove it. She’s read about how splinters can travel through the bloodstream, all the way to the heart and kill a person. She doesn’t know if that’s true, but she doesn’t want to risk it.
She stands in front of the bathroom mirror and pulls at the pink skin with a pair of tweezers. She makes her finger bleed, but she still can’t get the damn thing out. Her reflection distracts her from the discomfort, and she notices some tiny black hairs have sprouted from her chin. She starts to pluck at them instead, getting some small satisfaction each time she successfully removes one at the root. Extracting pleasure from the pain.
She wants to look her best this evening.
She can see from the mobile phone tracker app that Aimee is eating out somewhere special tonight, as though she has something to celebrate. She checked Aimee’s emails and has read the three latest ones sent by her agent.
Maggie does not want Aimee to be in another film.
That is not part of the plan.
She’s heard of the restaurant Aimee is at; it’s the kind of place that requires a booking several months in advance, unless you are someone like Aimee. Or Jack Anderson. So Maggie knows she needs to dress the part.
She puts on Aimee’s old trench coat, fastening the teeny tiny belt around the slim waist she has worked so hard to achieve. Then she blots her red lipstick one last time, with a piece of quilted toilet tissue, before admiring her reflection. She puts on her sunglasses, despite the fact that it is already dark outside, and leaves the flat. Maggie has thought a lot lately about whether grief was a price worth paying for love, and has decided that it was. Love is all Maggie has ever wanted, and she’s going to get it, regardless of what it will cost her.
Sixty-one
“Cheers!”
“Here’s to you,” Jack replies, clinking his champagne glass with mine. “I want to hear more about the meeting. I want to know everything. Every single word he said.”
I laugh. “No, I don’t want to jinx it. I think the lunch went well, and now we’ll just have to wait and see whether I get the part.”
We’re sitting at the bar of an exclusive West London restaurant, waiting for a table, and enjoying the taste of premature celebration until then. I let myself relax a little, appreciating the way the alcohol numbs my senses and diminishes the fear that has been growing inside me since this nightmare began.
I’ve already said more than I should about the meeting with my agent and Fincher. I couldn’t help it, it’s all too exciting. I embroidered the truth a little, just a few stitches here and there, to present the story how I have chosen to remember it. I might have let the waist of the story out just a tiny bit around the middle, to let it breathe, but that’s okay. I think we all do that. The stories we tell each other about our lives are like snow globes. We shake the facts of what happened in our minds, then watch and wait while the pieces settle into fiction. If we don’t like the way the pieces fall, we just shake the story again, until it looks how we want it to.
I used to think that everything happened for a reason, but I stopped believing in whims like that some time ago. That said, if there was a point to the hellish last few days, then maybe this was it. Maybe this is the part that will change my life for the better. I try to stay calm and steady and deny the excitement that I feel. I don’t want to let the fantasy of fiction seduce me into a false sense of security; I’ve made that mistake before.
“There was one thing Fincher said that I can’t get out of my head,” I say eventually, aware of the weight of Jack’s stare as I take another sip of champagne.
“Well?”
“He said that the character he wanted me to play was morally repugnant but fascinating, and I got to thinking that maybe I am too.”
Jack stares at me for a few seconds, then the creases around his eyes fold, his mouth opens up into a wide white smile, and he laughs at me. Really laughs. Completely unaware that I wasn’t joking.
“I’m so proud of you, do you know that?” He takes my hand in his.