The Disappearing Act(89)

“Hey. Listen. This is Hollywood,” he counters, a slow smile building, “you’re going to have to trust me when I say you’re not the craziest person I’ve ever met, Mia. Hell, you’re not even the craziest person I’ve kissed.”

I laugh in spite of myself, my face pinching tight.

Emboldened he continues, “When you’re ready. When you’re back home and you’re thriving and happy and healed. When you want. Can I see you again? Back in London?”

My already haywire emotions reel off in every direction. It takes all of my willpower to hold it together. To hide my surprise, my happiness, my relief that I haven’t ruined whatever this is. He still likes me. Trusts me. Wants to see me. Even though he knows something very strange has happened, and he knows I’m weird and a bit broken, and that there are certain things about me that I can’t tell him just yet—somehow, somehow, he still likes me.

He mistakes my silence for something else and keeps talking.

“However stupid it sounds, I’ve genuinely never met anyone like you, Mia. You’ve got this rock-solid core, this strength inside you. People can see it. You know yourself. Do you know how rare that is? It’s something special.” He shakes his head, trying to find the words. “And whatever’s been going on. I know you’d tell me if telling me was important. Maybe I’m naive, or delusional, maybe, but I trust you that you know what you’re doing. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. It’s funny, with you I always feel like we’re working toward something together, does that make sense? Like we’re always just picking up the same long conversation we’ve been having since we met—” He breaks off, suddenly self-conscious.

I take a slow, calm breath before speaking—a movement in the mirror beside me catches my eye and my attention flicks to the figure reflected in the glass beside me, her bruised face, my bruised face, Jane Eyre’s bruised face, our eyes wild and lost but still just about holding it together—and then, reader, I answered him.





35


    Everyone’s a Winner


SUNDAY, MAY 16 (THREE MONTHS LATER)

The hotel suite is empty now and the comforting rumble of metropolitan London seeps in through the hotel windows. Faint horns honk in the distance, and building work burrs on with the roll and shudder of traffic in the city streets below.

I stand and assess the woman before me. In the hotel’s floor-length mirror, finally alone, I take in what hours of preparation and hard work have created.

I turn, the sparkles of my Tom Ford gown catching and refracting the light up into twinkling shimmers on the hotel’s high ceiling. The delicate fabric clinging tight and then falling loose over the contours of my frame made six inches higher with towering Aquazzura heels. I wobble slightly as the sharp stilettos sink too deep into the thick pile of the suite’s carpet.

It’s almost exactly three months since I left LA, three months since I watched Marla tip back into the darkness and disappear.

I inspect my face for evidence of that night but my bruises are long gone. No traces of the trauma inflicted that night remain—except maybe the look behind my eyes, but then no one would know to look for that except me.

About my healed neck are ￡1.8 million worth of diamonds on loan from Boodles. The burly security guy assigned to guard it—and, I suppose, as a consequence, me—is stationed just beyond the suite door in stoic silence. He’ll follow the small army of stylists, hair and makeup artists, and assistants down the hall, waiting for me to emerge, and escort me, from a distance, down to the red carpet just across the road from this hotel.

I think of the crowds gathering right now outside the Royal Albert Hall, the BAFTA television crews, the journalists, presenters, and public. The long gauntlet of the red carpet, the massive banks of photographers with walls of flashes. Tonight’s show will be televised live, with only a three-minute delay. The idea of it both thrilling and nauseating.

I look down at my index cards again, my acceptance speech. Should I need one. My scrawled-out handwriting will be my only protection against the vast waves of nerves that I know will crash through my body if my name is called from the podium. That long walk to the stage—past the smiling faces of make-believe superheroes, historical figures, faux-gangsters, and rom-com best friends—to the moment I’ve worked my whole life for. Maybe.

I run through the speech cards again one last time, my hands shaking. Let’s call it excitement.

The speech is short but packed with thanks.

I know how lucky I am. Now more than ever, to even be alive. Luckier than ever after everything that happened, after almost losing myself, after looking into the darkness and seeing so many near-identical faces staring straight back at me.

I am so, so incredibly grateful, but—and there is a but—I know none of this is real. This industry is not fair, the price is so often higher than the reward. I’ve won some things but more often than not, I’ve lost. We all have. And there should be a limit to what we are willing to lose along the way…after all, we’ll need something left once we get there.

Marla lost everything. Emily too. I wish—award gown on, and on my way to the ball—I could have told them that it feels good but it’s not worth losing everything for. This. Standing here, covered in reflected and refracted light. I can tell you firsthand this feeling is only the same one you felt when you won a gold star in school, or when your mum said she was proud, or when you won a sports match. Don’t get me wrong, success is a great privilege, but standing here I can tell you it’s not what I thought it was before I had it.