Authors: Harriet Evans
But a week later it hasn’t gone away. Up on Hollywood Boulevard over the stars on the Walk of Fame they’re selling T-shirts and mugs emblazoned with that photo and the slogan, ‘
I’VE LOST MY DEODORANT!
’ I saw them today, on the news. Yes, it’s on the news, a news story about how Armpitgate is still in the news. The world is going mad and I think I might be going mad too, because I don’t understand it any more.
At three, I wake and know I’m not going to get back to sleep. I gaze up at the ceiling, thoughts tumbling through my weary brain. And the honesty of half-conscious thought tells me this feels wrong. My life feels wrong, somehow. I can’t complain, I know that, but something’s not right. I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere. These things keep happening and I feel like there’s a pattern and I’m too tired, too hungry, too self-obsessed to see it. The roses. The scripts. Armpits, journalists, girls in lobbies with tight, sad faces, Deena’s brown fingers criss-crossed with suntan, grimy with years of cigarettes.
George lies beside me, sleeping like the dead, his huge naked brown body sprawled in a tangle amongst the white sheets. I get up and creep through the empty house, out to the pool, where the lights of the city twinkle below. The sky is purply blue, smoggy even in the depths of night. I sit on the damp lawn and dial.
‘Hi, Mum.’
‘Sophie? Is that you? Let me turn the radio off.’
I can picture the scene completely: the kitchen done up in best country-cottage style, the flat-screen TV in the corner, the Portmeirion china on the pine dresser. It’s morning there and it’s nearly summer. Even in the dingy little town I grew up in, the trees are greener, the fields and hedges nearby full of life.
I pick at the grass under my feet. ‘Sorry we haven’t spoken.’
‘It must be two, three a.m. What on earth are you doing calling at this hour?’
‘I knew it’d be a good time to get you …’ I trail off. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Well, Sophie. I wanted to tell you before but I can’t trust the email. You must get better advice about what to wear, dear. That dress, there’s pictures everywhere, of you with a sweaty armpit! It’s terribly embarrassing.’
There’s a pause. I pick furiously at some more grass. ‘Yes, I know, Mum.’
‘I mean, there’s some tops I don’t even look at now. The turquoise silk one with the gold buckle that I wore to the London premiere of
Wedding of the Year
– I’m afraid that’s in the back of the wardrobe. I won’t sell it, because I don’t want people to have something I’ve worn in that way, but really, they should think of these things. You need to tell them! It really shouldn’t happen again, Sophie. Everyone’s talking about it.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, I know,’ I say, barely able to control my irritation. ‘Don’t go on about it. I was just ringing to see how you are.’
Mum’s voice rises. ‘Oh, well! Don’t shout at me! I’m your mother. I’m just trying to help.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. The last thing I want to do is get her wound up; then we’ll be here till the sun rises. I stretch out on the grass, the grey-black sky above me and the city glittering below. It’s just me alone out here. I feel very small. I keep my voice light. ‘So, how’s the new bathroom? What’s been going on? How’s Dads?’
‘Well, I’m fine, dear. I’m fine. I went to Cribbs Causeway John Lewis last week, with Mary. Her eyes are very bad. George has to have a knee replacement.’
‘George – oh, that George. Oh, dear,’ I say.
‘And I meant to tell you this – you see, there’s a couple of things I wanted to tell you, now. You’ll never guess who I bumped into.’
I don’t realise she wants me to guess till she says, ‘Well, go on. Who?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘I saw Jane Yardley.’
The houses below me are in darkness except for one, a way away, that’s glowing with white light and the pool beside it is lit up, a beautiful turquoise against the black hills. The cicadas croak softly nearby and there’s the faintest, faintest roar from down below.
‘Who?’
Mum says in a rush, ‘Oh, Sophie, you remember, the one who was always so stuck up with me around the village. Jane Yardley. Well, her daughter – you remember Rachel, with the terrible teeth? She’s moving to LA to be a set designer and anyway Jane sidled up to me yesterday in Gloucester Quays M&S and asked can Rachel get in touch with you when she’s out there! I took great pleasure explaining why that wouldn’t be appropriate, as you can imagine! The nerve!’ Mum laughs.
‘I’m pretty lonely at the moment,’ I say, feeling quite mad. ‘It’d be nice to see Rachel again. Tell her to email me.’
‘Very funny! Lonely.’
‘I’m serious,’ I say.
Mum ignores this. ‘Now, dear. I want to know how you are. You’re not actually upset about all this armpit hoopla, are you?’
I stare down at the blue pool, then close my eyes. I can still see it, glowing inside my lids. ‘No, God no. It’s all stupid, anyway, isn’t it?’
Mum sounds confused. ‘What is?’
‘The whole thing. I mean, it’ll blow over soon. I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal.’
‘That’s because you’ve never done anything wrong before, dear.’ I can hear her moving around the kitchen. ‘You’ve not been caught falling out of nightclubs with no knickers on and going out with the wrong sort of boy. People love you! Because you’re a nicely brought-up girl who makes nice films for everyone to enjoy, you see. And stuff like this – well, it’s not …’ She hums, looking for the word. ‘Well, again, it’s not nice. That’s all.’
‘Right,’ I say, closing my eyes, and rolling back onto the grass. I wish I’d never called her. I remember now: I have to be a bit drunk when I do it. I don’t have anything to say to her and it terrifies me.
Yet I owe her so much. I owe her my career. When I was eleven and I played Miss Hardbroom in the
Worst Witch
at school, the father of one of my classmates who happened to be a producer at BBC Bristol told Mum he thought I had potential. Well, that was when the cork came out of the bottle. I must have said I wanted to do it, I suppose. I loved acting. I still do, despite everything. I remind myself as I listen to Mum telling me about what’s wrong with various actresses in various soap operas, how hard she worked, how she totally believed in me. How she drove me everywhere, waited, held my hand when I came out crying. How she believed I could do it when I didn’t – I think because she wanted it, maybe more than I did. Mum propelled me here, no doubt about it, but the thing is, she doesn’t get it. Even though she’s been to stay loads of times, and even though Deena’s her best friend, she doesn’t get it.
‘How’s Dads?’ I say.
‘Dads? Oh, he’s fine. Chugging along, you know your father. He doesn’t change, does he?’ She gives a little snort. ‘Actually, the manager of the garage over at Cirencester has just resigned, so he’s been spending quite a bit of time over there. He’s always covered in oil when he gets back – it’s horrible.’ She laughs. ‘But don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone he’s getting his hands dirty if they ask!’
Mum is slightly ashamed that Dad runs a garage business, even though he’s got five and he’s had a good living out of it. It’s one of the things she doesn’t get. Having a dad who’s a mechanic, who’s made something of himself, who I can talk about in interviews, helped me escape that Posh English Girl label in Hollywood. I didn’t ever want to be someone who just does costume dramas. You get typecast as English and they don’t know what to do with you, and the press in the UK gets obsessed with you and your weight, your boyfriends, your every move. The newspapers weren’t ever that interested in me till I became a star out here and now they’re constantly running stories about me when the truth is I don’t feel English any more. I don’t sound English – I haven’t lost the accent but my speech is totally American. I say ‘cell’ and ‘have him call me’ and ‘raisin’, instead of ‘mobile’ and ‘tell him to give me a call’ and ‘sultana’. I don’t know where I’m from, really. But Mum is Middle England through and through. She was the one who suggested I change my surname to Leigh. ‘Leigh … Like Vivien Leigh. Ladylike,’ she’d said approvingly.
Honestly though, I have no idea what my dad thinks about it. He’s never there. I can’t remember now if he wasn’t there before the drama classes and the tap and the ballet started, but as Mum and I turned into a mini production company, her ferrying me around to practices and auditions, he retreated further and further into work or his garage at home. He’s probably there right now, not in Cirencester, hidden behind the
Mail
, with a bottle of whisky, some McVitie’s Cheddars and a box of spark plugs, waiting for Mum to go out.
A pang of longing for home hits me. I rub my eyes. I’m just tired. ‘Give Dads my love, won’t you?’
‘Well, yes,’ Mum says. ‘Yes, I will. When I see him.’
She’s saying something and I try to listen, again, but there’s a faint noise near me and I’m distracted.
‘So, Deena’s getting on well in the guest house. She loves being there – it’s great for her,’ she’s saying. ‘Have you seen much of her? She says you’ve been out a lot …’
Suddenly, there’s that prickly, watery feeling of fear, that taste of something metallic in my mouth.
There’s someone else here.
I know it in that instinctive way one has, who knows why.
It’s deadly quiet. I look over at Deena’s guest house. The lights are off. They’re off all over the main house too.
‘Hold on, Mum,’ I whisper. ‘Give me a second.’
I hold the phone down on the grass to muffle the sound, and I listen.
There’s the noise again. It’s coming from below me. Down on the narrow, winding road below the house. Someone’s shouting something. I can hear the crunch of gravel and dry, parched earth, in the still of the night, and a car revving up nearby. Someone shouting something across the valley.
My shoulders slump. It’s nothing to do with me, I realise. Some couple having an argument, or some lonely nutter – you get a lot of them in this town. I smile at my own preoccupation, self-absorption, and pick up the phone again.
‘What happened to you?’ Mum says, almost squawking with indignation.
‘Sorry,’ I say, biting my nail. ‘I think it’s fine. Someone outside down on the road.’
‘Good, well, I was explaining to you that Marcy …’
I am suddenly tired, very tired. A cold, mean little streak of nastiness runs through me, the knowledge that I am powerful and I can do what I want, and she likes it that I’m like that.
‘Look, I’d better go, Mum,’ I say. ‘I have a ton of things to do tomorrow and my lawyer’s calling me first thing to go through some contracts.’
‘Ooh, right,’ she says. I hate that note of impressedness in her voice and I hate that I engineered it. ‘By the way, what’s the next project?’
‘Something different.’ I sit up. ‘Actually, Mum, what do you remember about Eve Noel? Didn’t she come from near us?’
‘Not far away, over more towards Moreton-in-Marsh,’ Mum says. ‘I saw her round here once.’
I stop chewing my nail. ‘What? When?’
‘Ooh. About … five years ago?’ she says. ‘On the high street.’
‘You saw Eve Noel? On Shamley high street?’ I laugh. ‘Mum – no, you didn’t. No one knows where she is. She disappeared off the face of the earth like forty years ago.’
‘Well, maybe it wasn’t her,’ says my mother slightly defensively. ‘But it looked like her. Older, you know. Small, too. It’s not out of the realms of possibility.’
‘Eve Noel! You don’t find Fred Astaire wandering round even in LA just doing his shopping,’ I say.
Mum sounds prickly. ‘Fred Astaire’s been dead for years, Sophie. She has to buy food, you know. She came from near here, you know that. You of all people, you loved her. She must have some family still here, or something. Maybe she’s got a sister.’
‘Her sister drowned when Eve was six,’ I say automatically.
‘Oh, I’d forgotten how obsessed you were with her,’ Mum says. ‘Of course. Well, it probably wasn’t her, was it.’ She pauses. ‘But Sophie dear, it comes to us all, doesn’t it? Look at Deena. I mean, I know it’s not in the same class, but … Deena used to star in the biggest soap on TV, and now look at her. She used to get hundreds of letters each week. Free dresses, holidays, the lot. And now who cares about Deena Grayson any more? No one. She’s invisible.’
She sounds so pleased with herself, glad about Deena’s failure. I wish she wasn’t like this, and I wish it didn’t grate with me so much. I stand up. ‘Look, Mum, I have to go.’
‘But, dear—’
‘Sorry, Mum. We’ll catch up soon. I have to go now. Bye.’
I end the call, feeling guilty. As I go back to the house I see a security guard shuffling around the edge of the pool. It’s Denis, he’s covering the night shift tonight. ‘All OK?’ I say. ‘I heard you down there. I couldn’t sleep.’
Denis chuckles and shoves his hands in his pockets. ‘Some weird-ass shooting their mouth off, some crap about how someone should leave. Homeless, I bet you. They left this behind.’ He holds up a tattered old rug, an ancient UCLA hooded top, torn and stained, and a plastic water bottle. Each of them looks like it’s spent many nights out in the open air.
I’m astonished how many homeless people there are in Los Angeles walking along freeways, on the beach. They hitchhike to California from all over because it’s warmer all year round, and when I told Tommy I’d donated to a shelter a few months ago and asked what else we could do for them, he didn’t look up from his BlackBerry, but just said, ‘Uhuh. Homelessness isn’t the right area for you. We’ll hook you up with that philanthropy advisor and work something out.’
I meant to ask him what would be the right area. I say bye to Denis, pad back through the empty house, and crawl into bed again, next to the snoring, warm, bulk of George. I sleep then, a heavy sleep, full of strange dreams.
IT’S HARD, WRITING a proper email that you want someone to take seriously. I’m normally on my BlackBerry just writing
Yes
or
Ask Tommy
or
Thanks guys!
or usually
Tina can you deal thx.
But I want to get this one right. It’s like homework.
Dear Melanie,
I am Sophie Leigh, the film star.
No
. What a jackassy thing to write.