‘Fine.’ Suze doesn’t look at me properly. She hasn’t looked at me properly since last night. Her phone is clamped to her ear, and she’s stirring her tea obsessively with her other hand, round and round and round.
‘Who are you phoning?’ I venture.
‘Alicia.’
‘Oh.’ I turn away.
‘Hi,’ says Suze into the phone. ‘No. Nothing.’
I feel a tweak of hurt. She’s talking in the kind of intimate shorthand you use when you’re really close to someone. Like the way we talk. Used to talk.
I can almost feel tears rising at the thought of Suze and Alicia being that close, but then I have only had about two hours’ sleep. I kept checking my phone for messages from Luke, but there weren’t any. I’ve composed a million texts to him, but I haven’t sent any of them. Every time I even picture him, I feel such a tidal wave of hurt that I don’t know where to start.
I rub my eyes and drain my coffee. ‘OK, Jeff,’ I call. ‘Shall we go?’
As Jeff comes into the kitchen, his demeanour is gloomier than ever. He hasn’t reacted well to the news of Dad and Tarkie disappearing. He seems to feel it’s all his fault, even though I keep reassuring him that it isn’t.
‘The site’s secure,’ he says. ‘Mitchell’s on patrol in the yard with Echo.’
‘Great,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’
Jeff heads to the kitchen door and checks it, then goes to the window and runs a finger along the glass. He murmurs into his headpiece, then goes back to check the door again. God, he’s making me edgy.
‘The kitchen’s fine!’ I say. ‘We’re safe! Look, Jeff, my dad just took off. It wasn’t your fault.’
‘Shouldn’ta happened,’ he says heavily. ‘Not on my watch.’
‘Well, let’s go, and maybe we’ll find something out.’ I push my chair back with a scrape. ‘Suze, I’ll keep you posted.’
‘Fine.’ Suze’s eyes are fixed resolutely beyond me. Her jaw is tight and her hair is lank. I know she didn’t get any sleep at all.
‘Look, Suze,’ I say tentatively. ‘Please don’t worry. I’m sure everything’s fine.’
She doesn’t even answer. I can see her mind grimly whirring around all the worst possibilities. There’s nothing more I can say.
‘OK.’ I bite my lip. ‘Well … I’ll talk to you later.’
We’ve been driving twenty minutes or so when my phone rings and I reach for it eagerly. But it’s not Suze or Dad, or even Luke, but Sage.
‘Oh, hi Sage.’
‘Hey, Becky!’ Her voice peals happily down the phone. ‘Are you super-excited?’
‘What?’ I say blankly.
‘Our
Camberly
show! It airs in, like, ten minutes! I’m totally psyched. Aran was just on the phone. He was, like, this is huge already, babe. I mean, have you
seen
the hits on YouTube? And that’s just the trailer!’
‘Right. Right.’ I try to wrench my head away from Dad and into the world of Sage. ‘Yes, I saw that. It’s phenomenal!’
It’s true, it is pretty phenomenal. There have been wall-to-wall trailers for the last two days, for what they’re calling
The Big Showdown: Lois Meets Sage
. They were on this morning while I was making coffee, but we turned the telly off because it was all getting a bit too much.
(Well, in fact, Suze threw her phone at the telly and yelled, ‘Shut up! Shut
up!
’ So I zapped it off.)
‘So are you watching?’
‘I will be!’ I say, hastily turning on the in-car TV. ‘I’m in the car but I’ll be watching it in here. I can’t wait. I’m sure you’re amazing in it.’
‘I’m awesome,’ says Sage in satisfaction. ‘So the other thing is, I had this great idea for my premiere outfit tonight. You have to come over and help me with it. Where are you now? Could you be here in, like, fifteen minutes?’
‘Fifteen
minutes?
’ I stare at the phone. ‘Well … no. Sorry. I have some stuff I have to do this morning. It’s kind of a family emergency.’
‘But you’re styling me!’ says Sage, sounding affronted.
‘I know. I’m coming round later, remember? Can we discuss it then?’
There’s silence down the phone. Oh God. Is Sage pissed off?
‘What’s the idea?’ I say hastily. ‘I bet it’s brilliant.’
‘I can’t
tell
you. I have to
show
you.’ She gives a huffy little sigh. ‘OK, if you really can’t come now I guess we’ll meet later. You’ll be, like, totally oh my God.’
‘Wow! Sounds amazing. I’ll see you later. OK?’
I ring off and turn up the volume on the TV. It’s showing a weather report for the East Coast and I find myself wondering if Dad and Tarkie could have got on a plane.
No. They wouldn’t do that. Would they?
Even though I’m sure both Mum and Suze are overreacting to the situation, I feel a little chill. People you love shouldn’t disappear, simply telling you vaguely they have ‘something to put right’. They shouldn’t do that.
Suddenly I realize the
Camberly
show is starting. The familiar titles are zooming over the screen and shots of Camberly in evening dress and running along the beach with her dog are flash-cutting with shots of her famous white house, where it’s ‘filmed’. (It’s really filmed in LA, on a studio set. Everyone knows that.) Normally, there are several sections in the show. There’s an interview and a song and a cooking slot, and often a competition. But today is a ‘special’. It’s all about Lois and Sage. As soon as the music dies away, the camera focuses on Camberly, looking sombre, and a backdrop of Sage’s and Lois’s faces blown up, glaring at each other. It all looks very dramatic.
‘Welcome to my home,’ Camberly says, in serious tones. ‘And to a unique and momentous hour-long special. Sage Seymour. Lois Kellerton. Meeting for the first time since their infamous encounter at the ASAs. We’ll be back after this.’
Music plays again, and the titles swoosh around the screen. I stare at it in slight outrage. An ad break
already?
I will never get used to American telly. Yesterday I started watching an advert and it went on for twenty minutes. Twenty whole minutes! (It was quite good, though. It was all about this brilliant barbecue grill thing, which gives you a ‘restaurant-quality finish’ with none of the calories. I wrote the number down, actually.)
I sit impatiently through a zillion ads for pain relievers, and then watch as Sage appears on the screen, sitting on the sofa with a rapt Camberly. At first, it’s very boring, because she gets Sage to tell her exactly what happened at the awards ceremony, in every detail, and shows the video clip about ten times, and asks Sage over and over, ‘And how did that make you feel?’
Sage is acting devastated. She keeps using phrases like ‘I felt so betrayed’ and ‘I just don’t understand Lois’ and ‘Why me?’ in a broken voice. I think she’s overdoing it, myself.
Then it’s
another
ad break – and then it’s time for Lois’s appearance. And even though I know they’ve cooked all this up, my heart is beating faster at the thought of them together on the sofa. God knows what the American public is feeling. This really is a TV event.
Suddenly we’re back in the studio, and Lois walks on to the set, wearing skinny cigarette pants and a billowy white silk shirt and … holding the clutch bag! I can’t help gasping, and Jeff looks in the rear-view mirror.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Just watching the telly.’
Sage and Lois are staring at each other like two hostile cats, with a kind of crackling, unsmiling tension. The cameras keep switching from close-up to close-up. Camberly is watching silently, her hands to her mouth.
‘Have your clutch bag.’ Lois throws the bag down on the floor. Camberly jumps in shock and I make a squeak of protest. She’ll damage the diamanté!
‘You think I want it?’ says Sage. ‘You can keep it.’
Hang on. I’m a bit offended, here. That’s a really nice clutch bag. Which, by the way, no one has ever paid me for.
‘You two girls haven’t seen each other since the awards ceremony,’ says Camberly, leaning forward.
‘No,’ says Sage, not taking her eyes off Lois.
‘Why would I want to see
her
?’ chimes in Lois.
And suddenly I lose patience with the whole thing. It’s so unreal. They’re going to fight and be mean and then they’ll probably hug each other and cry at the end.
‘We’re here,’ says Jeff, pulling the car over. ‘You wanna keep watching?’
‘No thanks,’ I say, and switch off the TV. I look out of the window, trying to get my bearings. There are the galvanized gates. There are the rows of mobile homes. OK. Let’s hope I find some answers here.
‘This is really the address?’ says Jeff, who is peering out of the window dubiously. ‘You sure about that?’
‘Yes, this is it.’
‘Well, I think it’s advisable I come along with you,’ he says firmly, and gets out of the car.
‘Thanks, Jeff,’ I say, as he opens my car door.
I’m going to miss Jeff.
This time I walk straight to no. 431, without looking right or left. The eviction notice is still on the door, and the trailer opposite is shut up. I can see my card, still stuck in the window frame. Great. Clearly that woman didn’t pass it on.
I walk past an old man sitting outside a trailer about three along but I don’t feel like approaching him. Partly because he keeps giving me funny looks, and partly because he has a massive dog on a chain. I can’t see any neighbours other than him. So what do I do now? I sit down on a plastic chair which seems to be randomly in the middle of the path, and heave a big sigh.
‘Are you visiting with someone?’ says Jeff, who has followed me without comment.
‘No. I mean, yes, but he’s been evicted.’ I gesture at the notice on the door. ‘I want to find out where he’s gone.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Jeff digests this for a few moments.
‘I was hoping to speak to a neighbour,’ I explain. ‘I thought I could get a forwarding address or something …’
‘Uh-huh,’ says Jeff again, then nods at the trailer. ‘He might be in there. Back door’s open.’
What? That hadn’t even
occurred
to me. Maybe he’s come back. Maybe Dad’s in there with him! In excitement, I hurry to the trailer door and bang on it.
‘Hello?’ I call. ‘Brent? Are you there?’
There’s a pause, then the door swings open. But it’s not Brent. It’s a girl. She’s a little older than me, I’d say, with wavy sandy hair and a freckled, weatherbeaten face. She has pale-blue eyes and a nose ring and an unfriendly expression. I can smell toast and hear Michael Jackson’s
‘Beat It’
playing faintly in the background.
‘What?’ she says.
‘Oh, hi,’ I say hesitantly. ‘Sorry to disturb you.’
A little dog comes running out of the door and licks my toes. He’s a Jack Russell, and he’s wearing the cutest lime-green harness.
‘Gorgeous!’ I say, and squat to pat him. ‘What’s he called?’
‘Scooter.’ The girl doesn’t unbend a millimetre. ‘What do you want?’
‘Oh. Sorry.’ I rise up and give her a polite smile. ‘How do you do?’ I extend a hand and she cautiously takes mine. ‘I’m looking for someone called Brent Lewis. Do you know him?’
‘That’s my dad.’
‘Oh!’ I exhale in relief. ‘Great! Well, he was a friend of my father, and I think my dad’s gone off looking for him, but I don’t know where’s he’s headed.’
‘Who’s your dad?’
‘Graham Bloomwood.’
It’s as though I’ve said ‘the Antichrist’. Her whole body jolts in shock. But her eyes stay on mine, unwavering. There’s a gimletty hardness to them which is starting to freak me out. What’s wrong? What have I said?
‘Your dad is
Graham Bloomwood?
’ she says at last.
‘Yes! Do you know him?’ I say tentatively.
‘So, what, you’ve come here to gloat? Is that it?’
My mouth falls open a little. Have I missed something here?
‘Er … gloat?’ I echo, at last. ‘No. Why would I come here to gloat?’
‘Who’s that guy?’ Her eyes suddenly fix on Jeff.
‘Oh. Him.’ I cough, feeling a bit embarrassed. ‘He’s my bodyguard.’
‘Your bodyguard.’ She gives a bitter, incredulous laugh and shakes her head. ‘Figures.’
It figures? Why does it figure? She doesn’t know anything about me—
Oh, she’s recognized me! I
knew
I was famous.
‘It’s just been since the whole ridiculous business on TV,’ I say, with a modest sigh. ‘When you’re in my position you have to hire security. I mean, I’m sure you can imagine what it’s like.’
She might want an autograph, it occurs to me. I really should get some of those big shiny pictures to carry about with me.
‘I could sign a napkin,’ I suggest. ‘Or a piece of paper?’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ says the girl, her tone unchanged. ‘I don’t watch TV. Are you a big deal?’
‘Oh,’ I say, feeling suddenly stupid. ‘Right. I thought … Well … no. I mean, kind of …’ This conversation is excruciating. ‘Look, can we talk?’
‘Talk?’ she echoes, so sarcastically that I wince. ‘It’s a bit late to
talk
, don’t you think?’
I stare at her in bewilderment.
‘I’m sorry … I don’t follow. Is something wrong?’
‘Jesus H. Christ.’ She closes her eyes briefly and takes a deep breath. ‘Look, just take your little bodyguard and your little designer shoes and your little prinky-prinky voice and go. OK?’
I’m feeling more and more upset by this conversation. Why is she so angry? I don’t even know her. Why did she say I’d come here to gloat?
And what ‘prinky-prinky voice’? I don’t have a prinky-prinky voice.
‘Look.’ I try to stay calm. ‘Please can we start again? All I want is to track down my father and I’m quite worried about him, and this is the only place I can think of, and—’ I break off. ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t even introduced myself properly. My name’s Rebecca.’
‘I know.’ She looks at me strangely. ‘Of course it is.’
‘And what’s your name?’
‘Rebecca too. We’re all called Rebecca.’
It’s as though time stands still. I gape at her blankly for a few seconds, trying to process her words. But they make no sense.
We’re all called Rebecca
.
We’re all
… what?
What?
‘You knew that.’ She seems puzzled by my reaction. ‘You had to know that.’
Am I missing something? Have I moved into some weird, parallel universe? Who’s
we
?