The Perfect Location (29 page)

‘I’m so pleased, I missed you!’

‘I missed you also, Tosser. Chris is on the shoot also, so I figured I should do this one. Might be the last time we all work together for a while.’

‘Why?’ asked Rose, frowning.

‘Because I’m twelve weeks pregnant. Found out when we got back from Italy. That’s why I was sick there, so I hope you don’t mind me throwing up every morning while I do your face,’ said Kelly as they walked towards the make-up trailer.

‘Oh Kelly, I am so happy for you,’ exclaimed Rose, throwing her arms around her. ‘How wonderful, I want to hear all about it.’

Rose was truly happy for Kelly, without any of the old angst she used to feel when she heard people were pregnant in the past. The time with her own family had made her realize what she had in her life, and even if she never had a family of her own, she would always be welcome in their lives.

‘How’s Max?’ asked Kelly as they settled in the chairs inside.

‘I don’t know. We haven’t spoken for a while.’ Rose picked up a hairbrush and started to brush her hair.

Kelly looked closely at her. ‘What happened?’

‘Oh, you are going to love this one. Apparently his dead wife keeps coming to him in his dreams, trying to tell him something. He thinks she doesn’t want him to be with me or some crap. I tell you, he was a different man in London to Italy, Kelly. I’m not even sure I like him. He was a bit wet, pathetic and self-righteous. And I bloody cleaned his house like some little scullery maid. Germaine Greer would have had my tits for breakfast. I am a disgrace to feminists. Not any more though. I’m here in New York, the best place for a single woman to be. I plan on having a ball here and forgetting about him,’ said Rose, her nose in the air in defiance.

‘Fair enough,’ said Kelly, disappearing into the small bathroom and then emerging a few seconds later. ‘Sorry, thought I was going to be sick.’

Rose looked at her sorrowfully. ‘Oh Kel, it’s a massive fuck up and who the hell am I kidding? I love him and my heart broke in his house the day when he cried about his wife and those dreams. He cried!’

‘Listen, Rose, I’m going to say something you may scoff at but if you feel this deeply then I think you might want to consider it.’ Kelly sat very close to Rose, her face almost touching hers.

‘You are in the home of magic. New York is the most magical city in the world. Why do you think so many movies are made about this place? Things happen here and the people this city attracts are people who believe in the impossible. I know a woman who speaks to the dead. Maybe you should meet with her and have it out with Alice?’

Rose looked at Kelly incredulously. ‘Are you serious? We did that whole psychic bullshit when we were younger, but you still believe that stuff?’

‘I never stopped. I have too many experiences to tell me otherwise. This woman is the real deal,’ said Kelly, eating a peppermint.

‘Why haven’t I heard of her on the psychic channel or whatever? Shouldn’t she have her own TV show and a book deal now?’ asked Rose mockingly.

‘That’s how you know she’s real. She doesn’t need any of that crap,’ said Kelly.

‘So, she speaks to the dead?’ Rose asked, her eyebrows raised.

‘Yeah, she’s a medium. Super expensive, but the good ones usually are,’ Kelly said matter-of-factly.

‘She’s the haute couture of spooky, is she? Gosh, Kelly, I don’t know. I’ve never been into all that woo-woo stuff, it was you who liked that years ago,’ Rose said, her face screwed up.

‘Woo-woo or boo-hoo. You choose.’

Kelly stood up to get ready for the day; the other actors were due on set any minute.

Rose stood up and took off her jacket. ‘I’ll go,’ she said decidedly, ‘but you have to come with me.’

‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world,’ Kelly said with a wink. ‘Dead people love me.’

Kelly organized the appointment with the medium for the following Tuesday evening. Rose met Kelly at the apartment block on the Upper West Side. She was surprised, thinking she would be in Brooklyn somewhere in a five-storey walkup, with a man asleep in the stairwell. Instead there was a doorman and plush lobby.

‘Are you sure this is it?’ whispered Rose as they stood in the brass and wood panelled elevator.

‘I told you she was expensive, honey,’ laughed Kelly as they stopped on the eighth floor. ‘Of course she’s on the eighth floor,’ said Kelly to herself as they walked down the quiet, carpeted hallway.

Standing outside the door marked 108, Kelly noticed a small fish doorknocker. She knocked and the door opened. A tiny glamorous blond woman of no particular age stood in front of them. She could have been forty or ninety years old.

‘Hello,’ she greeted them warmly.

‘Hi, I’m Kelly and this is Rose. I spoke to you last week.’

‘Of course, I’m all set up. Which one is going first?’

The tiny sparrow of a woman led them into an exquisite room with yellow Chinese silk hangings of butterflies on the walls, off-white plush carpet that sank when you stepped on it, and a gorgeous collection of blue and white vases on a Chinese apothecary table. In the room were two pale yellow silk couches and a small Chinese table with dragons for legs sitting in the centre of the room.

She gestured for them to sit down. ‘I’m Marion,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you have come. I am already getting messages for both of you. So many angels surround you.’

Rose nodded politely.

Marion bustled about the room. She took one single white candle and placed it in a silver dragon candlestick in the middle of the small table and lit it.

‘So, which one will go first?’ she asked with a smile as she sat on the opposite couch. She looked like a grandmother, not a communicator with the dead, thought Rose.

‘I’m not having a turn, just Rose,’ said Kelly.

‘Oh, that’s a shame, I have people trying to speak to you,’ said Marion.

‘Really? Who?’ asked Kelly, intrigued.

‘I have your little boy, the one in your womb. He says to tell you he wants to be called Otis. That’s his name.’

Kelly sat up and Rose felt her skin prickle. Kelly was twelve weeks pregnant but not showing, and no one knew but a select few.

Kelly laughed. ‘Of course he does. Otis Redding was my dad’s favourite singer. Tell him, Otis it is.’ Turning to Rose, she laughed, clearly delighted. ‘Chris is gonna freak!’

Rose was nervous. How did Marion know that? She felt a bit sick.

Marion looked at her for a long time. ‘Rose,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Rose tentatively.

Marion smiled. ‘I’ve many people who want to speak to you. Grandparents, someone from school who has passed over, but you don’t want to speak to them, do you? You are trying to call someone, someone you don’t know.’

Marion closed her eyes. Rose sat still.

‘They are coming from across the seas, over the oceans,’ she smiled. ‘On angels’ wings.’

Marion remained still with her eyes closed, smiling at something, someone. ‘Why do you want to speak to her, she wants to know?’

Rose was shocked. ‘Who is it, who are you talking about?’ she asked, her voice breaking.

Marion opened her eyes and looked at Rose. ‘I have Alice, and she said she has something to tell you.’

Rose felt tears roll down her cheeks, she lowered her head and saw tears fall onto her lap.

Marion continued. ‘Alice is here, she wants to tell you she thinks you are an angel. Don’t give up. She has been trying to talk, but they won’t listen to her.’

Marion spoke as though she was in a trance, her voice at times taking on a British accent, but Rose was too moved to be scared. Whatever doubts she had had about Marion disappeared at that moment.

Marion put her head back on the couch. ‘Three boys. A man. Italy … a sink filled with dishes. So much food.’ Marion laughed. ‘Food for a feast. A white witch.’

Her face darkened. ‘I have all these images flashing before me. She is showing me so many things. Perfume. There’s a knife in you, Rose. A stabbing pain.’

Rose gasped, her face turning white. Not even Kelly knew about her half-hearted suicide attempt years ago.

Marion ignored her, continuing with her channel from beyond. ‘Alice is trying to bring you something, something precious to her. It doesn’t feel bad. Do you know what it is?’ Marion opened one eye and looked at her piercingly.

Rose nodded. ‘He doesn’t want me,’ she cried.

Marion closed her eyes again and mumbled under her breath, as though she was having a conversation with Alice. This went on for some time and then she spoke again. ‘Alice is angry.’

‘With me?’ asked Rose fearfully.

‘No, with him. He won’t let her in when she goes to him. He ignores her. Makes up what he wants to hear,’ Marion laughed.

Rose was openly weeping. Kelly sat quietly. The energy in the room was thick with emotion. Marion spoke again under her breath to Alice and then smiled with her eyes closed. Finally she opened her eyes, tears pouring down her cheeks. She smiled at Rose. ‘Why are you crying?’ asked Rose. ‘What did she say?’

‘I always cry when they return. The love is amazing and I always get to feel it. It’s an honour,’ said Marion, as though this was an everyday occurrence.

Kelly looked at Rose’s ashen face. ‘Well, it seems Max has women pissed at him even from beyond the grave.’

Rose sat in shock but Marion smiled at Rose as though she knew a big secret.

Rose didn’t ask, she had had enough of secrets. It was time to live the life she was destined, with or without a man.

The FBI were a humourless lot, Calypso thought as she sat in their offices on Wilshire Boulevard. Sitting with Julius, the agency head, Mandy, Greg and her lawyer and four FBI agents, in various shades of grey, Calypso felt like she was in a bad B-grade movie.

Calypso had dressed for the sombre meeting in black Miu Miu pants and a tight black Chloe leather jacket, done up, with red Marc Jacobs suede high heeled boots. Calypso had channelled Sapphira in choosing her outfit. Tough, uncompromising, and in control. She looked the part on the outside. If only her stomach would unknot itself, she thought as she sat in the briefing room.

‘We are going to need you to meet this person who sent the package, Calypso, since it is addressed to you,’ said the agent, standing at the table where Calypso and her team sat.

‘We will need security, we don’t know what kind of nut we’re dealing with here,’ said her lawyer, Martin.

‘Of course, I recommend you meet somewhere public, gives them less chance of doing the unthinkable,’ said another agent, more senior than the last.

Calypso felt her stomach flip again. The female agent looked at her sympathetically. ‘If it helps, I don’t think he’s after you. I think he just wants the money.’

Calypso smiled at her wanly. This was one role she never prepared for. Then she thought about what the world would say, even TG, if they knew what Leeza had done, no doubt countless times before. She sat up straight in her chair. ‘Just talk me through it,’ she said, shaking back her newly straightened hair.

The plan was made for Calypso to confront the blackmailer the next day and two hours later Calypso left via the underground entrance with Julius and Martin in a car with tinted windows and driven by a young FBI agent towards Calypso’s home.

‘If this situation wasn’t so completely fucked, this moment would be cool but as it stands, this is what I call a cunt of a day,’ said Calypso absentmindedly, as she looked at the traffic flashing by them on the road.

Julius roared with laughter. ‘Atta girl, Calypso. What doesn’t kill you makes you smarter.’

Calypso started to laugh, as did Martin and Mandy. It felt good; it had been weeks since she laughed, since she left TG. She wished Sapphira was here to see her now.

Calypso had avoided TG’s calls, texts and emails. As far as she knew, he was still in Europe, going into postproduction on the film. They had planned that she would sail with him along the Amalfi Coast after the shoot but then the call came about Leeza and everything changed. The admission from TG about Raphael had sent her reeling; it was just like Leeza – doing the unthinkable for her perceived benefit. She had never asked either of them for this kind of investment. Perhaps she had used TG the way she had used Leeza, for protection, and saw each of them as saviours. Her mom had always taken care of every problem when Calypso was a kid and then she had handed the baton to TG.

The time away from TG had forced Calypso to assess many things in her life. Leeza, her relationships, what she wanted and what she needed. For the first time, she had no one in front of her, protecting her and fighting her battles. It felt oddly exhilarating, as though she could do and be anything. The only trouble was she didn’t know what that was.

When Kelly called her to see how she was doing back in LA, Calypso was frank with her. ‘Listen, Kel, if TG has asked you to ring then tell him I’m fine, okay?’ she said shortly.

‘He hasn’t, I promise you,’ Kelly said honestly. TG had been over the night before for dinner, pumping Kelly and Chris for information on Calypso.

‘Has she called you? Have you heard from her?’ he had asked. He had skipped the planned trip to the Amalfi Coast and had flown back into LA soon after Calypso.

‘No, I haven’t,’ said Kelly.

TG pulled the label off his beer as he sat on the deck of Kelly’s house. The frangipani tree dropped flowers into the pool in the breeze and TG thought how much he wished Calypso was with him in the balmy air.

‘I’ve called her constantly,’ he moaned to Kelly.

‘Let her be for a while. I get the feeling she’s trying to deal with something big in her life right now and it has nothing to do with you,’ Kelly advised as she put a large salad down on the table.

‘Why won’t she let me help her?’ TG asked.

‘Because, you lovely fool, she wants to do this by herself. I think Calypso has had everything organized for her since … well, forever, and now she’s trying to stand on her own two feet,’ Kelly explained as she sat down opposite him.

‘But she let me help her in Italy.’ Just saying the word Italy stabbed his heart and he remembered the easiness between them, something he thought he would never have again.