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Unsurprisingly, sleep remained elusive that night. It made me glad to have surrendered the bedroom to Caro; there was no point taking up a bed when I’d have just lain awake, staring at the ceiling...as opposed to lying awake, staring at my phone, reading Glenn’s email over and over again. Oosh. Whoever the hell he was to me.
Before retiring, Caro had again advised me to at least reply to the email. Even if I didn’t feel comfortable giving him my phone number, if I wanted to avoid speaking to him, I could still communicate in writing and ask what he wanted.
More politely than that, of course. After nineteen years and no direct communication, things were bound to be awkward but even so, what do you want sounded, even to my ears, unnecessarily aggressive.
“Hell, why don’t you invite him to stay here during the festival?” Caro had suggested, and at first, I’d thought she was only joking, but that twinkle in her eye had told me different. “Yes, it would be mischievous–”
“Mischievous?” I’d echoed. “More like bloody asking for trouble.”
“You’re single now. So’s he, isn’t he?” She’d frowned then, and suggested Googling him, but I’d shut the shit down on that notion, quick-smart. “I’m not too familiar with him, but I know who he is. I’m sure he’s been divorced for a good few years. At least you know you get along with him.” And she’d grinned. “You know you could stand his company for however long he’s here. Nothing more than that. Aaaaand,” she’d drawled, “if it happens to get back to Joseph that you’ve got another, older, more successful, better-looking man staying in the house he half-paid for...”
“You think Glenn Peterson is better looking than Joseph Dylan Marshall, do you?”
“Like I said, I’m not too familiar with Peterson, but Joe? Ugh, arsehole. He’s ugly on the inside. Anyway. Glenn. He’s obviously got in touch again for a very good reason. Maybe he wants to build some bridges, or make amends for however he treated you back then.”
“After all this time?”
“Or it could just be that he’s doing the Fringe for the first time in years and wants to check in with you, assuming you’ll both be in the city of your birth at the same time.”
“I suppose so.”
“Give him a call,” she’d said, with a casual shrug, like it was no big deal, the easiest thing in the world to do. “Or at least an email. I’m off to bed now, I’m bloody knackered. But give it some thought.” She’d ended her little speech by throwing a question over her shoulder as she’d left the room, to which I could give no profanity-free answer. “What harm could it do?”
And so, hours later and still chasing sleep, I pondered that question. What harm could it do? What actual, real, emotional harm could that do? Sure, it had hurt when it had all blown up. I’d been a mess. He’d been a mess. Together we’d been a disaster. Now, though? I was thirty-eight, he forty-nine. We’d gone our separate ways, built separate careers, gotten ourselves straightened out. Completely different people. Surely now we could have a conversation without fighting or getting lost in the drug-fuelled haze of what might have been?
Some couples were just better off apart.
But still...I sympathised with that nineteen-year-old, the girl I’d been. Sentimentality was a tough habit to break and I still felt pain when I thought of not Glenn, but the still-teenage Afton. If only I could reach through time and tell her it would all be okay in the end.
Then again...there was the whole Joseph Dylan Marshall shitstorm to come in her future and while they did say what didn’t kill you made you stronger, I could have done with less turbulent life lessons.
Sighing heavily, I considered any possible reply to Glenn for the umpteenth time. Eventually tapped out something anodyne and easy-breezy, and while I didn’t want to read it out loud in case Caro happened to overhear and think I’d finally flipped and had conversations with myself, I still cringed as I thumb-typed on my phone.
“I could tell her I’m rehearsing lines,” I muttered, pausing for a moment. The standard actor’s excuse for when one was caught talking to oneself.
Hi Glenn
Even that had taken some consideration. Was ‘hi’ too casual? ‘Glenn’ too formal? No, of course not. ‘Oosh’ harked back to a time long gone. Like a pet name, used only by a close friend or a lover. Far too intimate.
Hi Glenn,
You’re right; I was surprised to hear from you after all this time–
Nope. Too censorious. Like I was saying what took you so long?
You’re right; I was surprised to hear from you. It’s been a while. But if you want to carry on using this email address, it’s fine, no-one else has access to it.
Phone numbers, phone numbers? Fuck it.
Or you can call; I’ll leave my number at the foot of the email. I should be in Embra for most of the duration of the Fringe.
I signed off then, checked I’d typed out my number correctly and hit send.
Then immediately asked what the fuck was I thinking, giving him my number? That was a bit forward...unless he thinks ‘oh she probably gives her number to everyone in the television industry; contacts are always useful, gotta keep your eye on the main chance’, fucksake, Afton, just get over it. It’s a casual email. From an old...friend. Okay, okay, lover. A previous lover.
He’d not been my first, but he’d been the first of any importance.
I could have kicked myself for getting so het up, so jittery. After the split from Joseph, he and I had spoken. Usually with lawyers present. And I’d never felt like this. So out of sorts.
Then again, in Joseph’s case, I hadn’t really had time to brood, to reminisce. It had happened so fast. Once it became clear the marriage was irrevocably damaged, I saw no reason to drag it out and initiated divorce proceedings.
Friends had asked me constantly, at every point of the process, absolutely every step of the way, Afton, are you sure? but I’d gone steaming ahead, with my legalistic shears and cut apart every thread of the marriage. No, I hadn’t been sure, if the truth be told. That is to say, I hadn’t wanted to be divorced, but it had to be done. Joseph hadn’t fought to keep me, hadn’t even seemed like he cared, and that was that. Marriage over, another chapter done and dusted, Afton Collier-not-Marshall on her lonesome, dealing with another fuck-up as she pushed forty.
Maybe that was why hearing from Glenn out of the blue had upset me so much. Not the first, but the first one that mattered. The first major mistake I’d made, and all subsequent ones reminded me that I had a long history of screwing up.
I tossed the phone onto the coffee table and pulled the duvet more tightly around myself, snuggling into it like a bug in a 15-tog cocoon.
Sure, I had a long history of screwing up. But I also had a long history of pulling myself together and moving on.
That, at least, was something to be proud of.
~*~
I hadn’t thought the alarm would go off quite so soon in the confusing darkness. Night-time only lasted a few hours in Scotland at this time of year; the sun crept back over the horizon at half three, four in the morning, or thereabouts. Surely it shouldn’t still be this dark at half past seven–
Oh. Oh.
My blood chilled when I registered my phone ringing away on the coffee table. Phone calls in the middle of the night never brought good news. Especially when I’d just sent my number off into the ether of the internet a short time before.
“Hello?”
“Afton? Is that you?”
“Fuck.”
He paused before saying anything further and maybe his slight chuckle was an aural hallucination on my part, born of sheer emotional exhaustion. “That wasn’t the first thing I expected to hear from you in nineteen years.”
I hauled myself into something approximating a sitting position. Ordinarily I’d stand to take an important phone call, to force authority into my posture and therefore my voice. At the very least, sit up straight. But casually slouched on the spare pillows, more recumbent than anything else, was the best I could do. “Hold on, gimme a sec.”
“Did I wake you? You only sent the email twenty minutes ago, so I assumed when I checked my messages you’d still be awake. What time is it there?”
“No. Yes. I think so. Wait, lemme gather myself.” I stretched, somehow managing to stay silent and not give one of those undignified, unladylike, bear-waking-from-hibernation yawns. Checking the time on my phone’s screen before holding it to my ear again told me it was just coming up for three in the morning. Indeed, as Glenn had said, I’d only emailed him twenty minutes before. I couldn’t have been asleep longer than ten minutes. Jesus Christ, he was quick off the mark. And I wasn’t sure if I was cheesed off that he’d woken me, or pleased to have gotten this initial call out of the way as soon as possible.
“I guess I can give you a few more seconds, seeing as it’s been twenty years,” he said, and the chuckle became audible rather than merely imagined on my part, this time.
“Nineteen,” I instantly corrected him and would have kicked myself if I’d had more brain cells working at this time of night. Morning. Whatever it was.
“Of course. Nineteen.”
“So...?” I said, trying to prompt him to speak for two reasons. One, he’d been the one to initiate contact, and he’d called me within half an hour of me sending my number so let him do all the work and two...I probably wasn’t capable of coherent speech. It might have been the nineteen years’ radio silence making it a challenge, but I preferred to believe I was just too bloody tired after a long conversation with Caro, and the knowledge I’d have to get up early to see her off.
“Ah. Yes.” Glenn cleared his throat. Nerves? Not him, a talk show host in his late forties. He spoke to the great and the good several times a week, could charm his guests and the audience in equal measure. So I’d been told. Glenn Peterson, nervous?
Never.
“Sorry for waking you.”
“‘S’all right,” I slurred. “I fell asleep after I sent the email so I couldn’t have been under that long.”
“Am I disturbing you?”
“What?” I arranged the pillows behind me in a more supportive arrangement, so I could afford to sit up a little more. Then it struck me. Oh. He was asking if I had company. “Oh, no. No. I have a friend staying over but she’s in the other room.”
“If you’re sure.”
“Yeah, she was recording a guest slot in Glasgow today and I said she could stay here before driving back to London in the morning.” Why I needed to explain all this to Glenn, God alone knew, but at least I still had the sense to hold her name back. Over the years I’d gotten used to protecting others’ privacy and biting my tongue when it came to names.
“So ‘here’ is still Embra?” he asked, repeating the nickname for our home town I’d used in my email. “I know you said you’d be there for most of the Fringe, but didn’t know if you were there at the moment.”
“Yeah, I got back from filming a thing in Manchester recently, but I’m here ‘til...well, this is where I’m based now, since the end of last year. I moved back when...uh...”
“Oh, yes. Yes. I know. I, er...heard. On the grapevine, you know?”
Shit. The damned showbiz grapevine. Nobody could keep their mouths shut. Not that it was a secret; divorces were frequently reported, even in passing. Word got around. But there was something humiliating about my failure being made manifest to a man with whom I’d also failed so monumentally. Look, Oosh; I’ve learned nothing in those intervening years. I still can’t get anything right.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to...anyway, I guess I’d better get to the point of the email and this phone call, hadn’t I?”
“If you would. I need my beauty sleep.”
“Ouch. Not so Sweet Afton, are you?” he asked, with another quiet laugh, and his casual reference to the Burns poem took me back. I shouldn’t have pictured him rolling a joint while singing it to me stark naked on his living room floor but I couldn’t help it. He’d made Rabbie Burns positively pornographic, effortlessly.
“Sweet and sour Afton needs to be up in a few hours to get my friend out the door. Sorry, I don’t like to mention names. I’m paranoid about discretion and suchlike. I’m sure you understand.”
“Of course, of course. You’re to be commended for it,” and the formality of his compliment clashed with the reference to our drugs-fuelled intimacy moments before.
“I honestly wasn’t expecting you to call so soon. If at all. Even your email was a surprise, I must admit. Is something wrong?”
“Wrong? No, no...it’s just...can I be completely honest with you?”
“I would expect nothing less.”
“I know it’s awkward, us speaking after all this time, but years have passed and we’ve both moved on, and...as I’m going to be in Edinburgh soon, I genuinely thought it would be not rude, but...well, it would simply be a shame to not get in touch to say hi, if we were in the same city at the same time. It’s been years since I was there, and I’d heard about, you and, er...”
“You’re allowed to say his name, Glenn. He’s Joseph. My ex-husband.” I couldn’t help it. After saying those words, I had to screw my eyes shut momentarily. As if that would block out the truth of them.
Still, at least I’d proven to myself I could say them out loud without dying a death.
“Uh, yes. Quite. Well, after I heard you were no longer together, I figured Scotland was the place you’d be, and more than likely Edinburgh, so. Yeah. There you are.”
“Here I am,” I said, with rather more cheer than I felt but hey, didn’t that just prove what a brilliant actress I was? “I dot around a bit when I’m in Scotland.” I wasn’t going to tell him where exactly, as I’d grown more proprietorial over the country than any one person had the right to be. “But I always come back home in the end.”
“And so, it seems, do I.”
“You still think of Edinburgh as your home?”
“It’s my home town. It’s maybe not...I dunno...” He still had the Scottish accent but had acquired a strange, mid-Atlantic slur to some of his consonants, which made it obvious the land of his birth hadn’t been his base for many years. I’d avoided watching his show, so hadn’t listened closely to his voice since I’d last heard it in person.
When After Hours had been on at a friend’s house, I’d decided to feel ill, necessitating a visit to the bathroom to splash water on my face for half an hour. When Joseph had channel surfed through it, I’d feigned a headache and gone to bed. Of course, that was in the days when “I think I’ll have an early night,” had dragged Joseph along behind me soon enough anyway.
How ironic that his show would be named after a British reference to surreptitiously drinking in a pub that had closed to public custom for the day. He’d have been as well calling it Lock In with Glenn Peterson.
“Are you okay with me being in Edinburgh soon?” Glenn asked, bringing me back into the present.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked, and even as my heart thumped, I wondered how my voice would sound to him. Cold? Standoffish? Insulted?
There was no earthly reason why I shouldn’t be okay. I didn’t want him to think my reaction to him was an overreaction, after all. Sure, there had been drama between us, and a lot of bad feeling, but we’d both had relationships since, so it wasn’t like there was any good reason for this residual awkwardness.
“Maybe it was a mistake to leave it this long. I feel kinda weird right now,” I heard myself blurt out. So much for self-control. “Or maybe it’s because it’s three a.m. and I’ve only had ten minutes’ sleep.”
“Sorry about that.”
“I wasn’t getting at you. But...honestly, Glenn, why wouldn’t I be okay with you being at the Fringe?” Because I could always find an excuse to skip town for a few weeks if need be. Clear out, after you giving me this warning.
As if we hadn’t just spent the past two decades studiously keeping tabs on each other from a distance, so we could avoid any ‘accidental’ meetings. At least, that had been what I’d done.
But by Christ, did that mean I now had to spend another fucking nineteen years avoiding Joseph? He, at least, had had the good sense to be born in a different country, so it wasn’t like any homecoming for him stood to land him in my lap all over again.
Glenn groaned, a low, rumbling sound that spoke of tiredness. Or perhaps he was just busy. The line was clear, with not too much interference. Of course, it’d be an international call; if he’d be in Scotland for the Fringe, he likely would have his arrival scheduled down to the minute. Gotta get back to the U.S. to carry on building his empire.
“Where are you?”
“Studio,” he replied. “Just got out of the meeting, and had– No, no, my hair’s fine. Just gimme a minute, would you? Let me finish this call. Yeah, sure...” After a few seconds’ pause, he resumed his former train of thought. “Got another taping tonight; they’ve just opened the doors to the–”
“You’re at the studio?” I didn’t know why that surprised me so much. Because calling me back was so damn important he had to slot me in between recordings of the show I’d spent a good few years not watching?
“Sure; maybe I shouldn’t have called you in between recordings, should’ve just left it ‘til I got home, but I figured if you were awake...but what time would it be there when I got back? You said you were going to London?”
“No, my guest’s got a long drive back. I’m not going with her.”
“I’m gonna have to go soon; they’re fussing over my hair not looking right. I just got a haircut, and...never mind about that. Can we meet up when I get to Edinburgh?”
Some part of me was dying to ask why. What would be the point? To prove that we could, without fighting? Hell, I wasn’t quite sure I’d be capable of getting over-emotional in his presence if a five-minute phone call had my heart thudding so hard, I suspected the damn thing might break one of my ribs.
“Um...I guess?” Man, I’d come to regret that, I felt sure.
“I know I’m putting you on the spot. Look, Afton, I thought we could catch up.”
“Yeah, well...” I huffed out resigned laughter. “There’s a lot to catch up on. It’s been a good few years and this is...I’ll be honest with you, Glenn, this is hella strange. I’ve spent the past year trying to pretend the last decade never happened and here you are, popping up after twice as long as that–”
“I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have contacted you.”
“No, no, it’s not that. It’s just...strange. There’s been a lot of upheaval.”
“But I couldn’t be in Edinburgh without speaking to you. Big city, but we’d run into each other, maybe through being in contact with the same people, you’d see a flyer, or walk past a venue, and, well, I wanted to avoid any surprises, unpleasant or otherwise.”
His voice was huskier than I remembered. But age did that to men. We all changed. He’d look different too.
“I appreciate the heads up. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
I cleared my throat. “I hear you got clean.”
I thought at first the line had gone dead, but no, it was just the silence of Glenn absorbing my comment. “Yeah. Fifteen years this summer.”
When I screwed my eyes shut this time, it wasn’t because I cringed at anything embarrassing I’d said or done, but to avoid tearing up. A whole world of regret and what might have beens in his declaration of sobriety. And rather than be selfish and demand he apologise for his treatment of my teenage self, she had to step the fuck aside and make way for the nobler, more grown-up adult me.
“Good. Congratulations. I mean it.” I sniffed, but it was just a nervous twitch. Definitely not me on the verge of tears. No, I was just tired. That was all. “Stay healthy.”
“Thanks. Did you ever...?”
“What?”
“Go back to it? You know, after we...?”
It. As he’d just declared himself clean for fifteen years, I assumed he meant the Colombian marching powder, resolving to answer accordingly. “No. I stopped.” That, at least, hadn’t required any medical attention. “Strongest thing I’ve taken since is an aspirin. Well, maybe the occasional smoke.” And I laughed, because ha ha, it was so much fun to snort thousands of pounds between us over the course of however many months we’d lasted. I’d never looked at a mirror or a couple of credit cards together in the same light since. Glenn had never used razor blades in case he cut himself. Half the time we’d both been drunk so it wasn’t worth the risk.
I could have laughed out loud at my own ridiculous reasoning. No, Afton; of course you can’t risk cutting yourself with a pair of razor blades while bladdered; you must stay healthy while cutting a gram into a couple of lines.
“Drink?”
“Sometimes. Never on my own. Well, rarely,” I added. The time after I’d split from Joseph didn’t count. I’d have to have been superhuman to have got through that time without a little Dutch courage. Okay, a lot.
“Not for me. Can’t touch it.”
“You do what’s best. You’ve done well for yourself.” Look at us, being all civilised.
“Can I call you in the morning?” he asked suddenly. “I know this is a bit rushed, but I wanted to make contact again when I saw your email had come through, and I wasn’t quite sure what time it was, but I thought, she’s up late, so I may as well call.”
“Sure,” I said. “But remember I’m eight hours ahead of you. I don’t have anything on tomorrow. Planned, I mean,” immediately correcting the accidental double entendre. Glenn had always been a great one for picking up on those and maybe my verbal correction had drawn attention to itself. “My sleep pattern’s all buggered up anyway. I spent a whole week on night shoots after extremely early mornings and I still don’t know where I am.”
“What were you– Look, Afton, gotta go. I’ll call you tomorrow. Try and get some sleep.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll be right there. Afton, they need me in makeup, must go. Speak soon.”
“Bye.”
Glenn said goodbye and the phone went dead. I sat there for a full minute until the screen’s backlight faded to standby then eventually went full dark.
Pushing away the duvet, I hauled myself to my feet then padded through to the bedroom, finding my way easily in the dark. At least that was a sign this house was becoming my home. No longer bumping into things during one of my many sleepless nights.
“Caro?” I whispered, and she murmured something, half-asleep, half-awake. “You awake?”
“Whassup?”
“I got in touch with Glenn.”
“Mmm?” She yawned and hauled herself up, her silhouette just about visible in the almost-darkness, now beginning to lift.
“And he phoned back.”
“He did?” Caro replied, her interest obvious. “Wow; that must have been quick.”
“I emailed him and fell asleep almost straight away.” I sat on the edge of the bed, still gripping my phone, as if I expected him to call back almost immediately. Strange to think that at this very moment, while I sat in my bedroom in Scotland, gossiping about him to a girlfriend, he was on the other side of the world recording a TV show watched by probably hundreds of thousands of people. “Ten minutes later he called me back and woke me up,” I continued.
“Really? He did that? So soon?”
“Yes, he did, and yeah...I was surprised, too. Well, once I woke up, I was.”
“So you woke me up too?” But there was definitely a smile in her voice, the merest hint of laughter.
“Sorry. I just got so excited about it that I–”
“Excited, you say?”
“Oh, not like that.” I didn’t want her to think I read too much into Glenn’s getting in touch with me after all this time, but couldn’t help it. Nineteen years later and he’d seemed just like any polite, respectful gentleman. Out of character for him given what I knew of him, but then his public persona would have been taking the lead if he were at the television studio right now. He couldn’t allow himself to fall into talk of “Hey, remember that time we experimented with staying awake and naked for as long as humanly possible?”
Our personal record was thirty-seven hours, but that might not have been due to sheer human endurance and more down to astonishing amounts of coke, alcohol, speed, cannabis and sex.
His only reference, his only hint at the past, had been calling me Sweet Afton, that old nickname.
“Anyway, I don’t mind you waking me up,” Caro continued. “I’m as curious as you are about what’s going on here. Okay, maybe not quite as curious as you, given that you’re the one who’s doinked him, but come on, ‘fess up.” She reached over and took my hand. One of my more tactile friends, and I’d seen the effect such ease of communication had on men. She could walk into a party and seduce just about any bloke she wanted. Probably half the women, too. “What did he want? He must be keen to speak to you if he called a few minutes after you’d sent the email. Practically sitting on his laptop or phone, if you think about it.”
“I wasn’t doing much thinking before I got back in touch with him. In the end I just banged out an email and left it there. When he phoned, he was at the studio.”
Caro whistled. “Definitely sitting on his phone, then. Probably leapt on your email when it came through.”
“Not as reassuring as you might think, Caro. This has me worried.”
“You sound as if you’re uncertain of what he wanted. Didn’t he say?”
“It was like he just phoned to make contact and say thanks for replying, but I have to go record the show right now, I’ll call you again in the morning.”
“Huh. Strange. Like he just wanted to hear your voice? Maybe you’re just that damn magnetic, Collier. But seriously, I think he did just want to hear your voice. Not in a romantic sense, but oh, she’s sent her number, I better use it now to break the ice after all this time, or I’ll lose my nerve. As for the reason? I wouldn’t like to speculate. If he’s gonna be back at the Fringe for the first time in however long, maybe it could be as simple as checking in with an old friend.”
“He’s been clean and sober for fifteen years,” I blurted out. Why had I shared such information with her? Not that it was a secret; there would be no earthly reason for the Glenn Morangie of old that I’d known, to make his acquired sobriety a state secret.
“Has he? Well. Good for him. And good to see you wasted no time in getting down to the nitty-gritty. Most normal people might wait a while before touching on that sort of subject matter.”
“Oh, it just came up.”
Caro snorted with laughter.
“Shut up, you.” I paused. “So, he’s going to call me again in the morning. His morning, I think. But I said I had nothing important on, so...”
“Ooh, big mistake. Big.” Caro sucked in her breath. “You don’t want them thinking you’re hanging on for their phone call.”
“Them?”
“You know. Them. Men.”
“Oh, Glenn isn’t a man.” I waved my hand dismissively, hoped she’d pick up on the motion in the dim half-light. “You know what I mean. What he thinks of my schedule isn’t important.”
“Uh-huh.” Even though I couldn’t make out her exact features, I speculated that Caro had arched both eyebrows in a perfect expression of scepticism. “Maybe it’s your availability he’s more interested in discerning.”
“Oh, do shut up.”
“As long as you keep me informed of whatever is the reason for him popping up again after all these years. Go on, get in, then, if you want to get some sleep. I’ve got a long drive ahead of me and I don’t want to end up mashing the car into a wall.”
“You’ll leave a fine body of work if you do,” I said, sliding under the duvet and leaving my phone on the bedside table.
“Yeah, a couple of soaps and a BBC period drama.”
But her career was a lot more than that, much more than she gave herself credit for.
“Imagine seeing someone you used to be that close to, for the first time in years and years, though,” Caro murmured, already sounding as if she were drifting back to sleep.
Imagine? I wanted to say to her, but sleep beckoned to me, as well. I’ll be doing nothing else until Glenn calls me again tomorrow.