| |
With my phone beside me on the breakfast bar, I perched on a barstool and took a sip of coffee, the strongest I could brew at home, then tapped a few buttons on my laptop. I could easily have accessed the internet through my phone, but wanted to keep it fully charged and ready for the call I both did and did not want to happen. If I were fiddling around on YouTube when the call came through I’d no doubt jump, press the wrong part of the screen and cut Glenn off before he even said a word.
Not that I was back in teenage mode, obsessing over a phone call from a cute boy I liked.
I’d never sought him out online; immediately after our split I’d been in no fit state to even think about his name let alone track him down through the ether, besides which, neither of us had had much of an internet presence back then. His career I already knew about – stand-up gigs and guests slots on sitcoms, that kind of thing. As for me, my CV at that point consisted of a couple of bit parts in TV dramas and a six-week stint in a Scottish soap opera. I’d played a young woman who had an affair with one of the main characters before getting him fired when she revealed his financial chicanery at work. Bitches were always the most fun to play.
Because neither of our careers set the world alight at that point, we didn’t have websites or bother with social media, so there had been nothing for me to stalk. A good thing. If the internet had been able to drip-feed me information on Glenn Peterson while I was at my weakest point, I’d never have recovered.
Of course, tabloid newspapers and gossip magazines threw up articles now and again; they occasionally crossed my path. The first time it happened and I’d seen a reference to his Glenn Morangie persona in between his stints in rehab, it had been a blade through my chest.
The first time I heard of his efforts to clean himself up, it had felt like someone had actually reached into my shattered ribcage and pulled my still-beating heart out of it. Why he couldn’t have made the effort to sort his life out while we’d still been together, I didn’t know. I hadn’t been worth the effort. He hadn’t looked at me and thought, yeah, she’s worth it.
I’d had my sister, Isla, to keep an eye on me and she was careful never to tell me anything about Glenn if she spotted an article in a newspaper or magazine. I was sure she went out of her way to put them in the recycling before I could get my hands or eyes on them, if at all possible.
After a time, it mattered less. The numbness that protected me from being hurt too badly eased off – hence the stabby pain when I heard about him crashing out of a nightclub or some showbiz party across the pond. Due to the distance, he had to really make a show of himself to make it into the glossy gossip magazines or into an article online that crossed my path while casually browsing. So it didn’t happen too often. But when it did, it hurt, and I longed for that numbness again.
As Isla had said at the time, the numbness refusing to come back was a sign my body, on the right track, was healing. My brain or my soul trusted my body to be able to feel again, and I’d just have to work through the pain and wait for it to fade. Avoiding it forever would be self-destructive and denial would do to me, what drugs and alcohol were clearly doing to Glenn...as I had by then taken to calling him.
A minor part in a romantic comedy (as the best friend, not the hero) and one of the first of those failed stints in rehab had put Glenn on my radar by way of a well-meaning friend passing comment about a magazine article she’d read. Who would have thought the words “Hey, that guy from Edinburgh who went to America, you know Glenn Peterson? He’s in a film with some bigshot movie star, apparently,” could hurt so much? And the follow up, “They say it’s conditional on him staying sober for the duration of filming. Aye, like that’s gonna happen. They made him go to some drying-out clinic before signing him,” well, that had filled me with regret.
The younger me had known, even then, that the decent thing to feel was pride. Good for him, getting parts in America, making himself known for something other than being a pisshead. But I couldn’t help nursing just a tiny kernel of resentment, that I hadn’t been important enough to him to make that effort.
But then again, I hadn’t been Hollywood. I hadn’t been awards season. I hadn’t been glitz and glamour. I’d just been the silly little girl who’d been sick with devotion. He’d had no reason to clean himself up when we’d been together. Over here, he had none of the opportunities the States could offer.
Oh, there had been those sitcoms and stand-up gigs, but he’d been tempted by the possibility of translating the American dream into Scottish, nicking a piece of the action for himself.
I, on the other hand, had my own career path to tread. Soaps and TV dramas, leading to Resurrection Men, a six-parter that had taken off, and required some promotion across the pond.
Perhaps childishly, I’d refused to even countenance going on the LA talk show circuit, even though that city’s numbers could nearly, nearly repopulate Scotland itself. What would be the chances of running into someone one hoped to avoid, in a metropolis that large and populous?
Well, given that we were in the same line of work and might have had one or two contacts in common, it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility. I hadn’t wanted to take the risk, and that had been in the days before Glenn had been signed to host his own talk show.
My stomach had flipped over when I’d heard about After Hours, just as it later would when I chanced upon news of his brief marriage. But by then, trips to New York for me were not uncommon, and within a year or two, I’d ended up filming a movie there, a family drama that had fully utilised my talent for accents. More than one director had expressed admiration for my ability to hear someone speak once and perfectly imitate their accent, intonation and diction like a native. A point of pride, with me.
And it was while filming a guest slot in a detective show on the East Coast I’d met Joseph Dylan Marshall. I’d mangled my own voice into the form of so many others, it had been a relief to speak normally at the party to which I’d been invited. He’d zeroed in on my Scottishness, kept asking me to say something, say something, say something.
“Like what?” I’d asked, laughing, sipping champagne. I’d gone cold turkey after the whole Glenn Peterson unpleasantness but by then had recovered confidence in handling alcohol in small amounts. And champagne was so deliciously decadent, I didn’t want to resist. Isla would kill me if I didn’t milk the Upper East Side for as much as it could give. As long as you’re careful, Afton, she’d say, her voice lingering in the back of my mind. Don’t go too far.
She worried about me more than I worried about me, sometimes, despite being younger.
“Just keep talking,” Joseph had said. “I could listen to you for hours.”
If my accent had attracted him, I’d lusted after his mouth, with its sinful cupid’s bow, and a lower lip just as decadent as the champagne I sipped. I’d been unable to take my eyes off it, was sure he knew, judging by the way he quickly moistened his lips then smirked.
“Where are you from?”
“Embra,” I blurted out, and he frowned. “Sorry, it’s a local nickname. I mean Edinburgh. The capital city.”
“Ohhh,” he drawled. “I see. I knew you were Scottish, but couldn’t quite place your accent.”
“It’s been smoothed out a bit. I’m so used to being told to files the edges off my rhoticity, that I–”
“Don’t you dare,” he commanded, and his blue eyes clouded over in what I’d thought at the time was anger, what I now know to have been possessiveness. “What brings you to New York then?”
“I’m filming a guest slot in Above the Law.”
“You here for long?”
The way my heart had thumped at that point confirmed he wasn’t asking about my work in the US. He couldn’t care less, and truth be told, neither could I.
“Until Saturday morning. I’m not flying back ‘til Monday though, because there’s nothing like spending a weekend in New York.”
“You’re damn right, if I’ve got anything to do with it,” he replied, lifting a glass to his lips. He had a dimple in one cheek that deepened then, and when he swallowed and his Adam’s apple rippled his throat, I wondered what his skin tasted like.
Within another hour we were in bed back at his hotel. Others might tell me it wasn’t the smartest idea I’d ever had, to go back to a hotel with a guy I barely knew, but...God, I just wanted him. I’d not experienced lust like it in years, and this time I did so with a clear head, or as near as damn it. Though I’d consumed alcohol that evening, I hadn’t done so to excess and I remember thinking, so this is what it feels like, to want someone, sober and clear-headed.
Of course, I hadn’t remained celibate since the split from Glenn, but I’d not had a serious relationship. Right from the off, with Joseph, I’d known this was the start of something. He was different. Not something casual.
Being wanted sexually was nothing new for me; as arrogant as that sounded, it was the truth. I’d never wanted for male company. But Joseph looked at me with such intent, looked me dead in the eye and told me he didn’t just want to make me come, he wanted to own me. An unusual line to feed a woman he was just getting to know, but it worked.
The intensity of it all, that was what weakened me. That was the part that was familiar. Being so wrapped up in another person that no-one else existed. Only this time, it was with a guy whose desire matched mine, and who wanted to marry me within six weeks of meeting. I put him off, put him off and put him off, because as well as the sex being addictive, the adoration was too. The being chased. Now, I was the one lusted after.
“Fat lot of good that did me,” I muttered, forcing myself back into the present with a mouthful of caffeine.
But the past was all too easy to slip into, especially with my laptop right in front of me.
Glenn Peterson Joseph Dylan Marshall sat in the search bar, punctuated by a blinking cursor, for an age. My pinkie finger tapped at the Return button several times until, encouraged by my out loud “Oh, fuck it,” to the empty room, I hit it.
At the time of this interview, Joseph and I had still been married of course, and not only that, but still deeply, deeply attracted to each other. At least on my part, that feeling had never gone away. Quite when it had dissipated on Joseph’s side I didn’t know, didn’t care to know. When it ended, it had spectacularly blown up and part of the reason his infidelity had surprised me so much was that I’d thought...well, there was a lot I’d thought.
A woman could be wrong.
“This is so dirty,” I muttered, as Glenn’s house band played Jeff’s walk-on music. He’d been there to promote a kids’ movie, and I’d stayed in New York, my stomach churning at the chance of him finding out about Glenn. Though why Glenn would open his mouth and reveal our shared history in front of the cameras, I didn’t know. Even he wasn’t that stupid.
I’d fretted about after-filming chat, though. Passing the time. Oh, did you know I grew up in the same city as your wife, we knew each other, we had an affair?
Joseph had returned home to our rented apartment in Manhattan (our combined income at the time being very respectable indeed) not saying a word about his wife’s history so I breathed a heavy sigh of relief, concluded I’d gotten away with it, and just to put my seal on the matter, gave him a blowjob so enthusiastic my cheeks met on the inside.
Why I needed to withhold the details of my romantic history from him I never managed to work out, but the longer I left it, the harder it was to say anything, particularly after the two men had met on camera. Glenn Peterson was the type of person you ignored as best you could, but who never went away entirely. Even when he wasn’t in the room, he lingered.
I didn’t want Joseph to be jealous. Not that he had any reason to be. For as long as we were together, I hadn’t even looked at or desired another man, even one I’d previously been sexually intimate with. An unusual thing for me to be contemplating, while watching him shake hands and sit down with Glenn. The video was around five or six years old and only now did I have the courage to watch it, and even then, only did so piecemeal. Skipping ahead, I let the video play at normal speed while Joseph talked about the movie and how he’d come to voice the character he had. Last I’d heard there was talk of a sequel; he’d be involved if at all possible. He’d need to make up the dent in his savings after paying for half my apartment, after all.
I looked around the room with a smirk. I hated the circumstances that had led to me living here, but now I was...might as well appreciate it.
Joseph, I was totally familiar with, and didn’t feel the need to study him too closely. Of course, I’d been intimate with Glenn too, but our encounters went further back, and he’d changed far more in the intervening years.
When Glenn had conducted this interview, he’d been in his mid-forties; sober, of course, otherwise he’d never have been able to hold down a job in the public eye that required him to be able to hold charming conversations with people, some he didn’t even know, some he probably didn’t even like.
I knew my name came up at some point; Joseph had told me. “He asked about you; I didn’t say much for the sake of privacy and, you know...I was there to talk about the movie, not my private life, so.” He’d shrugged, hands in pockets, not appearing to notice my reaction which I’d endeavoured to suppress. Every day, my acting skills grew.
But, to hear Glenn ask about me... “You’re married now, I hear. How long? Oh, she’s from the same neck of the woods as me? I haven’t been back there for years; have we ever crossed paths?”
The man had a streak of devilment a mile wide. I didn’t know whether to hate or admire him for it, then bit my lower lip, forced myself not to smile. No point in hating or admiring a man across a gap of five, six years.
There was something so twisted about watching a talk show segment featuring two men I’d been involved with and one of them didn’t appear to know. Guilt pierced me through; as much as I tried to justify it to myself, a lie of omission was still a lie. No matter what Joseph had done to me, I still had a moral code of my own and I’d broken it by not being completely open and honest with my husband.
“You’re bloody loving this, aren’t you?” I whispered, peering at the screen, and when Glenn looked directly at the camera, I jumped, as if his gaze travelled through the internet and a computer screen, and from years in the past.
Instinctively, I hit the X in the corner to close the window. No point just slamming the laptop closed; when I opened it again, the video would resume playing if I had.
“That,” I declared to the empty room, “was so dirty.”
When my phone rang, it came as a welcome relief from my ongoing discomfort with the laptop. “Hello?”
“Afton? It’s me.” No need to be more specific. “You answered quickly.”
“I was right by the phone,” I blurted out, and my cheeks heated up. Dear God, this was bizarre. From watching him years before, to talking to him in the now, my sense of time was completely messed up. My sense of what was even normal any more had a hard time of it, too. “Working on the computer.” Working, indeed.
“I best not keep you, then,” Glenn said.
“No, no, it’s okay...nothing important. Nothing that can’t wait,” I replied dismissively. Okay, Afton, let’s dally with the truth awhile, shall we? “To be honest, Glenn, I’d be glad of the break.”
“I’m glad to have caught you again,” he said, and I still couldn’t get over the fact we were now speaking again, in real life, after so long. No, I couldn’t see him although that was probably for the best if a YouTube video could make my stomach flip over...although whether that was due to the sight of my ex-lover or my ex-husband, I couldn’t decide. “I pretty much said it all last night but it must have been late when we spoke, so.”
“Oh, it’s okay. As you said, I’d only emailed you shortly before, so I’d only been asleep a few minutes when you called.” And in an attempt to move the conversation on, away from this achingly polite dancing around each other, I took a deep breath. “So, you’re going to be back in Edinburgh, then?”
“Yep. Doing a show at the Fringe for the first time in years. I’m in talks for the location; they’ll let me hold it on their property, even at this late stage, I’m sure. I mean, let’s face it...”
“You’re a big enough star to persuade any venue to rent you their place for however long you want it?”
“Hmm. Well, I would have said every landlord and publican knows all about the Fringe, and it would be good publicity and drag in a few extra bums on seats and people buying meals and drinks, but, if that’s the way you want to put it, sure. My ego can fill a room.”
“What size of a room? You going for a theatre or concert hall?”
Glenn scoffed with laughter, as if my suggestion had been the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. “I’m not quite sure after so long away I’d be able to sell the tickets.”
At that, I bit my lip, suppressing any sarcastic remarks ready to burst forth. Glenn had always been charismatic, true, and he’d been a stand-up comic and a comedy actor before all else, but his words didn’t sound like a joke or an attempt to fish for compliments. Maybe he really was uncertain about how successful his upcoming run would be.
“So where are you holding your gigs, then? Or is it a one-off show?”
“At the Barley Mow,” he said. “You know it?”
“Huh. Small venue.” I’d been there once or twice for drinks with friends and although I knew they served meals, had never dined there.
“I prefer to call it intimate. And no, it’s not a one-off, although I’m not doing nightly gigs. Fridays and Saturdays with one through the week, likely a Wednesday, I think. Spaced out enough to allow me to adjust what doesn’t work.”
“And of course, it’ll give you the air of exclusivity.” I smiled; it was easier to speak to him normally over the phone. In person would be a bit more awkward. Or perhaps that was just because of the length of time that had passed since we’d been in the same room. We now had the benefit of hindsight and age. Glenn pushed fifty and my age had doubled.
“That too. So.” He cleared his throat and my stomach flipped over again. So much for any ‘ease’ at speaking to him. That throat-clear was a universal sound, code for ‘I’m about to change the subject to something a bit more serious.’ “You’re okay with all this, then?”
My spine stiffened, and though I sat in the room alone, cocked my head with curiosity. Nobody there to see my gesture of what does he mean by that? but I still did it. Perhaps to move my own brain along, to see if it came up with a solution. “Um...yes,” I lied. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Just hoping to avoid any awkwardness. And as I said last night, Edinburgh’s a big city and even if we didn’t run into each other, you might have seen a flyer, or...”
“Bit cheeky of you to assume I wouldn’t be the one to have flyers and ads on display.”
“Oh,” he replied, and I could just imagine him sitting back with a face like a skelped arse, as we Scots say. That’s me telt. “Sorry. I didn’t mean... So, do you have a show on, then? Or a play?”
“Just teasing,” I reassured him. “Although my face did appear on the side of a bus once, a strip-ad for a crime drama I did once. A two-parter called Double–”
“–Helix?” Glenn finished. “Yeah, yeah, I saw that once. Uh, the drama, not the bus. And jeez, isn’t that a punchline waiting to happen.”
“I swear to God, Glenn, if you say I’ve got a face like the back of a bus...”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
“It was bloody strange, let me tell you. My face, twice its normal size on the number 23 through the centre of Glasgow...” And my voice faded away as I remembered how it had felt; a combination of absurdity and excitement. I definitely leaned towards crime thrillers and mysteries. Romances weren’t really my thing, although I’d done some work in that genre. I thanked my lucky stars Double Helix hadn’t involved any full-frontal nude scenes or graphic sex on my part. The thought of Glenn watching that...
Strange, as he’d seen it all in real life, but the possibility of me being on display to him and not knowing at the time of his viewing, felt a tad voyeuristic.
Of course, Double Helix may very well not have been the only one of my roles he’d watched. If he’d seen anything else, I didn’t want to know.
But I couldn’t help wondering about the circumstances. Had he been on his own, or with friends? A lover, his ex-wife? Round at a mate’s house? Was it planned viewing, or had it been spur-of-the-moment channel surfing that had landed him on the relevant channel or streaming service?
“No,” I said, bringing myself back into the present, or attempting to, at least. “I don’t have a show on. God, no. Me? I wouldn’t do stand-up if you paid me.”
“Well, that’s usually what happens. I’m not doing this for the good of my health,” he commented. “I’m hoping the show will turn a profit.”
“As for theatre?” I shuddered. “Not my favourite thing. No, I’m not doing the Fringe. Never have, can’t see it happening any time soon.”
“I wouldn’t have thought Afton Collier got stage fright,” Glenn said.
If I knew him even a little bit, judging from personal experience and his TV persona, that was nothing more than a blatant attempt to get a rise out of me and I absolutely would not fall for it. “Where are you staying?” I blurted out. I didn’t really need to know, but at least it gave me something to talk about that wasn’t my reluctance to do theatre again. I’d never massively humiliated myself on stage; it just wasn’t my favourite thing to do. Other actors opined about their love of ‘treading the boards’ as if that lent their careers legitimacy. Wankers. I was quite happy to be in front of a camera with someone else’s lines to remember, because whatever happened on camera could be edited. Although I had to admit, being given my own blooper reel at the end of a season’s filming was fun. The point being, the bit that was broadcast, that most people saw, was the polished version.
“I haven’t booked anywhere yet; just been thinking about the venue for the show.”
“You won’t have to book anywhere, surely?” I blurted out. “You’ll have someone to stay with.” If I had my facts straight, Glenn had lost both his parents in recent years so obviously couldn’t go home again, but he had an older brother, and no doubt old friends, so long as he’d kept in touch with them.
“Mark’s got a massive family. He’s moved out of Edinburgh anyway, so I’m going to have my people look into hotels and such.”
“You’d better get on it. I know we’re months away, but even so...”
“I know, I know.”
Although I didn’t want to sound like a nag, or that I was panicking this far in advance of the comedy festival, curiosity about his old associates, of whom I was technically one, I guess, rose up and would not be denied. “You must be looking forward to catching up with your old friends, though.”
“Which is why I mentioned us having dinner,” Glenn said. “And wanting to avoid running into each other by accident. Unlikely, but still possible. Would be a bit of a shock to the system if that happened.”
“Sure it would, and I appreciate the advance warning, but I can’t be the only one from back in the day you’ll want to seek out.”
“Mmm, not really,” he replied, sounding uncomfortable, and I imagined him rolling his shoulders to shrug off the discomfort, or grimacing to make his feelings more visible. “I hate to be so brutal about it, but a couple of folk I used to hang out with are no longer with us, and to be honest...even though it’s been so long? It’s rarely a good idea to step back into the past.”
I wished my heart would make up its mind what it wanted to do. One moment it thudded so hard it threatened to break my ribcage, the next it plummeted to my stomach and I felt faint. Sick.
“I’m one of those people you used to hang out with.”
“And you’re still around. Living in Edinburgh. And, from what I can make out, healthy.”
“No longer drinking, is what you mean.” So that was it. I was a link to his past, and just about the only safe one. “Well, sometimes. Rarely.”
Glenn made a near-silent huff of acknowledgement. It was amazing the sound made it across a continent and an ocean to my phone. “And not using either, thank God.”
“No. I, uh...there’s a lot of it about, but I tend to absent myself. I can joke about it, it doesn’t bother me, but I’d rather not make the same mistakes I did when I was younger.”
“Exactly.”
“And bloody hell, doesn’t saying that out loud make me feel old?”
“Put it this way, Afton,” Glenn said, his voice now more determined. Sure of himself. “Getting old is better than the alternative.”
“Yeah.” I nodded, knowing he wouldn’t see. Sometimes, your body did things you couldn’t control, merely out of habit. And sometimes, if you were lucky enough, no lasting harm came to you. “Yeah, you’re right.”
We both fell silent then, and I realised just how sweaty my palms had become, how tightly I gripped the phone. I had to loosen the muscle tension ever so slightly to avoid cramp.
“So you’re okay with us meeting up then? Maybe you could come to the show as well.”
“I’d love to.” I heard myself say the words, wasn’t quite sure how sincere they, and I, were. It was the polite thing to say and when in an awkward situation, manners were never wrong.
And then, then, I said something that stood a very good chance of being the most idiotic sentence I’d ever utter.
“Well, as your family is either no longer with us, or moved out of the city, if you think I’m a safe person to associate with...”
“Yes?”
“You could always crash at my place.”