London, 2017
The wrap party is being held at a private club in the heart of London. Even as a child I hated parties. I never had anyone to talk to and I didn’t fit in. I’ve never known who to be when I’m supposed to be me. I don’t want to go tonight, but my agent says I should and, given everything that is currently going on, it seems wise to do as I am told. He doesn’t seem to understand that social gatherings, with people looking at me all night, fill me with the most horrific and inexplicable fear.
Perhaps I’m just scared of what they might see.
I think about the version of me I need to be tonight, then flick a switch and turn her on, hoping she’ll stay with me for as long as I need her to. She doesn’t always.
I pass a McDonald’s and remember that I haven’t eaten. I double back and order a Happy Meal, hoping it might work in more ways than one. I choose the same things I used to as a child thirty years ago: chicken nuggets and french fries to take away. I don’t get far. I don’t even open the box. I see a homeless girl lying in a doorway on a folded-up piece of cardboard and I stop. I know that could have been me. She looks cold and hungry, so I give her my coat and my Happy Meal, then carry on towards the tube station.
I stare at the floor of the train carriage, avoiding eye contact with my fellow travelers, pretending they can’t see me if I can’t see them. When I was a little girl, I was always afraid that I might disappear, like the little girl who lived in the flat above the shop before me. I still don’t have children of my own, despite wanting them so badly, and time is running out for that dream. The only way I can now live on after I die is through my work. If I could star in the perfect movie, a story that people would remember, then a little bit of me might continue to exist. Someone once said that people like me are born in the dirt and die in the dirt, and I don’t want that to be true. The Fincher audition might save me, and if I get the part … well, then maybe I won’t have to be scared of disappearing anymore.
I get off the tube and fight my way to the surface, walking up the escalator, through the barriers, and up the stone steps, until I am in the open air again. I’m cold without the coat I gave away, but it feels better to be above ground and I remind myself to breathe.
It’s just a party.
I let go of the me I need to be for just a moment and lose her in the crowd. My fear turns the volume and my terror up to maximum. I stare down at my new red shoes; it’s as though they have become stuck to the pavement. I wonder if I click my heels together three times, if I might magically vanish, but there’s no place like home if you’ve never had one, and I was only ever pretending to be Dorothy in that school play all those years ago. Just as I’ve only ever pretended to be Aimee Sinclair.
The closer I get to the venue, the worse it gets. I haven’t slept for days now, and it feels as if I’m losing my grip on reality. I lean a trembling hand against a wall to try to steady myself as the rush-hour traffic roars past. A black cab races by, then a red double-decker bus seems to charge straight at me, its windows morphing into the shape of evil yellow eyes in the darkness, and even though I know it can’t be real, I turn and try to run away, pushing through the crowds of pedestrians marching in the opposite direction. It’s as though they link arms and deliberately try to block my path. I cover my head with my hands and close my eyes; when I peer out between the fingers I’m hiding behind, it feels as if the whole world is staring at me. The canvas of multicolored faces starts to twist and blur with the streetlights and traffic, as though someone has taken a paintbrush to this scene of my life and decided to start again. When I lower my hands, I see that they are the same color as the bus, dripping in what looks like red paint. Or blood. I close my eyes again, and when I next open them, the world has reset itself to normal. I switch her back on and force my feet to start walking in the right direction once more.
I can do this.
We are all capable of the most fantastical fiction in the aid of self-preservation. A shield of lies can protect from the toughest of truths.
The club wears a disguise, hidden inside a terrace of three Georgian town houses within an elegant square, a short walk from Soho. I cloak myself in a cocoon of forged confidence, then press the buzzer. The huge, shiny black door opens, revealing yet more eighteenth-century architecture and an overly opulent design within. It’s certainly atmospheric. A man with a tray of champagne glasses is standing at the bottom of an elaborate circular stone staircase. I take one and enjoy a quick sip, hoping the alcohol might help neutralize my anxiety a little. I remind myself that I’m the lead actress in the film we’re here to celebrate working on, and that I deserve to be here, but inside my head the words sound like lies.
The film company has hired the whole place, all three floors. I memorized the entire layout before I came by looking at the venue’s website. I find that helps when I’m this scared of an event; knowing what a place is going to look like before I get there. I wander through the rooms, each one decorated in a different but distinctive style. I feel like a guest at a club I’ll never be a member of in more ways than one.
I nod and smile when people wave in my direction, and exchange my empty champagne flute for a full glass at the bar, before wandering through to another room. The walls in this one are blue, and I like the color, I find it calming. Then I see her strutting towards me like a trainee catwalk model, and any brief sense of serenity evaporates.
Alicia White should not be here.
“Aimee, darling, how are you?” she purrs, and kisses the air on either side of my cheeks.
She’s wearing a red flouncy dress that looks as if it might literally take off, and heels I’d never be able to walk in. She’s all tanned skin and bone, and I look even bigger and paler than I am standing next to her. With her hair looking scarily like mine now, it’s as though we’re the before and after in some fucked-up slimming contest. I’m the before.
“I’m great. It’s so good to see you. Again.” I mirror her fixed fake smile.
It is not good to see her, it never is. She shouldn’t be here, she’s not in the film. It makes no sense, as if she just invited herself along to piss me off.
“It’s so strange to think that I could have been in this movie”—she shakes her head—“if I hadn’t turned them down.”
She’s crawled so far up her own arse, she can’t find the way out.
“Yes, you mentioned that last time.”
I so badly want to punch her in the face. She deserves it, but I’ve never punched anyone in the face, and I’m not sure I’d know how to do it without hurting myself. Her red lips part, and I dread to think what is going to come out of her poisonous mouth next.
“I know how daunting it can all feel when you don’t have much experience, but Tony knows what he’s doing. I’m sure he wouldn’t have put you forward for this if he thought he could get you something better. Sometimes you just have to take what you can get.”
Fuck you and your egotism poorly disguised as empathy.
“I saw Tony today actually,” I manage, unsure where I’m going with this.
“How lovely. How is he?”
“He’s good. He mentioned he doesn’t represent you anymore.”
Her smile falters so fleetingly I almost miss it. “That’s right, it was time to move on.”
It must be quite something to love yourself as much as she does; I wouldn’t know. But something about her is a little tragic and broken. The spotlight led Alicia somewhere dark, and she couldn’t understand when the light went out. I guess nobody explained to her that even the sun disappears for a while, once its turn to shine is over. All stars are born to die.
“Oh, look at your little red shoes, so sweet. It’s like you’re trying to be Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz all over again,” she says. “It took me a while, but I think I’ve just about forgiven you for stealing a part that should have been mine at school.” Her words sound a little slurred. I never knew she’d auditioned for the part; she must have hated me, especially given I was in the year below. Alicia was always queen bee and always got her own way.
“I … I had no idea that you—”
“Of course you didn’t.”
“No, really. If I’d known, well, I think you would have been terrific.”
Water doesn’t melt witches in real life, best to kill them with kindness.
She laughs. “I know I would, but it really doesn’t matter to me now. It was over twenty years ago! You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here tonight…”
You probably just invited yourself like usual.
She doesn’t wait for a response, which is good, because I can’t come up with a polite one.
“We’ve been keeping it a secret, but I don’t think he could stand to be apart any longer, I know I couldn’t. He’s here somewhere. It can be so hard maintaining a relationship when you’re always away filming, but I don’t need to tell you that. How is your husband?” She looks around the room. I really have no interest in meeting her latest boyfriend. I’m about to make my excuses and walk away when she speaks again. “Jack, darling, come on over here and say hello to your co-star.”
I feel physically sick.
Jack emerges from a huddle of men in the corner of the room and strolls over in our direction. She snakes her skinny arm around his waist as soon as he’s within touching distance, but he only looks at me, as though he knows he’s standing next to Medusa. She kisses him on the cheek, watching for my reaction the whole time, her red lips leaving their mark. My smile is in serious danger of sliding off my face, and holding it there is exhausting.
“Now, I know those pictures in the papers weren’t real, but I can’t stay too late to keep an eye on the pair of you tonight, so don’t go getting any funny ideas. I need my beauty sleep for my audition for the next Fincher film tomorrow,” she says. My face gives me away for less than a second, but she sees it. “Oh, you have an audition too? You didn’t think you were the only one, did you? Bless, always so sweet and naïve.”
“I’ve just seen someone I just must say hello to, will you excuse me?” I say to them both, with the best smile my face can manage.
I walk away without waiting for either of them to reply. I find myself in a red room this time—red walls, red furniture, my red shoes scurrying across a plush red carpet—unable to stop thinking something that I shouldn’t. The thought is only on loan, a temporary rental that I already know I will have to give back sooner or later. I mustn’t hold on to it. But for now, for just a little while longer, I permit myself to indulge the idea. I get myself another glass of champagne, the words repeating themselves over and over, loud and clear inside the privacy of my own mind:
I wish Alicia White was dead.