Angelica Dupree was in a quandary. She was in LA for the week filming pick-up shots for her new film. Word on the movie grapevine had got out that her most recent performance was fabulous. The word ‘Oscar’ was even being bandied about. Yet right now work was the furthest thing from her mind.
Picking up her cigarettes and lighter, she slid open the glass doors that led out on to the balcony of her penthouse suite. Surveying the sun-drenched Beverly Hills landscape, she tried to relax but it was no good. Recently Graydon had started dropping hints about taking their relationship to the next level, which had triggered an unexpected but urgent desire to speak to her ex-husband. She hadn’t spoken to Edward directly in years, having always made arrangements concerning Jessica via his agent Jill Cunningham, but with marriage looming it felt like the time had come to set things straight with husband number one.
She’d never forgiven Edward for not replying to the hundreds of letters she’d written him after she’d left, but she wanted to lay the ghost of their relationship to rest. Before getting married again she needed closure. So, after days of procrastination, she’d finally decided she was damn well going to ring him. In a minute. Happy to have reached a decision, but slightly confused by how she’d got there, Angelica dragged hard on her cigarette.
Meanwhile, not far away at his home in Malibu, Edward was just finishing up a meeting with agent Jill, his assistant Clare, and Brendan, the producer from his upcoming movie Soldier.
‘Well, it’s been enlightening, Brendan, and thanks so much for coming all the way out here,’ Jill was saying as she saw him out.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ said Brendan, halfway out the door already, squinting in the bright sunshine. ‘And I just hope Edward comes to his senses about our leading lady,’ he added quietly, so only Jill could hear.
‘Oh, he will,’ she said firmly, waving goodbye.
Edward stood scowling in the background and as Jill shut the door his assistant, Clare, decided to make herself scarce. ‘If you don’t need me, I think I might just go and type up these notes,’ she told Edward.
‘Good idea. Thanks, love,’ he replied as she scuttled off.
Jill took a deep breath. Now Brendan had left the building, she could tell her oldest client was about to give her a rocketing.
Sure enough …
‘Is he out of his fucking mind?’ Edward blustered. ‘I simply cannot and will not act opposite a twenty-one-year-old love interest. Juliana – whatever her name is – is five years younger than my own daughter, for Christ’s sake. I’ll look like Gary bloody Glitter.’
‘Calm down,’ said Jill, following Edward as he strode angrily through the hallway in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Juliana Sabatini is going to be huge and, I’m telling you now, in a few months’ time you’ll thank me for standing my ground over this one. I agree she’s a bit young, but they wouldn’t have cast her if they didn’t think you could pull it off. And, besides, would I ever let you look foolish?’
‘No,’ conceded Edward huffily, though he was still fuming inside. ‘But even you have to admit, Jill, the script’s a heap of crap. Trite at best. Ah, Consuela, there you are,’ he said, marching into his vast kitchen. ‘I’m peckish. Any chance of one of your legendary lobster sandwiches, preferably with lots of mayo?’
‘Coming right up, Mr G,’ she replied.
‘Why don’t you have a nice egg white omelette instead?’ suggested Jill bravely, ever mindful of the ten pounds she’d promised the studio her client would drop before shooting began.
‘If I fancied a plate of something deeply pointless and unsatisfying I would have it, but I don’t,’ said Edward angrily, fetching himself a can of Coke from the fridge.
Ignoring Consuela, who was trying not to laugh, Jill stared at Edward reproachfully.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he said wearily, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender before exchanging his can of Coke for a Diet Coke instead and going to sit at the breakfast bar.
‘Look,’ said Jill, taking in his sullen expression. ‘I know you’re not happy with every aspect of this movie, but you have to trust me. Remember how concerned you were about the script for Fifty Guns and how did that turn out in the end?’
‘Pretty well,’ muttered Edward.
‘That’s right, so try not to worry. Leave Brendan to me. By the time I’ve finished, the script will be up to scratch, I promise. As for the Juliana issue, this is Hollywood, where a handsome man like you can be with whomever he likes. In fact, the younger and prettier the better as far as the audience is concerned. Even if we all know that in the real world a man’s far better off with a more mature woman,’ she finished, a touch flirtatiously, just as Edward let out the most enormous gassy burp, having knocked his soda back far too fast.
‘Sorry about that,’ he said, not registering what she’d said as his phone had just started ringing.
Consuela had heard, however, and as she delivered Edward’s sandwich to him, her shoulders were heaving. Jill’s cheeks flamed red.
Oblivious to everything, Edward answered the phone crossly, irritated that a phone call was coming between him and what looked like a triumph of a sandwich.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Edward,’ said a familiar and yet distant voice from the past that he instantly recognized and yet couldn’t quite comprehend he was really hearing. ‘It’s me …’
For a few seconds Edward simply stared gormlessly into space before sitting bolt upright as if he’d been stung. Then, offering no explanation to either Consuela or Jill, who were both staring at him, he leapt down from the breakfast bar, abandoning his snack altogether in order to take the call in another room.
‘Hang on a minute,’ he managed as he raced through the house towards the privacy of his study, holding his phone aloft and staring at it in the same way Superman might regard a lump of Kryptonite. Finally, upon reaching his study, he locked the door behind him and cleared his throat. ‘Angelica, is that you?’
‘Oui, c’est moi,’ came the reply and Edward was instantly transported back in time, overwhelmed by memories, both good and bad.
‘How are you?’ he enquired, immediately feeling ridiculous for having done so.
‘I’m … OK,’ said Angelica. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine, I suppose … but … look, what do you want?’ he asked bluntly, changing tack completely. Exchanging social niceties with someone who had caused him so much pain simply didn’t feel appropriate or natural, so he cut to the chase.
‘To talk … I don’t know, I’m sorry. I just wanted to try and talk about … everything.’
Hearing her voice, something he’d once longed for, was agonizing and Edward felt as though someone had just lobbed a hand grenade into his life. Why now, he wondered, as his brain whirred away? Why after all this time was she ringing out of the blue when he’d prayed that she would do so for years and years?
Just then, someone knocked hard at the door. It was obviously Jill coming to find out what was going on, but he ignored her. He swallowed, wishing he’d had some kind of warning that Angelica was going to ring. That way he could have figured out what to say, how to be. As it was, he felt utterly thrown. ‘Well, I’m not sure we really have anything to say,’ he stuttered. ‘I mean, it would have been nice to have talked about, ooh – twenty-odd years ago, but I think the moment may have passed now, don’t you?’
‘But at least I tried to …’
‘Tried to what?’ he demanded to know.
‘I should go,’ said Angelica, her voice almost a whisper and Edward felt an instant jolt of emotion. He didn’t want her to go, which was horribly unnerving given that he’d spent the last couple of decades convincing himself he loathed her. Yet suddenly it didn’t feel like that at all. In truth, it was unbelievably good to hear her voice. More than good. It was like coming home and reminded him not just of everything they’d once had together, but of everything she’d thrown away. What he had thought were old feelings of grief and rage began to unfurl in his belly and now he knew they’d never really gone away. All the hurt and regret had merely been lying dormant inside him, like a sleeping dragon, and he didn’t know if he was strong enough to handle dredging up all those feelings again.
Jill banged on the door once more. ‘Edward, open up.’
‘I don’t think we can talk until you’ve reconciled things with Jessica properly,’ Edward said eventually. ‘She’s grown up not knowing why you left, but deserves to know, Ange. She deserves to know but only you can tell her.’
The familiarity of him calling her ‘Ange’ made Angelica’s heart expand and contract as she experienced a dull ache of longing for the whole sorry situation to be different, but she understood what he was saying. What she didn’t understand, however, was why he himself couldn’t have helped their daughter to try and make sense of things. ‘OK,’ she said simply. ‘I will talk to Jessica. You are right.’
‘Right,’ said Edward, blinking furiously. ‘And then, you know … maybe …’
‘Maybe … what?’
‘You know – we could speak … maybe …’
‘Goodbye,’ said Angelica before putting down the phone.
Edward shut his eyes, inhaled deeply and put everything he was feeling into a little box somewhere deep inside him. He would be having a good look at it all later on, but not while Jill was there, demanding to know what was going on.
‘Edward, what’s happening? Let me in.’
As he unlocked the door, an irate Jill practically fell into the room. Having taken one look at Edward’s ashen face, however, her tone switched from affronted to one of concern.
‘What is it? Tell me, Edward.’
‘You won’t believe who that was.’
‘Try me.’
‘Angelica.’
Jill gasped. It was a shock all right and yet, funnily enough, she could believe it only too well.