When I tell people what I do for a living, they sometimes get a fervent gleam in their eyes, as though I can unlock something for them. Who’s the most famous person you’ve ever interviewed? they ask. Do you get to go to premieres? What’s it really like on a film set? And sometimes I enjoy it, their awe bringing back a spark in me that’s been ground out over the years, a reminder that this really is a dream job. Other times, I force a smile and wish I could be honest about how unglamorous the whole business really is.
A case in point, tonight. I am going to the Golden Globes. The unofficial beginning of awards season, one of the few ceremonies that celebrates both movie and TV stars in one evening. Half of the most famous people you can name will be there, either as previous winners or current nominees or presenters. I’ve spent close to three hours getting ready, which is so foreign that it’s warped my entire sense of time. I rented a dress, the kind of full-length gown I have no reason ever to own, and it’s so tight around my hips and waist that I had to practise sitting down. I watched a YouTube tutorial on cat-eye makeup and followed it to the letter, and will now spend the entire night paranoid that the liquid liner will run. I went to the salon that only does blow-dries, and got my hair polished and smoothed and twisted into an intricate up-do that required forty-seven pins to secure. I don’t understand the mechanics of it, nor how I will undo it later, but all that matters is that it looks sleek and will require no maintenance from me through the evening.
This is my first time at the Globes, and though I won’t have a seat at the actual ceremony, I am covering the red carpet, and then the backstage press room, and then the afterparty, assuming Ben Schlattman was serious. He emailed me back within an hour, responding to my three-paragraph interview query with a single lower-case line: ‘sure. come find me after the globes. will put you on the list.’ The Scion afterparty is not an easy ticket to get, so this in itself seems hard to fathom. But all of this depends on whether I can even get near the building.
My Uber driver has been attempting to drop me off for the last fifteen minutes, only to be blocked at every turn by men in high-visibility vests waving him onwards and yelling ‘No stopping!’ The Beverly Hilton is a fortress at the best of times, a nightmare labyrinth of driveways nestled at the intersection of Santa Monica and Wilshire boulevards, and now even the actual entrance is cordoned off, the entire complex reworked and lined with impenetrable security.
My driver looks expectantly back at me, as though I might have a solution to our quandary. As though I have any idea what I’m doing. I’m anxious already, my chest tightening, and I hold in my next inhale for several beats before slowly letting it out. 4-7-8, inhale, hold, exhale. You’ve got this.
‘You can just let me out wherever there’s a place to stop,’ I tell the driver, ready for this ride to be over. ‘I’ll figure it out.’
He gestures to our left as we crawl up Wilshire, pointing out a gas station, and I try to suppress a laugh at the perfect anticlimax of this. I clamber ungracefully out of the backseat into the parking lot, restrained by my gown, and walk from the gas station to the red carpet. No one in the parking lot so much as looks twice at me, and I think maybe I’m not the first.
I’m waved inside by an unsmiling security guy once I flash my purple MEDIA lanyard at him, and walk cautiously onto the red carpet as though there might be a tripwire waiting. I keep expecting to be stopped, maybe searched, maybe told that I’m going the wrong way or maybe simply turfed out because I so clearly do not belong here. But nobody gives me a second glance, and as I reach the press pen I realize just how early I am.
My spot is at the lousy middle section of the carpet, sandwiched between a newswire organization and a blog from Germany I’ve never heard of, and I shoot off a quick email to my editor warning her to lower her expectations. Every carpet has its own kind of internal logic, and it’s always a waste of time trying to figure out whether being near the entrance is a good or a bad thing, but being this far from either the start or the end of a very long carpet is not auspicious. I’ll be lucky if I get three interviews out of this, and even luckier if they’re with anyone who matters.
The pens are still an hour away from being locked down, and so I take a walk all the way to the glossy end of the carpet, the feted place where the major trades and the TV networks are positioned. Rectangular shrubs are lined up to form a hedge around the perimeter, interspersed with golden blocks that read ‘Golden Globe Awards’, as though anyone could possibly forget where they were.
Way up at the other end of the carpet is the public pen, the place where onlookers and fans can gather to wave autograph pads and memorabilia and scream for their favourites, hoping for a few precious seconds in their orbit. I move closer, pretending to be absorbed in my phone, until I can hear their conversations, overlapping and frantic.
‘Do you think she’ll sign a DVD?’
‘I heard he’s only doing the step-and-repeat and then they’re going right inside, but if he sees our sign—’
‘We’re in a good spot right here, everyone has to come past us, I think we have a really good shot of him coming over.’
‘I heard she’s really weird about selfies, but I want that so much more than an autograph, like who even cares about a scribble on some paper?’
‘I just want him to see the sign, honestly, like even if he doesn’t come over at least he’ll know we’re thinking of him.’
I glance over at the girls discussing their sign, and my suspicions are confirmed; they’re here for Clark. ‘WE LOVE YOU, CLARK’ blares their homemade sign in black and gold, a red crayon heart in place of the O, and a part of me wants to forsake my spot in the press pen and join them.
Finally, the process begins. Celebrities are dropped off by limos and SUVs in a holding pen, from where they are escorted down the carpet for a procession of carefully scheduled photo ops and interviews, and the whole thing becomes a blur of tuxedos and satin and shimmery makeup. The German blogger next to me turns out to be a stunning blonde who has brought a cameraman with her, and tries to position herself on the carpet with a microphone until a security guard sternly tells her, ‘You’re not approved for on-carpet, ma’am, please walk back behind the barrier.’ Her name is Hilda, and Hilda eventually proves herself useful because she has no shame in screaming out the names of every celebrity who passes, openly begging them to come over and speak to her. And I, meek opportunist that I am, get to ride on her coat-tails with the few that do come over.
Thanks to Hilda, I speak to a former leading actress from a network drama about her character’s unexpected recent death, and to the writer of an indie movie which broke out at this year’s Sundance. Most excitingly for me, I speak to the producer of Clark’s Neil Armstrong biopic, and get a few quotes on his performance which I can use as supporting colour for the profile I still want to write.
But soon, the carpet is too full for us to get anyone’s attention. There’s something uniquely bizarre about watching some of the most famous people in the world being herded along like cattle, in a space that’s rapidly proving itself too narrow. I’m getting claustrophobic just watching, and now a cluster of publicists is making it impossible for anyone to stop for us even if they wanted to.
‘This is a fucking nightmare,’ I hear one hiss, seemingly unaware or uncaring that she’s within earshot of the press. Over their heads, I see two first-time Best Supporting Actress nominees being shepherded towards the doors by their handlers, arms linked as though they’re afraid to let go of one another. I can’t blame them. I’m trying to look out for Clark but it’s pointless, the carpet now six-deep as everyone rushes to get inside in time for the 5 p.m. show start time, and he probably came as late as possible on purpose, the better to keep his head down and avoid the cameras. He might even have been sneaked in early, or through a side entrance.
Every time I cover a red carpet, I swear to myself it’s my last – they’re a relic, a throwback to a bygone time when there weren’t thousands of online outlets scrabbling for the same access, and a time when stars weren’t media-trained to the point of being useless. But I’m nowhere close to the point in my career where I have the luxury of opting out.
Though I picked the lowest pair of heels I could find, the balls of my feet are still killing me, and I’m grateful to find actual seating in the backstage press area, along with a full buffet – salads, charcuterie, two kinds of pasta, a wan-looking cheese plate. I haven’t eaten all day, and if I thought about it for long enough I would probably be hungry, but I also haven’t been able to work out in days and so I limit myself to Diet Coke and a few kale chips before hurrying in to reserve a spot in the winners’ room.
When you win a Golden Globe, you pay the immediate price of being led backstage into this cavernous ballroom where a seated throng of journalists will ask you basic-yet-confusing questions, and your responses will be filmed and uploaded to the internet for immediate dissection. Everyone in this room is hoping, on some level, that at least one winner says something controversial enough to become a story, and to justify all of our being here. It’s always possible, too, that someone will make an inspirational speech. The two major currencies of the internet: outrage and joy.
Two hours later, and not a single newsworthy thing has happened in this room. The winners have emerged and given earnest responses to earnest questions, and confused responses to confused ones. The word ‘blessed’ has dropped dead from overuse. ‘What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get home tonight?’ is a question that keeps being asked, along with, of course, ‘Where are you going to put your Golden Globe?’ I know I should have the balls to get the mic myself and ask a question, instead of just complaining inwardly to myself about how stupid other people’s are, but I’m exhausted and distracted and have no clear assignment here. And Clark, in what’s already being described as a ‘shock upset’, did not win Best Actor in a Drama.
Armstrong was beaten in every major category by a lavish historical romance called Idyllwilde, whose poster is laden with quotes calling it ‘stirring’ and ‘heartbreaking’. I found it neither, but its heavy-handed script and showy lead performance are pure awards bait, and though most pundits had predicted a win for Clark and for Armstrong, Idyllwilde sneaking in has always been a possibility. I try to keep the resentment off my face as the lead actor fields press questions, his answers more smug and contemptuously boring than the average. The only good news here, from my perspective, is that Idyllwilde is a Scion production, and so its unexpected Globes triumph throws Schlattman’s departure into an even more newsworthy light.
I deliberately kill a little extra time once the ceremony winds down and the last press call is over, so as not to arrive at the afterparty too early. This hotel is not so much a hotel as a complex, housing multiple restaurants and bars and ballrooms which allow most of the various Globes afterparties to take place just steps from the main event. As ever, the real party is the after-afterparty; these do not involve lists or RSVPs and most certainly do not involve journalists. Their locations are secret, usually the home of a celebrity or a discreet private room at the kind of club that knows how to protect its patrons’ privacy. Faye somehow got herself into an after-afterparty for last year’s Grammys, held at an unidentified millionaire’s house in Bel Air, but as far as I can tell she spent most of the evening taking surreptitious selfies and failing to inject herself into conversations between famous friends.
The Scion party is inside one of the hotel’s many ballrooms, its dated seventies carpet and beige vibe transformed by lilac-hued lights and candles and champagne flutes into something that feels exclusive. The women here are all lithe and polished and radiant, the men neat and broad beside them, the collective angles of everyone’s cheekbones exhausting. The un-chosen few among us are easily discernible, the journalists and publicists and assistants who made it in here as accessories, necessary addenda to the glowing, shining core of this town.
And of course, I know nobody at this party. Except, I suppose, Ben Schlattman, who really did come through and put my name on the list but is nowhere to be found inside. I’m not even convinced that I remember what he looks like, and pull up his face on my phone to be sure before accepting my first glass of champagne from a passing waiter. Then a second. Three is usually the number it takes for me to feel capable of striking up a conversation with strangers, and so I sip my third glass while looping the room, glancing casually from one side to the other as though searching for my companions. Keep moving. This is the most important rule I’ve learned from years of covering these things alone; don’t stay still for too long, don’t hover for long enough to make it obvious, don’t look desperate.
On my third loop, I finally accept that nobody I know is going to spring out magically from behind a decorative plant to save me. But Melody Harmon is here, the rising star now turned Best Supporting Actress winner, and she’s engaged in a conversation that looks non-committal enough for me to cut in.
‘Excuse me, Melody?’ I ask smoothly, what I think is smoothly, and she turns to me with a sculpted eyebrow barely raised. I remind myself that she’s hardly a star, that before this Globe nomination she was recurring on a CBS sitcom, that she’s the same age as me and I do not need to be intimidated by her. ‘I’m a reporter with Reel, could I ask you a couple of questions?’
She blinks at me, almost smiling.
‘No,’ she says, then, ‘Sorry,’ in a tone that suggests that she’s only sorry our paths crossed to begin with. And then she is gone, her golden dress a blink in the distance as she shoots away to tell, presumably, everyone else at this party to stay away from me.
I spend the next several minutes in line for the bar, the better to face forwards. If my skin were capable of turning any colour but alabaster, it would be flushed. On my way back, an Old Fashioned in either hand (the line was long and I’m planning ahead), every eye that catches mine feels accusatory, every glare confirming that word has already spread around the entire room. Melody knows everyone here, inevitably, and maybe it’s bad form to chase interviews at an awards afterparty, maybe these events do not work like most of the industry parties I’ve attended. Maybe I’ve breached some invisible but sacred line, my indiscretion solidifying the fact that I do not belong here.
I get a wall at my back and pretend to be texting frantically, then realize there’s an actual text I should be answering. Today marked Tom’s fourth unanswered message, this one tinged with an unmistakable, understandable passive-aggression. ‘Got some big news… call me if you ever get time. T x.’ Right after I’ve sent off my long-delayed response promising to call Tom in the morning, I spot Ben Schlattman, his face newly clear in my mind. He’s in a roped-off VIP area of this VIP party, and as I move towards the rope my path is blocked by a security guard.
‘Miss, this is—’
‘Mr Schlattman?’ I say loudly, and he looks over, as do the three people he’s surrounded by. Two power producers in suits, a pinched older actress I recognize from Idyllwilde. He’s bigger in person than I imagined, both taller and wider, his thinning hair slicked back and beard trimmed short, his suit clearly tailored yet somehow slightly too small. ‘I’m Jessica Harris, with Reel. Faye’s friend, you—’
He nods, waves me over with a quick nod to the security guard, and the rope is pulled back for me.
‘Congratulations,’ I tell him as I shake his hand. ‘Five Globes, not a bad omen for the rest of awards season.’
‘Did you like the picture?’ he asks, and I barely hesitate.
‘I did, very much.’
‘So you’re not one of those reporters calling it “hackneyed” and “obvious” and “the easy choice”?’ His tone is light, even jovial, but something in his eyes makes me suspect he’s serious.
‘It wasn’t my favourite of this year,’ I allow. There’s no point in lying more than necessary. ‘But I thought it was elegantly made and told a powerful story well. The cinematography was stunning.’
‘Roger’s a gem.’ He nods. ‘All right. Not your favourite, but powerful. I’ll allow it.’
I laugh, a little too loudly, and let him introduce me to his three companions, all of them feigning interest when he tells them I’m a reporter.
‘I thought about being a reporter,’ the younger of the two producers tells me.
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, back when I started out I thought I was gonna be a newspaperman, dig up scandals in Washington, speak truth to power, all that stuff. I was in the mail room at the Post, and then the copy desk for a while.’
‘Why did you give it up?’ I ask.
‘Too much work for not enough money,’ Schlattman answers for him. ‘Toby straightened out his priorities along with the rest of us.’
‘Smart move, I can attest,’ I say ruefully, and raise my glass in a mock-toast.
‘Do you love it?’ the producer asks me, as the other two drift away to join a more compelling circle. ‘Reporting?’
‘I love writing,’ I say honestly. ‘Using words to try to get at the truth about somebody, or something. I’m not sure I love reporting in the same way, but you have to do the one to get to the other.’
‘Not if you’re a critic. Then you just get to watch the movies, churn out a few hundred words, pass judgement without having to create anything of your own…’
‘Toby’s still sour from his last round of reviews,’ Schlattman murmurs, and Toby grimaces. His last project, I think, was Only the Good, a neo-western blockbuster which got savaged upon its debut at Cannes, drawing boos and walk-outs and a wave of reviews so brutal that it was reportedly re-cut before its eventual release. I never saw it, so can only smile sympathetically.
‘So, what can I do for you?’ Schlattman asks me. I’m taken aback, and since I’m not sure whether the news of his leaving Scion is common knowledge, I reply with caution.
‘Like I said in my email, I’d love to profile you. A little bit of a retrospective on your career to date, obviously, how Scion was formed, the awards success of Idyllwilde, and a look into the future. Where you see the industry going, where you see your own work going.’
‘A look into the future,’ he says, contemplative. ‘All right. Let’s do it, Jessica.’
The VIP area is growing full, and Toby slinks away in the direction of the bar, presumably punctured by the memory of Only the Good. I follow Schlattman over to a low sofa beside his reserved table.
‘We don’t have to do this now,’ I say hastily once we’re seated, suddenly realizing he may think I want to interview him immediately. ‘Just let me know when’s good for you.’
‘Want to meet me in the lobby restaurant here tomorrow for breakfast? Bright and early, that’ll keep you out of trouble tonight.’
‘Sure. Sounds great.’
I watch him, as he continues to ask me questions about my job, my background, why I got into the industry. It’s curious, the mismatch between his body language and his apparent interest; he’s angled almost away from me, his gaze distant and his face impassive. Anyone watching from afar would assume he was annoyed, or at the very least not enjoying our interaction, and yet he’s the one pushing the conversation forward, so much so I feel as though I’m being interviewed. But this, I suspect, is how he operates in business; make people feel special, make them feel unique, but never quite make them feel secure. I don’t doubt that he has an agenda going into this interview, a perspective that he wants to get across, and that’s fine. He gets to tell his side of the story, and I get to put my byline on it.
Melody Harmon passes by and I can’t suppress a wave of pleasure at the startled look on her face. She did not expect to see me in here, much less at Ben Schlattman’s table, and I smile lightly at her before turning back to Schlattman, who’s now distracted in turn. He’s craning his neck to look up at somebody at his right shoulder, and I realize with a thrill that it’s Clark.
He doesn’t immediately acknowledge me, though he clearly sees me. I’m frozen, though of course on some level I knew he might be here. He’s doing the rounds.
‘You want to join us?’ Schlattman asks, raising his voice back to a normal volume. ‘This is Jessica, the hack Reel sent to profile me.’ He says the word with a crooked smile in my direction, and I smile back.
‘We’ve met before, actually,’ Clark says, and stretches out his hand to me. ‘Good to see you again.’
‘Don’t you have your own afterparty to be at?’ I ask playfully as I take his hand.
‘He likes us better,’ Schlattman answers. ‘And he knows he fucked up when he chose them over me. Could’ve been you tonight, Clark.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Careful,’ Clark says lightly. ‘You better be sure this is off the record.’
‘It is,’ I say quickly, but Schlattman waves a dismissive hand.
‘Hell, this is already out there for anyone who cares. Clark was my first choice for Idyllwilde, I said that from the start. Wined and dined him, thought I had him, and then he turned me down for the space movie.’
Clark shrugs in a mea culpa way. ‘It was the role of a lifetime, I’m not sure I’ll ever read a better script.’
‘I can send you ten better scripts from my slush pile,’ Schlattman snaps back. It’s all in jest, no true venom; this is just how the business works, and we all know it. Still, there’s always a grain of truth in the joke. After the pair of them have gone back and forth on this for a while, Schlattman gets called away by another acquaintance, leaving me alone with Clark. And though I’m braced for him to bail, for his eyes to fix on a point somewhere over my shoulder and excuse himself with a painfully polite smile, he stays.
‘Can I tell you something?’ I say quietly, so that he has to lean in to hear me.
‘That’s a loaded question.’
‘You made the right choice. Armstrong is a way better script than Idyllwilde, and there’s no comparison between the roles.’
He nods.
‘Agreed. But who’s sitting here tonight with a Golden Globe in his hand? Not me.’
I watch him stare vacantly into his glass and wonder if he’s joking, startled that he cares this much about what is objectively the least important award of the bunch. But this might not have mattered so much to him a month ago, or even two weeks ago, before Skye drew a bloody divide between one era of his life and the next.
‘I still think you’re going to get the Oscar.’
‘You must like to go against conventional wisdom.’
‘I think a lot of the conventional wisdom around awards season is bullshit. You’re not going to stop campaigning, are you?’
‘I haven’t been doing a lot of that, under the circumstances.’ His tone pointed, as though I could possibly have forgotten. I was there. And I feel something in me shift, the alcohol and the giddy rush of this evening powering me towards a reckless thing, an idea that will either draw me closer to him, or ensure that I never see him again.
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying,’ I tell him, looking hard into his eyes. ‘The Globes voting closed at the start of the year, too early for… those circumstances to be reflected. But the Academy is voting right up until January 30. That’s nearly two weeks away.”
He regards me steadily.
‘The sympathy vote. That’s what you’re saying?’
‘I’m saying you deserve the Oscar because your performance is the best I saw all year. But it’s rarely just about that. Right? It’s about who campaigned the hardest, who’s in favour, who’s really earned it? Who reflects the values the industry wants to be seen as upholding? Who do we like the most? Not just their performance, but them as a person.’
‘I assume you’re going somewhere with this.’
‘Everybody likes you. You’re one of the nicest guys in the business – I’ve heard about seven variations on that sentiment this week alone. No one’s heard from you since what happened, and that’s good because you don’t want to seem opportunistic. But I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said during our interview, before. About wanting to be more present in your daughter’s life, and how admirable that is.’
He shakes his head with a bitter chuckle.
‘You have a low bar for admirable. Clearly.’
‘Maybe. And I would never pretend to know what your family is going through, or how you’re feeling after what happened. But there are more absent fathers in this world than not.’ Clark frowns, as if prompting me to expand on this, and I don’t hesitate. ‘My dad went out for groceries one afternoon when I was seven, and never came home. We thought something had happened to him, until the police came to search the house and discovered that he’d taken a suitcase with him, and clothes, and his passport. Money. He ghosted us.’
I haven’t told this story in a very long time, and not to anyone since I moved to LA. I tell people that my father is dead, now, because it’s so much more straightforward, and if I had the power I would rewrite my own memory to make myself believe it too.
He stares at me, and I dig my nails deep into my palms to steady myself. I had no idea I would be revealing any of this tonight, but it’s coming out so easily now, so naturally, and he understands me.
‘So believe me when I tell you that trying to be more present as a father is admirable to me. It’s not small. It’s not nothing.’
He reaches out and holds on to not my hand, but my wrist, a tap of pressure near my pulse point.
‘Thank you,’ he says quietly, ‘for your honesty. It’s generous of you to share that with me.’
‘It’s a little bit self-serving, too.’
‘Oh, I know.’
‘So you know where I’m going with this. Everybody likes you, but at least as far as the public is concerned, no one really knows you. I’m willing to bet a lot of voters feel the same way. So. If you ever decide you want to speak to the press, and open up about… anything, maybe before January 30, I hope I’ll be your first call.’
He looks at me, unblinking, impassive, and maybe it’s the alcohol or maybe it’s not but his silence is not unnerving. It feels like understanding, a shining invisible thread between us now, a thread that’s been woven ever since that Friday by the pool.
‘What makes you think I would say yes to this?’ he asks, calmly, curious.
‘What made you say yes to the Nest interview? That was a pretty big surprise, from someone who grants so few interviews. A lot of publications were fuming.’ This is true. Justin had told me gleefully that a longtime rival had given him the dirtiest look when they’d crossed paths at an event, the kind of look reserved for pure envy. Clark Conrad is a unicorn, now more than ever. ‘The fact you said yes, even to a fluffy interview about your house, suggests you’re amenable to a little more exposure than usual.’
He stares at me.
‘Why am I so fascinating to you?’
‘You’re fascinating to a lot of people.’
‘That’s not what I asked. I mean, you’re not some hysterical fangirl.’
‘Actually—’ I hesitate, but to hell with it. ‘I am. Or I was. I used to be one of those girls outside on the red carpet, waiting for hours.’
‘For an autograph?’ he asks, incredulous.
‘No.’ How can he not understand this, after so many years at the eye of the storm? ‘It’s not about the autograph, it’s about the interaction. I waited outside the Odeon in Leicester Square from five in the morning, before the Reckless premiere, hoping to get a glimpse of you.’
‘Jesus. That was— what, ’07?’
‘And you arrived late. It was pouring with rain, the premiere was due to start, but still you spent half an hour signing autographs for fans. You skipped all the press—’
‘—And went straight to the fans.’
It seemed impossible, this gesture, in the moment. I can still feel it, the sensation of being soaked through to the point of forgetting what it is to be dry, shivering in the endless January grey, and after fourteen hours on my feet it seemed impossible that this could end in anything but disappointment. I was not going to see Clark Conrad, and the autograph I’d half-heartedly solicited from the movie’s director was no consolation prize. I remember bracing myself for it, the soggy walk back to the tube station, the bleak ride home to the very end of the Central Line, the farthest possible place from anywhere Clark Conrad has ever touched. When he’d bounded down the red carpet in his three-piece tux and dress shoes and woollen coat, a frantic umbrella-wielding assistant struggling to keep up with him, he’d seemed like a mirage. He made his way down the entire vast pen of screaming fans, holding his Sharpie pen high to meet the notebooks and DVDs and bare palms that were being desperately thrust towards him, and when he got to me I was so cold and numb and disbelieving that I didn’t say a word, only stared as he signed my Loner DVD in a twisted scribble. Gone in a blink, and it would take me days before I came back down to earth enough to regret my silence.
‘So we have met before,’ he says. ‘Before you came to the house.’
‘I’m not sure it qualifies as a meeting. There’s no way you’d remember me from that.’
‘Don’t be so sure.’
Soaked to the bone, hood pulled tight around my face, a disposable plastic raincoat on top of that, handed out to the crowd en masse by sympathetic red carpet runners. There’s no way.
‘You still haven’t told me,’ he says. ‘What’s so fascinating about me that would have made teenage Jessica sleep on the streets of London?’
‘I didn’t camp overnight.’ But only because my mother absolutely would not let me. One of the worst fights we’ve ever had, to this day. ‘Honestly, I’d spent so much time watching Loner that I probably believed on some very deep level that I was meeting Richard Loner, and not you. No offence.’
‘None taken. Richard Loner is a much better man than me.’
‘But a lot of people’s fandom fades away after their show ends. Yours just kept growing. The people out there tonight were here for you, not Loner.’ I pause, then adopt a low, dramatic trailer voice. ‘The star power of Clark Conrad – what is the secret to his enduring appeal? How did he make the near-impossible leap from small-screen favourite to movie star?’ I’m pitching too much, I know, but something about him feels small and diminished and in need of pushing.
‘What’s happening with that interview, since you bring it up?’
‘Nothing. I mean… My editor wouldn’t let us publish it, under the circumstances. Do you mind if I ask—’ I start, then remember one of the only direct pieces of advice I’ve ever received. Never apologize for a question. If you feel the need to apologize, you need to either change the question or change your attitude. ‘How is she?’
‘Alive. I’m not sure what to say beyond that.’
I look down at my hands, trying to remember what I had scripted in my head to say next, but everything is blank.
‘I didn’t know what to do,’ I whisper. ‘When I saw her. I froze.’
‘So did I.’ Then, barely missing a beat, he asks, ‘So your editor got cold feet?’
‘She just thought we’d risk looking tasteless.’
‘Well. That seems like a waste. I think I said at least three pretty coherent things in there.’
‘You did,’ I say, holding my breath. ‘And I’d love to be able to use it.’
‘Maybe we can figure something out.’
I hand him my card, the one I’ve had pressed against my palm for the last half-hour, and just as he takes it an explosion of blonde separates us, and a wave of perfume hits me so powerfully I almost choke. Of course Amabella is wearing her own signature fragrance, as she drapes herself around Clark’s neck and kisses him ostentatiously, her perfect ringlets obscuring him from my view.
When she finally lets him up for air, he introduces me as a reporter and Amabella looks right through me.
‘Get any scoop?’ she asks sharply.
‘I’m not sure yet.’ I smile back. I’m waiting for him to explain that I’m not just a reporter, but the reporter, the one who was there on the day it all happened. The one who found Skye. But he doesn’t say anything.
‘My feet are killing me,’ Amabella complains, folding herself into Clark’s lap and letting her skyscraper heels clatter to the ground. There’s a headache building behind my eyes, watching them, a haze of something red and painful. I watch his face as closely as I always do, and it’s lit up, rapt, gazing at her like she’s a wonder.
I mutter a goodbye under my breath as I leave, my words barely registering in their glow.