I try to. Barefoot. Like Lennon. But the tourists get in the way. Reality is I’m inside all the time.’
‘Recording your soundtrack?’
He nodded.
‘Who’s in your film?’
‘Well it isn’t my film – I’ve just written the music. But Jeff Bridges is the lead.’
‘Oh I love him,’ said Frankie, thinking Scott’s modesty was beguiling. ‘And anyway, music is often as much a lead character in a film – like setting can be in a book.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Scott but their glasses were empty and the bar was closed. Only the little old lady remained and she’d just asked for her bill. Scott was brought his though he hadn’t requested it.
They were going to have to go, really.
Frankie wondered, how do we leave these seats, this table, our little corner in which my world expanded? How can we stay in our bubble?
And then, in her mind, she heard Ruth saying go for it! and Peta saying don’t be so stupid.
‘If you get some time tomorrow,’ she said, ‘and I do too – shall we try and meet? Perhaps I could come to The Abbey Road?’ He was just looking at her, not speaking. ‘Or if not there, somewhere?’
‘Anywhere,’ said Scott softly. ‘Why don’t we make it happen, Frankie. Crazy as it sounds.’
* * *
As slowly as they walked across the atrium, soon enough they were behind the huge urns and bamboo, back at the lifts. As they stood waiting, Scott looked down on her head and thought how Frankie would tuck just under his chin. And Frankie glanced sideways at his chest and imagined laying her cheek against it. He had his hands in his back pockets and she wanted to link her arm through his.
Into the elevator, just the two of them. Her mind reeling through a thousand movie scenes of impulsive kisses when the doors slide shut, of fumbling with keys and falling into an anonymous hotel room shedding clothes, broiling with desire.
But Frankie and Scott just stood side by side.
Fifth floor.
‘This is me,’ said Frankie.
‘Tomorrow?’ said Scott.
Frankie tapped her watch. ‘Today.’
And she walked down the corridor on her own aware that, downstairs in the lobby, Kate Moss was still smiling on the magazine table.
Enormously tired. Stratospherically tired but high as a kite. Running that bath, eating chocolates left on the pillow, flicking on the television and zapping through the channels. One two three four five six seven scatter pillows pedantically rearranged at the foot of the bed. Four plump pillows and a waft of duvet enticingly folded back to reveal the downy comfort of a beautifully made bed. So long since she’d felt this wired, this alert, this sentient. So long since she’d had any of these feelings. Longing and kinship and warmth and attraction and wave after wave of desire. Something deep inside had stirred. Over the last few years, it was as if she’d switched off lights from necessity in those rooms within herself that she couldn’t afford to use.
She eased herself down deep into the bath, bubbles up to her chin, the soothe of a thick warm flannel over her face. The plastic shower cap.
If anyone could see me now.
Tomorrow.
Today.
Earlier yesterday.
Later today.
Frankie, says Alice. Who was that? Who was that man, Frankie? Will you write him into your life like you did me?
‘Can we get a rise on the string line?’
All of this was giving Scott a headache. There’d been too many interruptions and the music he’d written for a particular scene sounded all wrong today, with the full orchestra. Yet on first reading of the script three months ago, melodies had sailed through his mind like drifts of overheard conversation. His best work often germinated this way, subliminally almost. But today, though he’d watched the cut over and again all morning and asked the musicians to play it this way, play it that way, the music just didn’t segue. He felt as clumsy and inept as a child furiously hammering at the wrong piece on a shape-sorting toy. The film’s producers were in the studio today, along with the director, the music editor, the fixer and the technicians. Everyone making encouraging noises at Scott despite the stress clearly legible behind their eyes.
‘You’re a perfectionist – it’s why people love working with you,’ one of the producers said. What else could she think of to say? Sometimes she despaired at the amount of soothing flattery and ebullient bullshit her role necessitated when all she wanted to do was shake these creative types – these actors and musicians and directors – and say for fuck’s sake, get over yourselves and do the fucking job we’re paying you a fortune to do. But she’d worked with Scott before and had never known him so discontented. The director himself was concerned too. He’d worked with Scott many times. If previously Scott had struggled and vexed it had always been behind the scenes and out of earshot, before he brought a single sound to the table. He was always so quietly professional and capable, delivering excellent soundtracks on time with no drama whatsoever. Commissioning Scott to score a movie was as easy and satisfying as ordering a takeaway and having it delivered piping hot and utterly delicious exactly when you wanted it.
‘It doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do,’ Scott said quietly. ‘It sounds shit.’
The producer looked at her watch and raised her eyebrow at the director, both of them quietly calculating the cost of the studio against the days they had Scott over here for.
‘You know what? Take time out, Scott. Get out of here – go for a walk, go to London Zoo, go to Harrods or the Tate Gallery, go have a swim or a sleep. Clear your mind, then come back.’
He was watching the scene again.
‘Go for a burger, go to a strip club,’ she said, ‘I don’t know! Go and have a cuppa with the Queen at the bloody Ritz!’
It was three o’clock.
‘You’re fine,’ she said. ‘Go. Jimmy and the guys will have a play with what we’ve got so far. We just have piano this afternoon – you trust Lexi.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Scott and everyone brushed his apology away, relieved to see the back of him as he left the control room for Studio Two.
Midway over the legendary zebra crossing, his phone call to Frankie was finally answered.
‘Hey.’
‘Hello.’
‘Fancy a “cuppa”?’ he asked.
‘You sound like Dick Van Dyke,’ she said.
Scott walked straight past Maison Bertaux, reaching the end of Greek Street and having to ask at the minicab rank where it was. With all the previous talk of the Ritz and royalty, he’d been expecting somewhere grand to shout out to him, not a tiny little patisserie tucked behind a simple blue-and-white awning. However, once inside, the opulence of the pastries on display and the complex fragrances – fruit, vanilla, chocolate, baking – elevated the café beyond its modest setting.
Frankie had said on the phone that she’d find a table, now all he had to do was find her. Up the narrow crookedy stairs he went, wondering whether the café suddenly increased on the first floor, wondering if he’d have to negotiate white-clothed tables and velvet-backed chairs and little old ladies sipping their Darjeeling behind mountains of scones. But no. Just Formica tables and mismatched chairs jigsawed into a confined space. And there, in the corner, Frankie.
‘Hey.’
‘Hello.’
If he could have teleported himself to the studio