in my ears. He swings and misses, Daddy hits him again, so hard he falls down on his knees, the chicken’s blood spraying all over their dirty white shirts. My brother swings a third time and the bird’s head falls to the floor, its wings still flapping. Red feathers that used to be white.
When Daddy has gone, I creep into the shed and sit down next to my brother. He’s still crying and I don’t know what to say, so I slip my hand into his. I look at the shape our fingers make when joined together, like pieces of a puzzle that shouldn’t fit, but do – my hands are small and pink and soft, his hands are big and rough and dirty.
‘What do you want?’ He snatches his hand away and uses it to wipe his face, leaving a streak of blood on his cheek.
I only want to be with him, but he is waiting for an answer, so I make one up. I already know it is the wrong one.
‘I thought you could walk me to town, so I could show you the red shoes I wanted for my birthday again.’ I’ll be six next week. Daddy said I could have a present this year, if I was good. I haven’t been bad, and I think that’s the same thing.
My brother laughs – not his real laugh, the unkind one. ‘Don’t you get it? We can’t afford red shoes, we can barely afford to eat!’ He grabs me by the shoulders, shakes me a little, the way that Daddy shakes him when Daddy is cross. ‘People like us don’t get to wear red bloody shoes, people like us are born in the dirt and die in the dirt. Now fuck off and leave me alone!’
I don’t know what to do. I feel strange and my mouth forgets how to make words.
My brother has never spoken to me like this before. I can feel the tears trying to leak out of my eyes, but I won’t let them. I try to put my hand in his again. I just want him to hold it. He shoves me, so hard that I fall backwards and hit my head on the chopping block, chicken blood and guts sticking to my long black curly hair.
‘I said, fuck off, or I’ll chop your bloody head off too,’ he says, waving the axe.
I run and I run and I run.
London, 2017
I run from the car park to the main building at Pinewood. I’m never late for anything, but the unscheduled police visit this morning has thrown me off balance in more ways than one.
My husband has disappeared and so has ten thousand pounds of my money.
I can’t solve the puzzle, because no matter how I slot the pieces together, there are still too many missing to complete the picture. I remind myself that I have to keep it together for just a little while longer. The film is almost finished, just three more scenes to shoot. I bury my personal problems somewhere out of reach as I hurry along corridors towards my dressing room. As I turn the final corner, still distracted, I walk straight into Jack, my co-star.
‘Where have you been? Everyone is looking for you,’ he says.
I glance down at his hand gripping the sleeve of my jacket and he removes it. His dark eyes see straight through me and I wish they didn’t, it makes it almost impossible to lie to him, and I can’t always speak the truth; my inability to trust people won’t allow it. Sometimes, when you spend this long working with someone, when you get this close, it’s hard to hide the real you from them completely.
Jack Anderson is consciously handsome. His face has earned him a small fortune and more justifiably than his intermittent acting skills. His uniform of chinos and slim-fitted shirts are cut to flatter and hint at the muscular shape of him underneath. He wears his smile like a prize and his stubble like a mask. He’s a bit older than me, but the grey flecks in his brown hair only seem to make him more attractive.
I am aware that we have a connection. And I am aware that he is aware of that, too.
‘Sorry,’ I say.
‘Tell it to the crew, not me. Just because you’re beautiful, doesn’t mean the world will wait for you to catch up with it.’
‘Don’t say that.’ I look over my shoulder.
‘What, beautiful? Why? It’s true, you’re the only one who can’t see it, which just makes you even more enchanting.’ He takes a step closer. Too close. I take a tiny step back.
‘Ben didn’t come home last night,’ I whisper.
‘So?’
I frown and his features readjust themselves, to reflect the caution and concern most people would display in these circumstances. He lowers his voice. ‘Does he know about us?’
I stare at his face, so serious all of a sudden. Then the creases fold and fan around the corners of his mischievous eyes, and he laughs at me. ‘There’s a journalist waiting in your dressing room, too, by the way.’
‘What?’ He may as well have said assassin.
‘Apparently your agent arranged the interview, and they only want to speak to you, not me. Not that I’m jealous … ’
‘I don’t know anything about—’
‘Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry, my bruised ego will regenerate itself, always does. She’s been in there for twenty minutes. I don’t want her writing something shit about the film because you can’t set an alarm, so you might want to be a little more tout suite about it.’ He often adds a random French word to his sentences, I’ve never understood why. He isn’t French.
Jack walks off down the corridor without another word, in either language, and I question what it is about him that I find so attractive. Sometimes I wonder if I only ever want things I think I can’t have.
I don’t know anything about any interview, and I would never have agreed to do one today if I had. I hate interviews. I hate journalists; they’re all the same – trying to uncover secrets that aren’t theirs to share. Including my husband. Ben works behind the scenes as a news producer at TBN. I know he spent time in warzones before we met; his name was mentioned in online articles by some of the correspondents he worked with. I’ve no idea what he is working on now, he never seems to want to talk about it.
I found him romantic and charming at first. His Irish accent reminded me of my childhood, and bred a familiarity I wanted to climb inside and hide in. Whenever I think it might be the end, I remember the beginning. We married too fast and loved too slowly, but we were happy for a while, and I thought we wanted the same thing. Sometimes I wonder whether the horrors of the world he saw because of his job changed him; Ben is nothing like the other journalists I meet for work.
I know a lot of the showbiz and entertainment reporters now; the same familiar faces turn up at junkets, premieres and parties. I wonder if it might be one of the ones I like, someone who has been kind about my work before, someone I’ve met. That might be okay. If it’s someone I haven’t met before, my hands will shake, I’ll start to sweat, my knees will wobble and then, when my unknown adversary picks up on my absolute terror, I’ll lose the ability to form coherent sentences. If my agent had any understanding of what these situations do to me, he wouldn’t keep landing me in them. It’s like a parent dropping a child who is scared of water into the deep end, presuming that the child will swim, not sink. One of these days I know I’m going to drown.
I text my agent, it’s unlike Tony to set something up and not tell me. Other actresses might throw their toys out of their prams when things don’t go according to plan – I’ve seen them do it – but I’m not like that, and hope I won’t ever be; I know how lucky I am. At least a thousand other people wish they could walk in my shoes, and they are more deserving than I am to wear them. I’m still fairly new to this level of this game, and I’ve got too much to lose. I can’t go back to the start, not now. I worked too hard and it took so long to get here.
I check my phone. There’s no response from Tony, but I can’t keep the journalist waiting any longer. I paint on the smile I have perfected for others,