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‘I’m guessing,’ said Carrie, paying for the tickets and tucking away her purse, ‘there’s a clue in the title, which probably contravenes the trade descriptions act. Cute unsuitable man reforms to become cute suitable man.’
‘And there speaks the scriptwriter,’ said Alan, wrapping his arm around her as they walked towards screen seven.
‘Then it sounds like a very good alternative,’ said Angela. ‘Although perhaps a bit unfair on the sole male in the party.’
‘Well Al would prefer that to a shoot ‘em, beat ‘em and kill ‘em, fast and furious thing, wouldn’t you? You’re used to all that Pride and Prejudice, Far From the Madding Crowd stuff.’ Jade shuddered. ‘I’m so glad, once this year is finished, I never ever ever, have to do English Literature again.’
‘So too, I suspect, is your teacher,’ said Al with a wink. ‘And no, I’m quite happy to watch something undemanding. I’m sure there’ll be some lady candy for me.’ His hand resting on Carrie’s shoulder squeezed her.
Thank goodness he was used to teenagers. Carrie lifted her hand and wrapped her fingers around his, squeezing him back. Being a teacher at the same school as where she taught drama part-time meant Jade’s behaviour, thankfully, didn’t faze him or put him off.
They shuffled into their seats and sat down in the semi-darkness. The ads had already started but the audience, blasé and indifferent to the stylish mini-films, paid no attention. Jade’s phone glowed as she scrolled through pages on the internet, reminding Carrie to switch hers off. Next to her, Alan did the same.
‘Richard Maddox,’ announced Jade, showing her phone to her mother.
Carrie heard Angela’s quick, sharp gasp.
Her stomach flipped. In the dark she saw the light from the phone reflected in Angela’s wide-eyed expression.
Angela grabbed her arm on the rest between them.
‘He’s Mr Delicious Arse,’ explained Jade, leaning over her mother to show Carrie a picture of Richard Maddox’s naked backside.
All the air whooshed out of Carrie’s lungs and someone had removed the bones in her legs. Thank goodness for Angela’s grip on her arm, otherwise she might have slipped out of her seat like a slick of jelly, sliding right out under the seat in front of her all the way to the bottom.
‘It’s a YouTube vid. Him buck-naked on a beach in California. All you can see is his butt.’
An image of a tiny heart-shaped mole wormed like a determined maggot into Carrie’s head, and no matter how hard she blinked, she couldn’t dispel it.
‘Not the meat and two veg, thank you. That would just be vile. Don’t look, Al.’ Jade waved the phone at him.
‘Thanks, Jade, I won’t.’
A sudden burst of music, ebbing from left to right of the cinema in a cacophonous wave, silenced the chatter and Jade snapped her phone off.
Angela’s hand crept into hers with a limp grip. Carrie clung on to it, her heart leaping about in her chest like a bucking bronco on acid. Her stupid brain insisted on replaying an image of a finger tracing that blinking mole, the tip of her index fingernail a perfect fit for each side of the heart, which nestled on the top left side of a right buttock. She squirmed slightly in her seat and stiffened when she realised what she was doing.
‘You okay?’ whispered Angela.
In the darkness Carrie shook her head, unable to speak. A sense of dread and anticipation rolled around in her stomach. She sat straighter. It seemed a miracle she could keep her body still when inside it felt like someone had switched on a blender.
It was bound to happen one day. A miracle that she’d managed this long. Richard Maddox starred in one block-buster after another.
Sickness and curiosity warred. It had been a long time. She’d been good. Not stalking him. Not Googling. Managing to avert her gaze from the front of Hello magazine at the checkout in Marks and Spencer, training herself not to flinch when someone in the staff room talked about his latest movie or when his name was linked with yet another blonde bombshell of dubious intelligence. Okay, that was her being a bitch. They might be very intelligent, but couldn’t they give everyone else a break and not be completely gorgeous as well?
Maybe she’d built it all up in her head and seeing him on screen wouldn’t affect her at all. She hadn’t seen him for years. Eight years, ten months, give or take a day or two. And she only knew that because it was July 1
and he’d left on the August bank holiday. No other reason.
Why the hell hadn’t she done this before? Put her demon to rest? Except he wasn’t a demon. Or even a bad person. Just someone from her past. She should have done this ages ago.
She squeezed Angela’s hand back to show she was fine. Absolutely fine.
Carrie approved of the sassy character of the female lead, a willowy blonde, who kept the hero on his toes. The well-written screenplay had lots going for it. Entertaining. Good snappy dialogue. Gorgeous location. New York without the traffic, the noise or the humidity. She liked the conflicts that kept him and the heroine apart, and the will-they-ever-get-together moment, where he cast a wistful backward look at her sitting alone on the Highline. Carrie was doing really, really well. Focusing on the film. The mechanics of it. Stoic and impassive. She was doing well, right up to the point when on the Staten Island Ferry, Richard Maddox’s character removed the suitcase from the heroine’s hand, turned her to him, cupped her face in his hands, pushing her long windswept curls out of the way, and leaned in. The camera homed in on the wistful, longing expression on his face, his lips centre-screen as he uttered the words, ‘I love you,’ before leaning in to bestow a kiss of heart-rending intensity.
He might as well have punched her right in the gut. She almost doubled over with the impact.
A flush of heat raced through her as memories loosened, tumbling down like an avalanche. The way he’d lazily snake one of her curls around his finger when they were lying in bed in the mornings. His eyes holding hers when he kissed her, the quick nibbles at the corner of her mouth, those spontaneous public pecks on the Tube as if he couldn’t hold them back and the long, slow langorous preludes to love-making. A myriad kisses danced in her head.
The pain sliced hard and sharp, like a crack suddenly tearing its way through her heart. She tensed, her diaphragm clenching as she fought to hold in a shuddering sob, which threatened to launch itself into orbit.
Mindful of Alan on her right and Angela on her left, she swallowed hard. She clamped her lips in a mutinous line, wrapped her arms around her chest and shut her eyes, praying that these precautions would succeed in repelling the emotion fighting to leak out. Tears streamed down her cheek, gathering speed and a single hiccoughing sob escaped.
Al slipped an arm along the back of her chair. ‘You big softie,’ he whispered.
Blinking back the tears, feeling all kinds of fool, she ducked her head to scrabble around in her bag at her feet to find a tissue. It gave her time to take her attention away from the screen and to get a grip.
‘Aw, Auntie Carrie’s been crying,’ teased Jade as they filed out of the cinema, blinking as they emerged into daylight. ‘You big wuss, you.’
‘She’s an old romantic, aren’t you love?’ Alan shrugged into his jacket as they stepped out into the early-evening drizzle.
‘It was a lovely film,’ said Angela, her eyes anxious as they scanned Carrie’s wan face. ‘Made me cry too.’
Carrie winced at the blatant lie. She did love her sister.
‘Mum, what are you like? Seriously? What was there to cry at? Honestly, you’re a pair of saps. I’ll give him hot, though. Up in the old Fahrenheit register. Hot, hot, hot,’ she paused with a cheeky raise of her eyebrows, ‘for an old guy.’
‘Old?’ chorused Angela and Carrie at the same time, exchanging secretive smiles.
‘Yeah, he must be at least thirty. Old.’ She grinned. ‘Obvs, not for you geriatric crustys, of course.’
Carrie and Angela each linked an arm through Jade’s.
‘What do you think?’ Carrie said to Angela. ‘Bread and water for the next ten years?’
‘Ladies, you can do better than that.’ Alan frowned as if giving it serious thought. ‘How about no phone upgrade for another year?’
‘Nooo!’ howled Jade, dramatically locking her hands in mock prayer, ‘anything but that.’
‘Or we could give her away?’ suggested Angela
‘Who’d have her?’ Carrie shrugged as Jade poked her tongue out.
‘There is that,’ agreed Angela with a long-suffering sigh. ‘Look’s like we’re stuck with the brat.’
‘You know you love me. Both of you.’ Jade tugged at their arms, pulling them closer to her.
Her mother placed a kiss on her cheek. ‘We do.’
Carrie followed suit. ‘Course we do.’
She pushed back at the sense of melancholy hovering over her, as if ready to snatch her away.
She had plenty of love in her life. What more could she ask for? She had a tight-knit family and a lovely man, who adored her.
CHAPTER TWO (#u08620eb5-e103-58cd-ae2a-1342d287ab9f)
‘You coming in for a coffee?’ asked Carrie, opening the car door.
Alan shook his head, as Angela and Jade stepped out of the passenger seats in the back. ‘No, it’s a school night and I’ve still got a stack of marking to do.’
So did she. Guilt pricked at the thought of 8G’s navy-blue exercise books heaped in a pile in the kitchen. They ought to be done tonight.
She came round to the driver’s seat and Alan climbed out of the car to face her. She was lucky to have him. Good looking in a forty-watt sort of way. Every feature created a harmonious symmetry that fell a touch short of dazzling. Nice brown eyes, with thick dark lashes that begged the question was he wearing make-up, good skin, hair mid-brown but slightly limp and a nice neat nose. He was the same height as her and quite possibly the kindest man she knew.
‘Okay. Thanks for coming with us. Sorry about the film choice. I’m sure it wasn’t your cup of tea.’
‘What? And Breakfast at Tiffany’s was?’ He tilted his head to one side.
With a gentle laugh she tugged at his jacket. ‘Yeah, but it’s iconic and you said you’d never seen it. And everyone should see it at least once.’
He put his arms around her, pulling her into an embrace.
‘Well, the other one wasn’t so bad. Though who knew you were such a closet romantic? Tears, Miss Hayes? I always thought for a drama teacher you were incredibly emotionally stable.’
‘Thanks, I think. That was supposed to be a compli-ment?’
He grinned at her. ‘Of course it was. Not that you need them.’
He leaned in and brushed his lips over hers. For a minute she clung to him, her heart lifting in anticipation. She wanted him to kiss her. Properly. Chase the demons of fantasy away. This was real.
She deepened the kiss, needing that connection with him, but he pulled back.
‘I need to go. Those books won’t get marked by themselves. Sleep tight. See you at work in the morning. Only three more Mondays and we’re home free.’
She bit back disappointment. Alan was being sensible. In a few weeks’ time they’d have a whole summer off, although they’d yet to decide what to do. He’d got a cycling holiday in the Swiss Alps booked and, despite the invitation, it didn’t appeal. She could’ve gone along but Angela and Jade still hadn’t sorted out a holiday and it felt wrong to abandon them.
‘Thank the Lord.’ She hugged him. ‘This summer term is always a killer. There’s so much going on. Exams. The leavers getting too big for their boots. I can’t wait until we break up.’
Jade had already gone up to bed when Carrie sank down at the kitchen table opposite her sister. She let out a weary sigh and reached for the cup of tea Angela had made for her.
‘You okay?’
Carrie rubbed her hand over her face, trying to summon up the right words. She didn’t want to worry Angela but no she wasn’t okay. Nothing like okay.
‘I’m fine. That last bit got to me. But I’m fine.’
She should be fine. After all, she’d worked in the business. Written her own scenes designed to engineer an audience’s response. Should be impervious to a scene where the director had brought every cinematic trick in the book into play, expressly to create a total heart-stopping, heart-fluttering scene.
‘Are you sure?’ Angela’s soft voice penetrated her thoughts, her gentle grey eyes glistening with sympathy.
‘Am I fuck?’ Carrie laid her head on the table and bashed it a couple of times. It hurt.
‘Carrie!’
She lifted her head and said with a weary sigh, ‘I’m not fine at all. I feel pants.’
Seeing Richard had knocked her sideways, out through a glass window seventy-five stories up, and she was still hurtling through the air.
Her response was ten times worse than she could have imagined. Out of sight, out of mind had worked pretty well for her to date. Whoever talked about opening cans of worms had known their onions. She wished she’d walked out of the cinema as soon as she’d heard the name Richard Maddox.
‘Probably the shock of seeing him again, as it were.’ Angela lifted her shoulders in a helpless shrug, her brave attempt at reassurance at odds with her bewildered expression.
She and Carrie were so different. Angela’s mild disposition and gentle approach meant that she sailed rather serenely through life on a gentle swell, never plunging into the lows or cresting the highs, despite the constant pain and difficulties she suffered with her rheumatoid arthritis.
Her affair with a married man that resulted in Jade was the most out-of-character thing that Angela had ever done and even now Carrie had difficulty in believing that her sister had been swept away enough to commit adultery. ‘Maybe it’s because you never had proper closure. When I got pregnant with Jade, I knew that it would be over with Clive. With you and Richard, it never ended properly. Just drifted to a halt.
‘I’m sure that’s what it is. How long ago was it since you last saw him? Seven, eight years? You can’t possibly be in love with him, not after all this time.’
Carrie swallowed a protest. What if she could? She’d never tested the theory before today. ‘Yes, you’re right. It’s the shock of seeing him in all his twelve-foot celluloid handsome glory.’ That’s what had made her heart beat a thousand times faster and deepened the hollow feeling in her stomach all the way to Australia.
‘No one’s that good looking. Do you think he was wearing loads of make-up?’ Angela said knowledgeably, as if she spent hours on a film set.
‘Probably,’ agreed Carrie, nodding as if her life depended on it.
‘And I bet he had a body double.’ Angela leaned back in her chair, waving her cup about in her usual feeble grip, sloshing tea over the sides. ‘His body can’t be that good.’
Carrie nodded again. If she wasn’t careful someone would stuff her in the back window of a car.
Angela had a point, though. It certainly hadn’t been when he was in his twenties but then he wasn’t leading a superstar lifestyle then. You don’t exactly fill out a scrawny frame when you’re existing on baked beans and fish-finger sandwiches, living in an unheated, mould-ridden flat off Cold Harbour Lane in Brixton, shivering off any muscle tone to keep warm.
‘Alternatively,’ Angela was her in stride now. ‘he could have a Rottweiler of a personal trainer who dogs his every step-making sure he lives on horrible Hollywood-healthy milkshake things, like wheatgrass and alfalfa sproutings or that keen squaw stuff.’
Carrie smiled as Angela pulled a bleurgh face.
‘And he must wear contacts. No one’s eyes are that blue.’
Richard’s were. To hide the ping of protest her heart made, Carrie let out a mirthless laugh, cupping the mug of tea to take a sip.
‘Sweet of Alan to come with us.’ Angela’s eyes were guileless and her smile kind.
‘Subtle.’
Angela shrugged. ‘He’s lovely. You’ve been seeing each other for a while.’
Carrie didn’t say anything.
‘Do you think something might happen there one day?’
