Lucky Break (25 page)

Charlie wrapped herself in a long wool cardigan and went downstairs. Two smart, black Jehovah's Witnesses stood on the doorstep. ‘Hello,' they beamed, and the man's aftershave hit her like a wave. ‘Do you believe in God?' He spoke in a strong West Indian accent.

‘No,' Charlie told him.

The man rebounded. ‘NO?' He looked aghast, although he must have heard the word a thousand times. ‘Did you ever believe in God?'

‘No,' she lied. There had been a time, she supposed, but her Catholic boarding school had put an end to that.

‘What do you believe in, then?' The man moved closer.

Charlie looked from his gleaming face to the woman's, a little more reserved, her eyes already retreating. ‘What do I believe in?' Charlie put her head on one side. ‘I believe in . . .' She knew she didn't actually have to answer. ‘I suppose I believe in myself.'

The man widened his eyes, the woman pursed her lips.

‘I believe,' Charlie continued, ‘in people being big enough to say sorry. I believe in . . . hope.'

The man shook his head as if that was the wrong answer, but the woman looked interested. She rummaged around in her bag. ‘We believe in hope too,' she said, ‘and one day there will be the end to our hoping when good will conquer evil, and we will be rewarded.' She held out some photocopied pages with several lines underscored.

‘No thanks.' Charlie shook her head.

‘There will be an almighty battle. A heavenly war. Only the good will prevail.'

‘But where will this war happen?' Charlie looked round to check no one was listening. ‘In heaven?'

‘No,' the man boomed. ‘Here on earth. And then peace will reign.'

‘But you can't have a war without guns and bombs and people dying, and that's why I don't want anything to do with God.'

The woman looked genuinely shocked. ‘But there will be angels . . .'

‘So what happens when someone sets off a bomb? What about all those people in Omagh, the woman pregnant with twins, out shopping with her mother? Were there angels there then?' Charlie began closing the door.

‘If God created the earth,' the man tried a last different tack, ‘then there's hope, and if he didn't . . . what is there to hope for?'

‘Sorry,' Charlie said, diminishing him to a slice.

‘Think on that,' he called.

‘I will,' she called back, and she went upstairs and watched them from the sitting-room window, scouring the houses, wondering which bell to try next.

Ian was in the kitchen making tea. ‘Who was that?' he asked and Charlie laughed, more at herself than them, as she repeated the conversation. ‘Tea?' he offered, and Charlie sat down.

‘So when do you start this advert?' It was rare, she realised, that she asked him a question.

‘The week after next. I'll be gone for five days.'

‘And then?'

‘Nothing then.' Ian wilted. ‘My agent says it's a slow time. Slow in summer. But I haven't worked since January. Slow in winter. Slow in spring.' He laughed wryly. ‘Actually I'm thinking of packing it in.'

‘No!'

‘And retraining.'

‘Retraining as what?'

‘A lawyer.'

Charlie was amazed. ‘How long will you give it?'

‘Not sure. One more year.'

‘I don't know what I'd do if I stopped acting.' She felt a chill of alarm run through her. ‘I don't think there's anything else I could do.'

‘But you're a success,' Ian gazed at her. ‘You won't need to. What was that film I saw you in?
The Haven Report
. And
Celestina
. You were brilliant.'

Charlie blushed. ‘Hardly.' But she felt a glow of pleasure all the same.

‘And
Giant Small Steps
. That was the best thing I've seen on TV in years. Have you got anything lined up, after this film you're doing now, I mean?'

‘Not really,' Charlie shook her head. ‘I've been offered a tour. Rosalind in
As You Like It
, but I don't know if I can face it. All those dreary northern towns in winter.' Too late she remembered Ian was from Birkenhead. ‘And anyway, I don't know if the production is
themed
. Once I was offered Juliet at the RSC and I arrived to find that the Capulets were all of African descent and we were expected to be half-naked, playing the bongos at every opportunity, tearing into strips of meat.'

Ian laughed uproariously.

‘My agent swears that this is a
colour blind
production, but I'm going to wait and see who else they cast.'

‘Well, I hope it works out.' Ian was still chuckling, gratifyingly. ‘You'd be perfect.'

Charlie sipped her tea. ‘Maybe.' She could feel Ian looking at her, stealing glances while he had the chance, and she kept her head tilted, showing her best side, the lace trim on her slip just visible beneath the grey wool of her wrap, and then she remembered. Of course, he wasn't admiring her at all. He was looking at her spots. Setting down her tea she ran upstairs. Maybe there is a God, she felt like wailing as she peered into the mirror, and he's decided it's my turn to be punished. She mixed a pool of foundation in the palm of her hand and smeared it on, reminding herself she was one of the lucky ones – if she could take a bigger view – she was one of the luckiest people in the world.

 

‘Well, it's hardly life-threatening.' Dr Helik smiled, blushing a little as he had done ever since he'd made the error of mentioning he'd seen her in an episode of
Sisters of the Night
, in which she'd appeared dressed only in the skimpiest of underwear, brandishing a whip. ‘But then again, in your profession . . .' he conceded, frowning, shaking his head. ‘Presumably,' he had to ask, ‘the problem is only on your face?'

Charlie nodded tersely.

‘Right.' Dr Helik scribbled on a slip of paper. ‘These antibiotics are very mild and won't take effect immediately. Come and see me again in three months and we'll . . . um . . . review the situation.'

Charlie stared at him. I'll be dead by then, she wanted to say, or too busy retaking my A-levels, but she stuffed the prescription into her pocket and sauntered across to the chemist.

She took the first pill as soon as she got home, and although she knew it was ludicrous, she ran and checked to see if there was any change. ‘What am I going to do?' She bit her lip, and unable to think of anything else she lay on her bed and flicked through some of the scripts Maisie had sent her.
Mika, exotic beauty . . . Gloria, strong, charismatic career woman. Loretta. Sultry, sexy mistress of Philip
.

Charlie sighed, pulled the quilt over her head and slept.

 

That night Charlie made a plan to stay in. It wasn't that she'd never had a night in alone before, she had, but she'd never actually planned one. She bought vegetables from the stall at the end of the road and some fish from the fishmongers that until now she hadn't noticed was there. She even took down a cookery book her mother had once given her. A book she'd never opened, not even to read the inscription which she now saw for the first time.

‘To my beautiful daughter, stay well. With love always. Mummy.'

Charlie flicked through the pages. This doesn't look so hard, she decided, but she had to run out twice, once to buy a lemon and then again for bay leaves. When she had everything she needed she put on an old Country and Western tape. ‘Joleen, Joleeeeeen,' she belted along with Dolly Parton, and for a moment she felt supremely happy.

She sliced courgettes, celery and aubergine. She dipped tomatoes in boiling water and peeled off the skin, and as she sang, and twirled and chopped, she imagined Ian might come through the door and be amazed to see her. Not just a talented actress but a goddess in the kitchen as well. But the time for Ian's nut roast to go into the oven passed, and then the time at which he usually ate it. Charlie sat down at the table, with her slice of grilled cod elegantly perched on a bed of ratatouille, alone. Not bad at all, she nodded, and she ate it, ravenous.

After she'd eaten, and left the dishes in the sink as proof of her productivity, she sat with her back against the sofa and switched on the television. But it bothered her to see the actors playing parts that should have been hers, or playing parts badly, or worse, with style and grace. It made her uneasy, and reminded her she still didn't understand Melina, and had no idea how to approach tomorrow's scene – a confrontation with her husband, her children hanging on her skirts. She switched off the TV and put on a CD, a Bach sonata she'd bought once to impress Marcel on his first and last visit to this flat. He'd been on his way to New Zealand, where she'd been planning to join him for a month of travel, kayaking with dolphins, catching river taxis along the Marlborough Sound, but before she'd had a chance to book her ticket he'd called to say he was sorry, he'd fallen in love with a documentary filmmaker who was making a film on the making of his film. He didn't know how it could happen, the girl was half-Maori, had only recently graduated from film school . . . and the attraction, it was . . .

‘No,' Charlie stopped him, ‘please, don't, don't . . .' and afterwards she'd lain on the floor, curled up against the pain, and thought, so this is how it feels – and she'd prodded the pulpy bleeding muscle of her broken heart.

Charlie let the music swell around her. It was too late to switch it off. And wondering what she could possibly do now she remembered a packet of white organza on a shelf in her cupboard where it had sat since the week that she'd moved in. She'd planned to make a lace curtain for her bedroom window several years before but had never found the time. She retrieved it and tipped it out on to the floor. The material was fine and creamy, a little dusty from lying folded for so long, but she ironed out the creases and then turned the top over in a pleasing double hem and pinned it. The curtain wire was coiled in the packet too, and as she was threading it, pushing it inch by inch through the hem, bunching and straightening with a caterpillar's progress, she heard a crash outside. There was some muttering and cursing and the scratching of a key at the front door. Charlie frowned and continued threading, hoping it was someone from the flat below, but then her lodger's unmistakably heavy steps began ascending.

It took Ian some time to fathom the intricacies of the next lock, but eventually he was in, and she could feel him standing looking down at her from the hall. ‘Charlie,' he spluttered, helpless, ‘meet Charlie,' and she glanced up to see he had a traffic cone in his arms.

‘What about your supper?' She couldn't think of anything else to say. ‘You missed it.'

‘Oh that,' he stumbled forward and still holding the cone, he slumped on to the sofa. ‘I met up with a friend, we went to the pub and I thought, fuck it, fuck the advert, fuck Munchy Crunchy mix. It won't get me anything I want.' He looked at her mournfully, his eyes so shiny they were wet.

Charlie continued with the threading. The material was all bunched up now and she had to ease it along the wire with great care so that it didn't slide off. ‘Could you take one end?' she asked, thinking she could measure it against this window, identical to the one above, and Ian leapt up to help her so quickly that he stumbled over the cone and fell. ‘Charlie,' he moaned to the cone, ‘I'm sorry, baby, I'm so sorry,' and the real Charlie stood and looked at him, her face closed. It occurred to her that she was haughty as her character, cold and admired and absorbed by domestic deeds. ‘Don't worry,' she said when Ian dropped the wire for the second time, ‘I'll take it, I'm going up to bed now anyway,' and still in her role as nineteenth-century paragon of womanhood she gathered the white organza in her arms and aware how much it suited her, how the nape of her neck looked as she bent over it, she walked quickly up the stairs.

 

Once she was in her bedroom she realised she'd forgotten the little screws that needed twisting into the wooden window frame, but she couldn't go back down. She abandoned the material in a pile and pulled off her clothes. This is ridiculous, she thought, it's only ten o'clock, and it occurred to her she hadn't seen a single person that day, apart from the doctor. If Ian comes up, she thought, and if he waits for long enough outside my door, I'll let him in. He's not that bad. She opened her script and looked over the next day's lines. Just to have someone's arms around her, a man's hot beery breath against her ear, but the minutes passed and there was no sound from him. It's for the best, she told herself. Just think of the next morning. A small tear trickled down her face. We'd have to eat breakfast together like some horrid suburban couple, and with Melina's lines circling in her head she fell asleep.

 

The next day at six a.m., her face made up, her skin still blotched and lumpy, she came downstairs to find Ian asleep on the sofa, the traffic cone beside him, his arm clutched tight around its base. Charlie looked at him, and then she went and found a blanket. As she draped it over him he reached up and caught her hand. ‘Sorry,' he mumbled, his eyes still closed, and for a moment she allowed herself to sink down beside him. To feel the warmth of his touch, the pressure of his fingers, smell the male hay and sweat smell of his skin. ‘Charlie,' he moaned, ‘sorry about being an idiot . . .' and as he tightened his grip she remembered herself, and who she really was, and disentangling her fingers she turned impassively and walked away.