Constance A Novel

TWO

Noah headed downriver, towards the battlements of Tower Bridge and the pale shard of Canary Wharf tower in the hazy distance. It was the beginning of June, a warm and sunny early evening. The Embankment was crowded with people leaving work and heading home, or making for bars and cinemas. The girls who passed him were bare-legged, the skin above the line of their tops showing a pink flush from a lunchtime’s sunbathing.

Noah had sat with his mother for over an hour. He linked his fingers with hers, not talking very much, rubbing his thumb over the thin skin on the back of her hand. Sometimes she drifted into a doze, then a minute or two later she would be fully awake again, looking into his eyes and smiling.

‘Do you want anything, Mum?’ he asked, leaning close to her so she could see his face.

She shook her head.

At the end of an hour, she had fallen into a deeper sleep. He sat beside the bed for a few more minutes, then slid his hand from beneath hers. He stood up carefully, bent down and kissed her forehead where the faint lines showed between her eyebrows.

‘I’ll be in tomorrow, same time,’ he murmured, for his own benefit rather than hers.

Noah hadn’t worked out where he was going; he just wanted to be outside in the fresh air. Even though there was a thick waft of grease and fried onions from a hot-dog stand and a blast of beer and cigarette smoke rising from the crowded outdoor tables of a pub, it still smelled better out here than inside the hospital. He stuck his hands in his pockets and walked more slowly, threading through the crowds, his head turned towards the khaki river. A sightseeing boat slid by, trailing a noisy wake of commentary and the smell of Thames water.

Under a plane tree, just where the shade from the branches dulled the glitter of dusty cobbles, one of the performance artists who regularly worked there was setting up his pitch. He was wearing a boxy robot costume sprayed a dull silver colour, and all the exposed skin of his body was painted to match. As Noah idly stood watching, the performer laid out a blanket and placed a silver-painted box on it, and positioned a small matching plinth behind the blanket. He made the arrangements with mechanical precision, his head stiffly tilted in concentration. Then he tapped a silver metal helmet over his silver-sprayed hair and took a step up onto the plinth. His arms rotated through a few degrees and froze in midair. A few of the passers-by glanced at him, probably wondering why an able-bodied individual should choose to spend an evening locked into immobility on a plinth instead of heading for the pub. Losing interest, Noah was about to walk on when he noticed the girl standing on the opposite side.

She was watching the performance with surprise and delight, as if it was completely new to her. After a moment she took a step closer, then cautiously skirted the blanket to stand directly in front of the robot. She waved her hand in front of his face. The man gave a reasonably convincing impression of being made of metal and Noah remembered how tourists used to make similar attempts to distract the Guardsmen frigidly mounted on horses in front of the sentry boxes in Whitehall.

The girl was laughing now. She reached out a hand with the index finger extended and gently prodded the robot in his metallic middle.

The girl was very pretty, Noah noticed. Her head had the poise of a marble sculpture, and her mouth had a chiselled margin to it that made her lips unusually prominent. She really did have an amazing mouth. He considered the rest of her. Her hair was short and spiky, blonde with a greenish tinge that suggested it was dyed. She was quite tall, thin, with long thighs and calves. Her clothes were similar to those worn by all the girls in the passing tide, but at the same time there was something very slightly wrong with them. Her top was flimsy and gathered from a sort of yoke and her jeans were an odd pale colour. Her open-toed shoes were thick-soled and dusty and their heaviness made her protruding toes look small and as fragile as a child’s.

Noah experienced a moment’s dislocation, as if he were drunk or had just stepped off a theme-park ride that had been whirling too fast for him. His body felt very light and insubstantial, and the plane tree and the metallic man and Tower Bridge seemed to spin around him and the girl. He rocked on his feet, establishing a firmer connection with the ground beneath.

The girl drew back her hand, still laughing.

Noah took a breath. The world steadied itself.

He said to her, ‘You won’t be able to make him move. It’s more than his job’s worth.’

She gave no sign of having heard him.

Disbelief flooded through Noah. It wasn’t possible. Maybe it was possible, maybe that’s why he had noticed her in the first place.

Then she slowly turned her head. It wasn’t that she hadn’t heard, he realised, rather that she hadn’t understood what he was saying.

‘Do you speak English?’ he smiled.

‘Of course. Why not?’ she shot back. She did have an accent. It sounded Slavic, or Russian.

‘I thought you were, you know, perhaps a tourist.’

‘No,’ she said flatly.

‘Ah. Right.’ She was making Noah feel a bit of a fool. As if she sensed this and regretted it, she jerked her chin at the robot man.

‘This is clever. Not moving one muscle.’

‘Yeah. Sometimes there’s a Victorian couple, and there’s a gold man who does it as well. Usually you see them at weekends in Covent Garden. It always looks to me like a really hard way of earning money.’

The girl’s eyes turned to him. She looked disappointed, and at once Noah felt sorry that he had diminished the originality of the spectacle for her. ‘But it is clever, you’re right.’

‘I was not trying to tease him, you know? I was thinking he cannot be a real man because he is so still, even though I saw him walk up on his step.’

‘He won’t move, though. That’s the point.’ Noah was beginning to feel that it was time to steer this conversation forwards. ‘Um. Are you on your way somewhere? Would you like to have a drink? There’s a bar just here. Bit crowded, but we can sit outside…’

Suddenly an empty table to one side of the open space looked intensely inviting.

‘I have the bicycle with me.’ The girl pointed to a bright yellow mountain bike propped against the river wall.

‘Nice bike. We can lock it up…’

‘I do not have a lock.’

‘Really? You should have one, someone’ll nick a bike like that in five seconds. Look, we’ll just park it beside us so we can keep an eye on it.’

They were walking towards the table, the girl wheeling her bicycle, when she suddenly stopped.

‘We did not give him money.’

Noah was pleased with the we. He grinned at her. ‘You can, if you want.’

She didn’t smile back. ‘I don’t have any. Not today.’

He sighed. ‘All right.’ He made a little detour and dropped a pound coin into the robot’s box. The man’s head gave a sudden jerk and his hands rotated. ‘Thank you,’ a robot’s voice mechanically grated. The girl beamed and clapped, and Noah judged that that was easily worth a pound of anyone’s money. He touched her elbow. ‘Let’s be quick, before someone grabs the table.’

He left her sitting with the bicycle, fought his way to the bar for two beers, and was pleased and relieved when he got back to find that she was still waiting for him.

‘Cheers,’ he said as they drank. ‘My name’s Noah, by the way.’

‘I am Roxana.’

‘Hello Roxana.’ He put out his hand. I am acting like a total prat, he was thinking, but he couldn’t stop staring at her mouth. He wondered what it would take to make her laugh again, the way she had done when she prodded the robot. Roxana took his fingers, very cautiously, and allowed an infinitesimal squeeze before drawing back again.

‘Where are you from? Are you Russian?’

She looked levelly at him. ‘I am from Uzbekistan.’

‘Are you? Uh, I don’t think I even know where that is.’ He sighed inwardly. That’s right, go on, let her know you’re thick as well as a prat.

‘It is in Central Asia. We have been independent country since 1991. Our capital is Tashkent. We have borders with Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.’

Noah raised an eyebrow. ‘Thank you. Now I do know. What brings you to England? Are you a student? Your English is really good.’

‘Thank you very much. I’m not a student. I’m working here, I would like to stay. It’s better for me.’

‘What do you do?’

Roxana paused. ‘I am a dancer.’

Yes, she had the body for it. And that explained the studied poise of her head on the long, pale column of her neck. Noah found that he didn’t want to speculate too hard, not here and now, anyway, on the look of her in – what were those things dancers wore? Leotards.

‘Ballet?’ She was a bit too tall for that, though.

‘No. Not ballet. Modern.’ She nodded towards the yellow bicycle. ‘I have only just been for, um, a test?’

‘Audition?’

‘Yes. I have the job, they tell me there and then.’ She did smile now and Noah blinked.

‘Congratulations.’

‘Thank you. And I should of course ask now about your job but I have to go soon. It’s not my bicycle, I have only borrowed it to come to the place over there for my audition.’ She nodded across in the approximate direction of St Paul’s. ‘But in London for two weeks I haven’t yet been to see the river Thames, so I came for one hour.’

She pronounced it with a soft th, to rhyme with James.

Noah’s stomach did something that he associated with a lift dropping very fast. Jesus, he thought. What’s happening? Can you fall in love with someone after ten minutes, just because she says Thames instead of Tems?

‘What is your job?’ she asked softly.

‘I work in IT. For a small publishing company.’

‘Near to here?’

‘In the West End. I’ve just been visiting my mother, in the hospital. She’s had an operation. She’s got cancer.’

Roxana didn’t react in the usual way. Her face didn’t contract with distress or sympathy and there was no rush of consoling words, although Noah realised a second later that this was what he had been looking for. Instead she just nodded, quite matter-of-fact.

‘Will she recover?’

‘Oh yes, I think so.’

‘That’s good.’

He might have concluded that she was unusually detached. Most people, in his experience, when you told them your mother had cancer, were concerned for you and her, even though they might never have met her. There was a look about Roxana, though, that told him she wasn’t unconcerned. He noted the way her incredible mouth drew in at the corners and her neck bent a little, as if it were made of soft wax. He thought she might have heard a lot of stories that were sadder than the illness of a stranger’s mother.

Their glasses were empty. ‘I have to go, really,’ she said.

He said too quickly, ‘No time for one more drink?’

‘No. Thank you for this one.’

They both stood up, awkwardly negotiating the edges of the table. Roxana twisted the handlebars of the yellow bike and prepared to wheel it away.

‘Which way are you going?’ Noah asked. He was thinking, Do you have to sound so desperate, you sad bugger?

‘Over there. There is a small bridge.’

‘Oh yeah, that’s the Millennium Bridge. Known as the Wobbly Bridge, usually. I’ll walk that far with you.’

They wove through the crowds together. Noah heard himself giving an overlong and over-animated explanation of why the footbridge had acquired its nickname. She might perhaps have been half-listening, but she was also frowning and biting the corner of her lip. She was anxious to get away, probably to return the borrowed bike to its owner. He wasn’t usually quite this hopeless with women. What was it about this one?

They were crossing the bridge. Streams of people poured past them, which meant she had to keep dodging and breaking away from him.

‘Would you, um, like to meet up again? As you don’t know London, maybe we could, ah, go on a riverboat.’ A big white one was passing directly underneath. Roxana briefly glanced at it. ‘Or do something. See a film? Or I could come and see you dance.’

‘No.’ She said that very quickly, and in a firm voice that meant absolutely not.

At the far end of the bridge she bent her head and pushed the bike up the steps, leaning into the job. She looked tired now, and – what? Forlorn. That was it.

‘I do have to go.’ She gestured at the handlebars. ‘There will be trouble.’

‘Can I have your phone number?’

‘I don’t have any phone. Not at the moment.’

‘Roxana, I’d like to see you again. Is that all right? Won’t you tell me where you live?’

She looked away, in the direction she would be heading as soon as she could get away from him, and Noah knew that she was concealing something.

‘I will have a place. In a few days.’

You’re getting nowhere, mate, Noah decided. Can’t you take a hint? She’s probably got a huge Uzbek boyfriend stashed away somewhere.

‘Well. I enjoyed talking to you.’

Roxana made to get on the bike, then stopped.

‘You have a telephone?’

‘Sure. Yes, of course.’ He took a work card out of his wallet and scribbled his mobile number on the back. ‘Call me.’

‘Okay. Goodbye, Noah.’

She tucked the card away, slung her plastic handbag over her shoulder, straddled the mountain bike and forged out into the traffic. She was looking the wrong way and he almost called Look out. But she veered away from an oncoming bus and wobbled into the left-hand lane, then pedalled uncertainly away. He watched until she was out of sight.

He was sure he would never see her again and the thought left him entirely disconsolate.

His mobile rang and he tore it out of his pocket, allowing a flare of hope.

‘Oh, yeah. Hi, Dad. Yeah, I was there for an hour, maybe a bit more. She was very sleepy. Call me later? Yeah, me too. Bye.’

His father was on his way to the hospital. Noah put his head down and started walking towards the tube.





As soon as she was safely round the corner Roxana peered up at a street sign, then stopped to search in her bag for the street-map book that the man Dylan had loaned her. She found where she was now, after some flipping back and forth through the small grey pages, and also where she had come from. It didn’t look so far, in terms of map centimetres, but remembering the difficulty she had had in getting to the place Dylan had sent her to for the audition, she suspected the return journey was going to cause problems.

Still, she’d find it in the end, wouldn’t she?

She tried to memorise the names and the sequence of the four or five big roads she needed to follow, but before she had even reached the first junction they had jumbled themselves up in her head.

London was a big place. She couldn’t even imagine how far it spread. All these rooms stacked on top of each other, all these tall buildings and streets and glassy shops. All these people. She felt very small in the thick of it, as if she were no more than a speck of dust, a little glinting mineral fragment that the wind might suck away. She kept on determinedly pedalling, bracing herself against a gust of fear as well as the buffeting of the traffic. Buses and trucks hooted at her as they roared past.

It would turn out fine, she kept telling herself, why not? She had a job now, at least.

She had got talking to Dylan on her first morning in London, in the café near King’s Cross Station where she had looked out at the rain and the crowds of people all walking heads down with somewhere to go. She had spent the previous night in a nearby hotel, in a room that was noisy and dirty and had still cost far more than she budgeted. Her savings and the money her mother’s old friend Yakov had loaned her wouldn’t go far at this rate.

The young man, thin as a bamboo pole, asked her for a light and then slid closer along the red plastic bench. He offered her one of his cigarettes and bought her another cup of coffee. It was nice to talk to someone.

It turned out that Dylan lived in a house where there were cheap rooms to rent. When he asked if she wanted him to find out if the room next to his was free, she said yes, because she had no other ideas. Once she saw the place she didn’t want to stay there, not even for one night. But she did stay, because she had no alternative. She promised herself that it was just until she found some work.

The house was a catacomb of rooms, the doors leading off the dim staircase all padlocked and the grey walls daubed with slogans. Apart from Dylan, Roxana didn’t know who else lived there. She rarely met anyone on the stairs, and when she did they hastily drew back into the shadows. It was only at night that they came out. The nights were constantly disturbed by running feet, thunderous crashes and outbursts of wild shouting. A door would be wrenched open to set a jagged burst of music throbbing in the stairwell before the door slammed again. After a few nights she learned to pull her pillow over her ears and not to speculate about who was murdering or being murdered on the other side of her door. She bought her own padlocks, two big heavy ones, and kept the door locked day and night.

Dylan had tried to get inside the room with her, of course he had, but she told him what he could do with himself. He hadn’t taken it all that badly. He was lonely, too. When he wasn’t at work and didn’t have any money for drugs, they sometimes went for a walk or a bus ride together.

She told Dylan that she needed a job and that she was a dancer, not necessarily expecting the two statements to connect. It was true that in Bokhara, where she grew up, Roxana had sometimes gone to classes and then for a whole wonderful term Yakov had helped her and she had studied dance in Tashkent. She had clung to this tenuous historical link to her maternal grandmother, who had died before Roxana was born and who as a young woman had been a professional dancer. The wife of Tamerlane the Great himself had also been renowned for her grace and skill as a dancer. Both these women had been called Roxana.

But it was not easy to live in Uzbekistan. After her brother was killed in the uprising she made up her mind that she would find a way to leave it behind, every broken street and Russian soldier, all the memories, everything her native country stood for and everything that had happened to her there, and live in America, or England. She would become an American girl by sheer force of will.

Or an English one, that would do.

It had taken a long time to get the money for a holiday flight from Tashkent to Luton, but she had managed it.

Yakov had wished her good luck, knowing that he would never leave Uzbekistan himself.

Roxana didn’t plan to be on the return flight.

In London her intention was to find work looking after children, pink and white cherubs who would be dressed in little coats with velvet collars, that would be nice. Or if not that, maybe she could be a chambermaid in a big hotel. She saw herself in a maid’s uniform, plumping up pillows and setting out white towels and crystal glasses.

But she had soon found out that without references and papers there was no work with English children. The hotels she walked into had all told her that they weren’t taking on casuals at the moment. It was Dylan who had come to her rescue again.

‘Ye said ye can dance.’ His accent was so strange. He told her he came from Ireland. When she first met him in the café she could hardly decipher a word, but by now she could understand him better. ‘There’s a feller ye can go to see.’

He wrote down a name and an address for her, lent her the map book, told her which bus to catch and what time to be there, and advised her not to be late. To make sure she knew where she was going, Roxana traced the route from the house to the place. And on her way out of the house, on a sudden impulse, she borrowed the yellow bike.

It had been in the hallway ever since she had come to live there, leaning in the same place among the litter of envelopes that no one picked up. She had not seen anyone touch it, let alone ride it. There was no lock. Maybe someone had just left it at the house and forgotten all about it.

And she had already worked out that to take it would save her the bus fares. Buses and tube trains in London cost a lot of money.

She had bumped the bicycle down the steps of the house and boldly set off. At first it was exhilarating to be so free. She flew along in the glittering traffic, the wind of her own speed whistling in her ears and pinning a smile to her face. It was a shame that she ended up getting lost. It meant that she was late for her meeting with Mr Shane at The Cosmos. He was a small, elderly man with quick cold eyes. He looked Roxana up and down as if he was pricing her for sale.

‘This is a quality venue, do you understand me?’ was the second thing Mr Shane said to her, after telling her that if she was ever late again she could forget working for him.

‘I understand, yes,’ Roxana answered, glancing around her at the tables and the shuttered bar. Before the club opened for the night it looked sordid, but she supposed that it would be different when the lights came up and it was full of people.

‘Right. Where are you from and how long have you been here?’

She told him.

‘Legal?’

‘Yes,’ she lied.

Mr Shane sniffed. ‘Let’s see what you can do, then.’

There wasn’t any music and the only audience was Mr Shane sprawled in a front-row armchair with his mobile phone pressed to his ear. It wasn’t difficult to envisage what he wanted, but making her body perform the right sequences wasn’t easy at all. Roxana concentrated very hard on making it look as though what she was doing came naturally. The performance seemed to go on for a very long time.

At last he held up his hand. ‘All right. That’ll do.’

‘I could do some more, something different if…’

‘You can start on Friday,’ he said impatiently.

Roxana could hardly believe her luck. ‘Yes? Friday. Thank you. Thank you, I…’

‘Seven o’clock sharp. Five minutes late and you can go straight home.’ He didn’t have time for her gratitude. He was already on the phone again, and gesturing for her to get dressed and leave.

She came out of the cavernous dimness of The Cosmos and into the fluttering air, breathing deeply with relief. She had a job. She was on her way.





She did get lost on the way back from the river, but not quite as badly as the first time. She had the first inkling that instead of being fragments of a puzzle, the few pieces of the city that she was beginning to recognise might even be logically and manageably connected to each other. She was whistling as she pedalled into the street and even the sight of the house, with peeling paint and torn curtains and the rubbish sodden in the basement area where the windows were boarded over, didn’t depress her spirits too much. She hauled the bike up the short flight of stone steps and leaned it against the broken teeth of the railings while she groped for the key to the front door. Before she pushed it open, she had a brief premonition that there was something waiting for her on the other side.

The flurry of violence was so sudden that she didn’t even have time to scream.

The bicycle was seized and hauled inside, dragging her with it. One of the pedals bit deep into her shin at the same time as the man grabbed her wrists and forced her up against the wall. The door slammed shut, cutting off her escape route.

‘Did I miss something? Did you buy that bike off me? Or did you say to me, “Mr Kemal, I need to borrow a piece of your property”? Or did you just nick it out of here without a word to no one, like you own the world?’

She tried not to inhale the smell of cigarettes and unwashed skin.

‘No,’ she said. Her teeth rattled in her head as he shook her.

‘No what?’

‘I didn’t buy it. I didn’t ask. I thought it wasn’t anyone’s.’

‘That was a mistake, Russia.’

Roxana lifted her head. The man was plump, black-haired, unshaven. He was wearing a grey singlet and there were thick tufts of glistening hair under his arms and curling all the way up to his throat. ‘I am from Uzbekistan,’ she said. ‘Not Russia.’

‘Like I give a shit.’ He twisted her arm and she winced. ‘You’re not hurt, Russia, not yet. If you take things that don’t belong to you, then you’ll find out about being hurt. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘What do you say now?’

‘I am sorry,’ she whispered.

Mr Kemal let go of her arms. ‘Upstairs,’ he ordered. He followed her up through the breathless house, made her unlock her padlocks and kicked open the door of her room so he could take a good look inside.

There wasn’t much to see.

She had sellotaped a picture postcard of a tropical beach to the wall beside her bed. She had bought the postcard from a street vendor in Tashkent, when she was out shopping with her friend Fatima. She had fallen in love at first sight with the image of silver sand and blue sea. Apart from that there were her few clothes hanging behind a curtain mounted across one corner, a two-ring gas burner and some tins and packets, a transistor radio in a turquoise plastic case, and her Russian–English dictionary lying open beside her plate and cup on the small table.

As he flicked through her belongings the man made a dismissive tssshhh through his teeth.

‘Didn’t you say to me you’re not Russian?’

‘My father, he came from Novosibirsk. That’s Russia, okay. But my mother was Uzbeki and I was born in Bokhara.’ Roxana was recovering herself. She said quickly, in Uzbek, ‘I think you are Turkish, yes?’

To her relief, she understood that he was finished with her. From the doorway he said, ‘Born in Stoke Newington, if that’s any of your f*cking business. Now, keep your thieving hands off my stuff, all right?’

Roxana nodded. She would make every effort never again to come into contact with Mr Kemal, or any of his belongings, until such time as she could move out of this house for ever.

After he had gone she quietly closed the door and secured it from the inside. Then she sat down on the bed, her head bent and her hands loosely hanging between her knees. She could feel blood congealing on her shin and her arm throbbed, but she didn’t make the effort to examine her injuries. Once the initial shock and fear had subsided, what Roxana was left with was a feeling of dreary familiarity. Life had a way of repeating itself. To stop the cycle it wasn’t enough to be in a different place, even a different continent. You had to be a different person. You had to become a person like, say, the English boy. Noah. Big, and crumpled in a way that meant you were not worried about what anyone thought of you, always smiling, and completely certain that you had your rights and that justice was on your side. Roxana wasn’t so sure, after all, that she could make this much of a difference in herself.

Half an hour went by and someone tapped at the door. She ignored it for a while, then heard Dylan’s voice. It came out as a breathy hiss, which meant he must have his mouth pressed right up against the splintery panels.

‘Roxy, I know ye’re there.’

‘I’m busy.’

‘What in the name of feck were ye doin’ with Kemal’s bike?’

‘I borrowed it.’

‘What was it, a death-wish?’

‘Go away.’

‘Listen, all right. I’m just askin’ about the job.’

‘I got the job.’

He whistled. ‘Did you so? It’s good work, that. There’s good money in it. Easy work too, lap dancing. Waftin’ yerself around in front of a few boozed-up City boys.’ She heard his chuckle through the door.

‘Dylan, I’ll see you tomorrow, maybe.’

‘Yeah, right enough. See yer, Roxy.’

Dylan needed to make himself different too, she thought. He didn’t know it, though. That was the difference between the two of them.





‘That’s it, people. We’re all through. Good work. Thanks very much everyone.’

The first assistant scissored his arms in the air and Tara flopped back in her seat with a trill of satisfaction. The last shot for the third of the online-bank commercials was in the bag.

The middle-aged cellist in the string quartet gently put aside her instrument. Connie saw that there was sweat beaded around her hairline, and the bow-ties and starched shirts of the violin and viola players had gone shapeless in the humidity. She thanked them for their hours of work, playing the same few bars of music for the commercial over and over in the afternoon’s heat, and paid them their money. The violinist carefully counted it.

‘We should be thanking you,’ he said formally. He was German. ‘If there is any more work of the same type, please be kind enough to think of us.’

‘Of course I will,’ Connie said warmly as they all shook hands. She couldn’t imagine the likely circumstances, though.

She wasn’t sorry that the week to come would not be as ripe with crisis as the one that was just past. The main actress had barely recovered from her stomach upset, and her enfeebled state had led to rescheduling and hours of overage costs which Angela had had to negotiate with Tara. Relations had become strained.

Then the agency and client teams had both shown remarkable and competitive stamina when it came to after-hours partying. The mornings-after had been difficult. One of the Australian crew members had entertained a woman in his room and had been outraged to discover the next morning that his wallet, laptop and MP3 player had vanished with her into the night. Connie had been called on to act as go-between with the local police when the stolen property wasn’t instantly recovered.

‘What did he expect?’ Angela sighed to her in private. ‘Tarts with hearts of gold only exist in the movies, you’d think he’d know that.’

The musicians hurried with their instruments to the waiting bus. Their evening job was playing light classical pops in the main dining room of the most expensive hotel in Jimbaran, and they would have to go straight there from the set.

Still in his costume, the handsome actor’s stunt double strolled ahead of Connie as she made her way to the service tent. She absently admired the smooth, oiled breadth of his shoulders and the way his bare torso tapered to the waist of his breeches, and then laughed at herself. One of the riggers whistled at her as he hoisted a grip stand towards the waiting trucks. In the service tent itself the Balinese catering team were packing away chairs and folding down the tables. Angela was standing there with her knuckles tight around a cup of coffee. She looked as if she hadn’t slept for a week.

Probably, Connie reflected, she actually hadn’t.

‘Well done,’ Connie said to her.

Kadek Wuruk stuck his head into the tent. ‘Hello, Ibu,’ he beamed. ‘Kitchen closed, end of shooting, but you like drink maybe?’

‘Yes please, Kadek.’

‘Could you take a beer to Mr Ingram, too?’ Angela called after him. Rayner Ingram had been absorbed in his creative cocoon all week long, and had taken no note of the problems besetting the shoot. ‘He’s pretty exhausted. He’s done a great job, you know. The agency and the client are really pleased.’

‘Ange.’ Connie removed the cup from her hand and took her by the shoulders. ‘How are you? You look, if you don’t mind me saying, knackered.’

‘Oh. You know.’

For a moment, Connie thought her friend was going to cry. She told Kadek to take the drink to Rayner and led Angela outside.

The sun had slid behind the cliffs that they had used for the backdrop to the set and the rock was now a wall of darkness crowned with a halo of golden light that no lighting cameraman could ever have created. The first bat of the evening flitted overhead. Set-dressers were rolling up an artificial lawn, the cast were changing in the caravans. The self-important world of the shoot was folding up on itself, shrinking back into the waiting trucks and Toyotas. Tomorrow, when the cast and crew were on their planes home, the clearing would be deserted except for the birds and the bats.

‘Look at this,’ Angela sighed, as if she was seeing it for the first time. The trees were heavy with dusk.

‘Why don’t you stay on with me for a few days? Have a holiday. You’ve earned one.’

‘I’m fine,’ Angela said. She laughed. ‘Completely fine. I’ve got to start next week on pre-production for a yoghurt commercial. It’s really, really busy at the moment and that’s good, isn’t it? Can’t turn the work down while it’s there.’

‘Angie?’ It was Rayner Ingram’s voice. Her head turned at once.

‘Coming,’ she called. ‘Con, you’ll definitely be there tonight, won’t you?’

Tonight was the wrap party, traditionally hosted by the production company. Connie knew about last-night parties more by reputation than recent direct experience.

‘Yes. Course I will.’

‘See you later, then. You’ve been an absolute star all this week. I couldn’t have got through it without you.’

Left alone, Connie sat down on an upturned box. There were more bats now, dipping for insects against the blackness of the trees. She could almost feel the week’s edgy camaraderie being stripped away from her, rolled up like the fake turf and tossed into the back of a truck. She would feel lonely here next week, when Angela and the others had gone. She had her work, of course. She had planned to make some more recordings of the gamelan gong for her orchestral library. There was Tuesday night’s music to look forward to, and she should think about asking some people to the house, fill it up with talk and lights once in a while. The string quartet, for example. She should find out which was their night off and make dinner for them and their partners.

This time tomorrow, Angela and Rayner and Tara and all the others would be halfway back to London.

Connie found that she was thinking about London as she rarely did, remembering the way that lights reflected in the river on winter’s evenings, the catty smell of privet after summer rain, the glittering masses of traffic and the stale, utterly specific whiff of the Underground. She kept the focus deliberately general, excluding places and people for as long as she could.

‘I’m going to need that box.’ The voice made her jump. She saw it was the rigger who had whistled at her.

‘All yours,’ Connie smiled at him as she got to her feet. She wasn’t sorry to have her train of thought interrupted. In any case it was time to head home to change for the wrap party.





There were more than forty people for dinner. They ate in the garden of the better hotel, under the lanterns slung in the branches of the trees.

‘This place is a bit of all right,’ one of the Australians shouted up the table. ‘You guys did well.’

‘Next time,’ Angela called back.

‘Holding you to that, ma’am. They’ve even got beer here.’ In the last-night surge of goodwill, the disagreements of the week morphed into jokes.

The actress emerged from her room to join the crew for dinner. Draped in a pashmina against a non-existent breeze she was telling everyone who would listen that she had lost nearly a stone and wouldn’t be coming back to Bali in a hurry.

Tara was wearing a dress that measured about twenty centimetres from neckline to hem. Simon Sheringham’s arm rested heavily along the back of her chair, and he regularly clicked his fingers at the waiters to ensure that their two glasses were kept filled. Marcus Atkins and the agency’s creative duo sat with their heads close together, planning how to make the best of the rest of the evening.

Rayner Ingram naturally took the head of the table. After a successful shoot everyone wanted their piece of the director, and there had been a scramble for the seats closest to him. Connie was relieved to see that he beckoned Angela to the place on his right. She was surprised, as she took her own seat near the other end, by the rigger darting into the next chair. He extended a large hand.

‘Hi. My name’s Ed.’

‘Connie Thorne.’

‘Boom Girl, somebody called you. What’s that about?’

She was entirely happy that he didn’t know. ‘Nothing. History. Let’s have a drink.’

‘Let’s make that our motto.’

The food came and they ate and drank under the lanterns.





Connie learned from Ed that he owned a ski lodge in Thredbo and only took on film work when he needed a cash injection.

‘You should come out. I’m heading back for the best of the ski season now.’

‘I can’t ski.’

He grinned. ‘No worries. I’ll teach you.’

You could go, Connie told herself. Ed’s blue shirt cuffs were rolled back and she noted that he had nice wrists. He seemed a good, dependable, practical sort of man.

Damn, she thought. Why can’t it happen?

That question did have an answer, but it wasn’t one she was prepared to listen to at this moment.

Glancing up the table she saw Angela’s and Rayner’s heads close together. They were deep in conversation. That was all right, then. For tonight at least.

People were already swaying off in search of further diversions. There were loud splashes and a lot of shouting and laughter from the swimming pool.

‘Think about it,’ Ed murmured. He took out a marker pen and wrote his email address on her bare arm. ‘It’s indelible ink, by the way.’

‘I will think about it,’ she promised, untruthfully.

Tara asked for the music to be turned up and began dancing, stretching out her hands to whoever came within reach. Simon Sheringham had a cigar and a balloon glass; Rayner was talking about the big feature he was soon to start work on. Someone had unwound a volleyball net on the lawn and several men were leaping and punching at the ball. Connie slipped away from the table and walked over the grass. She was hot and she had drunk more than she was used to, and it was soothing to drift in the dusk under the trees.

Someone rustled over the grass behind her.

‘There you are. I’ve been hunting for you.’ To her partial relief it was not Ed but Angela, and she was carrying a bottle and two glasses. ‘Shall we sit here?’

There was a secluded bench with a low light beside it that hollowed an egg-shape of lush greenery out of the darkness. They sat down and Connie obediently took the glass that Angela gave her. Angela kicked off her shoes and rested her head against the back of the bench.

‘I meant it, you know. About not surviving this week without you.’

‘You would have done,’ Connie laughed.

‘I don’t think so. Christ. Tara? Sheringham? And that other woman, you’d think no one in the history of the world has ever had the shits before this week. Sorry. Listen to me. I just needed a quick moan.’

‘It’s over now.’

‘Until the next one.’ They clinked their glasses and drank.

‘How is it with you and Rayner?’

Angela exhaled. ‘Oh. You noticed?’

‘Well. Yes. Probably no one else did, though.’

Angela’s smile was a sudden flash in the gloaming. ‘He’s amazing. We’ve been working together quite a lot, and we started seeing each other…it’s difficult because he’s still officially married to Rose and he’s very close to his kids, so we’re keeping the lid on it, especially on shoots, but in time I think we’ll be really good together. You know, he’s so special, such a talented director; that has to come first a lot of the time.’

Connie did her best to receive this information optimistically. Angela was elated now, probably because Rayner had given her a sign for later. She was revelling in the anticipation of him slipping into her room, locking the door behind him. Connie could remember what all that felt like, more or less. But the provisos sounded too ready, and they were ominous.

Not that I’m the one to judge, she thought.

Maybe Rayner Ingram will turn out to be loyal, tender, considerate and generous. And maybe he will be all of those things for Angela and no one else. And her friend was enviably happy tonight, Connie could feel the pulse of it in her. Somehow everything had turned round since the tense ending of the afternoon, and she should be able to bask in the moment without anyone spoiling it for her with sage advice. Angela wasn’t a child, or any kind of innocent.

‘Don’t put his happiness before your own,’ was all Connie advised.

‘They’re the same thing,’ Angela breathed.

They sat in silence for a moment.

‘Anyway, I wanted to talk about you, not me,’ Angela began again.

‘Why’s that?’

Angela waved her glass. ‘About here. And why you stay, and what…Are you hiding from something, maybe? Out here. On your own, you know what I’m saying, ever since you split from Seb. Why don’t you come back to London? Be with your friends, everyone you know. Don’t your family miss you, apart from anything else? You’ve got a…sister, haven’t you? And that amazing flat. And it’s not as though you don’t get plenty of work. Honestly. You can’t stay out here for ever, you need to come back and…connect. Think about it, at least, won’t you? Aren’t you lonely? Don’t you ever think, is this what I really want?’

Angela was warming to her subject. She was happy, and in her benign daze she wished the same for everyone. They had both had quite a lot to drink, Connie allowed. She tilted her glass, then gazed around at the glimmering garden. The frogs were loud, but the noise of the party was eclipsing them. Soon, probably, the other guests in the hotel would start complaining. That would be something else that Angela would have to deal with.

‘Connie, are you listening?’

‘Yep.’

She was wondering which end to pull out of the tangle of Angela’s speech. She didn’t say that she only asked herself what she really, really wanted when her solitude was compromised.

‘I do come back to London. Quite often.’

‘You slip in and out of town like a…like a…’

‘Mouse into its hole?’

‘I was trying to think of something polite.’

‘I like my life.’ It was true, she did.

‘But – don’t you want – love, marriage? A family?’

‘I’m forty-three.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘No, then.’

That silenced Angela for a moment. Eight years younger and uncomfortably in love, she couldn’t imagine any woman not wanting those things.

Love, marriage, family?

Love Connie did have, and she had come to the conclusion that she always would. Love could exist in a vacuum, without being returned, with nothing to nourish it, without even a sight of the person involved. It was always there, embedded beneath her skin like an electronic tag, probably sending out its warning signals to everyone who came within range.

Yes but no. Available but not.

The truth was that Connie had loved Bill Bunting since she was fifteen, and Seb hadn’t been the first or even the last attempt she had made to convince herself otherwise. She wasn’t going to marry Bill, or even see him, because he was another woman’s husband. He wouldn’t abandon his wife, and if he had been willing to do so Connie would have had to stop loving him. That was the impossibility of it.

And family…

It was significant that even Angela, who had been a friend for more than ten years, had to think twice about whether Connie had a family or not, and what it consisted of.

That was the way Connie preferred it to be.

She turned to look at Angela and started laughing.

‘What’s funny?’

‘Your expression. Angie, I know what you’re saying to me, and thank you for being concerned. Your advice is probably good. But I’m happy here, you know. I’m not hiding. And it’s very beautiful.’

‘Do you feel that you belong here?’

‘Do we have to feel that we belong?’

There was a sharp scream and a splash followed by some confused shouting.

‘What now?’ Angela groaned.

‘It sounded like Tara.’

‘Will you think about what I’m saying, though?’

‘Yes, I will.’

‘It’s mostly selfish. I want you to come home so we can see more of each other.’

Connie smiled. ‘I’d like that too. But I am home.’





The evening was finally over. Connie walked the empty side-roads back to her house, the way ahead a pale thread between black walls of dense greenery. It was a still night, and she brushed the trailing filaments of spiders’ webs from her face.

When she reached home, she saw that there was a small, motionless figure sitting on a stone at the point where her path diverged from her neighbours’. The figure took on the shape of Wayan Tupereme.

‘Wayan? Good evening.’

He got to his feet and shuffled to her in his plastic flip-flops.

‘I have a grandson,’ he said. ‘Dewi had a son tonight.’

Connie put her hands on his shoulders. The top of his head was level with her nose.

‘That’s wonderful news. Congratulations.’

Dewi was his youngest daughter, who had married and gone to live with her husband’s family. Wayan and his wife missed her badly.

He nodded. ‘I wanted you to know.’

‘I’m so pleased. Dewi and Pema must be very happy.’

‘We all are,’ the old man said. ‘We all are. A new baby. And a boy.’