Lucy was older than her father? How had that happened? This made her feel even queasier. She was afraid that she would see the Ghost of Sophie Future.
Lucy didn’t look older than her father. She was wearing what appeared to be a Foale and Tuffin dress, a moddy white thing with a big orange 3D letter on the side, and she had the figure and the legs for it, still. She looked old, though, in the way that a ghost looks old. Her make-up was so thick that her face was white and blank, those big eyes lost in the middle of it, the only features capable of expression. That’s where Sophie could see Lucy, in the eyes, but they looked trapped, the eyes of a frightened animal buried in snow. And she was too old to be prancing around outside a sentry box with a bunch of young dancers wearing busbies, while a pop group that Diane said was the Dave Clark Five mimed on a makeshift stage to the side of them. (They cut the scene, in the end. Lucy in London turned out to be terrible, but even a terrible show had no room for the dancing guardsmen in the busbies.)
‘Do you think this was written?’ said Diane.
‘Everything’s written,’ said Sophie.
‘Gosh,’ said Diane. ‘I really do have a chance, don’t I?’
Sophie was staring intently at Lucy.
‘She looks different,’ she whispered.
‘She’s had something done to her face,’ said Diane. She wasn’t whispering, and Sophie shooshed her.
‘What do you mean? Why would anyone do anything to their face?’
‘They have operations,’ said Diane. ‘To make them look younger. Facelifts and so on. I think she’s had her eyes tucked.’
‘Tucked?’
‘They stretch the skin, to get rid of the wrinkles. Can you see? That’s where the make-up is heaviest, around the eyes. She can’t make her faces. Look. It’s so sad. Promise me you’ll never do that.’
Sophie didn’t answer. She understood that one day she’d have to choose, as Lucy had had to choose. You could have all sorts of operations that left you unable to act; or you could let your eyes and your bust and your chin go where they wanted to go. And if you did that, then nobody would give you a show called Lucy in London, or Sophie in Hollywood. She wished Lucy wasn’t making a spectacle of herself outside Buckingham Palace. It was undignified. But was it any more dignified to sit at home waiting for the phone to ring, like Dulcie, who’d appeared in the first-anniversary episode of Barbara (and Jim)? Or to give up entirely, and get fat, and spend the last twenty-five years of your life thinking about the time when you were young and pretty and famous? She wished she didn’t spend so much time worrying about the end of it all, but she couldn’t help it. Being at the top of your career was like being at the top of a Ferris wheel: you knew that you had to keep moving, and you knew which way you were going. You had no choice.
Lucy in London
Lucy and the dancing guardsmen got to the end of their routine, and they took a break, and a young man came over to usher Sophie towards Lucy. Sophie suddenly realized that Lucy was going to look at her, that those eyes would meet hers, and she thought her knees might buckle.
‘Hello, dear,’ said Lucy.
‘Hello,’ said Sophie. ‘I like your dress.’
‘Isn’t it darling? Congratulations on your show.’
‘Have you seen it? Did you like it?’ said Sophie.
She couldn’t stop herself. It was a mistake, of course. She knew it was a mistake because she saw a door close in Lucy’s head, the door that led from her brain to those eyes. Those eyes were still looking at her, but they may as well have been behind a television screen. Lucy had gone.
‘Oh, it’s all right,’ Sophie said then, except she was squeaking now, not speaking. ‘You wouldn’t have. Sorry.’
‘Thank you so much for coming all this way to say hello, dear,’ said Lucy, and then she was led away. Nobody took a photograph.
‘Oh,’ said Diane. ‘Oh, well. What an old bag.’
‘No,’ said Sophie. ‘No. I did it all wrong.’
‘What did you do wrong?’
‘I shouldn’t have asked that.’
‘Why on earth not?’
‘I overstepped the mark.’
‘How are you supposed to know where the mark is?’
But she had known. It was very faint, and nobody else would have known it was there, apart from the two of them, her and Lucy. (The two of them! Her and Lucy! Even that distinction, between them and the rest of the world, seemed presumptuous.) Sophie had seen it and she had ignored it, because she’d been greedy. She had asked Lucy for proof that she existed, and Lucy wasn’t able to provide it, because Sophie didn’t exist, not yet, and maybe not ever, not in the way that Lucy existed. She began to fear that she would always be greedy, all the time. Nothing ever seemed to fill her up. Nothing ever seemed to touch the sides.