Not Without You (48 page)

THERE’S A GREEN stencil of a flower, like a rose, on the window of my room. That’s all I remember, of the two, three, four? days after the attack. I’ve lost all track of time but whenever I look up it’s there. Sometimes I think I’m awake, sometimes I know I’m asleep and it’s better that way. There are a few other things I recall, with varying degrees of terror or bemusement. The ferocious clang of the pale blue metal bin lid in the hospital room, white cloth and tissues stained blood-red disappearing into its jaws before it snaps shut. A doctor, or someone, talking very loudly right next to my bed, voice blaring like a foghorn into my soggy mind. Someone sobbing, a voice that I know well. I can’t reach out to remember what I feel about the voice and its owner. The pain. The pain closing around me before the cold rush of morphine washes me again in its cool relief.

My first actual memory afterwards is in the middle of the night. I know it’s night because it’s dark. That sounds stupid, but in hospital for a long time you lose your sense of day and night, hot and cold, who you even are. I wake up, look around, and try to move. But when I do it’s agony. I don’t know why I’m there and I start to cry, howling great sobs. My right side doesn’t do anything. It feels heavy, cold, fleshy. My face throbs. I try to lift my hand up to touch it but I can’t feel skin. I try again, lifting my left hand, and it falls onto a mass of cotton dressing. Like a mummy. I trace with one finger, feeling for my eye socket, my cheekbone, but they’re covered up. I can’t feel anything. Then I remember her, remember Sara’s face over me. I scream, hollering so loud my throat hurts. A door swings open, someone comes in, and soon I’m asleep again.

I dream about her. I can hear the words, see her face, the bared teeth, the horrible rictus smile.

‘You stupid bitch. You think it’s over because you decide it’s over?’

She kicks me, in the stomach, and I howl. When you see it on film, it never looks that bad. It is agony, and I curl up as tight as I can.

‘
I
decide.
Me. I’m
in charge now, not you. You understand that?’ She’s so strong. She pulls me up by my hair, thrusting my head back and forward, so I can hear the bones in my neck crunching and I think she might break my neck. Then she throws me back on the floor and starts talking, her mouth open wide, flecked with spittle.

‘You remember the day you went into the studio to talk about
Goodnight LA
, and you threw a hissy fit because they made you read, and you thought you were too fucking big to audition any more? I bet you don’t remember. It’s just another day to you. Well, I was the girl after you. That’s when I started to get mad. Watching you, staring at the rest of us outside the room like we were
dirt
, ’cause you’d made your crappy ditzo films and you thought you were a star … You’re not a star, Sophie, you’re just a stupid bitch who got lucky, and I was the girl due to read after you, and I smiled at you but you didn’t remember me. I should have had that part, that movie sucked with you in it, you made it tacky, you make everything tacky, everything you touch, you skank …’

Her voice is a hissing, rapid monotone. ‘And then that day I saw you in the lobby at WAM and I deliberately elbowed you in the tits, because you know what? You did the same thing to me when you came in for the audition. And you just looked at me like I was fucking scum, like you could have me fired, because you’re the one who got lucky and I’m the girl who should have had the nose job who didn’t get her break and the truth is I deserve it, you’ll never act the way I do … It should have been me. You had no idea who I was, and that’s when something inside me said,
This girl needs to be reminded that she’s nothing.
’

She puts her shoe on my chin, pushes my face up. I don’t fight her. I’m trying to gather my strength. Slowly, quietly, I breathe in and out. ‘You were so desperate for company, it’s tragic. You don’t have any friends, do you? How totally sad is that?’ She makes a boo-hooing sound, and laughs. ‘It was so easy to make you believe I wanted to hang out with you. You, you’re like the total symbol of what I hate about this town. You’re no good. I’m better than you! It should …’ She pauses and swallows saliva. ‘It should have been me, not you.

‘I could cope when you were on the trash heap making shitty films, because that’s where you belong. But you convinced yourself you ought to be a
proper
actress, making
proper
films.’ She’s shaking her head, eyes wide open. ‘How fucking stupid you sound! You! You’re so bad in this movie, and no one’s telling you, because you got them the funding, and they’re too shit-scared to admit you’re ruining it! And you can’t do it again.’

‘Shut up,’ I say. I reach out to take her ankle in my fingers and she glares manically at me, the huge whites of her eyes almost swallowing the irises. I think she might explode.

‘Shut up, Sara,’ I say again. ‘Shut the fuck up. You’re tragic, you know that? You’re living in a—’ With all the strength I can summon, I try to sit up, but when I put weight on my shoulder I realise something’s wrong. A white shaft of pain drives through me and I fall on the ground again.

I call out for help, screaming at the top of my lungs, but the water’s still running and it’s so loud.

She laughs. ‘They’re all downstairs. I got lucky, there’s some drunk guy on the floor below and I told them he was behaving erratically and asking about you,’ she says, stepping lightly on my chest with her foot like a victor, mocking me as I lie on the floor, sobbing quietly. The pain is so bad, I hope I’ll just pass out. ‘No one knows it’s me. I’m out of here, and you’ll never be able to prove it. The CCTV in your room is disconnected, isn’t that weird? I noticed it when I went to check everything was OK in the security booth earlier. You gave me clearance, remember?’ She starts kicking me, short jabs all over my body, laughing.

‘That’s what’s so funny. You worked out it was me, and you’re so arrogant you thought you could just have a little word, make Sara go away, calm her down? Yeah, right. You’re going to be so ugly when I’ve finished with you … You won’t act again, and that’s the only way to get rid of you. You thought you liked Eve Noel, didn’t you? You don’t know anything about her. If you did you’d know she hates white roses. My daddy worked in the clinic where she lost her junk all those years ago, he watched her get the shock treatments, he told us all about her, how all she said all day was, “Take them away, take them away.” That’s why I kept sending them to you, I knew you’d never know. I just liked the idea that your idol was crazy in the head, and the thing you thought you knew about her, you were wrong about, because she hated them, and now you hate them too.

‘Your face is
fucked
.’ She stamped on my face again, and I cried out in pain, in huge, huge pain. Not sharp, stabbing needles, like before, but internal, agonising, gnawing, heaving pain, the kind that makes you pass out. She did it once more, wiping her lips with her hands, so the lipstick she was wearing smeared across her face, and her eyes were staring at me. I knew she was mad – even then I clung to that – but it was me who’d sent her that way, I was the trigger, and I couldn’t help thinking as she did it again, and I prayed to just give up and pass out, that she was probably right – I had done something, somewhere along the way, to deserve it.

But the next time I woke up in my hospital bed three days later, there she was. Standing there, smiling demonically. And when I started to scream again I realised I wasn’t making any sound. Just the quiet beep of the monitor. The hum of the strip lights. The gentle murmur of low voices outside.

‘Hello, Sophie,’ she says, and I open my eyes wide, and realise I can only see out of one, and that I can’t move, can’t seem to move my face at all.

SHE STARTS TO walk towards me, with that crazed smile on her face, the huge white eyes, and then her guard slips and I think it saved my life. She glances behind her, just for a second, and I know it on a basic, primeval level:
She’s scared.
She doesn’t know what comes next
.

I can’t yell so I act. I flick my one good eye behind her towards the door, looking alarmed. Sara turns around again, on edge and I take a deep, painful breath, reach over, summoning up the last little bit of strength I possess, and with my left arm I pull out my drip.

All of a sudden, things start happening very fast, and because I’m still half out of it, it isn’t until later that we piece it all together. The door swings open. A doctor comes in, and a security guard with two policemen, followed, incredibly, by Eve Noel and Patrick.

Patrick Drew. I stare at him. He stops at the sight of me.

The security guard grabs Sara, as Eve steps towards her. ‘There.’ She points at Sara. ‘It’s her.’

The guard and one of the policemen pull her arms behind her back, and she struggles. I close my eye, so I can’t see if she’s looking at me. I don’t want to see her any more. She starts screaming as they haul her out of the room, her voice high-pitched, like an animal. ‘
No!
No! No! It’s not fair! Leave me alone! No! LEAVE ME ALONE! It’s not fair!!
’

The doctor is tiny, pretty and flustered, with a halo of back-combed hair that’s escaped her tight ponytail. She presses a button beside my bed and holds up my arm, whipping the stethoscope deftly from around her neck and into her ears. Two people in blue scrubs burst in. I look over at Eve, leaning against a wall, looking pale. Patrick Drew takes her by the arm.

‘Would you like to sit down?’ he says.

As the doctors start hooking me up to the drip again I watch him helping her into a seat. ‘Thank you so much,’ says Eve, smiling at him, as if this were totally normal.

‘Eve, what are you doing here?’ I begin, and then I realise the sounds I’m making don’t relate to the words I’m trying to say. I stop.

‘It’s OK, Miss Leigh.’ The doctor looks at the monitor next to me and flicks a biro on my arm. It hurts. I jump. She smiles. ‘You’ve been in a bad way, but you’re getting better, you see?’

I can hear Sara’s voice receding down the corridor, until it’s no more than a tiny, faraway cry. It could be something else entirely. An animal, something in pain, a coyote out in the hills at home. I listen, my eye half closed.

My mouth is thick, heavy, stuffed with something, and I can’t feel my face when I reach up with my left hand to touch it. I turn to the doctor. ‘What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I speak?’

But it sounds like rubbish.

‘I’m sorry—’ The doctor smiles politely. The remaining policeman, pathetically young, shifts uncomfortably, as if the raw, shifting emotion in the room is too much.

‘Here.’ There’s a voice beside me. It’s Patrick. He hands me a notebook and a chewed pencil. ‘Write it down.’

I’ve never been more glad to be left-handed. I write,
It was her. She did it. What’s wrong with me? Why are you both here?

But the letters are crazy, wiggling up and down on the page, like I’m drunk.

The doctor looks at Eve and Patrick, unimpressed. ‘You should go. We don’t have visitors. I need to examine Sophie again.’

The policeman says calmly, ‘We’ll need to ask you two a few questions, madam and …’ He addresses Patrick. ‘Sir. Can we go somewhere …’

I bang my hand on the sheets, shake my head. I write down,
Please, can’t you just tell me why you’re here first?

I hold up the pad. Eve turns to the young policeman and says: ‘Let me explain, my dear, and then we’ll go. A couple of weeks ago, Sophie came to see me. I wouldn’t let her in. Then, some time afterwards, another girl purporting to be Sophie Leigh arrived on my doorstep. I live a quiet life but I knew enough to know they weren’t the same person. As you see, she resembles Miss Leigh somewhat but it wasn’t her. No sparkle. Strange look in her eyes. I have no idea why she came.’ She looks at me. ‘I think she was lonely. I think she wanted to prove she was as good as Sophie, she could play her, control her destiny, if she wanted.’ She lowers her voice, and smiles at me. I try to smile back but I can’t. The room is silent; I look at her, so poised and beautiful, and realise she is almost relishing the audience.

‘I told Sophie this when she visited again a few days ago, and then I didn’t hear anything more until this dreadful business was on the news yesterday. This morning I realised I might be able to help and that …’ She falters. ‘I ought to help. I should have come last night, I know.’ She gives me a small, quick glance of apology. ‘I came to London, and my agent met me off the train. She took me to the Dorchester, to inquire as to where the police investigation was based so that I might give them my evidence. While I was waiting in the lobby of the hotel, this young man –’ she gestures to Patrick – ‘approached me, and asked me if I was the actress Eve Noel, which I am.’

The larger, older policeman has re-entered the room. He jerks his head back, as if someone behind has him on a string. I can see him thinking, ‘That’s it!’ The younger one looks a little blank.

‘We fell into conversation. I explained the situation to him. He told me the young lady in question was at the hospital with Sophie. That no one had realised yet it was she who was responsible. We came here with all possible haste. In fact, it seems as if we arrived in the nick of time.’

Patrick nods. ‘How the hell did she get away with it?’ He turns to me. ‘Sophie. Wow. I’m so sorry.’

His kind eyes, his beautiful face: I stare at him, realising I’m probably off my head on morphine and I shouldn’t try to speak again. He feels like a benign presence, here in this brightly lit room, cluttered with steel and plastic and machines that beep. I think back to that coffee, on that sunny LA afternoon, when the biggest concern of my life was appearing in public with a sweat patch under my armpits, and how he thought it was kind of ridiculous. He was right.

I hold out my hand. ‘Thank you,’ I try to say, to him, and to Eve. She nods, then mutters something into her lap and stands up. ‘I have to go, I have an appointment,’ she says. When she looks up, her eyes are full of tears. She kisses my forehead. ‘Thank you,’ she says.