The past week or so has been a bit of a blur, what with me dashing back and forth between Canterbury and London, trying to spend as much time with Leo as possible in between meetings with Dylan and long writing sessions to get this book finished ASAP. Then, of course, there’s all the time I’m spending avoiding Debbie, the wedding planner from hell. The woman just has no chill whatsoever. Worse still, she doesn’t respect my wishes or my taste at all. She’s constantly trying to force things she thinks we should have, like an extortionately priced, handcrafted white chocolate unicorn sculpture. In August – is she high? You don’t need to be Professor Stephen Hawking to figure out what’s going to happen there.
Not only is working with Dylan a great way for me to hide from Debbie, but it’s giving me a taste of a life I never thought I’d get to live again. I’ve been following him to gigs, TV appearances, parties – all of which are full of fabulous people and free food and drink.
Today is a break from writing and from working on the house, and we’re gathering at my gran and granddad’s house for Sunday dinner. Leo and I are the first to arrive, which will hopefully score me some brownie points with my gran – unless we’re too early.
Leo is making small talk with my gran, so I sneak out into the back garden to see my granddad, who is hiding in his shed.
‘Now then, kid,’ he says as I walk in.
I squeeze him and give him a kiss on the top of the head before sitting down next to him.
‘Look at all these plants,’ I say sarcastically.
‘It’s winter, kid. And I’m only out here to listen to the radio in peace.’
‘Your secret is safe with me,’ I tell him. ‘How are you?’
‘Not too bad,’ he replies. ‘The legs aren’t so good today, I just can’t make them go.’
I rub his shoulder.
‘I’m not enduring Sunday dinner without you, even if I have to carry you in,’ I joke.
He laughs.
‘How’s the new job going?’
‘Ah, it’s great,’ I reply.
‘Glad to hear it,’ he replies. ‘Kind of makes it OK that we’ve hardly seen you.’
‘We need to get you a phone,’ I say, taking my iPhone from my pocket. ‘There’s this app called Skype – I’ll show you – we could see each other.’
I’m only logged in for a few seconds before a call starts coming through.
‘Oh shit,’ I blurt. ‘It’s my old boss.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’d better answer,’ I say. ‘Hello?’
‘Mia Valentina, long time no speak,’ Skinner says cheerfully.
Skinner was my boss at Pink Inc., the screenwriting team I was a part of back when I worked in LA.
‘I know,’ I reply. ‘We haven’t spoken since you fired me because I wouldn’t leave my sister’s wedding to work.’
I hear my granddad snigger quietly.
‘Possibly,’ Skinner replies casually. ‘How have you been? I hear you write books now?’
‘Yeah, great, and I do. It’s all going well, thanks, really enjoying it, getting lots of good reviews.’
‘I don’t doubt you’re good,’ Skinner replies. ‘But you were awesome at writing movies.’
I was, which is why it’s such a shame that he fired me.
‘Listen, I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for days but your Skype was all I had. Do you know what time it is here? But I figured I wanna catch you online, I gotta think like I’m in a different time zone.’
‘Right,’ I reply. ‘So, what’s up?’
‘Remember The Unhappy Couple?’ he asks.
‘Remember it? I won an award for it,’ I remind him.
‘A well-deserved award,’ he says. ‘The powers that be want a sequel – The Unhappy Marriage – and, well, they want the same writers to do the screenplay, and Molly got married, then pregnant, then quit – who saw that one coming? And Savannah is being real fussy about who she’ll work with, but she’s too stressed to do it alone… bottom line, we want you back.’
‘You want me back?’ I repeat. ‘Like, you want to give me my old job back?’
‘Yeah,’ he replies. ‘I’m not happy about the way we ended things and, of course, you would be coming back to a better package than you had before.’
I don’t think Skinner feels bad for sacking me at all, but I think he needs me now and that puts me in a very powerful position. Not only would getting my old job back mean more money, more fabulous parties and more time in sunny LA, but I’d be doing a job I loved, that I was really fucking good at. It always has been and always will be my dream job. I can’t believe I’m getting a second chance.
But then I remember Leo and our house and our life here. There’s no way he’d want to leave his family – even if he said he would – and I wouldn’t want to go without him, even if it was for just one project. We sure could use the money, though, and I could do the right things with it this time.
I know I’m still writing, but there’s no way I could ever be as successful writing books as I was writing movies. I’m just not sure writing movies fits in with my new life. Money and success, or love? Surely it’s a no-brainer.
‘I’ll give you some time to think about it,’ he offers.
‘OK,’ I reply. ‘Thank you.’
‘I just got offered my old job back,’ I tell my granddad after the call ends.
‘Kid, that’s brilliant. Congratulations. Are you going to accept?’
‘I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss it, and that I didn’t need the money… but Leo wouldn’t want to move, and whether he agreed to, even though he didn’t want to, or whether he suggested I go alone for a few months… it just wouldn’t be fair.’
‘That’s very considerate of you, kid. I’m proud of you. I guess it would throw the wedding off too, hey?’
‘Yeah,’ I reply. I hadn’t thought of that.
‘I hear your gran on the phone to your mum, talking about the wedding,’ he starts. ‘I think they’re worried you’re not actually going to get married.’
I face-palm.
‘It’s because I haven’t made any real plans yet,’ I tell him. ‘I’m going to, I’m just so busy.’
‘You sure?’ he asks me.
My granddad, as always, can tell when something isn’t right.
‘I… I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ I admit. ‘But I meet with Debbie and I look at all the different options and I don’t want any of it. It just fills me with this feeling of…’
‘Nothing is worth you getting anxious again, kid.’
When I was a teen I was anxious almost all the time and, at one point, it really got on top of me. I was bullied at school for being a bit fat – amazing, isn’t it, that the biggest crime you can commit as far as your peers are concerned is to be ‘not thin’. Living your life as a fat teenage girl is one of the hardest things you can do – I know it may seem like a very first-world problem, but you can’t even imagine what it’s like. The thing that always amazed me was just how many people would tell me I was fat, as though I didn’t realise every time I had to run or try and buy clothes from the same shops as my friends. Kids at school would tell me, people would shout it from passing cars – even my PE teacher would yell it at me as I failed my sixteenth attempt at the high jump. Ah, the high jump, the highest of academic achievements. Your weight should have no bearing on your worth as a person whatsoever, but it does, and so back then, no one gave me the time of day. It got me down and soon enough my low mood turned into anxiety – about everything. It was a really awful time where I just struggled from one panic attack to the next, and although I got through it, you never really get past it. It still rears its ugly head every now and then, if I’m especially stressed, and that’s what my granddad is worried about.
‘I’m OK,’ I promise. ‘I’m sure I’ll get into the swing of it soon – it’ s my first wedding,’ I laugh.
‘And hopefully your last,’ my granddad smiles.
‘In the spirit of that sentiment, let’s not mention this job offer to Leo,’ I suggest. ‘I don’t want to put him in a difficult position.’
‘Sure,’ my granddad replies. ‘Pass me my stick, will you?’
I hand my granddad his walking stick and watch helplessly as he struggles to pull himself to his feet.
‘I just can’t make my legs go,’ he tells me, shaking his head. ‘Few Yorkshire puddings will see me right.’
I smile. It’s so like my granddad to be so positive when he’s feeling so bad. I offer him my arm to help him back into the house where hopefully dinner is ready.
The thing I love about my grandparents’ house is that – even though I’m sure it has – I don’t feel like it has changed a bit over the course of my life. I used to spend a lot of time here when I was a kid, and all the things that make me think of back then are still present today. My gran still has a bowl of ornamental soaps in her bathroom, shaped like a variety of things, form fruits to seashells. I used to love playing with them when I was a kid, although I learned from a very early age that we didn’t use these soaps to wash hands. I’m not sure if the ones there today are the same ones, or just similar. However, it was the large glass cabinet in the dining room, full of crystal figurines, that I always so desperately wanted to play with, but was never allowed to touch. Perfect, sparkling little swans, rabbits, cats and all sorts of animals made of perfectly clear crystal that beamed a rainbow of colours when the sunlight shone through the dining-room window of an evening. Even today, as we sit and eat dinner, despite being a grown woman, those little figurines will tease me, their bright little colours catching my eye, still making me want to touch them, just once…
‘How are the plants coming along?’ my gran ask. As she fills a pan with water the pipes in the kitchen make a weird noise. It’s like a sort of clunking, gurgling sound.
‘Pardon me,’ my granddad jokes.
My gran rolls her eyes at his toilet humour. ‘Your plants, Jack, how are they coming along?’
‘Coming along nicely,’ my granddad replies, giving Leo and me a sneaky wink.
I wonder if this will be Leo, in 50 years’ time, telling little white lies to get a break from me. Breaks are all we seem to be getting from each other at the moment, and even when we are together, we’re summoned to things like this.
I feel guilty, not telling Leo about my job offer, but what would be the point? It would put him in an unwinnable situation and I wouldn’t want to do that to him. I’ll just wait for Skinner to call back and tell him I don’t want the job. It will be hard, because I don’t just miss the job and the money. The Unhappy Couple was my baby and, since he mentioned the idea of a sequel, my head has been buzzing with exciting ideas. Things have changed, though. I have a different life now, with different responsibilities. I know Leo would never hold me back, and maybe he’d be willing to move to LA with me – he suggested this once before, before we got together – but I know family is his life, and even if he were willing to do it, he’d be making a huge sacrifice. Sometimes I worry that we want different things from life, like I take my happiness from my career but Leo takes his from his family and friends – then again, he doesn’t have a family like mine. The bottom line is that I love him and, when I moved here to make us both happy, I never mentioned the possibility of moving back to LA one day.
I can’t just take off to LA for a few months to write a movie… not without creating an unhappy couple all of my own.