It would have to be the actress playing Ali, wouldn’t it? Andy’s words ricochet around my head like a stray bullet as I hurry down the corridor away from the registration desk. Sam can handle it, scavenger hunters and all.
We mailed. Yesterday. We pinged messages back and forth and not once did he casually say, Hey, Lexi, guess what? I hung out with a couple of guys from the film. Including film-Ali. But if he had said that, I would have thought it was absolutely fine and had no problem with it whatsoever, because why should I?
Because, obviously, I wouldn’t. I don’t.
Do I?
Because I didn’t mean to, don’t mean to…and yet this feels an awful lot like I do.
Inside, deep down inside where no one can see it, I think I do. I have a problem with it.
Lexi Angelo, are you jealous?
I thought he liked me, that’s all. In his room in York, I thought…
After all, it was me who pulled away. I was the one who took a step back. I don’t have any right to be jealous – and yet, I don’t know…maybe I expected it would take a little longer for him to turn around and go after someone else. So no, not jealous, exactly. I guess I just expected…more. I expected he’d be upfront with me about where we are – or where he is, anyway, because there isn’t really an “us”, is there?
Was I right…or was I an idiot? Either way, this sucks.
The ops room door is half-hidden, covered by a mirrored panel in a back corridor of the hotel – and as I reach to pull it open, my reflection meets me. She’s not exactly “glamorous actress” material; not in the red convention staff T-shirt that has splashes of Bede’s coffee on it, or with the crazy hair that comes from forgetting to pack conditioner and having to use the two-in-one conditioner and body lotion (how is that even a thing? Who thought that up?) in the hotel shower – or even, if you look past all that, the fingernail that’s turning suspiciously black after she managed to hit it with a hammer during the art-show build. She does not look like the sort of person you’d lean towards during breakfast on the balcony of a hotel on the Amalfi coast.
Leaning. Balcony.
Nobody said anything about leaning or balconies; Mirror-Lexi has come up with that one all on her own.
Thanks, Mirror-Lexi. Thanks for nothing.
I yank the door open.
Ops is even more chaotic than usual because, by some miracle, Dad’s team is overstaffed. Just for once we have enough people to actually run a convention and make sure everyone gets breaks and time off and food. When I told Nadiya and Bede, they actually high-fived. And cackled. I don’t know whether Dad, in a fit of post-honeymoon bliss, overbooked people, or whether everyone was so keen to meet this new, mellow version of Max Angelo that they all showed up (they never all show up). But either way, the ops room is absolutely stuffed full of people.
Which is not what I want.
What I want is for the ops room to be empty so I can sit down in peace and quiet until the pounding in my head and the shredded feeling in my heart go away – but no such luck. I’m barely through the door when the walkie in my pocket barks into life.
“We’ve lost the Doctor Who writers,” says Nadiya through the speaker. I sigh, and fumble the radio out of my pocket.
“What do you mean, ‘lost’ them? Lost them where?”
“They’ve all gone down the pub for lunch.”
“What…all of them?”
“Yep.”
I grab a schedule from the table, running a finger down the columns until I find the item I want. I look at the clock. Right.
“But we need them for their soundcheck in ten minutes…”
“That’s Doctor Who writers for you. They said they’d be back in time…”
“I can’t decide if that was supposed to be a really bad joke or not.”
Across the ops room, Marie looks up from the banquet list she’s ticking off. “Don’t worry. I know where they’ve gone. I’ll get to the end of this page and then I’ll fetch them.”
“You will? You’re amazing, Marie, you know that?”
“I do.” She tries to look serious, but then ends up smiling anyway as she shuffles the pages of her list together and tucks them into her bag on the floor. “Won’t be a sec…”
As she steps out, the sounds of the convention drift through from the corridor – more distant than normal, but still there. The sounds I normally love. Laughter and the rise and fall of voices; a smatter of applause from one of the panel rooms and music from one of the activity rooms (formal elvish dancing, by the sound of it). Today though, between that and the chatter all around me, I can’t take it. I need to be on my own. Let someone else – anyone else – take care of the convention for a while. I need to take care of my life. Putting the walkie on the table, I slip out of the room again. Nobody seems to notice – or at least, nobody asks me for anything, nobody tells me anything, nobody says anything.
I know where I’m going – there’s a spot under a table in the empty banqueting hall with my name on it.
Halfway down the corridor, I’m overtaken by Bede and Mike – one of Dad’s senior staff (The One Who Gets Things Fixed) racing past. Mike doesn’t run very often. Mike is running now, and leaving a trail of curses so substantial behind him that the air virtually turns pale blue.
“Bede!” I shout after them, and Bede turns – still jogging backwards.
“Lift broke!” he shouts back.
“The lift?” Unlike a lot of hotels, this one has a single lift serving the lower floor of the convention area, and I’ve been worried about it from the start. Sam’s been using it at every available opportunity, just in case it did break down with her inside it and she had to be rescued by firemen. “Shit.”
“Mike’s going to shout at someone.”
“Who?”
“Anyone he can find! Want to come watch?”
“You go. Make sure he doesn’t get us thrown out, okay?”
Bede hurtles off in pursuit of Mike. They don’t need me; in the big picture, Mike’s higher up the food chain than I am and this is what he does. Besides, he can shout a lot louder than I can. He used to be an actor and apparently it’s something to do with breathing from the diaphragm…
The further I follow the corridor, the quieter the convention gets. The banquet hall here is at the front of the hotel overlooking the bay, the tables all set out ready for tonight. One of the staff hears me come in and pops his head around a pillar – he has an empty tray tucked under his arm and an invisible hand reaches into my chest and squeezes my heart because it makes me think of Aidan…
Outside, the rain lashes against the plate-glass windows. I’m sure there’s the whole of Cardiff Bay out there somewhere, but from here it’s just a great big wet grey smear. Like my soul.
I check the waiter’s gone and clamber under the nearest table, letting the tablecloth drop down behind me. Only then – when I know I’m alone – do I slip my phone out of my pocket. There’s no reception (as usual; why would anyone in a hotel want anything as boring as for their phone to work?) so I connect to the hotel Wi-Fi and open Instagram, typing Haydn Swift into the search bar…or gadtyn aqift as it comes out, because apparently that sausage I dropped on my phone at breakfast made more of a mess than I realized. Fortunately for me, my phone knows who I mean, and suddenly my screen is filled with blue.
Blue skies, blue seas. A lemon tree. What looks like a medieval fortress, perched up on a rock – and everything washed in the most brilliant, buttery sunlight. I can almost feel the warmth of it from here – despite the sound of the rain beating against glass.
Sea salt and sun. If he were here now, if I could bury my face in the side of his neck and breathe him in, that’s what Aidan would smell like. But he isn’t here. He’s there. Dozens of him, small enough to fit into the palm of my hand over and over again.
He’s on a stage in front of a green backdrop, his eyes laughing behind his glasses as he sits on a wooden chair with a copy of his book in his hand.
He’s gazing out over an azure sea, the wall he’s leaning against painted ochre-red.
He’s posing in front of a bookshop; the old-fashioned bow-fronted window artfully arranged with copies of Piecekeepers – Capolavoro, they’ve called it there. I don’t know if it even means the same thing – can it? And is it the same book if it has a different title? If the name is something else…can it be the same?
A salmon-pink sunset over a harbour wall.
A row of vast, glittering motor yachts; all of them glossy white with glistening steel rails. Lights under the surface turning the harbour water a glossy green.
Aidan – Haydn – again, on the deck of one of those boats as it leaves a tiny port; behind him a washed-out mountain looms over a misty coast. The caption below the photo reads: Working hard, playing hard in Ischia. Keeping an eye on Vesuvius though. Just in case… followed by a load of tags. Thankfully, he hasn’t included #blessed or #nofilter because the Winky Face of Idiocy is quite bad enough.
At least there’s no sign of any actresses in these. That helps.
Except…who took the photos?
Not him.
Who was with him? At the bookshop and the festival, probably someone from his publisher. But on the boat? Who was that?
I can’t bear to look for the photos Andy was talking about. It would be so easy – but then could I ever unsee them? Would they be better or worse than I imagine? As long as I don’t see them, I can tell myself what I want. As long as I don’t go looking, I’m still in control.
I guess it doesn’t really matter, does it? This is Haydn, not Aidan. This is public, not private. This is the famous bestselling author with his game face on (yes, it’s a bestseller already; no, of course I haven’t been checking, whatever would give that impression?), not the guy who spills UHT milk all over himself in the early hours of the morning. Not the one who’s allergic to lilies. Not the one who stood on the roof of a Brighton hotel with me and told me I knew him, even though I barely knew him at all…
And yet, however hard I tell myself that, there’s still this feeling.
I can’t control this, can I? People can’t be managed by to-do lists and feelings don’t stick to the plan. I can solve any problem you give me at a convention, any puzzle…but I can’t solve this.
I can’t solve him.
I took a risk, and what did it get me? This scraping sensation down the inside of my ribs; the feeling rattling down my arms that everything is too small and too imperfect and too stupid for words…
It’s all him…not me.
He said that himself. Aidan and Haydn aren’t the same. They aren’t. They aren’t. I tell myself that and I stare at the screen, at the tiny, tiny Haydns lined up in their neat little grid. These aren’t Aidan. They’re projections of him; ghosts. Masks and mirrors and what he wants the rest of the world to see. But they aren’t him. They aren’t what I see.
What was it Mum said? Stand up for myself? Be proud of who I am.
Right. So, I solve problems. I’m proud of that. It’s what I do.
And there’s only one way to solve this one: I’m going to call him.
Because Aidan is my problem.
I’m going to call him and talk to him and I’ll feel like I’ve done something useful, instead of sitting here under a table stalking him from halfway across a continent. If it matters, he’ll tell me who took the photos, he’ll tell me what happened at breakfast. He’ll tell me because I know him.
And if he doesn’t?
Shut up, Lexi.
I scuttle sideways out from beneath the table – and frighten the life out of one of the cleaners wiping the windows. He actually drops the cloth he’s using – I didn’t think I was that scary. I do feel better though. Lighter. This is good. This is a positive thing. I’ll speak to Aidan, and then I’ll catch Dad and ask him if we can talk. He’s been in such a perky mood that he might even say yes – and it’s not like he can tell me we don’t have enough staff for both of us to spare ten minutes for a chat, is it? I’ll tell him how much I love the conventions, how much I love what we do…but I need to look beyond them too, and work out who I am when I’m not being Max Angelo’s perfectly organized, perfectly in-control daughter. I’ll have to do it sooner or later – might as well make it sooner, right?
If I can keep out of the way of the scavenger hunters, this might even turn out to be a good day.
I’m almost at the door when I hear footsteps – running footsteps – and suddenly Sam bursts through the doors into the banquet hall.
“Lexi.”
She’s out of breath; she’s been looking for me.
“What? If it’s about the lift, I know and—”
“It’s not the lift.” She shakes her head. “You’d better come. The ambulance will be here any time…”
“Stop. Ambulance?” Oh, god. One of the convention members has had an accident. That must be it. How many first-aiders have we got? Where did I put the insurance forms? Do we have any doctors around or do I need to call the hotel one? Dad’ll know. “Okay. Is Dad there already or do I need to call him?” Bugger. Left the walkie in the ops room. We’ll have to run back there to fetch it…
Sam’s face turns ashen. “You don’t know. Oh god.”
“Know what?”
“Lex, it’s your dad. The ambulance is for him.”
My phone slips from my fingers and something cracks as it hits the floor – but what that is, I simply don’t know.