“Cut...Thank you. Very good.”

  The bell rang again. From stillness, activity. The dangling boom lifted. A costume girl, very mannishly dressed, hurried in to wrap the naked nun in a pink towelling dressing gown. The actress, climbing off the man beneath her, then off the bed, and now leaving the set, was Natasha. Geraldine hid, quickly retracing her steps, handing the headphones back to the soundman. Natasha, busy asking for a cigarette, didn’t look in her direction, but Geraldine kept her back turned, just in case.

  “Geraldine? Royston Dammers.” It was Harry introducing the new director, a man in his sixties, rather theatrical type, white badger stripes at his temples, horn-rimmed spectacles, cravat. ENSA. Quota quickies. Films with John Mills and Bryan Forbes under his belt. Films with men bobbing in the sea in life jackets.

  “Pleased to meet you.” Handshake light as a feather. Voice to match.

  “Steady hand at the tiller,” glowed Sheinberg. “Are you happy with what you’ve seen?”

  Geraldine laughed coyly, casting her eyes to her foot, which was swivelling on its toe. “It’s not up to me to tell you how to make your film, Mr Sheinberg.” She inadvertently caught sight of the clapperboard, which still had Marcus Rand’s name in the box marked “director”, and the producer saw that she had.

  “Let’s go out in the sunshine, shall we?”

  The artificiality of the horror film was replaced with what she thought looked more like an industrial complex, the kind you saw in the suburbs, wide roads between sound stages that looked like aircraft hangars. Nothing looked particularly artistic about the studio, really. It could have been a place where they were manufacturing ball bearings.

  “Great loss, of course,” Sheinberg said quietly as they walked in the shade, a golf buggy humming past. “A tragedy. So young. But life goes on.” He seemed, briefly, to want to detect emotion in her face, but she showed only surprise that the producer was waxing wistful now the young man was gone, almost as if he had a personal affection for him rather than a business relationship. “He had strong ideas, see? Stubborn. Absolute conviction he was right. Don’t know if that comes from the class he was brought up in. You know his mother and father were killed?” Her expression told him she didn’t, not until that moment. “Yes...He was four years old. Armed burglary. House full of antiques, expensive paintings. Mayfair. The police found the boy sitting there.”

  “How dreadful.”

  “If you ask me, that’s what drove him to make films that horrified people. Deep down he wanted to make them understand terror, violence, for what it really is.” Sheinberg sank his hands deep into his pockets. “He might have gone on to be a genius. Won an Oscar. Won a whole shelf of ’em. We’ll never know.” As he spoke, Geraldine could see Natasha, still in the pink dressing gown, smoking outside a makeup caravan while a camp little fellow in a Beatle cut and floral shirt tweaked her hair.

  “I suppose you think I’m to blame?” she said.

  Sheinberg didn’t look at her, but squinted under the assault of the sun. “If we could go back and do things differently, we would—we all would, but we can’t. He was a good boy. Bit of a demon. But he was the one took the drugs. Nobody else.”

  Across the road, Geraldine could see an undertaker with a dagger sunk up to its hilt in his bicep, eating a hot dog.

  “All good, clean fun,” said Sheinberg, noticing what she was looking at.

  She didn’t know whether the words were the producer’s cri de coeur, an apology, or the catch phrase of some comedian she didn’t know about. But he smiled. So she did also.

  That afternoon saw her assessing a new Frankenstein film from the Pitchfork stable. Frankenstein Mon Amour. She saw Harry’s name come up, and that of his co-producer, Monty Cass, known to be the “money man” behind the business. As she’d anticipated, the laboratory scenes pushed new boundaries of disgust without any appreciable dramatic merit. The acting was jaw-droppingly stagey: one could virtually see the dollar signs on the thesps’ pupils—yet it did nothing to relieve the endless litany of shots involving blood and guts, limbs sawn from a dangling cadaver on a gibbet, or digestive tracts lifted like well-fed pythons from an abdomen then dropped into a bucket. Her friend the projectionist had decided to come in and sit next to her.

  “I don’t need you to hold my hand, Dave.”

  “I know that. I need you to hold mine. I get scared back there all on me own.” In the gloom he could see her hesitant smile, but she didn’t lose her concentration or composure, and every few minutes scribbled intently in her notebook.

  “Maybe we should sit in the back row, eh?” he said, after a while, chancing it.

  No reaction. He waited for a reply and was sure he wouldn’t get it. He began to think he’d said the wrong thing, yet again, till she spoke.

  “My parents are away tonight.” She didn’t take her eyes from Dr Frankenstein lecturing to the young student doctors in the steeply raked medical school auditorium. “They’re going down to Broadstairs to see my Auntie Jean.”

  Dave wondered if she meant what he thought she meant.

  “Are you sure?”

  She, without looking at him, nodded.

  It began with a bottle of vodka and a lot of kissing and cuddling on the settee downstairs, but Geraldine thought that wasn’t going anywhere, they could be kissing all night at that rate, so she took him by the hand and took him up to her bedroom, fairly confident he would comply. There was a part of her that wanted to get it over with, but she didn’t want it to be a horrible experience either. She was glad he hadn’t been drinking beer because she hated that rancid-like hoppy smell on a man’s breath. And vodka didn’t have a taste or smell, thank goodness. She didn’t want anything upsetting her. He was a good-looking man and she feared that prolonging the issue might give her ample opportunity to think that he wasn’t good-looking or nice, and was just like all the rest...except of course there was no “all the rest”—that was part of the problem.

  He took one look at her array of cuddly toys and laughed. She said: “Don’t.” She didn’t want him looking at her Frank Ifield or Adam Faith singles either. She didn’t switch on the light, kicked her Mills & Boon under the bed and undressed to her slip while he took his trousers and shirt off. The light from the landing shone on his skin. He sat on the bed next to her and kissed her, expecting her to fall back against the pillow, but instead she stood up, wriggled out of her panties and pushed him onto his back.

  “Oh, help,” Dave said. He was shocked, but he wasn’t complaining.

  She lifted her slip off, just as the nun in The Mortal Sins of Dracula had peeled off her habit, and rode him as Sister Ingrid had ridden the stranger, hands flat on his chest, hips rising and falling in a steady rhythm, feeling him there where she wanted him, and in control of him; but she wanted so badly to lose control too. Seeing in her mind the image of the blood gushing, the release of that, the terror of it, hearing Dave gasping and grunting as the stranger had gasped and grunted—his hands on her thighs, on her breasts now, clawing, hurting her, but she liked it—the despicable “like” she found so abhorrent to watch, but was immersed in now—not watching but being. And he cried out and she cried out to match him, like they did in films. The sound of fists banging on the gates of the convent, the nuns rushing to the gates, the gates bursting open as the stranger—Marcus—fell into their arms, those white-clad nuns, their purity, and him, injured and dying, covered in blood.

  She rolled onto her back and lay next to Dave, panting.

  He laughed breathily. “What are you doing to me, girl?”

  “Didn’t you like it?”

  “What?”

  “Did it hurt you?” she asked. “I...”

  “Shut up.”

  He propped himself up on one elbow and kissed her. Past him, she could see the shadows in the curtains. The man in the curtains. Marcus. The man who she knew liked watching...

  Dave saw her flinch. Why was she looking away, turning her cheek to the pillow now?

  “What?” He saw her shudder. Didn’t understand. “Do you want me to go? Is that it?”

  “No. No. Stay.” She wrapped her arms round him, held him tight. “Please. I’m afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  Morning light blinded him as she opened the curtains. She was already washed and dressed. He blinked madly, almost in pain. She stood with her back to him, looking out of the window.

  “Those pills that Marcus got,” she said. “Can you get some for me?”

  Dave walked over to her and kissed her between the back of her neck and her shoulder. The sensation of his lips touching the tiny hairs sent a shiver through her body. “Your wish is my command,” he said.

  “I’m sorry if I wasn’t very...you know.”

  He turned her to face him and kissed her for a time. After it, the glow in his face told her that she’d done nothing wrong, there was nothing to worry about, nothing to apologise for, and no need for words. His eyes said, You were wonderful. She smiled.

  “Sorry, I’m bursting for a wee.” When he’d disappeared to the bathroom, she made the bed, puffed the pillows, flattened the bed sheet, then glanced back into the shadowy corner. It didn’t look shadowy anymore.

  Downstairs, she looked at herself in the hall mirror as she brushed her hair, wondering if she looked in any way different now. He came down, tucking his shirttails into his trousers. They were about to leave when, on impulse, he fetched the empty vodka bottle from the sitting room. Better dispose of the evidence. She rinsed the two glasses they’d used and put them on the shelf they came from. The two of them were behaving like criminals, but she didn’t care, it was rather exciting, in fact. She clicked off the double lock on the front door, hesitating before opening it.

  “Do you think people will, you know...know, from looking at us?”

  “I don’t care if they do. Do you?”

  She grinned. Pecked his cheek. Pulled the door wide.

  The thing she saw. Her mum and dad standing there. Her father placing the suitcase down on the pavement. Cut!

  “Your mother had one of her stomachs.”

  Cut to Geraldine. Close up. Geraldine seeing her father was looking straight past her at Dave. “I’m going to work,” she said, more firmly than she’d have expected of herself, taking Dave by the arm, holding him tight beside her and walking between her startled parents. Dave, she could see in her peripheral vision, keeping his head down, and she didn’t blame him.

  “Haven’t you got anything to say, young lady? Can’t you see your mother is upset?”

  “There isn’t much I can do about that, is there?” Geraldine’s blood was coming to the boil.

  “We’re not fools. We know what goes on in this day and age, but you don’t have to rub our noses in it.”

  Dave said, “Mr Copper—”

  “I’m not talking to you. I don’t acknowledge your existence, as a matter of fact.”

  Geraldine, already spinning round. “Don’t you dare talk to Dave like that!”

  “Don’t dare? Don’t dare? You think you can tell me what I can or can’t dare, young lady? When you sleep under my roof. Sleep with this this this this...” That did it. Dave took a few steps nearer. Geraldine couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “Stop it, Dad!” she screamed at the top of her voice. “Stop! STOP IT!”

  And that was when everything froze, and Geraldine thought it had just frozen in her head, or exploded there, but it hadn’t. Her father’s face had gone that grey-white colour of the stringy stuff you threw away when you prepare fish. Something about the smell when you did that hit her and her stomach jerked. But his arm was shaking and he was gasping, the way a fish does when it’s on dry land, and the strength left him, the plug was pulled, and for a second he was sitting on the suitcase, tilting over, and then he was lying there, sprawled.

  “Dad...” Geraldine fell to her knees. “Dad? DAD?”

  Dave was off finding a pay phone to ring Geraldine’s office to tell them what had happened. Why she wasn’t in today. She and her mum—who’d travelled in the ambulance, Geraldine and Dave in a taxi—sat on hospital chairs, bent over, waiting for news. The absence of it made Geraldine feel sick and hollow, and she supposed her mother felt the same, so she avoided looking at her watch yet again, or asking a nurse what was happening and walked to the self-service machine to get them both a cup of tea.

  Fishing for change in her handbag, she noticed two nuns walking through the seating area. Nothing unusual about that. Nuns could be in a hospital. Nuns could be anywhere. Perhaps they were ministering to the sick, giving the last rites to the dying—or could only priests do that? If so, why were they chatting so cheerily? Geraldine watched them enter a side room and shut the door. They accidentally left it open a few inches and, if she moved a few yards closer to the reception desk, Geraldine could see clearly inside. The nozzle was spouting hot liquid into her cardboard cup, but she was watching one of the nuns lifting her habit off over her head, exposing her naked and substantial breasts.

  “Mrs Copper?”

  Geraldine blinked, turned, and saw her mother look up, bewildered as a child, as the Pakistani doctor addressed her.

  “Would you come this way, please?”

  A few paces behind, Geraldine followed them towards a small consulting room, glancing back to see that the door to the side room was now shut. She knew what she and her mother were going to be told in the consulting room. They would be told that her father was dead. She almost knew exactly, word for word, what would be said, as if she was reading the pages of a script, or hearing the lines of dialogue uttered by actors. Lines she wanted to cross out, and say were not allowed, or distasteful, or upsetting, and should be cut.

  Her father had not been a great lover of music, and the best the family could come up with in terms of hymns was “All Things Bright and Beautiful.” The mourners’ rendering had something of a children’s Nativity play about it, lacking both musicality and depth of feeling in abundance. Geraldine hadn’t anticipated to what extent such a chirpy song could actually sound like a dirge.

  Unbidden, an image popped up in her mind from The Mortal Sins of Dracula. The group of undertakers bursting like black-clad gangsters into the funeral, unannounced. As she stared at her father’s coffin lying on the bier in front of the altar, she pictured that lantern-jawed character actor, the one playing the father figure—“Wilhelm Weber” as he was named in the credits—sweeping the flowers off the lid off the coffin onto the floor with one swipe of his black-gloved hand. She remembered how abruptly he’d quelled the rising panic of the congregation: “The disease. We must stop it spreading. Here, and now!”

  But there was no rising panic here, at her father’s funeral. No outrage. No despair. No rending of clothing, or keening of grieving women. Just a dull, excruciating, pitifully English sense of embarrassed acceptance that extended, as it always did in her experience, to the stiltedly formal drinks and dry, curled up sandwiches at the wake afterwards. She didn’t think it was called a wake. She thought a wake came before the burial, in Ireland anyway, where they didn’t tend to be ashamed of expressing their feelings: admittedly, often through the medium of copious alcohol. The English, however, couched their grief in so many layers of politeness and decorum it was, for her, like being wrapped in a shroud yourself.

  Blanking out conversations she dreaded being drawn into, she avoided her friends and relatives, mostly people she’d never met in her life before, but who greeted her mother as if they were meeting royalty—her brother Ron sobbing like a baby, being treated like an invalid or mental defective.

  She gazed down at the cold buffet laid on by the community centre. The plates of sliced Swiss roll and cheddar and Branston pickle on Ritz crackers started to fizz and blur in her mind, bunches of green and red grapes melding into the tiny peeled onions run through by cocktail sticks, the bowls of Twiglets, the half-burnt chipolatas punctuated by dipping pots of tomato ketchup, and sliced cucumber covered in dollops of flesh-coloured Shippam’s fish paste. She couldn’t shake the idea the whole thing laid out on the white linen was one of those cadavers opened up on Dr Frankenstein’s slab, his surgeon’s hands delving in to pull out organ after organ.

  The thought made her bilious and she turned away.

  Unacceptable. Unacceptable.

  She sat on a stool at the bar and plucked cubes from the ice bucket. She could see through to the other bar, where Marcus Rand sat on an identical stool facing her, dressed in his embroidered Afghan “Jimi Hendrix” sheepskin waistcoat, and sunglasses which reflected her face back at her. He raised his glass of red wine as if in greeting.

  “You all right, love?” said Dave.

  Geraldine said she was, as she watched Marcus drink, knowing that she could see him and Dave couldn’t. He was hers. All hers.

  Later, back in Roslyn Road, when the telly was finished, and Kenneth Allsop was gone and the screen was grey-black, and they were just a family again—but they weren’t, they never could be, not really—her mother said she was bushed.

  Dave looked at his watch and stood up, wiping his thighs. “I...I better go. Will you be all right?”

  “No need for that,” said Geraldine’s mum, craning herself out of the armchair with both arms. “You stay, love.”

  Dave was pleased at that. So was Geraldine. It almost made her shed a tear. Her mum was lovely and Geraldine wanted to hurt instead of her, if she could, because her mum had done nothing bad in her whole life and didn’t deserve to be unhappy. But neither of them said anything. Geraldine made some Cadbury’s Drinking Chocolate for her and Dave, but her mum said she didn’t want any. Geraldine asked if she was sure, and she said she was.

  “Goodnight, Mum.”

  “Goodnight, Mrs Copper,” said Dave.

  The two of them lay in bed together in the dark. It felt nice and private and good and there was a bit of guilt involved in that, which Geraldine kept at bay: the fact that her father hadn’t wanted Dave in her life and now he was, and her father wasn’t. But she pushed that thought away—that was the order of things. Wasn’t it? Anyway, she liked it, and felt safe now. Tonight, anyway. One night. This whole night she would lie there and sleep and feel safe.