Worn Out Wife Seeks New Life Page 15

  How could she make it really exciting and moving and good? Really good? She needed to write something really good this time. No more hack jobs for the pay packet. Whatever had come together and worked so well for Spangled, she had to make all of that happen again.

  Being here, where Shakespeare had lived and worked all those hundreds of years ago, would surely help. Wouldn’t it?

  She walked, once again, slowly and deliberately through the little wooden rooms. She imagined the much smaller people living here, in the smokiness of the fire, with their many dogs and cats, and the very plain food they had to carefully grow, catch, harvest and cook – vegetable soups and the odd chunk of meat, an occasional spoonful of honey as a treat.

  Somehow, the baby born here hundreds of years ago began to think, began to imagine and began to write, words tumbling into his mind and flowing out from his pen. And people right across the world were still reading his words today. It was just incredible when you really thought about it.

  River walked out into the back garden and took in the flowers rocking in the breeze, the rows of vegetables, and this view of the humble house from the garden. How had William Shakespeare conjured up such a vast world from such a humble beginning? He had written about kings, queens and emperors and captured all the secrets of the human heart. His words still stood because they were still true. They told the most important stories, and revealed the smallest secrets.

  She didn’t want to make some cheesy LA version of what he had created. Even if this was a crappy project for a highly commercial production company, and even if she just needed the money, she wanted to make something good out of it, something special and something true. But that was probably going to be even harder than she thought it would be.

  She hardly wanted to admit to herself how desperate she was for this to turn out really well. Her career wasn’t where it could be, where it should be. She’d been overlooked, forgotten about really – you could hardly find Spangled on any of the movie channels any more – and she was determined to make the best possible use of this chance. But Shakespeare… re-writing Shakespeare was a big ask. She didn’t know yet if she was going to be able to step up.

  ‘River? River Romero? Is that you? Yes… it is you! What in the world are you doing in Stratford?’

  She turned away from the view of the house that had caught her attention and pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head to get a better look in the direction of this oh-so familiar voice.

  He was a little older, of course, but fit, tanned, and suiting the careful transition to steely grey hair. The ageing process was generally so much kinder to male film stars than female ones. He’d no doubt had some light peeling here and some Botox there to lessen the cragginess and here he was, looking handsome, expensive and groomed in his caramel suede jacket.

  Unfortunately, it was far too late to duck, or to run and hide.

  In her head, she shrieked: ‘What the actual freaking fuck? What are you doing here?’ while thanking the tiny inner voice that had made her sort her hair, pick the fresh outfit, add the smoky eyes and spritz on the good stuff.

  Out loud, she managed to say, ‘Oh, hey, Franklyn… that jacket will not help you in the English rain, buddy.’

  And she was pleased with the line, even thought it was a little snarky and not the kind of thing you’re supposed to say when you randomly cross paths with the enviably successful previous love of your life, who you maybe should have settled down with, but instead you chose to walk away aged twenty-nine… and of course, you’ve occasionally revisited your decision and wondered what might have been, if you’d chosen differently.

  21

  What did you wear to a dance lesson? Leggings, a sports bra and a baggy t-shirt was what Tess had decided on. Then she’d added her ankle socks and running shoes, and yes, she had considered a last-minute online purchase of dance shoes, but then thought maybe her new dance teacher could advise.

  She put her hair up in a messy ponytail, settled the dogs down with a treat, then left the apartment and went down the stairs to number 33. She knocked briskly and it only took Larry a few moments to answer.

  ‘Hi, Tess, you’re right on time,’ he greeted her. She was relieved to see he was in a loose t-shirt too, along with some cropped sweatpants. The only obvious signs of ‘dance teacher’ came from the soft, well-worn, leather jazz shoes laced onto his feet, his effortlessly upright posture and the sculpted muscles on his arms.

  ‘Hi Larry… well… this is… quite exciting!’ she said, although actually she felt oddly nervous and exposed.

  ‘I hope so, come in.’

  She stepped into an apartment that was almost identical in layout to River’s. A generous L-shaped space with an open kitchen in the corner, then a calm and ordered living room opposite the generous windows that led out onto the balcony.

  But in Larry’s apartment, the wide entry space, where River had a dining room table and chairs, was empty and a ballet barre and tall mirrors had been put in place along the wall.

  ‘Welcome to my very own in-house studio.’

  ‘Your apartment is lovely,’ Tess told him and it was true. It was decorated in warm, welcoming shades of taupe and beige with bright bursts of colour like the orange kitchen doors and the emerald green sofa. It felt warm, bright and inspiring, but Tess couldn’t shake her growing nervousness.

  ‘Okay, so the idea is we don’t hang about here, we start straight in and we talk as we move. Does that sound okay to you?’

  ‘Erm… yes… you say move… you do realise that I’m a total beginner? I haven’t a clue how to do anything.’

  ‘Everyone says that and it’s not true!’ Larry countered, as he moved gracefully into the centre of the space. ‘We all know how to dance, we’ve just forgotten, because we’ve got all adult and rigid and set in our ways. My job is to show you how to undo that. So let’s just stand here.’ He motioned to a spot close to the mirror, beside the barre, so Tess put down her handbag and went and stood there.

  All adult and rigid and set in our ways… Tess was beginning to think that this was exactly her problem and not just when it came to dancing. How was she going to loosen up… in so many areas? Did she even want to? Could she? What was future Tess going to be like? The questions swirled as Larry stood in front of her and put his hands on her shoulders.

  ‘Okay, first of all, shoulders dowwwwwn,’ he said, pressing gently to help them on their downward journey, ‘and neck and head lifting up from the shoulders. Very good… and now arms out to the side and moving gently up and down like this…’

  As Tess tried to copy Larry’s elegant movements, he asked her: ‘So tell me what you do for exercise every week?’

  ‘Well… not as much as I should,’ she admitted. ‘I used to walk the dog twice a day, but she died a month ago…’

  ‘Oh no, I’m so sorry,’ he broke in.

  ‘Thank you… it was really sad. And she had slowed down a lot, so I suppose it wasn’t the exercise it used to be.’

  ‘And what else?’ Larry asked, making a little correction to the way she was raising her arm.

  ‘Well…’ Tess searched her mind. ‘There were some yoga classes over the winter, but I found it all quite boring. Tinkly bell music… and I’m not at all supple.’

  ‘So some slow dog walks… oh boy,’ Larry said, looking disappointed in her, ‘so we’re starting from a pretty low base here then. You let me know if anything gets too tough for you, okay?’

  This felt like another LA insult. She had come here to rejuvenate, relax and develop fresh ideas. But for a moment Tess wondered if going to Thailand might have been more gentle.

  She tried to copy his deep leg bends, then the leg lifts and the bends from the waist. The backs of her legs burned, and her arms were already exhausted from what she assumed must be just the warm up. She guessed that Larry was several years older than her, but he was moving gracefully and entirely effortlessly. Not for the first time, Tess wondered why she’d never found
the time in her life to take her fitness seriously. It would only have taken an hour a day… forty minutes, even.

  The children… the job… the house… the garden… it all took an unbelievable amount of time and energy. And, in all honesty, she never ever felt that a run or a dance or an online class would revive her after a long day. She usually felt that the sofa, a large glass of wine and a bowl of crisps were what was required to revive her. Or, at the very least, reward her.

  ‘Let’s put some music on and step it up,’ Larry suggested, once they seemed to have gone through every kind of painful bend-lift-stretch-and-hold combination that the human mind could create. ‘What kind of music do you like?’

  And now Tess’s mind was blank. What kind of music did she like? Not the dirge-like stuff that Alex played, or the bouncy pop that followed Natalie all around the house; she wasn’t much of a fan of Dave’s music either, he still liked to bring out the 1990 Art School soulful classics.

  ‘Um… I don’t really know…’ she admitted.

  ‘You don’t know! Of course you know! You must know,’ Larry insisted.

  But she shook her head and felt at a loss. There just hadn’t been time for her music, for years. She couldn’t remember when she last actively listened to music and she didn’t want to mention songs she had liked ten or twenty years ago… it would be embarrassing and just make her feel completely out of touch.

  ‘Okay… I’m going to put on my white-girl playlist and you can tell me if you like it. Follow my lead, we’re going to do some core and butt moves now because every dancer needs those muscles.’

  And to the strains of ‘Uptown Funk’ – ‘too hot, hot damn’ – Tess followed Larry, move by tortuous move, and worked hard.

  ‘Just thirty-second bursts,’ Larry told her, ‘Throw everything at it for thirty seconds and then rest up.’

  Soon, she was rosy faced and sweating, but Larry was encouraging. ‘Not bad…’ he told her, as the warming up and stretching out session was done, the muscles were nice and warm, so now it was time to start some real dance moves. So, he began. ‘Arms up, leg out to the side, bend the knee and gentle, controlled jump…’ Larry made it look elegant and easy.

  He turned Tess towards the mirror and demonstrated once again. Then she made her first attempt and to her horror, not only was it far more difficult than it looked, but there, galumphing in front of the mirror, was Nelly the graceless elephant.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she exclaimed. ‘That was awful! I was completely terrible. Horrible! Hopeless!’

  ‘No, no, no,’ Larry assured her, ‘just give it another try, think: lift up the spine, chin up, shoulders down and light on the feet and graceful…’

  Tess tried once again but whatever she thought she could do in her head, her body had a completely different idea. She looked so clumsy, she could cry. Lumping and bumping about in leggings and Dave’s grey t-shirt.

  ‘Too hot… hot damn!’

  She was definitely not too hot… well, not in that sense. Hot and bothered maybe.

  What on earth was she doing? What was she doing here? In this room? In this city? In this country? What on earth did she think she was doing? Her brain spiralled into a despairing little crisis. And what had happened to her figure? She’d not faced up to the boobs and the bulges quite so directly before. She’d once been fit and relatively sleek and the kind of person who managed a run at the weekend and an exercise class on a Wednesday, a regular swim, a four-mile round walk with a young and excited Bella pulling her along.

  When did she get so… aaargh… mumsy? Teenage children, young adult children; it all started to suck the life out of you – those endless emotional conversations and arguments and dramas and difficulties. Lifts here, there and everywhere, the constant trips to the supermarket to make sure the fridge and the cupboards were full. And don’t mention office life with all its sitting and meetings and endless cups of tea and biscuit runs.

  This is where it had all left her – lumpy, shapeless and clumsy.

  What’s happened to me, she couldn’t help asking herself? Tess, the responsible one, who was always picking up or running after everyone else… never leaving one moment in the day for herself. Usually so capable… so in control… but not here in a dance class. Not doing this.

  Her face was turning scarlet with heat and embarrassment. She’d never seen herself quite so clearly as a frump and a clumsy frump at that. But here she was, standing in front of the mirror, attempting the simplest step and making an absolute twaddle of it. Hot tears leapt up to the back of her eyes and her throat burned. Where have I gone, she wondered? What about me?

  ‘I have to go,’ she told Larry. ‘I’m very sorry, but this is not for me. I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this. It just isn’t going to work,’ she blurted out, flustered.

  Larry looked genuinely surprised.

  ‘Hey, Tess, it’s okay… it’s totally okay,’ he exclaimed. ‘Honestly, you’re doing fine. If you don’t like the step or the song, we’ll change it… we can start simple.’

  But she was already fumbling with the door, desperate to get out into the corridor, so he wouldn’t see her tears.

  22

  River sat behind the steering wheel of the parked car and watched people come and go. She was in a supermarket car park. The weather was grey and everyone who passed looked kind of grey or beige too. Her heart had just about stopped racing from the encounter with Franklyn and now she was left with the tumble of thoughts that he had provoked.

  It wasn’t that she was still in love with him, of course not. It wasn’t that she was sorry she had fallen out of love with him and they had broken up. No, that wasn’t it either. It was pure and simple success envy.

  When they’d been together, he’d been an actor who was starting to get the breaks and the success and she was a writer who was doing the same. Their career trajectory had looked so assured. They had made it look easy… work hard for a few years, accept a few rejections and then get your foot on the bottom rungs of the ladder of success and start climbing.

  Now Franklyn was a massive star. He played the lead in blockbuster movies and major TV series. His face beamed out at you from magazines at the checkout; he had catchphrases that people turned into online memes. And meanwhile, she was still hustling from job to job with breaks between work that made her just about insane with anxiety. Could Franklyn have helped her out when she had started to struggle? Well, in fact, he had tried. He had called up out of the blue one day, over a year after they’d split, and asked if she wanted to join the writing team on some project he was putting together. But, of course, River had played the proud and angry card; she’d been insulted that he’d handed her a bone like this. So she’d told him she was busy, and couldn’t take it on.

  ‘C’mon, River,’ he’d told her, ‘this is not a favour; this is a good, solid project and you’d do it really well. We need your voice on this one.’

  But no, she’d stuck it out and turned him down. And he’d never come back to her with any kind of work offer again.

  ‘Maybe I should have taken the freaking job!’ she said to herself, out loud, ‘Maybe if I’d taken that job, I would not be sitting in a supermarket car park in the rain.’

  She tried to imagine what Franklyn’s Stratford accommodation was like… he must be staying in an enormous house; his wife and two daughters were probably there too. There was most likely a driver… to take Franklyn to Stratford and his family on day trips and shopping trips to London. There was probably a housekeeper and a chef… maybe a personal trainer and a personal assistant… and no doubt his phone buzzed and beeped and rang all day long with exciting calls and opportunities and Very Important People who wanted to speak to him ASAP.

  There was a tap on the car window right beside her head. A man’s face was close to the glass and he was obviously keen to speak to her. She considered him for a moment. He didn’t look overly crazy, in fact, he was wearing a bright yellow vest and possibly had some kind of officia
l duty to perform. So she pressed the window button, but nothing happened as the engine was off. Should she turn the engine on and then lower the window? Instead, she opted for opening the door.

  ‘Hi, yes? Can I help you?’ she went with a strict and officious tone, to ward of any kind of craziness.

  ‘Good afternoon, madam, are you planning to do any shopping with us today?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, you’ve been parked here for two hours and fifty-six minutes and in four minutes time, you’ll be liable for a £80 fine. As you can see from the signage placed in strategic positions all around the car park, this car park is for customers only and there is a three-hour maximum time limit.’

  ‘What?’ she demanded.

  The man merely pointed to a huge bright yellow sign attached to a lamppost just two feet away from the car, that she hadn’t noticed at all. In LA, you drove somewhere and you parked. That was it, no hassle, no complications. The whole of the UK was determined to make driving and parking two of the most difficult activities a human could pursue. Climate change, though. So surely that was a good thing?

  ‘I can’t see any evidence that you have shopped. Are you intending to shop here?’ he asked.

  ‘What? No! Well… yes, maybe.’ She considered that getting something nice to eat tonight might be good compensation for this afternoon.

  ‘Can I suggest that you drive out of the car park, park on the road outside and then come in and get the shopping?’

  ‘What? No! Can’t I just get my shopping now?’

  ‘I don’t think you would be able to shop in three minutes and forty-five seconds, though, would you?’

  ‘No, but you’re not going to give me a ticket now are you? I’ll only be ten, maybe fifteen minutes over.’

  ‘There are cameras…’

  ‘Oh, for freak’s sake! Never mind the cameras. I’m a human being; I take it that you’re a human being. Are we going to let the machines control us? Look…’ Her temper was rising now. ‘I’m going to go into that store and buy a good amount of groceries. Not like a candy bar. Then I’m going to come out and drive my car away without getting a ticket. Does that sound okay to you?’