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Authors: Jenny Oliver
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feeling the immediate relief of the cool inside compared to the belting sun outside.
Winston was up a scaffolding rig painting over the giant spray-painted skull on the hall wall while Radio Two was booming over the deafening thuds of the kitchen demolition. ‘You’re home early,’ he called down.
Emily kicked off her shoes and dumped her bag. ‘I’ve got to pick some stuff up,’ she shouted over the noise.
Winston nodded, then turned back to dip his brush in the white paint before pausing and saying, ‘Just want to say, my mrs showed me the article this morning and I was horrified. Trash. I want you to know that I think it’s trash. Me and the mrs both think that. Says she’s never going to watch a Giles Fox film again.’
Emily smiled. ‘Thanks, Winston. I appreciate it. Although I’m not sure Giles had anything to do with it so I wouldn’t want your wife missing out on his films.’
‘I’ll tell her that, nice of you to say.’ Winston raised his brush at her and then carried on with his painfully slow painting.
Emily went through into the living room where she’d created a makeshift desk in front of the big French windows. She tried not to look around too much when she walked in – the luminous-pink carpet and pineapple wallpaper made her wince. Somewhere else she might have thought it was OK, avante-guard trendy, but not here. When Bernard had owned the manor, this room had been the yellow room. Buttercup paint and pale-cream curtains. Polished wood floorboards and a giant marble fireplace that their dog would stretch wide in front of in winter, Christmas lights twinkling around the big gold mirror above. Every room was known as its colour. Never the living room or the study, but the red room and the green room. Her plans for redecoration were based on exactly that.
Sitting down, she tried to concentrate on an email thread about the huge umbrellas and jugs of cucumber water that would be available alongside the Aperol aperitifs, but the urge to find and read the article was niggling her.
It would be better if she read it, she thought. But it would only upset her.
She bit her fingernail and thought about what someone else might do. She thought about Enid. She was always about facing things head on. She’d been the one to push her to tell Jack about Giles. To come clean and get it all out in the open, even if it meant sending a letter because there was no internet and the phone was always engaged or the line dead. Emily had just wanted to ignore it all and start her new life. Better to just up and leave, she had thought. Jack wasn’t exactly making much contact with her. But Enid had almost stood over her as she wrote.
Clear up after you, Emily. The worst thing you can do is leave someone without answers.
She had written to Jack to tell him about Giles and her impending move to LA. Jack had written back a note that said,
I thought something like that might happen.
No fight, no tears, no upset. Just that she had behaved the way he’d expected.
And Emily had suddenly seen herself, momentarily, through his eyes, through Enid’s eyes, and she had hated it. So just as quickly she had glossed over that vision and packed her bags for Hollywood where, she discovered, no one really cared about what was underneath, as long as the surface was shiny enough.
It was only recently that Emily was starting to see beneath her surface and like what was there. What she was really scared of about this article was that it would mess that up. That the comments and observations would get under her skin and she wouldn’t be able to shake them away. She would see them every time she looked in the mirror.
Don’t read it.
She searched the magazine name and immediately saw a picture of herself in one of the little boxes on its cover. She shut her laptop.
People would mention it at the launch, she thought. They would mention it the way Winston had mentioned it.
All the other pieces that had come from the press
Winston was up a scaffolding rig painting over the giant spray-painted skull on the hall wall while Radio Two was booming over the deafening thuds of the kitchen demolition. ‘You’re home early,’ he called down.
Emily kicked off her shoes and dumped her bag. ‘I’ve got to pick some stuff up,’ she shouted over the noise.
Winston nodded, then turned back to dip his brush in the white paint before pausing and saying, ‘Just want to say, my mrs showed me the article this morning and I was horrified. Trash. I want you to know that I think it’s trash. Me and the mrs both think that. Says she’s never going to watch a Giles Fox film again.’
Emily smiled. ‘Thanks, Winston. I appreciate it. Although I’m not sure Giles had anything to do with it so I wouldn’t want your wife missing out on his films.’
‘I’ll tell her that, nice of you to say.’ Winston raised his brush at her and then carried on with his painfully slow painting.
Emily went through into the living room where she’d created a makeshift desk in front of the big French windows. She tried not to look around too much when she walked in – the luminous-pink carpet and pineapple wallpaper made her wince. Somewhere else she might have thought it was OK, avante-guard trendy, but not here. When Bernard had owned the manor, this room had been the yellow room. Buttercup paint and pale-cream curtains. Polished wood floorboards and a giant marble fireplace that their dog would stretch wide in front of in winter, Christmas lights twinkling around the big gold mirror above. Every room was known as its colour. Never the living room or the study, but the red room and the green room. Her plans for redecoration were based on exactly that.
Sitting down, she tried to concentrate on an email thread about the huge umbrellas and jugs of cucumber water that would be available alongside the Aperol aperitifs, but the urge to find and read the article was niggling her.
It would be better if she read it, she thought. But it would only upset her.
She bit her fingernail and thought about what someone else might do. She thought about Enid. She was always about facing things head on. She’d been the one to push her to tell Jack about Giles. To come clean and get it all out in the open, even if it meant sending a letter because there was no internet and the phone was always engaged or the line dead. Emily had just wanted to ignore it all and start her new life. Better to just up and leave, she had thought. Jack wasn’t exactly making much contact with her. But Enid had almost stood over her as she wrote.
Clear up after you, Emily. The worst thing you can do is leave someone without answers.
She had written to Jack to tell him about Giles and her impending move to LA. Jack had written back a note that said,
I thought something like that might happen.
No fight, no tears, no upset. Just that she had behaved the way he’d expected.
And Emily had suddenly seen herself, momentarily, through his eyes, through Enid’s eyes, and she had hated it. So just as quickly she had glossed over that vision and packed her bags for Hollywood where, she discovered, no one really cared about what was underneath, as long as the surface was shiny enough.
It was only recently that Emily was starting to see beneath her surface and like what was there. What she was really scared of about this article was that it would mess that up. That the comments and observations would get under her skin and she wouldn’t be able to shake them away. She would see them every time she looked in the mirror.
Don’t read it.
She searched the magazine name and immediately saw a picture of herself in one of the little boxes on its cover. She shut her laptop.
People would mention it at the launch, she thought. They would mention it the way Winston had mentioned it.
All the other pieces that had come from the press
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