I make my own fun, p.8
I Make My Own Fun, page 8
I don’t like seeing my reflection like this, with all its shine rubbed off. But I take the lift up to the lobby and walk to the exit with my backpack hanging precariously off my right shoulder, looking down at my phone, and no one on the front desk even looks up from their computers. When I get out on the street, I slip seamlessly into a group of shoppers making their way towards the Tube. It feels illicit, being this anonymous, which makes my discomfort with my reflection worth it. Besides, I might as well get used to it. Me and this wig are going to be spending a lot of time together over the next few days.
I’m making my way to the address Jules sent, the home of a repugnant man called Charles. Charles is a private investigator. He worked at a string of ratty tabloids in the ’90s – peak phone-hacking era – so it wasn’t exactly a huge leap from that to PI. He knows all the tricks of the trade and, being entirely morally bankrupt, is more than happy to farm them out to just about anyone for the right fee. I don’t particularly enjoy paying him a visit – not least because he lives in a depressing new-build in one of the more oppressive London commuter towns. But he does have his uses.
Still in the slipstream of shoppers and tourists, I descend into the Underground station and board a Tube going in the general direction of Charles’s town, trying to ignore the stale air of the morning commuters. Because of the time of day – no longer rush hour, not quite lunchtime – once we move through the central stations my carriage thins out almost entirely. By the time we reach the residential area on the edge of Zone 3 I’ve selected as my first stop, I’m the only one still in it. I’m feeling so pleased with myself that I almost strut off through the station before remembering who I’m supposed to be. When I get out in the fresh air again, I’m faced with row upon row of neat, 1930s terraces, a far cry from the graceful crescents of the city centre. Once again, I’m the only person here. I walk the streets a while, taking it all in. Assessing my options.
I’ve picked up a lot of skills from my work. I absorb something new from every role I play – and by now, there have been a lot of them. I know how to speak French; how to play Lizst’s ‘La Campanella’ flawlessly on the piano; how to bring a knife to a gunfight and actually make it work. I also know how to break into a car, which is ludicrously easy if you have the right tools: and of course I do, in this ugly-as-sin backpack. There are scores of cars, and whilst I could take the easy route and use a fob to clone the key for any one of them, I feel like going analogue. I scan for all the cars that look like they’re used to cart multiple children to and from school and doctors’ appointments and play dates. In my experience the people who drive these vehicles are prime car-theft targets: often too stressed to be truly organised, always leaving the spare key in the glovebox it arrived in rather than bringing it into the house where it might actually be of some use.
I settle on a teal six-seater littered with unidentifiable crumbs and a school tie strewn on the back seat. I pull the pump wedge from my backpack, an item that looks too ridiculous to be capable of anything so devious as grand theft auto. But then again, I’m only borrowing this car. Gleefully, I slide the wedge into the car door and pump until it springs open and I can slide in and search the glovebox. Not that it was in question, but I chose my victim perfectly, and the key is sitting in there next to a crumpled packet of cigarettes and some deodorant. People are so predictable. It’s not long before I’m zooming even further into suburbia, watching the streets get more tree-lined and the houses further apart the closer I get to Charles’s. I beam with self-satisfaction the whole drive. I’m so much more than a pretty face, I think as I go, fingers tapping merrily on the steering wheel. It’s a shame no one will ever know just how much I’m capable of. But then again, I counter, it pays to keep things for myself.
By the time I pull into Charles’s driveway and remember the slimy sewer rat I’m here to see, the sheen of my morning’s success has somewhat worn off. I park next to a matte-black sports car that definitely wasn’t there the last time I was here. He’s already waiting at his front door for me, as I suspected he would be, so he can watch as I de-wig in the wing mirror. Pervert.
‘Marina!’ he exclaims as I walk towards him, gravel crunching unpleasantly through my flip-flops. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure of a home visit?’
I roll my eyes.
‘You already know why I’m here, Charles,’ I say when I reach him. ‘I know my agent’s been in touch.’
He chuckles – a grating habit – and leans in to give me a kiss on the cheek, which I dodge, crossing my arms over my body instead. As if. Nodding at the matte-black monstrosity on the driveway, I say, ‘Business has been good, I take it.’
‘Technically, you bought me that,’ he replies, with a filthy, wheezing laugh and a wink that should count as a sexual offence. ‘Got her after the last time I came to your rescue.’ He’s referring to some old files he excavated for me a couple of years ago, stuff the press couldn’t print that helped me build a portrait of a politician I was playing in a biopic.
‘Please, Charles,’ I say, rolling my eyes again, ‘I didn’t need you to rescue anything then, and I certainly don’t now.’
He laughs again for no discernible reason, and swings open the front door, beckoning me inside. We walk straight to the living room, all black leather sofas and cabinets of trophies from his glory days. I’m hit with the smell of stale smoke and bad aftershave. If it wasn’t already clear: Charles is very divorced.
Even in these dowdy clothes, I don’t particularly want to sit on his furniture in case I end up smelling like it. He sits, though, the leather squeaking as he leans back into it; he leers up at me, his beady eyes on mine sending a shiver down my spine.
‘All I ever want from you is some light desk research,’ I continue. ‘Just the stuff I don’t have time to do myself. That’s all I’m here for today.’
‘Mmm. Desk research. On this Anna Young girl?’
‘So you have already spoken to Graydon,’ I say. ‘Yes, on Anna Young.’ A small jolt of electricity runs through me as I say her full name out loud.
‘Who is she?’
‘You tell me, Charles. Isn’t that the point of you?’
‘What, total stranger to you, is she? Plucked her out of thin air?’ He chuckles again, licks his teeth. He looks like a lizard. It irritates me, him thinking I’m here to banter with him: like I haven’t got infinite better things to do. All my bravura from this morning has dissipated. I just want to get what I need from him and leave.
‘I don’t think my reasons for contacting you are of any particular importance,’ I say, taking a step towards him as I do. I’m standing to my full height now, shoulders square and authoritative. ‘I just need you to do the job I’m going to pay you handsomely for, and not ask any unnecessary questions.’
Charles shifts. The leather squeaks.
‘Right you are,’ he grumbles. And then, finally, ‘What do you need?’
‘I need access to an Instagram account that already follows her. I need to know who her family is and where they live. And’ – I pause for a second – ‘and you might as well give me her address too, seeing as I assume you’ve already given it to Graydon. I can do the rest myself.’
Charles nods, tells me he can give me the address now and get the rest of it to me in a couple of days, max.
‘That’ll do,’ I say, walking towards the front door. As soon as I see his message come through, I head back out to the joyless teal people carrier.
I only need Charles for the boring stuff – the foundations that I can stand on to do the rest of it. Access to her Instagram, details of her family, her home address. It’s child’s play, really – desk research.
The fieldwork is the fun bit.
RAPUNZEL
I park the teal people carrier somewhere on the way between Charles’s house and where I picked it up; I can’t be bothered to do the whole drive again. Instead, I send Clive my coordinates so he can come collect me. Even through his stoic texting style, I can tell he’s relieved to hear from me. When I didn’t come back from my workout after my usual forty-five minutes he was probably having kittens. I can’t imagine he’d take it well if something were to happen to me on his watch.
Stay there please, Marina, he texts back.
I’ll be with you in less than an hour. Should be able to blue light it.
After a perfunctory browse of my fan Twitter accounts, I rifle through the glovebox again. In addition to the cigarettes and the deodorant I found earlier, there is a lighter, a half-finished packet of Polos, an ice scraper and, amusingly, a pack of Protectors-branded playing cards. I pull out all the ones featuring myself or Jenni, placing all of mine carefully in the front pocket of my backpack. I grab the lighter and, one by one, burn all but one of Jenni’s cards, watching her tiny smiley face melt into the blue flame until there’s nothing but ash left. Then I rearrange the remaining cards in ascending order in their pack, place the pack back in the glovebox, and take the last Jenni card round to the front of the car. I stick it under the wiper like a parking ticket, enjoying the thought of the confusion this will cause the stranger who owns this car when they eventually track it down. Perhaps it’ll even spook them, make them think they’ve been marked by some superhero-obsessed killer. A delicious thought.
When Clive arrives, blue light and all, his brow is so deeply furrowed you could land a plane on it. He was worried about me, slipping away like that. Or worried about his job – I suppose they’re one and the same.
‘Don’t give me that look, Clive,’ I say after I’ve climbed into the back seat and taken the wig off again. ‘You know I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself if I need to. And besides’ – I hold up the wig so he can see it in the rear-view mirror – ‘I have protection.’
‘I know,’ he replies in his slow sergeant’s staccato, ‘and I don’t want to intrude on your private life, but if you let me know the next time you want to leave the premises, I’d be more than happy to arrange for some plain-clothed security to keep an eye on you. Your safety is my number one concern, Marina.’
I think about my next couple of days, the field research I want to do on Anna whilst I wait for Charles to send through his research. It would be much easier if I just have Clive on side and out of the way, then I won’t have to deal with his worries. Clive is patriarchal to a fault: to him, I’m somewhere between his small, sweet daughter who’s never been told no and a Disney princess, locked in a tower he’s duty-bound to guard.
I let out a melodic, weary sigh, as if I’m feeling terribly misunderstood.
‘I know it is, and I know you would. But sometimes I don’t want an eye on me. Sometimes I do just want to feel like everybody else...’ Is this overkill? I think as the words come out, but one glance at his glinting eyes in the rear-view mirror tells me it’s bang on. I keep going.
‘I’m here strictly for pleasure, Clive, no business whatsoever. I want to wander round the city inconspicuously, even if only for a few days. Couldn’t we just... pretend I’m a regular person, no security, for a day or two?’ I imbue this request with enough wistfulness and hope to give a real Disney princess a run for her money.
Clive catches my eye in the mirror and breaks into a reluctant smile.
‘Well, you’re the boss,’ he says by way of approval. ‘But any trouble – anything at all – and I’m there.’
I beam back at him. Like taking candy from a baby.
FIELD WORK
I start each of these days by making myself unremarkable again – wig, bad clothes, defeated posture. Then I walk north from my hotel to the address I got from Charles. The first time, it’s all I can do not to skip the whole way there – I’m full of girlish anticipation to see her life unfold before me. To really get under Anna’s skin.
Her flat is the ground floor of a tired Victorian house on a corner plot. There’s a sad playpark with a rusty slide and a broken swing set directly opposite the house, and I set myself up there, early in the morning, waiting for the house to wake. I think about the last time I saw her. I look at the black front door, paint peeling, and the overgrown square patch of grass sitting just in front of it. So this is where she came back to, after she last kissed me. I imagine her as she was that night, red-wine drunk, consumed with thoughts of me – my scent, my clothes, my lips on hers. I imagine her walking through this front door, forcing herself not to call out to her flatmates all about the life-changing evening I’d given her. Lying in bed and willing herself not to message me because she’s trying to play it cool, to drag out her time with me.
After about twenty minutes, someone opens the curtains in the window facing me and I feel the hairs on my arms stand on end. It’s not Anna, just another girl – but not long after that the front door swings open and out she comes, her shock of pink hair ablaze in the morning sun. I linger in the rusty playground for a moment, my eyes on her, before falling in step with her movements, going wherever she takes me. Surrendering control. She puts her headphones on, and I type her name into Spotify to find her profile so I can see what she’s listening to and play the same thing. This is good. This is fun! I’m having fun.
I follow Anna as she goes about her morning. She picks up a coffee from a tired café and I hear her laugh with the barista from the doorway two shops down. She doesn’t take the Tube, for which I’m relieved – I don’t think I could stand two Tube journeys in as many days – and walks instead down endless winding streets, avoiding the main roads, until she gets to a canal. The canal path is narrow, single-file only, and I have to work a bit harder to make sure she doesn’t notice me; she turns around to pet a dog at one point so I turn around as well, face to the mildewy brickwork.
When I reach the dog myself, I feel a stab of envy that this slobbering thing had her hands on it so much more recently than me. I bend down to hold its face myself when its owner isn’t looking and stamp hard on its tail as I walk away. Eventually, Anna leads me to a children’s nursery which she disappears inside for several hours, during which time I scroll through her Spotify playlists, all named, rather earnestly, after the date they were made.
When Anna leaves the nursery in the early afternoon, she heads back to her home, where I watch her again from the playpark. With the curtains open I can see that the room facing it is a living room. Anna sits in there for hours with her flatmates – I count two of them, both women – laughing and watching TV. Lazing around, basically. I admire it: how at ease she is in her space, in her body.
The second day begins much like the first, the only variation being the strength of the morning sun – weaker – and the lack of a dog on the canal walk. As we walk just out of step with each other, I find myself marvelling at how Anna never once looks over her shoulder or suspects she’s being followed. She’s so certain of her own security and so unbothered by the world around her. I fight the urge to itch my scalp through my wig.
When we get to the nursery I station myself in the exact same spot as the day before, perfectly positioned on a bench to see when she leaves. Every so often a bus goes past, and my own face on an Interspace poster beams down at me like a god, or – less divine – Mimi Westenberg’s on some mid-range clothing campaign. I’m pleased that there are more of mine than there are of Mimi’s. As I’m working my way through ‘17.03.17’ – a mixed bag, musically speaking, some Nicki Minaj, some Mac DeMarco – Anna comes back out the nursery entrance. This time, she’s not alone. She’s moving her hands a lot as she speaks. It makes me smile, thinking of our dinner and the wine she spilled everywhere. Only now she seems angry. Her cheeks are a violent red. Her companion, a man whose dour face is as thin and angular as the offensive loafers on his sockless feet, is clearly the object of Anna’s ire. They walk together in a different direction to Anna’s house, and I follow suit, resuming my position several beats behind her. I can just about hear their conversation.
‘...you just had no right to do that, Matt, not in front of everyone else. How do you think that made me look to all of them?’ I hear Anna saying, and I feel a soft ache in my chest at the frustration in her voice.
‘I think you’re overreacting, to be honest,’ Matt replies. ‘It wasn’t that big a deal. I would want you to tell me if you thought I was doing something wrong.’
I nearly scoff out loud at that. In my experience good-looking, interesting women are very rarely ‘doing something wrong’. Mostly, the average men they work with just want something to lord over them.
‘Yeah, well, I didn’t fucking ask you, you just offered me your unsolicited opinion on something that doesn’t even concern you. You just couldn’t resist sticking your nose in. You’re a ghoulish fucking twat.’
‘Ghoulish? Come on, mate, that’s a bit harsh.’
‘Ghoulish is like the least offensive word I could call you.’ Anna practically spits the words out. She comes to a sudden halt – as do I – and continues: ‘Whatever. I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m going this way.’
At that point, Anna crosses the street and Matt is left standing alone, his pointy feet sticking outwards like hands on a clock. He looks around furtively to see if anyone saw Anna yell at him – he doesn’t register me in my pedestrian outfit – and in that moment Matt strikes me as a pitiable husk of masculinity. Anna was right to call him ghoulish.
Just as I’m considering whether I should stay behind Anna or follow Matt, my phone buzzes with an email from Charles. Greedily, I open it up there and then to see what he’s found for me, the people I can use to really understand the depths of Anna’s character. I would never go to the immediate family, obviously – parents get a little funny about people poking around after their children, even very charismatic, famous people like me. I’m hoping for someone slightly removed.
