Her last summer, p.1
Her Last Summer, page 1
HER LAST SUMMER
NINA MANNING
In loving memory of Mark Parker. You are gold.
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
More from Nina Manning
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Nina Manning
The Murder List
About Boldwood Books
PROLOGUE
The water is so cold it takes my breath away. And then in the place of my breath, is an image. An image of him as he watches me struggle.
I’m not ready. I’m never going to be ready.
Voices are echoing around me; I’m hitting ripples of waves but I’m not sure if they’re trying to embrace me. I am gasping for air now, breathing in and out no longer comes naturally. I’m bobbing up and down, the waves carrying me. The horizon appears and disappears, and she is there, but I cannot reach her. Time was deceptive. I felt I could hide behind it, but it’s fluid, never stopping to allow me to come to terms with anything, to seek repentance. I had vowed I would never get back into the water, but of course, this was always going to be the outcome. I never really had a choice.
My focus begins to get hazier, and the memories start to pound at me, hitting me hard with every pelt of wave. Voices are louder but I can’t speak, I can’t shout, I can’t ask for help. Just like it was all those years ago, I feel helpless, powerless to what is happening to me.
Hands on me, under my arms, I am being lifted and pulled. I land in a RIB boat, faces staring at me, talking to me, asking, telling, ‘You will be okay, Rey, we’ve got you now. You’re safe.’
But they don’t know, they don’t understand, that keeping me in the water was the only way to keep me safe.
1
NOW
The air was so thick and dense, the room so hazy I could barely make out the body in front of me. But I knew they were naked, and because the sun was coming up, I knew I stayed the night. The bong that the man was sucking on was filling the air around me with plumes of smoke and I half closed my eyes so that he was completely gone, and the smoke became clouds, and I was in the middle of them, floating. I was wrapped up in their fluffiness and I felt warm and protected. Like the way he made me feel last night. But the night gave way to morning as it always does, and I wanted to move to find my way home, but to do that would also bring with it reality. There was some slow trance music playing low and the smoke was clearing. He was making his way over to me on the bed. He put his arm across me and kissed me. He tasted of last night’s alcohol and tobacco.
But I was not the girl I had allowed myself to be last night, I was someone else. I was everyone. Yet I was no one. I shuddered at his touch but not in the wanting way I did last night. I kissed him back then I sat up. I heard his soft voice coaxing me back to bed, but I needed to be gone. I needed to get up and prepare myself for whomever I would be today. I don’t know who I am, yet everyone knows who I am.
I asked if I could borrow his hat and scarf to hide my face as I prepared to leave his house. He nodded and told me he would call me later. But I already knew I would not answer and he like everyone else would go on to tell their tale of their experience with the actor Rey Levine, how she was cold and non-committal. How she was wild one minute and shut off the next. I thought about these things, but I did nothing to change them. I didn’t ask anyone for help because I didn’t know if there was anything wrong with me. I thought everyone felt this torn-up version of themselves unless they were drinking or taking drugs. Or if they were acting. Then they could be anyone. But I couldn’t act and be drunk perpetually, so I was left with this fragmented empty shell that I was forced to inhabit most of the time. It was what it was. It was all I knew. And it was now.
I left the man’s house before dawn. He was not a stranger. I knew of him. He’s in the ‘industry’ and if you’re in the industry you’re all a little messed up and so we just use one another. That is what I told myself. But I knew my demons, where they came from and how they grew and grew and became so entwined inside me that I couldn’t wake up for even one day and think that I was a capable, loving, person who in turn deserved to be loved.
There was a dark shadow that followed me wherever I went. I could never escape. It was forcing me to remember, but when I tried to reach for the memories, I hit something hard and solid and could never reach them.
Outside in the street, people were milling around everywhere because every day is market day in Camden, and it was summer. There was a mist in the air and the sun was creeping into the sky, etching the edges of the grey a hazy yellow and I knew it would be a good day. I knew I needed to feel grateful for what I had, for what I had become, but I could not forget. She was everywhere; in the wind, in the rain, in my dreams and nightmares. Some days I could feel content enough to believe she was just in my imagination and that I only ever had one younger sister, not two. But then I felt her all over again. And I knew she was real. I lived each day with the memory of Corsica and the night Franny left us. I knew I did something terrible, something wrong. I knew this was all my fault – somehow in many ways and not just one. It was often like a reel playing on repeat. And when I saw it and felt it all over again, I thought about what I could have done to have made it better. And I wouldn’t have done what I did. That one terrible act, a rash decision of a desperate teenager. I was older and supposedly wiser. But I lost her. Forever. I was only left with fragments of memories of who she was, that I must cobble together each day to remind me she was once real. She did exist. It was her face that greeted me every morning and said goodnight to me every evening. I woke up in a stranger’s bed sometimes because I didn’t want to keep being reminded, I didn’t want her to haunt me. Yet when I tried to forget her, like last night – and I was able to forget her – I woke up the next morning laden with guilt. I apologised profusely to her – silently in my head. I’m sorry. I just needed a night without you. And then she was back, begging me not to go, telling me to stay. And every single time, I went. And every single time she was not there when I returned.
2
NOW
The phone ringing through a hazy half-dream stirred me and I rose, too quickly, making me light-headed. I grappled on the bedside table and found the phone, but I ended up nudging it, so it fell to the floor with a heavy clump on the reconditioned floorboards. The ones I’d had done six years ago when my career was just flourishing, when I was an actor that everyone was beginning to recognise and I could no longer leave my house without sensing that someone was watching me, or even secretly filming me with their camera phone. These last few years have been quieter. I could say it was my decision, but things spiralled. She, Franny, eventually got the better of me. It was inevitable; I have been hiding from the pain since I was almost seventeen. The last film I had been in, I behaved so badly on and off set that the job offers dried up afterwards. The work I was offered beyond that, I had considered beneath me, when in hindsight, I should have taken the roles. I had overthought it. I presumed I was being punished for my behaviour and I let myself slip into a downward spiral of negativity. The job offers were the sort of things I had done before and would have served me well, given me back that scrap of reputation that I needed and so badly craved.
I knew that the call would be from my agent. She was, after all, the only person who called me at ridiculous hours of the morning – aside from my mother, but it was even too early for a call from her. She usually reserved the voice-to-voice until she was well and truly lubricated. Gin being her drink of choice. She would begin around 10 a.m. meaning that by midday I was on her mind, either as someone to lay into because all the emotions from the past were high and intense. It had been a few weeks since I had heard from Mum. I was due a call.
By the time I found my phone, it had rung off. It had been my agent. It was just after 9 a.m. I had been asleep for a mere few hours, having collapsed into my bed after completing the walk of shame. Sylvie would be leaving me a message as I lay there, telling me that I needed to get up, start exercising, and maybe think about my career, maybe post something on Instagram. Show people that I am still alive, that I have a fire burning within me. I could almost hear her voice anyway without the need to dial into the voicemail. Rey, I assure you, the work will come back in. You’re not a failed actor, nor an out-of-work actor. This is simply a quiet period.
A quiet period that h
I got out of bed, pulled on a hoody over my vest top, stepped into the kitchen, flicked on the kettle, and squeezed cat food from a pouch into Freckle’s bowl.
I put the radio on, leaving it tuned into BBC 6, and went about searching for food for myself. I had skipped dinner last night and opted instead for a line of white powder up my nostril, an amuse-bouche to the array of drinks which had followed and were the catalyst to falling into the arms of… I don’t remember his name. I knew he was working on a TV drama, and I think at one point I may have begged him for a role.
I am lucky that I purchased this basement flat early on in my career or I would be, quite frankly, screwed. Freckle had come into my life four years ago, a present to myself after a particularly messy breakup. Not the only messy breakup, just one that had managed to mess with my already pickled brain. Despite being a basement flat, it is massive, and the kitchen/diner front room gets a good amount of light from the huge window. And I often take myself upstairs to the small patio area I had embellished with some potted plants that, despite not knowing anything about gardening, I have managed to keep alive for several years. It is quite the little oasis. I made a coffee and took myself up there, settled myself on the reclining chair, and contemplated the day ahead.
I heard my phone ringing again and I ignored it, choosing instead to close my eyes and soak up the mid-morning sun. It was early June and it had rained solidly for three days. Now it was bright and warm, and it was giving me life. London, especially Camden in the summer, was all I ever needed to survive, to get me through another year, despite the background noise in my mind. The constant chatter, the constant what-ifs and regrets. The face of my sister. So small. So precious.
The phone rang again. I put my coffee down and walked back down the small flight of steps to the back door that leads into my flat and headed for my bedroom. Someone who calls three times in a row must have something important to say and if it is my agent again, then maybe, just maybe, it is finally a job. God knows I had waited long enough and God knows I needed the money more than ever. My bank balance, which had looked healthy a few months ago, was dwindling, and I didn’t like the measly figure that showed up whenever I logged onto Internet banking. The phone cut off just before I reached it and when I checked, Sylvie’s name was there again. My agent needed to speak with me. I called her back immediately and she answered, almost breathlessly and my heart began to soar a little at the prospect of this being the beginning of something and then I stopped myself. It could be a meet and greet, a few measly thousand; it could be another talk show offer. I knew by now not to get my hopes up.
‘Sylvie,’ I said when I heard her pick up.
‘Rey.’ There was excitement brewing in her voice, I could hear it even as she uttered that one syllable. ‘I have news.’
I took a sharp breath in and waited.
‘I have a job. An actual job. A film.’
I let out a breath. ‘Thank fuck,’ I muttered not necessarily to Sylvie. The relief, if it was a perfume, would be palpable and would have spread across my bedroom by now.
‘The film already has quite a buzz around it. They’re already talking about awards.’ Sylvie paused for reaction.
‘Okay.’ I allowed a flutter of excitement to bubble up inside me.
‘The production company is Expanse. You’ve never worked with them before. They had someone who had started working with them already, but she’s pulled out, so they asked for you. And…’ Sylvie took a deep breath. ‘They spoke about the last film, the breakdown.’ Sylvie said the word as though she had just gritted her teeth. I hated the way she referred to it as that, especially in that tone. I went a bit off the rails, delayed grief, shock, whatever you want to call it. A breakdown didn’t sound right, it felt ancient, like something that I heard my parents discussing about people they knew. A breakdown to me was a middle-aged man, once confident and powerful moping around in their dressing gown, drinking their best brandy in the middle of the day and shouting across the lawn at the postman, a mass of unshaven and unkempt hair. That was not me. I had upset some people, said some things I should not have said, not to their faces at least. And I drank. And I smoked and I took drugs. The drinking and drugs was much less than it once was, I was still doing a little but at least I was more focused now. I still thought of Franny every day, she was still ever present, but I was not staring into the abyss any more. And I believed Sylvie that the work would come back in. I had always believed her. And now it was. But why were they questioning the past for goodness’ sake?
‘And I assured them,’ Sylvie continued, ‘that it was a family matter and you have sought help, you have been working very hard on your…’ She paused to think of an appropriate word, then plumped for ‘Yourself. Which you have!’ she added. ‘You’ve been very quiet.’
‘That’s because I haven’t had any work.’
‘I know, which is why I am here now, telling you that you have. I just want to know you’re okay and up for it?’
I paused for a moment. I didn’t want to rush in with a high-pitched ‘I am!’ which would sound unconvincing.
‘I’m fine, Sylvie. Really, I am.’
I heard her sigh with relief, and I congratulated myself on my mini performance. Had it escaped her mind that she was managing an actor?
‘Okay. Well, one more thing, and this should cheer you up, they have already confirmed Dexter Rice to play the lead male.’
There was more silence from me. Dexter Rice. To say I had dreamt about working with Dexter once or twice would be an understatement. I had already worked with a few of the great British actors, but Dexter was a young breakthrough star, had already bagged several blockbusters under his belt, and was now by all accounts making the very stylish and highly recommended move for someone in his privileged position – to a lower-budget indie film. This was everything I wanted to hear and more.
‘But I haven’t auditioned?’ I suddenly added.
‘I know. I know. But I am confident that the part is already yours. They have specifically asked for you, Rey. They loved your performance in Cry Baby, they know you are the one for this part. Of course, you’ll go along for a read-through, but I am almost 100 per cent sure this is yours. It was in their tone of voice. I was on a three-way conference call, Rey! Two of them were in LA. That never happens. Like ever.’ Sylvie’s tone was increasing. I could imagine her sitting in her home office, the door firmly closed, blocking out her husband and three sons. This was the only time she ever got to herself when she was working, sitting at her desk and to be able to deliver such high-class news was what made the job worthwhile to Sylvie. She was in her little world in that room, moving and shaking and changing people’s lives and the face of British and worldwide cinema from a small office in a four-storey terraced house in Richmond upon Thames. It amazed me and I was in awe, despite being out of work for almost two years. I wasn’t her only client of course, and as she had assured me so many times, my time would come. And she was right. It had.
