Soft Limits Page 2

  “Then hire someone to write it for you.”

  I grimace. “That would be worse. I’d have to read someone putting words in my mouth.”

  Mona comes in and plops herself on the sofa behind her sister. Bored and hot, she seems to cast about for something to do. After a moment she scoops up a handful of Lisbet’s long hair and starts working it into a complicated braid.

  Anton sips his whisky, thinking. “Do a biography then. Third-person. Someone interviews you and the people who know you best and writes it up. All the dirt along with all the bragging. I’m sure any biographer worth their salt could dig up a few dozen people who hate the very sight of you. It’s what’s called a balanced view, I hear.”

  “People in the theater world who hate the sight of me? Oh, easily. The problem with a biography, though, is how do you end it? I’m not dead.”

  Anton waves this away. “Oh, that’s the writer’s problem. They’ll figure something out, and it doesn’t need to be flashy. Marianne Faithfull’s book ends with a recipe for chicken.”

  It’s not the writer’s problem. It’s mine. I have no idea what happens next.

  Mona’s been half listening to our conversation, it seems, because suddenly she turns to us. “Honestly, get Evie to do it. She knows your career back to front and she’s read every character you’ve ever played. She could probably write half of the book off the top of her head.”

  Anton gives me an appraising look.

  More to put an end to the conversation than anything else, I say, “Have you got anything she’s written?”

  Mona thinks for a moment. “Good question. All her ghostwritten books must be at college because I haven’t seen them here. She’s so private about that stuff. There’s probably something on her hard drive...” She makes an exasperated face, as if asking her sister about this is more trouble than it’s worth. Then she brightens. “I know! Give me your email address and I’ll send you a link.”

  Anton digs his phone out of his pocket. “I’ve got his address, Mona. I’ll send it to you now.” Once he’s done this and laid his phone aside he looks back at me, thoughtful. “Why is Martin so keen for this to happen? Why now?”

  I consider whether to tell him. I should tell him, as he’s going to find out sooner or later. But an irrational fear grips me. You have to get on the stage in this country in a few monthsʼ time. Do you really want to speak it aloud? I thought I was immune from silly theater superstitions, but it seems I’m not.

  “Wants his cut, doesn’t he?” I say, forcing a smile. “Been talking about getting a holiday house for the last year. Then he comes up with this book idea.”

  Anton grins. “That sounds like Martin.”

  Once I’ve finished my whisky I head upstairs. It’s very still outside, not even the slightest breeze stirring the net curtains on this hot, sticky night. I check my email on my laptop and see that Mona has sent me a link. I click through and frown at the screen. I’m not sure what I’m looking at. There’s a list of pieces and their characters and word counts. A name catches my eye. That’s curious... I click through and start to read.

  Two hours later I sit back, bewildered and amused. Evangeline Bell. Who would have thought?

  Closing the laptop, I ponder things for a moment. The book’s a pain in the ass but it’s not going to go away. Maybe, with Evie, I’ve found a way to make it a worthwhile project after all.

  Chapter Three

  Evie

  The next day is even hotter and by four p.m. the sunlight is hammering through my bedroom window. Fed up with the stifling heat and my sweaty fingers sticking to the computer keys, I take my sewing basket outside and pad barefoot over the grass to the folly at the bottom of the garden.

  It’s cooler there beneath the trees and twining roses. I sit cross-legged on a bench and tip the cast of A Midsummer Night’s Dream out onto my lap. This is my little preoccupation: sewing figurines from my favorite stories. Dolls, I suppose you’d call them. Their bodies are all much the same, little calico heads with embroidered faces, and sticklike arms and legs stuffed with cotton wool. The costumes, though, are elaborate. I’ve finished Oberon’s beaded jacket and breeches and this afternoon I’m going to put the last touches on Titania’s fairy queen gown.

  There, my proud lady, I think, straightening her skirts and smiling, you’re a match for any fairy king, aren’t you?

  I’m engrossed in stitching clusters of tiny iridescent beads to her skirt when a shadow falls across my lap. I look up and see Monsieur d’Estang standing before me in a blue shirt. He holds out my notebooks to me with a smile.

  “Hello. These are yours. You left them behind when you were in such a hurry to get out of my car.”

  “Oh, yes. Sorry about that.” I take the books from him. “I didn’t mean to be rude, it’s just that... Do you have siblings, Monsieur d’Estang?”

  “Frederic, please.” He laughs and sits down next to me. “Yes I do, and if I fell over in front of a stationary car they would crow over it for days. I didn’t tell them you fell, you know. You didn’t need to run.” He looks at the figurines in my lap, and Oberon lying on the bench next to me. Picking him up he examines the costume. He seems to recognize the little troupe as he quotes, “‘Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.’” But he doesn’t say it to the doll. He says it to me and Titania.

  Delighted that he knows the words, I play along, holding up the fairy queen and saying, “‘What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence: I have forsworn his bed and company.’” It’s only as I’m finishing the quote that I realize how flirtatious it is. My heart starts to thump a little too hard.

  “‘Tarry, rash wanton: am not I thy lord?’” He delivers the line as Shakespeare meant it to be, with all the authority of the king of the fairies. Then he turns to the basket and peers inside.

  “May I?”

  When I nod, he extracts Dracula and Frankenstein’s Monster, Mr. Wickham in his red coat, the White Witch from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the duo of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and then finally the Phantom from The Phantom of the Opera.

  “What a little basket of villainy you have, Evie,” he murmurs, examining the Phantom closely. I stitched him with dark hair very much like Frederic’s own. Jekyll and Hyde, two more of his characters, have his hair and green eyes, too.

  “They’re not all villains.” They’re just mostly villains.

  The Phantom has a beautiful black satin cape and a little plaster mask. Frederic smiles as he peers at my handiwork. I feel a compulsion to pull out my phone and photograph him. The Phantom admiring his miniature doppelgänger, what an Instagram post that would make: #themanhimself #musicofthenight

  I apply my needle to the pale silk of Titania’s skirts once more, feeling his sharp gaze on the side of my neck.

  “Why do you make these?” he asks.

  Looking at Titania, I think how to answer. The fabric cost sixty pounds a yard but I only needed a few inches. Still, if anyone knew I lavish my dolls with Thai silk they’d think I was mad. But she’s my friend. She deserves it.

  I’ve made these little figurines for as long as I can remember. When I was eight it was because I liked them better than store-bought toys. Who wants a generic doll when you could have all the Bennet sisters from Pride and Prejudice to tea, or Susan and Lucy from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to go adventuring with? By the time I was fourteen I was teased if I played with dolls, handmade or not, and looked on with envy as Lisbet did. Then I discovered that if I sat quietly and sewed, keeping my face blank, no one could tell that I was really playing. Now I’m twenty-four and I still haven’t grown out of it. It’s not just that I like make-believe. I crave it. And lately, I crave make-believe about villains most of all. I want to understand them. I even quite love them, though the infatuation frightens me a little. Is it wise to dwell in graveyards and
Gothic cathedrals with monsters and obsessives? To imagine myself with them as I sew, the willing participant, the enabler, the victim? But their allure is like dark chocolate and stolen kisses, and I can’t help myself.

  “It’s a hobby. I just like to.”

  Frederic sits back on the bench and looks at me. “Please tell me.”

  I just told you, nosy-parker. Mona has referred to the figurines sniffily as my “little dollies,” so I trot out the answer I gave her. “I’m a literature student. Doing this helps me tease apart the charactersʼ motivations. Villains are so much more complicated than heroes: There are few reasons someone might be a hero, but there are infinite reasons to be a villain.”

  “Ah, I see. It’s an academic interest, of course.”

  Something ironic in his tone makes the back of my neck prickle. He doesn’t believe me?

  He turns to the basket once more and pulls out Archdeacon Claude Frollo, the antagonist of Notre-Dame de Paris, who is so obsessed by a beautiful gypsy girl. Frederic played him in the French musical adaptation that toured France and Russia—a far handsomer Frollo than the Disney version, though no less intense. “Here’s another fellow I know well.” He holds Frollo up to his face and mirrors the figurine’s severe scowl.

  I enjoyed sewing Frollo and his priestly outfit, though not because of any lofty ideas I had about understanding his character. I was a little obsessed with Frollo at the time, imagining myself as Esmeralda high in a tower of Notre Dame having been dragged there by a sexually frustrated Frollo. He bound my wrists and rent my dress almost in two, and proceeded to whip me, quoting scripture about the Devil and temptation. I remember the heady sensation of being at the center of his world. Vulnerable. Laid bare. I don’t know why it preoccupied me so much. Being whipped must be painful.

  There are too many of Frederic’s own characters in his hands and I don’t like it. Desperately I try and think of another literary priest. “It’s not Frollo. It’s Gregory from The Monk.”

  “Oh.” He puts Frollo back, though I’m certain I caught another note of disbelief in his voice.

  “There you two are.” Mona is coming across the grass toward us clutching a sweating glass of Pimms. She turns to Frederic. “Well, did you ask her yet?”

  I lay Titania in my lap. “Ask me what?”

  “To write his biography, of course. We all talked about it after you went upstairs and I sent him some of your writing. This morning he said it was very good and that he was going to talk to you about it, didn’t you, Frederic?”

  He gives me a smile that’s not quite a proper smile, and shoots Mona a look. I have the feeling he’s annoyed with her. “Yes, I did.”

  If he’s annoyed, I’m doubly so. It was a stupid, throwaway suggestion of Dad’s that I write Frederic’s biography and it embarrassed me and Frederic. I bet it was her who brought it up again after I went upstairs. She probably thought she was doing me a good turn. My sisters are so competitive and they’ve never understood why I’m not. Now I’ll have to listen to Frederic politely tell me his publisher won’t go for an unknown writer like me, or worse, fib and say that he’s gone off the idea of publishing his biography altogether, thinking I’ll save face.

  “How did you even get hold of my writing?” I ask Mona. “I don’t have hard copies of the books I’ve ghostwritten in the house. Wait, you didn’t give him my essays, did you? Academic writing isn’t anything like creative nonfiction.”

  She snorts. “That stuff? Of course I didn’t. I sent him a link to your fan fiction archive.”

  I stare at her. My fan fiction archive, began when I was fourteen and updated on and off throughout high school and into my university years. Alternate point-of-view chapters for novels I studied. Offscreen moments for my favorite TV shows. Alternate universe drabbles. Some melodramatic, some smutty, all of them very silly, and all written anonymously under the name Princess_Nightshade. Anonymous, because I didn’t want anyone knowing that I, the serious literature student, could write such self-indulgent fluff.

  I sent a piece to Mona years and years ago when we were both hooked on True Blood, a stupid story about Eric and an original character who was essentially Mona and myself in terms of age, background and habits. How did she even remember what my username is? And how could she think it was appropriate to send a link to the archive to anyone, let alone a stranger?

  The archive even has—oh god. My stomach twists with shame, and I’m reminded of those last fatal weeks with Adam. I never wanted to feel like that again, but here I am, about to throw up because the archive contains a Notre Dame one-shot detailing my whipping fantasy. Frederic must have seen it. He would have homed in on the works he’s performed in, just as he picked out the dolls of the characters he’s played. How many other stories did I write for his characters? Maybe half a dozen. I look down at the basket of dolls next to me, stuffed full of those same characters, and I want to shove them all away from me.

  Frederic addresses Mona. “That Pimms looks so refreshing. Could you please bring us a couple of glasses?”

  Mona looks a little miffed that she’s being reduced to a waitress but she shrugs and does as she’s asked.

  I watch her retreating back as she heads for the house. As soon as I get my sister alone I’m going to strangle her with a length of embroidery thread. How could she? Doesn’t she realize how inappropriate it was, sending him that stuff?

  I start tying off my needlework so I can put it away and find someplace to hide from Frederic. He must think I’m obsessed with him. It’s not him, it’s the stories. I happen to like darker, Gothic tales and those are the roles he’s been cast in. “I’m so sorry about all this,” I mutter as I tie a knot in the thread. “Mona always does the most ridiculous things to get auditions and doesn’t understand why everyone else isn’t the same.”

  He regards me for a moment, though I can’t see his expression as my eyes are intent on the silk. “Don’t be embarrassed, Evie, please.”

  Too late. “She shouldn’t have put you in this position. It’s rude. You’re a guest here.”

  “You’re not interested in the job, then?”

  I’m scrabbling round in the basket for my embroidery scissors to cut the thread when he holds them out to me. But he doesn’t let them go until I look up at him, and then I can’t look away. It’s that cobra-mouse effect again. Damn his green eyes.

  “I want to talk about it with you,” he says. “You’ve had a first-class education and paid biographical writing experience. Mona’s told me about the sorts of things you’ve written. It’s impressive.”

  Please. I can just imagine what she said about those books. Stuffy things about old army officers and second-rate politicians. Yawn central.

  He goes on. “I’m not a writer or even much of a reader, but you’ve got a strong voice and a lively turn of phrase. I’d like to discuss the job with you, if you’re interested. It would pay well, and it would look very good on your CV.”

  My ears prick at his words, but then embarrassment crests again as I imagine him trawling the archive, reading those stupid stories. Frollo taking a whipped Esmeralda into his arms and kissing her passionately. Hyde running the flat of a wickedly sharp knife down his lover’s flesh. There’s no point wondering if I want the job because I’m about to die of shame.

  Then he tells me the name of the publisher his Canadian agent is negotiating a book deal with, and I bite my lip. It would look very good on my CV. The money would be good, too. I’ve been living at college since I was an undergrad but I’ll have my PhD soon and it will be time for me to move out into the real world. I’ve been carefully putting aside the money I make from ghostwriting, but it’s never much.

  All the same, I have the feeling he’s humoring me and I don’t like it. “There are people who have a lot more experience than me who would be willing to take the job. People who write biographies
professionally.”

  “Oh, I didn’t realize you did it as a hobby.”

  “No, I didn’t mean—”

  The sound of stricken female voices erupts from the direction of the house. The heat seems to be getting to my sisters; they fight like cats in the summer. Frederic glances toward the noise, grimaces, and then turns back to me. “Look, shall we get out of here tonight and go and have some dinner in town to discuss it? I can barely get a word in at the table here.”

  Spend the evening alone with a man who’s perused all my most ridiculous fantasies? I don’t think so.

  When Lisbet screeches in rage a moment later, he flinches, and I can’t help but smile. “You’re telling me.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  Consider the money. Think of the experience. With Frederic d’Estang’s biography on your CV you could approach other publishers for high-profile work. Your education is coming to an end. It’s time you consider what comes next.

  I remember how little there is in my savings account and try to put my embarrassment aside for a moment. Write Frederic d’Estang’s biography. It would mean delving into the private life of a man who’s kept a tight lid on it for most of his life; who’s performed in some of my favorite productions; who knows so much about many of the characters I love. Writing the book would mean getting to ask him about his inspirations and finding out about all the backstage stories. I could ask him if he thinks Frollo could have been redeemed, or if he believes the Phantom truly loved Christine. I could ask him anything. I bite my lip, more tempted by this than I am by the money and opportunity.