And finally, I am standing before them all, and I am speaking and they are laughing and I know I will never forget this moment and yet I realize I am forgetting it even as it happens. I lift the heavy statue and it feels so real, just like I knew it would.
A photo shoot backstage. I pose with my prize, eyes aflame, then retrieve my phone from an assistant to get my own shot. There’s a message on screen. The code Californian. My blood freezes in my veins but I do not let my smile crack. I’m a good actor; I have a statue to prove it.
But as I’m led into the press interview room, I carefully read the message once more.
36
Coming Soon
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11 （18 MONTHS LATER）
We’re sitting in the darkness of the cinema; the lights have dipped and Nick is squeezing my hand. The diamond ring he gave me on bended knee in the middle of a blustery Millennium Bridge gleams in the half-light. Life is good.
I got no more messages after that night. The number was disconnected. I’ve since tried to push its words from my mind.
The cinema screen curtains widen for the theatrical trailers to begin. Galatea premiered in London and New York last week to fantastic reviews, but I wanted to sneak into a real cinema tonight, to see it in an everyday setting, surrounded by the public, and see if it can pass their test. If real audiences actually like it.
The chatter thins around us as the trailers before the main feature start to play.
I give Nick’s hand a squeeze and take in his handsome face in the flickering screen light, and then a voice I recognize fills the cinema. The hairs on the back of my neck rise. Instinctively I turn to the screen and it’s there that I see her face.
Marla Butler.
She stares back at me in celluloid. Alive. Not just alive but resplendent. Her smile beaming across the forty-eight-foot-wide screen as one of the pre-film trailers plays. She’s in a period costume drama, a drawing room comedy of matters, her ringleted hair bouncing above her extravagant Edwardian costume, as she dances. An American heiress, a literary adaptation. My breath is caught in my throat. She looks beautiful, every inch a movie star. My mind races to the text message I received that night months ago.
Sun May 16, 9:48pm
Congratulations. And thank you for keeping your promise.
At the time I’d racked my brain for other explanations, of who it could be, what it could mean but of course my mind had always snagged on Marla. Because I made her a promise at the top of that ladder. I had half-forgotten. In the heat of the moment I had promised her that if she went away, I wouldn’t ever go to the police. If she left me alone then I wouldn’t ruin things for her.
I watch the cinema screen mute. Spellbound as she laughs, dancing and scheming her way frenetically through the trailer, electropunk Vivaldi pulsating over it all. Oh my God. She did it, I realize with a shiver fluttering up my spine. She made it. She got what she wanted. She got her deal. And I kept my promise, whether I meant to keep it or not. I didn’t ruin things for her. My story has always ended without her name being mentioned.
The music crescendos as Marla grins straight down the barrel of the lens at me, at the audience, and winks. Then the screen flashes to black. I clock the old Moon Finch logo. One of their last productions before they folded.
I pushed her that night but she survived. She must have watched me win that award on another screen somewhere. And she sent her message. As a warning, I suppose, or as a thank-you. Either way a reminder to keep my promise. A reminder of how much skin I have in the game. How much skin we both have in the game.
The trailer’s credits burst up with the promise that the film will be COMING SOON.
God help us all.
And then I spot it, in black and white—above-the-title billing—INTRODUCING ANNA SANDERSON.