‘Hey,’ Leo says, with the verbal fixity of someone who can’t permit so much as a millimetre of emotion.
‘Hi darling. Are you OK? Did you and your mum part on decent terms?’ I stick a finger in my other ear to drown out the cold air fans.
Leo pauses. ‘Oh, we’re fine. Listen, I was just thinking about Mags Tenterden. Your old agent.’
Leo is very bad at lying. He has not been ‘just thinking’ about her.
‘Oh yes?’ I transfer my phone to the other ear, hoping I’ll perhaps hear another story on that side.
He says, all rushed, ‘I did get it right, didn’t I? She dropped you as a client? It wasn’t the other way around?’
I close my eyes, where flames lick.
Please, Leo. Don’t go there, my love.
But he is going there, and it’s coming, now, no matter what I do. If Leo doesn’t already know the answer to this question, he’s close. And if he’s close to the truth about Mags, he’s close to all of it.
Over the years I’ve raged at myself for lying about Mags. It was one thing to conceal a past Leo could never forgive; it was quite another to start a whole new line of deception in the present tense. But what else could I have said to explain my hysterical state? What possible reason could I have had for leaving Mags, whom Leo knew I adored?
‘Mags did drop me,’ I say, hopelessly. ‘You must remember.’
There’s a long silence, which means he knows I’m lying. This call was very possibly my last chance.
I lean against the specimen storage shelves, shoving my free hand deep into my pocket. It brings to mind an image of Leo the day we met, leaning against the wall at Granny’s send-off, hands in pockets, watching me with a quiet smile on his face. I’d fancied him so much I’d barely heard the kind words of the funeral guests.
‘Fair enough,’ he says. ‘I was just wondering.’
‘OK. Well . . . See you later, then?’
‘I’ll be back for bathtime. Just need to sort out a couple of things in town before I come home.’
‘OK,’ I say. My eyes are filling with tears. I love you, I want to say, but I don’t.
Chapter Twenty-Three
LEO
Mags Tenterden’s offices are in one of the new blocks at King’s Cross. I pause by the canal before going in, looking at the crowd of well-dressed young people lounging by the water on cushions. Why are they not at work at 3.45 p.m. on a Friday in June? When I was twenty-five I was slaving away on a hot newsroom floor for twelve hours straight, too fearful even to take a piss.
Behind them, children run shrieking between choreographed plumes of water. There is live music somewhere, and the workers queueing for late lunch at the street food stalls have their sleeves rolled up. Everyone is having a nice day.
I turn back to Mags’ office building and my stomach churns.
‘I don’t have a great deal of time,’ Mags tells me. She’s aged only fractionally since I saw her last, but seems even more fashionable than before. Her silver hair is cropped, and she wears large red glasses with a dress that is all Scandinavian angles. ‘Sit,’ she adds, pointing to a chair.
I almost laugh at her frosty welcome. When I first met Mags at the BBC transmission party for This Land she warned me ‘not to be a pain in the backside’ if Emma’s career took off. It had taken me so completely by surprise I’d been unable to swallow my G&T and just stood there, cheeks bulging like a hamster.
‘I won’t be long,’ I reply.
She watches me. I expected her to have a clichéd agent’s office, covered in yellowing photos and dust-gathering trophies, but this place is like a waiting room in a design consultancy. Blonde wood, architectural steel, white-painted walls and prints in slim black frames. There is nothing to suggest that this woman represents close to a hundred actors and television presenters.