As she returns order to the shop floor she breathes in and smells not only the old clothes but Ophelia’s heavy perfume and a favourite customer’s shampoo and the aftershave of the mayor who used to visit far too often, as well as coffee and cigarettes, and cinnamon toast that one owner used to buy at the milk bar next door.
All of that crammed into her memory; all of it here now. Her life in this frock shop. There is nowhere else she wants to be today.
CHAPTER TWO
‘It’s a little too loose, doll – round here.’ Candy the wardrobe mistress pinches at Christina’s waist and Christina barely feels it. She’s so used to being pulled at, prodded and poked. That’s what happens when you’ve been an actress for most of your adult life.
At thirty-two, she’s had over a decade of being a clothes horse, a vessel, a symbol. She has embodied and represented other people’s stories and the way they want to tell them. Wearing a dress to an awards show is no different. She has to present as something her agent, her public, prospective producers and directors want to see. And she’s not going to complain about it because she chose it.
As soon as Christina left school she left Australia, treading the well-worn path to London. Her mother’s brother lived there and took her in for a while. She worked as a secretary – not very successfully – before finding work as a stagehand. She’d always liked drama at school, and her father used to take her to see plays and musicals at the Theatre Royal in Sydney. The theatre is tied in with happy memories for her, although she never imagined acting until one day the director of a play at the theatre where she worked asked if she’d consider auditioning. She was so beautiful, he said, that she shouldn’t be backstage.
Christina didn’t know she was beautiful. At the girls school she attended in North Sydney no one said anything; certainly her mother and sisters didn’t. And she was mostly kept well away from boys, apart from the brothers of her classmates and she was too shy to talk to any of them. After she arrived in London she thought Englishmen were just friendlier since they all seemed to want to chat to her.
That first play led to more, and more. After a year she had an agent, then she had a career. Then she moved to Los Angeles as her agent said her face was wasted on the stage and belonged in the world. On the big screen. So she became a movie star: Christina Clarke. A fake last name and one that sounded better, the agent said, than her real one, Christina O’Flynn.
Therefore she chose to become Christina Clarke. Chose to lie about her age so that the press, the fans, the industry think she’s twenty-eight, not thirty-two, and even then people say she looks young for her age. One reviewer called her an ingenue, which, when she read it, made her snort out her black, unsugared coffee.
It is being Christina Clarke that has brought her to this fitting today. And this pink, one-shouldered, toga-inspired dress that is supposed to be cinched at the waist to show off the figure she half-starves herself to maintain is meant to present her as a modern Grecian goddess, because the film she has just wrapped – the one that everyone is buzzing about, and saying will make her a proper movie star – is a retelling of a Greek myth, set in modern-day Texas. Orpheus and Eurydice in Stetsons.
A stretch, perhaps, but Christina loved the script from the first page. She wanted the role. She wrote a letter to the director telling him how much she connected with the story. It was true, but the fact that the director was one of the most in demand in Hollywood didn’t hurt.
‘Doll, let’s get the needle and thread,’ Candy rasps, patting the side of Christina’s waist, making her flinch then shudder.
‘Cold, doll?’
Christina shakes her head. It’s the touch on her waist – that’s what she reacted to. It’s a spot where …
She stops herself. No. That memory is not going to intrude. She’s worked too hard to let it do that.
Practising what she knows best – the art of pretending – she stands immobile as Candy pins the dress. Then they’re done and Christina is back in her street clothes.
‘May I use your phone to check my messages?’ she asks.
‘So polite!’ Candy laughs. ‘Of course, doll, it’s in the office.’
Christina’s politeness has been remarked upon by crews on sets, by PR people, by waitresses. She used to think it was normal but after five years in LA she knows it’s not.
When she dials her number to reach her answering machine, the first message is from Lindsay, her agent.
‘Call me as soon as you get this. Mischa will put you through.’
His tone is hard to read. But Mischa is his assistant and normally Christina has to spend at least ten minutes on hold waiting for Mischa to decide to put her through. So whatever the reason is for Lindsay’s call, it must be important. She went for an audition last week, for a big new movie. Could they have made the decision already?
‘Hi, Mischa, it’s –’
‘Putting you through.’
Christina frowns. Mischa also usually pretends she doesn’t know who Christina is, but clearly she recognises her voice. Maybe she’s the only Australian who calls.
‘I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt,’ Lindsay says as soon as he’s on the line.
‘Okay.’ Christina draws the word out, confused.
‘Tell me you didn’t.’
‘Didn’t what?’ This feels like some kind of joke but she’s not in on it.
‘You slept with him.’