Page 27 of Main Characters
‘I love you, Seb,’ she says, her voice hoarse with emotion.
But he still doesn’t say anything. There’s an overwhelming stillness, and the shock of his betrayal is clear in the absence of sound, in the ragged intake of the breath she takes next. The passer-by can only imagine the look that is shared between them. Then she walks away, her footsteps fading into nothing.
a director
His life is falling apart back in Stockholm. But it is easy to forget Stockholm here in the long grass, in the frost. They are on one hill in a rolling chain of white, and though they have only been filming for a week, his vision is clear.
The director turns his eye to the day ahead, to the star of the section they’re shooting. Seb is new. This is his first feature, having blown them all away in that audition room last spring. They have erased his tattoos, covered him in dirt, dressed him in rags and placed him here, outside a draughty shepherd’s hut in a field of sheep somewhere in the south-west of England. The cold wind bites at them, and Seb seems to be harnessing it, drawing it into his character as he prepares for the scene. He brings to mind a restless horse, his breath coming out in clouds, his stamping feet churning up the mud.
‘Stand by,’ the director says, and they stand by. ‘Action.’
Seb’s is a minor role. It will only take five days to film, and most of his dialogue will be cut in the edit. This job is pitiless. Existence is a scythe. But in the footage that survives, his presence will shine through, a furious intensity that feels like it’s reaching out and pulling you, physically, towards the screen.
One of the production assistants stands to the side of the director, watching intently over the top of the camera. The director wonders what she is thinking. He knows that she wants to make films, because everyone does, and because she’s one of the rare inferiors that his producer Agathe actually seems to have time for. She’s one to watch, Agathe had said. And so, he does. Her name is Clara, and it would be easy to assume that she’s standing so close to study the precise interplay of light and shadow, to work out what she’d do differently if she was at the helm. The director knows that this is not the case. He knows that Seb is her boyfriend, and that they have been fighting. He knows this, because a good director reads people, sees things. If only a film set could bring him and his husband back together.
He’s observed it between Clara and Seb, over the last few days. A thawing, like the wet grass underfoot. It started with a look, shared over the top of a camera like this one, on Seb’s first day of filming. A look that said, despite everything, break a leg. Then, a note, slipped into the pocket of Clara’s jacket, and, finally, a hushed conversation outside the craft services trailer, ending in a hug that started awkwardly but lasted longer than either of them seemed to expect it to. After this scene is ticked off, Seb and Clara will share a coffee and skirt around the bigger issues, talking only about her short film and all the insecurities that come with it.
‘You’ve got this,’ Seb will say. ‘You’re going to blow people away.’
And the director will do his best to act like he doesn’t overhear them, because Clara’s film sounds esoteric, and becausehe dreads the day that she asks him to watch it, as all assistants eventually do.
She never asks. There will come a time when this troubles the director. As if she didn’t need his opinion. As if he should have offered it anyway. Her short will be noticed by all the right tastemakers at all the right festivals, and Clara will suddenly be a wunderkind without need of this would-be mentor. But all of that is in the future. Right now, the director stands in a frozen field on a hill somewhere in the south-west of England. He takes a breath that hurts his lungs, and he feels filled up by his process, his peerless vision. Through it all, he waits for Stockholm to call.
her downstairs neighbour
If he were to disappear, if he were to step out of his front door and never return, they’d be able to piece together his entire personality from the items on this balcony. He was a cyclist, they’d notice, from the folded-up bike. And from the way it slots neatly on to the mount he himself fixed into the brick wall, they would note that he was capable, and that he cared about preventing clutter. The kitchen garden he’s been carefully cultivating, the pickling cucumbers and the radishes he uses to make his ownamazuzuke, would tell them that he liked to cook. The misting bottle sitting on the scrubbed-clean decking would mark him out as diligent, attentive. No one would find a more dependable partner, and yet on this balcony they’d see no signs of a lover, because if there had been such a person, they moved their stuff out a matter of weekends ago. The single whisky tumbler filled with melting ice would be enough to say that he lived alone.
‘I told you,’ comes a female voice from the balcony above. ‘I don’t have anything to do with them.’
‘But is she ill?’ a male voice responds. ‘Like, actually ill?’
‘I don’t know,’ the girl says. ‘I think so.’
‘Then you should go and see her,’ the guy replies, softly. ‘You’ll regret it if you don’t.’
What would he find, up there? From the street, he has seen the most spectacular array of plants and flowers, grown by one of the girls. An easel, used by the other. There’d be an ashtray, he assumes, from the smell of smoke that cascades downwards like dry ice. A small table with two beer bottles upon it. Two chairs, and two people. The guy doesn’t live there. Just the pair of them: the cute gardener with the fringe, and her uptight housemate. This sounds like the uptight girl, though the way she’s speaking tonight seems less guarded. They don’t know that anyone can hear them.
‘What happened between you?’ the guy asks.
The girl doesn’t answer.
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ he says. ‘It’s rich of me to ask.’ A pause. ‘But I’m listening, if you want.’
The girl sighs. ‘I always felt like I was the only one who saw my dad for the bully he is,’ she says, finally. ‘My sister toughened herself up to it. Got out of there as fast as she could.’ A sad laugh. ‘Self-preservation, I suppose. She’s a chef now. She needs a high-stress environment.’
‘And your brother?’
‘He’s the soft one,’ she says. ‘The baby. Cee and I like picking fights, making ourselves heard. Augie isn’t like that.’ A long exhale. ‘He’s always struggled, and my parents have always ignored him for it. Dad wanted a boy, but not that kind of boy. You know?’
The neighbour imagines the guy nodding, taking a drag of his cigarette. A shakiness is creeping into the girl’s voice.
‘I should have seen the signs, even if everyone else didn’t,’ she says. ‘When Augie tried to—’ She pauses. The neighbour imagines her waving the words, the smoke, away. ‘I told my dad it was his fault. And he said—’ A deep intake of breath. ‘He said he wished it had been me.’
‘Jesus.’
‘That’s not even the worst thing,’ she says. ‘The worst thing is that my mum heard him say it, and she said nothing.’
The girl sounds tired. The neighbour pictures her partner taking her hand, kneading his thumb into her palm.
