Page 121 of Let’s Make a Scene

“Into my mum’s giant aquarium,” Nico finishes.

“Noooooo!” I gasp, my hands flying to my face.

“Yep,” Nico says. “He tips the whole thing over—it’s a miracle it didn’t shatter—and gallons of water crash over Jack and Tansy. She’s screaming; everyone’s screaming. There are tropical fish leaping all over the place. Jack’s sliding around trying to scoop up the fish and get them back in the water. Tansy—who looks like a drowned cat at this point—has one leaping about in her hair and she starts crying. Everyone’s fucking traumatized.”

“Thankfully no fish perished,” Jack says heavily. “But the Grand Magneto retired that day. And Tansy Bennet remains the one who got away.”

“Wow,” I say.

“I expect your mother wasn’t best pleased,” Max chuckles.

“She actually thought it was pretty funny,” Nico remembers fondly. “But we were finding those tiny aquarium rocks everywhere for months.”

Marie-Therese comes in then, interrupting the laughter to tell us that lunch is ready.

When we stand up, Jack takes my hand in his, even though he doesn’t have to.

I try not to look too happy about it.

Chapter 39 CYNTHIE

The rest of our visit to Jack’s parents is painful. Nico and I are kept busy, running interference every time Max and Caroline try to steer the conversation toward their disappointment in their children (which happens often). While the majority of the disapproval is leveled at Jack, Lee comes in for a fair amount of criticism too—you would think that being an accountant was some sort of capital crime.

I demand anecdotes from Jack’s childhood; Nico asks about what’s been happening on set and I provide entertaining stories, or he gets Lee to share news of her grandmother’s high jinks, drawing her out of her shell. It’s like a high-octane game of small-talk ping-pong, and by the time we finish our exquisite chocolate tortes, prepared by the Turner-Jones’s chef and served on vintage Sèvres porcelain, I feel like my head is going to explode.

Caroline and Max, having put away a steady flow of alcohol, are most of the way toward drunk and getting less and less passive and more and more aggressive by the minute.

“Of course,” Caroline says, fixing me with a look of naked dislike, “you’ve only got so long before you start aging out of the leading roles. There’s a very long and painful wait between thirty-five and National Treasure status let me tell you.” She shudders. “And being a national treasure is bleak enough, in case you wondered. Everyone acts like I’m a hundred years old and a sweet old lady.”

I bury my face in my drink to hide my expression. I’m fairly sure “sweet old lady” is about the only name Caroline Turner hasn’t been called.

“I expect you’ve already been asked to play the mother to some peppy little nineteen-year-old,” she continues, waving her glass of perfectly pale white wine in the air. “If you want my advice, start making an investment in your face now. I can put you in touch with my plastic surgeon, I’m sure he could fix”—she gestures at my face—“things.”

“It’s kind of you to show an interest,” I say serenely.

“Fucking hell,” Jack mutters under his breath, and I squeeze his leg. It’s supposed to be a reassuring gesture to let him know his mum isn’t bothering me, but he flinches dramatically.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“Fine,” he replies tightly, taking a swig from his water glass.

When I look over at Nico he’s watching us with a smirk.

“Of course it’s all changed since my day,” Max rumbles. “Take what happened with Rufus. A few off-color remarks and now nobody will touch him. Didn’t get asked back for your film, did he?” Max shakes his head. “It comes to something when no one in the business is allowed to have a sense of humor.”

“You know it was a lot more than that with Rufus,” Jack says.

I look to Caroline, thinking she might have something to say about the way women are treated in the industry, but she shrugs. “Young women today are too sensitive. If I didn’t want someone pawing at me, I just told them so.” I think there’s a glimmer of something in her eyes, but then she squints down into her glass while Max makes noises of approval.

I’m absolutely certain that’s not the real story, that Caroline Turner somehow survived fifty years in the entertainment industry unscathed, but she’s entitled to do whatever she likes with those stories, even if it’s to pretend they never happened. If I think it’s bad now, I can only imagine how it must have been when she was starting out.

“When we made the first film, I was warned never to be left on my own with Rufus,” I say. “I didn’t even question it, but that’s not right, is it? You can’t have a culture like that. Women on film sets are just trying to do their jobs. We deserve to feel safe.” I think about something Jasmine said to me—that directing could be more than a new creative challenge, that it could be an opportunity to set the tone, to control the culture on a set, to make broader changes in industry standards. It sounded lofty at the time, but maybe she’s right.

“You never told me that,” Jack says slowly. “About Rufus.”

It’s my turn to shrug. “Honestly, it didn’t even feel newsworthy. Stuff like that was so common. Still is.”

“One of the journalists I work with is actually writing a story about something similar at the moment,” Nico says, diverting the conversation again, and it flows away onto other subjects.