Page 80 of We All Live Here
“It’s fine. I get it.”
He waits while she pulls on her clothes, digging her knickers out of a gap in the sofa cushions, feeling suddenly self-conscious as she wriggles into her bra. It takes her a couple of attempts to get everything together, and she wishes he wasn’t standing there, watching.
He walks her to the front door. Perhaps he notices the expression on her face, because he pauses in the hallway and takes her in his arms. “You’re lovely,” he says. “So lovely. We’ll do this again.” He gently tilts her face to his and kisses her, his eyes soft and serious. “Hey,” he says, when he senses a faint reluctance in her response. “Hey.”
She doesn’t know how to feel. This is not how she expected the evening to end. He kisses her properly then, pulling her in to him, not letting her go until she softens and kisses him back.
“You’re okay?”
“I’m okay,” she says, and smiles reluctantly at him.
He helps her into her coat, then pulls the two sides of her collar together, gazing into her eyes. “Text me when you’re home. I want to know you’re safe.”
She has walked a few steps down the path when he says, in a loud whisper: “Hey, Lila?”
“Yes?”
“Probably best not to say anything at school just yet. You know what those people are like.”
She of all people knows what they’re like. “Just between me and you,” she says.
“Just me and you,” he says, blows her a kiss, and waits at the door as she walks back down thestreet.
Chapter Twenty-six
Celie
Gene has a meeting with his agent, and gets the same bus as Celie so they’re seated together on the top deck. Celie will get off first, to walk the rest of the way to school, and Gene will stay on all the way into the West End. He is clearly not used to being up so early and keeps yawning and rubbing his eyes, but talks as much as ever, his loud American voice carrying across the seats so that Celie has to keep shushing him. British people like their public transport quiet in the mornings, aside from the psychopaths who play music without earphones or have conversations on FaceTime.
“So what did you choose?”
“I went for Animation.”
“Good call. This country is way too cold for nine months of the year to do Track.”
“I think I’m the only one in my class who’s signed up.”
Gene has been telling her she has to find the thing that she enjoys doing. “Life is going to batter you, honey. She’s a cruel mistress. So you have to find the place in your head where you can get lost in a good way. Otherwise it’s just drink and drugs and bad women.”
Celie is pretty sure she isn’t going to end up losing herself in bad women, but she gets his general point.
“Honestly, if I’d put more love and work into the acting I could have got an Academy Award,” Gene is saying. “I had all the studios lining up at my door. I should have carried on going to acting class, worked on my craft, not got distracted. The fame thing kind of went to my head for a bit. I guess it knocked me off course.” He rubs at his head. “In all kinds of ways.”
“You mean leaving Mum and Grandma?”
For the first time his voice drops a few decibels. Gene looks briefly uncomfortable. “I guess. Your mom finds it hard to forgive me for that.”
“Have you said sorry?”
He looks at her as if this is a radical concept. “Not in so many words.”
“Mum says you told Marja to say sorry.”
“Sure, but that’s…that’s different.”
“You told Marja if she broke up a family and she had to see Mum every day then she should say sorry. How is that different?”
Gene pulls out a cigarette from his packet, remembers he is not allowed to smoke on the bus, and puts it away again. He shifts in his seat. “It’s complicated.”
