It was her turn that evening to muck out the kennels. Afterwards she went straight into the shower, scrubbing herself clean and washing her hair, which as part of her disguise hung blonde and straight an inch below her collarbone. As she put on a nightie, which Tab had once given her, with a picture on the front of Peter Rabbit eating a carrot, she reflected that Tristan probably wouldn’t recognize her now. He met so many people, he might not remember her anyway. At least she had a lovely warm bedsitter, centrally heated against the East Coast winter and with views over the kennels and the park where she walked the dogs for their allotted twenty minutes a day.
She had bought a litre of white and poured herself a large drink to steady her nerves. The sweat was already coursing down her ribs. Over and over she checked the tape was working and that she’d got the right channel.
But in the end the awards passed in a blur. As the cameras roved around the tables, Lucy was conscious of the depressing number of ravishing women. Then she gave a cry of delight, as through a cloud of Gauloise smoke emerged Oscar, Valentin, Bernard, Sylvestre and Ogborne, all getting plastered. But as she searched in vain among the other flushed self-satisfied luncheon guests there was no sign of Tristan or Claudine.
Up and down, up and down, gush, gush, gush, went the winners, thanking everyone from Auntie Glad to the guinea-pig.
‘Oh, get on with it,’ implored Lucy.
But at last it was Best Actress. In the clips from
From an aerial view, the round tables covered in white damask, all with their rings of green Perrier bottles at the centre, floated like water-lilies on the bluey-green carpet, as Claudine glided between them up onto the stage. She was wearing a beautiful suit, the colour of bramble fool, which brought out the violet in her wide-apart eyes. Lovingly stroking her award, which was gold and in the shape of an owl, she murmured a few platitudes only redeemed by the sexiness of her French accent. Although it wouldn’t seem so sexy to Tristan, thought Lucy, helping herself to another glass of wine, because he was French anyway. Claudine didn’t look a bundle of laughs, nor did she get tumultuous applause. She had lost too many Brownie points not coming forward to save Tristan in July.
Valentin won the award for Best Cameraman. The prize for Director of Photography went to Oscar, who caused huge laughter by being caught fast asleep on camera when his name was read out. But he woke up enough to tell the audience Tristan was the finest director he’d ever worked with.
‘Hear, hear,’ shouted Lucy. ‘But where
The Best Actor Award went to Anthony Hopkins, which was an excuse for another glass of wine, and at last it was Best Director. Tristan was competing with Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg. Lucy’s nightgown was drenched in sweat, she couldn’t stop shaking. ‘Please make him win,’ she prayed, ‘so that at least I see him.’
As more clips were shown of Claudine in
‘And the best director is Tristan de Montigny for
Lucy’s scream of excitement was lost in the roar of applause as the whole audience rose to their feet to pay tribute to the courage with which Tristan had faced his terrible problems in the past year. But Lucy’s tears of joy turned into wails of despair as, after a roll of drums, the spotlight once more tracked bloody Claudine coming back through the tables up onto the stage.
And her make-up’s been redone, thought Lucy savagely.
Claudine wasn’t looking very sunny, however, particularly when there were groans of disappointment and a flurry of booing and shouts of ‘Where’s Tristan?’
‘I am afraid Treestan de Monteegny ees eendisposed,’ said Claudine defensively, ‘and cannot accept this award. But I know he would thank you all for this wonderful honour. I am so ’appy to accept it on his behalf because he is most wonderful director I ever worked with and the one with the most integrity.’
‘Which is more than can be said for you,’ shouted a drunken Ogborne.
Poleaxed with disappointment, Lucy switched off the television and threw herself on her bed. The pain was unendurable. Hearing his name, seeing the others in the crew had brought everything back. How could she exist for another second without him? She was crying so hysterically, at first she didn’t hear banging on the door.
‘Linda, Linda, Linda,’ shouted Bella, the senior kennelmaid, ‘what in hell’s the matter? Please open the door.’
‘Go away,’ sobbed Lucy. ‘Leave me alone.’
‘Gee, I’m sorry to bother you, but you know about lurchers and some guy’s brought one in. I told him to come back tomorrow, but he seems desperate. I said you’d take the dog’s particulars and settle it in.’
‘We don’t want any more dogs,’ wept Lucy. ‘It’ll mean another one put down to make room for him.’
Wiping her face on the counterpane, seizing a handful of tissues to blow her nose, mumbling that she simply wasn’t up to it, Lucy stumbled downstairs into the freezing cold night to discover it had been snowing. The dog pens on either side of the rough track leading up to the check-in office were empty of dogs but blanketed in snow. Snow lay on the roofs of the kennels behind, where she hoped the dogs were sleeping and wouldn’t wake up when she installed the lurcher. Newcomers were often traumatized by the din.
Snow, already freezing on the wire fencing and the dogs’ nameplates on each pen, reminded her unaccountably of Valhalla. And then she saw him tiptoeing tentatively out of the office, a big grey shaggy dog, and her eyes were full of tears once more because in the moonlight he looked like the ghost of James. He was a little rickety on his legs, but as she drew nearer he suddenly noticed her, stiffened and his tail began sweeping back and forth, almost touching his ears as he broke into a lovely loping canter.
He must be a ghost, he must! But as she ran forward, and he bounded towards her, swifter than eagles, she could see his dark paw prints stretching out behind him in the snow. Then he sank down on his ancient legs, squeaking and pirouetting four times in the moonlight, and, sneezing in excitement, he collapsed at her feet.
Totally immobile for a few seconds, Lucy fell to her knees, hugging him, wailing as she felt the razor sharpness of his ribs and backbone, but all the time his tail beat frenziedly as his long tongue shot out to lick away the waterfall of tears.
‘Oh, James darling, how come you’re in America?’
Wiping her eyes on his fur, Lucy raced up the snowy path in her bare feet with James bounding beside her.
‘It’s a miracle,’ she screamed, ‘someone’s brought in my James. Tell me I’m not dreaming.’
Then she heard a voice, the most heartbreakingly husky voice in the world, saying indignantly, ‘No, I didn’t make myself clear. I want to keep the dog. It is your kennelmaid that I want to rehome.’
‘Tristan,’ croaked Lucy. ‘Oh, Tristan.’
In the doorway to the waiting room her knees gave way, with James’s shaggy body the only thing propping her up. As Tristan came through the other door from the general office, she gave a gasp because snow was melting in his hair as it had been on the first day of filming, and because he was even thinner than James and, under the fluorescent lighting, looked greyer and more ghostly than James had in the moonlight.
It must be a dream. Her eyes were so wet and her throat so dry, she couldn’t cry out, and neither, it seemed, could he. They just gazed at each other. The only sound was the brisk drumbeat of James’s tail against a metal filing cabinet.
‘Where did you find him?’ At last she stammered out the words.
‘In Edinburgh, outside my hotel. Some bastard use him to beg for money. He was so thin I didn’t recognize him. He was the clever one who recognized me.’
As someone closed the door discreetly behind him, Lucy’s thanks came tumbling over each other. Wiping her eyes and nose on the sleeve of her nightie, she crouched down beside James, clinging to him, kissing him over and over, as he snaked against her in ecstasy.
‘I thought I’d never see him again.’ Her voice broke. ‘Oh, how did you find me?’
‘Gablecross finally admit you are here, or I would have arrived seven months earlier.’
Lucy gazed down, thinking how tearstained and soppy and Pollyanna-ish she must look in her Peter Rabbit nightie with her yellow hair in bunches. But Tristan was only aware of her sweet, trembling mouth and the way her
