thing.”
Beth smiles sweetly. “I haven’t seen anything I like.”
“We’ve been here over three hours,” says Hattie. “That’s like going to a supermarket and not seeing any food.”
“And what about the guy in Transcendental? What was up with that?”
Beth doesn’t recognize the name, but she knows exactly which store Isla means. She was going through the motions of looking at tops in the boutique where some actor whose name she can’t remember apparently shops all the time, when she
“I told you, it was a mistake. I thought he was someone else.”
“Who?” asks Nicki. “I didn’t think you knew anybody in LA.”
“Or maybe you do,” says Paulette. “You keep looking over your shoulder.”
“Hey, that’s right!” Hattie snaps her fingers. “Even in the car you kept looking back all the time.”
“Maybe she’s pretending she’s in one of those old movies she likes so much where everybody’s a spy,” says Isla.
Beth fidgets. She should have known that, with whatever grudging respect they’d had for Gabriela now gone, it was only a matter of time before they jumped on her like a pack of hyenas on the carcass of an antelope. “You’re all making a big deal out of nothing.”
“What’s going on?” Lucinda strolls up to them, a new shopping bag swinging from her arm, looking wary. “You guys look really serious.”
“We’re trying to figure out why Gab’s acting so weird,” says Nicki. “And don’t say you haven’t noticed.”
Oh, Lucinda’s noticed. From the minute she woke up to the sound of sobbing, Lucinda’s noticed. The clothes, the make-up, the apologizing, the clinical amnesia when it comes to anything to do with fashion, the fact that Gabriela, who last night was as graceful as a gazelle, can barely walk. It’s like she’s a different person to the one Lucinda met yesterday. But she was hoping the others hadn’t noticed. “Well…” She smiles without any conviction. “Define weird.”
“Weird like she’s not really here,” says Isla.
“Weird like she didn’t know what Madagascar was,” says Nicki.
“Weird like she’s wearing pyjamas and no make-up,” says Hattie.
“I’ll go for weird like paranoid,” says Paulette.
“I don’t think that’s being weird,” lies Lucinda. “It’s just nerves and stress and excitement and everything.”
“Sure,” says Paulette. “I can’t walk right when I’m feeling nervous either.”
“I can hardly leave the house,” says Isla.
“OK,” Beth sighs. “OK, I’ll tell you. I guess I should have told you straight away, but I didn’t want to worry you or scare you or anything…”
“That’s very kind of you,” says Paulette, “but we don’t scare that easily.”
“This had better be good.” Hattie looks as if she’s trying to swallow her mouth.
“Well, you see, there’s this guy. I noticed him first in the hotel.” Beth explains about the young man in the lobby in the white suit and the Panama hat. How he was watching them while they were waiting for the car. How she saw him in the garden at the studio. How she saw him parked up the road when they were getting back in the limo. How she’s seen him while they’ve been shopping. Someone, not Lillian Beeby, has said that a trouble shared is a trouble halved, and as she talks Beth really feels that that is true. After all her anxiety, this is a trouble that can be understood. She should have told them from the start, instead of keeping it to herself. United we stand, divided we fall. Strength in numbers. You don’t have to walk alone.
When Beth finishes her story, there is silence for a few seconds. But only a few – and it definitely isn’t the silence of fear.
“Some guy’s been following us,” repeats Paulette, with as much conviction as if Beth had said that the bustle is coming back into fashion. “You mean, like a stalker? Is that what you mean?”
“Well, yeah, I guess you could call him that.” Beth makes a scrunched-up face. “There’s something really strange about him.”
Nicki, peering at herself in a compact mirror, says, “I didn’t see anybody strange in the hotel this morning.”
“Me, neither,” says Isla. “I mean, everybody who stays at The Xanadu has money, don’t they?”
“So what if he has money?” Beth snaps. “That doesn’t make it OK to follow us around.”
“I’m just saying that it’s not like he’s some kind of LA lowlife, is it? He has to be respectable,” argues Isla. “Guys with money don’t do stuff like that.”
“Why not?” asks Beth.
No one hears her.
“Well, personally, I don’t understand how you noticed anyone.” Hattie’s lips form a narrow, unbending line. “You were pretty much out of it even then. You hardly said five words while we were waiting, and, if you ask me, they were the only thing that was strange.”
Paulette turns on, rather than to, Lucinda. “What about you? Did you see this mysterious stalker?”
“Well… I—” Lucinda’s eyes ping-pong from Paulette to Gabriela and back again. “I don’t— I’m not really sure. There were a lot of people in the lobby this morning.” Her shopping shrugs. “I can’t remember everybody I saw.”
“Well, I know I didn’t see him,” proclaims Nicki, “and I always notice hats because they’re, like, my specialty. There’s no way I’d’ve missed a Panama.”
“I still don’t see why you’re all wound up because some guy was looking at us in the hotel.” Hattie continues to study her as if she’s not sure of the decoration or the colour. “Let’s face it, guys always look at us. You’d think you’d be used to it by now.”
“Besides,” says Isla, “if there really was some guy watching us, then he was probably a director or a producer. They’re always looking for new faces.”
If he is a director or producer, then he’s one who spends his time riding around town and climbing into people’s gardens.
Paulette’s smile is full of ill will. “Nobody but you saw him in the garden, did they?”
“I can’t explain that, but he was definitely there!” Beth’s voice is, for her, unusually loud and firm. There’s nothing like chronic frustration to make a person forget her shyness. “I saw him as clearly as I see you. He was right there in the back yard. If he wasn’t there, why did the alarm go off like that?”
“The guard said it was a malfunction,” says Paulette.
“It happens at our house all the time,” adds Isla.
“And we were all right there,” says Hattie. “Right next to you. So if you saw him so clearly why didn’t we see him, too?”
Nicki laughs without a stitch of humour. “Maybe he really did fly away.”
Blessed are the peacemakers, a group that can now count Lucinda among their number. “Look, it’s been a long morning. Why don’t we get some lunch or at least a drink,” she says. “There’s a café a couple of doors down.”
Beth, who, met with so much resistance, is starting to doubt herself, jumps at the suggestion. “That’s a great idea!” Lunch, that’s what she needs. She hasn’t had anything to eat all day. Maybe that’s all that’s wrong with her – hunger. That and being in someone else’s body. She’s hungry. Hunger makes you hallucinate. Everybody knows that.
They come out of the shoe store and turn towards the café. Beth freezes.
Sitting at one of the tables, talking to a man with his back to Beth, is one of those LA types that Beth’s mother warned her about. Several times. There are undoubtedly quite a few things that she might be discussing with the man at the table, most of them illegal, but the improbable blonde isn’t the reason Beth has stopped like a phone whose battery has suddenly died. It’s the man. He may be facing the opposite way, but she knows him
