“There you are!” Penny exclaimed, breathless. “Eleanor, your mother needs you.”
Ellie’s eyes widened at the sight of her aunt, dressed in a sparkly red velvet dress that seemed more suited for a Christmas party, topped with a navy blue fascinator that clashed spectacularly. Somehow, Penny’s vibrant orange hair managed to tie the mismatched ensemble together.
“Tell my mother I’ll be right inside.”
“There’s been an emergency! A real one this time.”
“A man died today. Is it any worse than that?”
“Much worse,” Penny insisted, her eyes wide with urgency. “So. Much. Worse.”
Exchanging a concerned look with Daniel, Ellie rose to her feet. They made their way back into the house, where Ellie noticed the party had grown slightly, though there were still fewer than a dozen people present. She caught sight of Amber, who had joined Sylvia in mingling in the sitting room with Willow Thompson. A pang of anxiety shot through Ellie at the sight of Willow with her long brunette hair and scarf of layered necklaces, but she pushed it aside, focusing on the task at hand.
Following Penny upstairs, they passed her old bedroom. The pilates machine contraption filled the space, but the blue wallpaper remained, untouched from her teenage years. It was the only room in the house that hadn’t been redecorated since Ellie had left; everything had been blue before the beige.
As they approached her mother’s master suite, Ellie braced herself for whatever emergency awaited her. The day had already been filled with unexpected twists and turns, and she couldn’t help but dread what fresh chaos lay beyond that door.
Ellie followed Penny into her mother’s bedroom, the sight that greeted her both familiar and jarring. Carolyn Swan lay dramatically draped across a chaise longue in the centre of the room, a crystal tumbler clutched in her hand. The scene was reminiscent of an old Hollywood film, with Carolyn playing the part of the tragic starlet to perfection.
As they crossed the fluffy cream carpet, Carolyn pulled herself up, only to sag back down in a crumpled heap.
“My agent called,” she said bitterly, taking a sip from her glass. A mirthless laugh escaped her, ending in an undignified snort. “Turns out the reason they thought my audition was perfect was because they’d never seen someone corpse so badly during a taping before.” Her voice dripped with self-pity as her top lip curled up tight under her nose. “I swear it was the webcam. Penny knows how I hate those blasted Zoom auditions!” She gestured wildly with her free hand at a laptop sitting among the lotions and potions on her dressing table. “The casting director said they’d never seen anyone hold their breath and stare completely still before. I was trying to find my line.” She took another gulp from her glass. “This Autumn, I’ll be appearing in Casualty on BBC One as the woman who was hi . It’s a non-speaking, non-moving, non-breathing, non-acting, union fee role...” She raised her glass in a mock toast. “Cheers to the comeback.”
Penny looked lost, clearly unsure how to handle the situation. After a moment of awkward silence, she mumbled something about getting rid of the party guests and hurried out of the room.
Left alone with her mother, Ellie moved closer, unsure of how to offer comfort in times like these. There had been many times like these. And many comebacks on the cards, but something to eclipse her tepid Heatherwood Haven success had never materialised, try as she might. As she approached with an outstretched hand, she caught a whiff of her mother’s glass and couldn’t help but laugh.
“Apple juice?”
“You know I don’t drink drink, darling,” Carolyn said, a hint of her usual haughtiness returning. “It messes with my skin, and I need to look in tip-top shape for…” She looked into the glass and burst into tears, wailing, “For playing a corpse.”
“Mother, a man actually—”
“Until today,” Carolyn continued with the delivery of a stage actress, staggering to her feet as though she were drunk, “I thought my playing age was forty-two. Now, sweetheart? Your mother is a corpse.”
“My mother has no sense of timing,” Ellie replied, trying to sound firm but never able to match her mother’s booming voice. “Thomas Blackwood was murdered today.”
“Who?” Carolyn frowned as though the news was an inconvenience. “Oh, him. I think we share a cleaner.” She looked in the mirror, drawing up the sides of her face so that the loose skin stretched taut across her wide cheekbones. Turning around, through stretched lips, she said, “Darling, is it time?”
“Time for what?”
She dragged the skin back further until it shone like wax. “Time for the big yank, of course. The Jane Fonda. The Cher Special. The—”
“Elephant Man?”
“Did he look forty-two?” Carolyn spun back to the mirror, another set of fingers joining the imaginary facelift to hoist up the tails of her brows. “Because if he looked forty-two, sign me up. Forty-two. I loved being forty-two.”
Ellie wasn’t sure what had been so special about forty-two, but it had fallen in the middle of the VHS revival years.
Carolyn sighed. “Am I asking for much?”
“Just the biologically impossible.” Ellie pinched between her brows, unsure of how much more of this she could take. “Mum, a man died today, please—”
“And so did my career!”
“Your ‘career’…” Ellie let that thought drift away, clearing her throat.
“My career what, sweetheart?” She stared at her through the mirror, neither of them daring to look away, her face still stretched back to the Elephant Man at forty-two. “Don’t think I don’t know where that was going, little miss know-it-all. For my own daughter to be this cruel in my hour of need, and…”
Carolyn’s words faded, as did her intense stare. She let her face sag back to sixty-five. While not quite forties, Ellie would have pegged her mother’s actual playing age to be about fifty-five since she did take such good care of her outward apperance, but Ellie didn’t want to feed Carolyn Swan’s ego too much.
She pulled her robe closer together and said, “Though, I suppose, if you think about it, Casualty is prime time. Saturday prime time. That’ll be what… fifteen million people?”
“If it was 1970. About three million, and that’s good these days.”
“Good? They cancelled Heatherwood Haven in 1979 for four million! They called us a disaster.”
“And there were only two other channels to turn over to back then, and they had reasons outside of ratings to call that show a disaster. But you have a point. As far as TV goes, Saturday night is still king.”
“Prime time…” Carolyn said airily, nodding to herself in the mirror as she fluffed out her hair. “Corpse today, lines tomorrow, BAFTAs next week. That damn Helen Mirren won’t know what hit her.”
“Not this again.”
“All I’m saying is, my audition tape to play Queen Elizabeth the second, rest her soul, was the superior impression of the Queen and if Queen Elizabeth, rest her soul, saw it, I think she would have agreed.”
“Well, I suppose we never will know.”
“Or will we?” she replied in a clipped, high-pitched voice that Ellie knew from bitter experience was her mother’s Queen impression. “Tell Camilla she’s kept One’s seat warm for too long, but One is back.”
