‘There you are. Semple House. What d’you think?’ said Prim, smiling, biting her lip, as the Nissan’s tyres scrunched up the red gravel path.
‘You don’t have a butler called Lurch, do you?’
‘Swine!’ she shouted, laughing, and punched my arm. We eased ourselves out of the car and trotted up the six steps to the front door. Prim fumbled in her handbag for her keys. Eventually she found the bunch and fiddled through it for the right one.
She needn’t have bothered. The door swung open … with an authentic Addams Mansion creak, I was glad to note. Prim looked up, and gasped.
They aren’t instantly alike. They’re both gorgeous, but in very different ways. Dawn Phillips is dark, while Prim is authentically blonde, even when her hair isn’t bleached by the sun. Dawn’s natural expression, the one with which right there and then I guessed she opens every door, is one of apprehension, while Prim’s is one of total confidence, welcoming whatever challenge the world has to offer. But there is something about their eyes, about the tilt of the nose, which marks them out as sisters, beyond a shadow of doubt.
They stood there like statues, on their parents’ doorstep, staring at each other, their mouths hanging open. It struck me that it was like watching someone looking in a distorted mirror.
Dawn cracked first. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Prim! Oh God, you’re safe. We’ve been so worried about you, out there with all that trouble going on. When did you get back?’ She stepped out from the doorway and hugged her sister.
‘Hey, girl,’ said Prim, disengaging and holding her at arm’s length. ‘Didn’t I write? Didn’t I phone when I could? Didn’t I call Mum on Friday to say I was home?’
Dawn shook her head. ‘I didn’t know. I went up to Perth on Friday to chill out with Jenny Brown and get pissed. I’ve been so screwed up lately. I only got back half an hour ago.’
‘Before Friday, how long had you been here?’
Dawn jumped when I spoke. She was edgy, and no mistake. Prim smiled, and took my arm. ‘Sorry, I should have done the introductions first. This is Oz; Oz Blackstone, my new friend.’
The young Miss Phillips looked me up and down. My jeans had seen better days, but haven’t everyone’s, and at least my white tee-shirt was clean and my trainers didn’t smell. Eventually she held out a hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Oz. Did she bring you back from Africa?’
I shook my head, and her hand. ‘No. Anstruther, in fact. And before that, from Connell. We’ve been looking all around Scotland for you.’
She frowned, looking genuinely puzzled. ‘But…’
Prim cut her off, shooeing her inside the house and pulling me in after her. ‘We’ll get to that in a minute, Dawn,’ she said, carefully. ‘First of all let’s get the kettle on. Where are Mum and Dad?’
‘It’s Sunday. They’ve gone to church.’ ‘Mmm,’ I thought. ‘People still do that, do they!’
It was a nice old house on the inside. Full of character. It seemed that the Phillips family hadn’t thrown anything away for about three generations. As I looked around the hall, I had a funny feeling that I couldn’t pin down for a moment or two. Eventually it came to me. ‘It’s like stepping back into my Granny Blackstone’s house.’ I spoke the thought aloud.
‘Yes, sort of old-fashioned comfy, isn’t it,’ said Prim. ‘My Dad likes old things.’ She pointed me into a big living room, off the hall, and disappeared with Dawn in another direction. I looked around the room. It was dominated by a huge brown three-piece suite in leather and velvet, and the pleasant smell of the hide hung in the air. Everything else — curtains, rugs, furniture, huge wooden-framed radio — was of the same 1930s vintage. A telly would have seemed obscene in there.
‘It’s a museum, isn’t it,’ said Prim, from the doorway, behind me. ‘Lovely to visit, but not to live in. Not for me, anyway.
‘Sit down,’ she ordered. ‘Dawn’s making the tea.’ She flopped on to the big sofa, pulling me down beside her. The big velvet cushions whooshed up around me with my weight. I’ve never laid on a feather-bed, but when I do, I imagine it’ll feel like the Phillips family settee. Prim curled up on her cushion, sitting with her legs pulled up like she does in the car. She was wearing a white sleeveless wool top and pale blue shorts. The way she was sitting I could see her knickers. Suddenly my jeans felt tighter as old Mr Stiffy began to make his presence felt. I reached out for her, but she jumped up, a smile on her delicious lips. ‘Oz! It’s Sunday. My folks are Sabbatarians. No radio on Sunday, no playing cards, and absolutely no nooky on the living-room carpet!
‘Besides, this is serious. What are we going to tell Dawn?’
Dragged back to reality, I shook my head. ‘We’re going to ask her a few things first. She …’
‘Ask me?’ Dawn was in the doorway carrying teapot, cups and saucers on a big tray with folding legs. ‘Ask me what?’
‘How you came to be in a movie, for a start,’ said Prim, quickly.
‘Oh,’ said Dawn. ‘All that hasn’t really sunk in yet. It was pure luck. There was a part for an actress and Miles wanted someone Scottish. He came to the Lyceum one night when I was on and saw me. Next day, I had a note from the director asking me to come for a test.’
‘That’s great. How’s it going?’
‘Terrific, so far. I was supposed to be ravished and killed by the Redcoats quite early on, but Miles has given me a reprieve. They’ve written some more scenes for me and I’m getting supporting billing. A bit more money too.’
‘You seem to be doing all right in other ways,’ I chipped in. ‘We met Miles. He fancies you, and no mistake.’
Dawn glanced at me as she poured the tea and smiled self-consciously, nervily. I could see that, temperamentally, she was her sister’s opposite.
‘So,’ said Prim, ‘with all that’s going for you, how come you’re screwed up. What’s with the Prozac?’
‘Oh it’s lots of things, but mostly, as usual, it’s men. I’ve got myself trapped in a sort of, situation, and I was having trouble finding a way out.’ ‘Christ,’ I thought, ‘if that was her solution I found in Prim’s flat it was a bit drastic.’
‘I was having stage fright, quite badly. The Prozac sorted it out, but it didn’t do anything for the root cause of the trouble.’ ‘No?’ I thought again. ‘Maybe it took the kitchen knife to sort that out.’
‘Remember the guy I told you about in a letter?’
‘Danny deVito meets Nijinski?’ said Prim.
‘Yes, that’s right. His name’s William Kane. He’s a regular at the theatre. His firm are corporate sponsors. I met him at our theatre club one night. We got talking, and I thought he was sort of funny, but sad at the same time. He was carrying a burden, I could tell.’
Prim sighed. ‘Aah. Another bloody bird with a broken wing! I thought you’d grown out of that.’
‘You don’t though, do you. At least I don’t. Anyway Willie isn’t like that. He isn’t helpless or anything. He phoned me a couple of days after the reception and asked me out. He came to the play, then took me to dinner, and it was fun. We did it again, and soon it was a regular thing.’
‘He’s married of course, Dawn, isn’t he?’ There was an edge of disapproval in Prim’s voice. Her sister’s cheeks flushed, quickly. She nodded.
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘Look, I know this’ll sound awful, but his marriage is a sham. He and his wife are around forty; they’ve been married unhappily for years. She’s unfaithful to him, and she doesn’t hide it. In fact she rubs Willie’s nose in it. She has a relationship with someone she was at school with.’ Prim shot me a raised-eyebrow glance. ‘They were boy and girl school captains at the same time, but afterwards they went their separate ways, until they met up again a couple of years ago.