Gwen doesn’t do television, so the sofa is directly in front of the bay window, looking out over the unkempt garden. The iron gate at the end of the path is ajar – I must have forgotten to shut it properly – and beyond it, on the main road through the village, I can see my BMW and the pub opposite. It’s one of those ones with low, dark windows and dirty white walls. It’s called The Lamb.
‘I hate Devon,’ I say. ‘I should have talked you out of living here. Come back to London with me. I’ll find a better doctor.’
She shakes her head.
‘I’ll sell this place from under you if you piss me off. I’m serious this time, Taylor. Move your arse to London and get checked over properly.’
She doesn’t say anything for a while. Then, out of the blue, ‘Studies show a huge increase in Epidermal Sclerosis in the past five years. I heard rumours that they’re looking at Suscutin as a possible cause.’
‘Stop reading tabloids. You’ve spent too long sitting down here, looking out of the window and waiting for shit to happen.’
‘Come on!’ There it is: the fire, the heart of her. ‘Mik, it’s the pills, it’s the pills, it’s only what I deserve.’
‘Nobody deserves this. And if it’s the pills, they’ll prove a link.’
‘And do what? A few adverse reactions against a multimillion pound industry? It won’t change anybody’s mind. It hasn’t changed your mind. You’re still taking your daily dose, aren’t you?’
‘You know I am. There’s no proof, Gwen.’
She nods, and slumps back down. ‘I get it. It’s much better that we’re all free to love each other forever. If we can find anyone to love us back.’
She’s so bitter. But she knows who I am; she knows the deal. I don’t do love, not now, not ever again. ‘Listen, you’re my best friend, but I—’
She punches my arm. Once, not too long ago, it would have hurt. ‘Shut up, you moron. You’re so self obsessed.’
‘Fuck you!’
She laughs, then says, ‘Sell the damned cottage. Just pay my hospice bills instead. There’s a nice one with a duck pond just outside Exeter.’
‘Seriously? You’re going to meekly accept your impending death because there’s a duck pond to sit by?’
‘It’s not treatable, Mik. It’s gone beyond the first layer. It’s all the way through me, now. I smell it. I want to be in a place where we all smell as bad as each other.’
‘I think you’ll find that smell is my hangover.’
‘Go wash then, you pig.’
When I come back downstairs, only ten minutes later, it’s all different. Death is accepted, done and dusted, sitting down to breakfast with us. How can that happen? She’s made toast and coffee in her magazine-standard kitchen, and she’s all business.
‘Listen,’ she says, as I butter the toast and layer on marmalade, ‘there’s something you need to do for me.’
‘Fire away.’
‘You need to find someone. Someone that I have to apologise to.’
‘Making amends time already?’
‘No,’ says Gwen. ‘Don’t. Don’t make a joke about it.’
‘Is this to do with the day that you left Max?’ I ask. The day we never talk about.
She doesn’t answer me, exactly. ‘I don’t want to die without having said sorry. You can understand that, can’t you?’
She knows I can.
She knows how important apologies have been to me, and how hard I have worked for them: to get them, and to give them. Finishing Max’s film has been one long apology to him, even though he can never accept it.
‘It’s not only that.’ Her fingers pluck at the collar of her white shirt – why does she still dress like a professional even though she’s been out of work for years? It’s like she’s never let her guard down; she’s still looking for threats.
‘Then what?’
‘Do you remember when you first helped me out? What you said to me?’
‘I said, whatever you need.’
‘Not that bit. I told you I had to disappear, get far away from there, and you said: Okay. And you said: Nothing is unforgivable, though.’
‘That’s right.’
‘You still believe that?’
‘I do.’ I have to.
‘Then find Rose Allington for me,’ she says, and she hasn’t looked so desperate since she turned up outside my caravan one morning on Max’s Sussex estate, halfway through filming, and begged me to take her away, hide her from herself.
‘Just tell me,’ I say, on an impulse. ‘This one time. It was so long ago. Tell me what you did, and what Max did, and be done with it.’
She rolls her eyes. ‘One more time, Mik. It’s not about you.’
‘Oh that’s right, I forgot for one second. Lucky you were here to remind me. So where do I look for this Rose Allington? I’ve always wanted to play detective.’
‘You start by finding someone I used to know. He’s called Phineas Spice.’
JUST A TRIM.
It occurred to me to go back to my original name, of course. After we became press fodder, and being a Stuck was literally that – being mired in that role as one of the six happiest people on Earth, just waiting for it to end. Of course it had to end. We all knew that. The six of us, the reporters, the people who were searching the internet every day for updates. And it did end.
I always intended to go back to my old name. Mikhael Gusin. But when it came to it, I couldn’t. I wasn’t that person any more. I couldn’t find a new name that suited me either. What do people do, sit down and make one up? Is there a list, somewhere, to pick from by your particular trauma?
No, I’m Mikhael Stuck. It fits. We all took Howard’s surname at first because we wanted to be stuck together, and now it describes who I am with an ironic precision that continues to entertain me.
Not so for Phineas Spice, who has gone back to his birth name of Alexander Joseph Murray.
It didn’t take long to find him. In fact, I didn’t find him at all. I paid someone to do that. I don’t think Gwen really had in mind that I would need to get dressed up in a trenchcoat or a deerstalker, and do the legwork. I hired an agency, and they tracked him down in a couple of days. A courier dropped off a thick file to my flat in Kensington, and I read all about nightclubs and skin fights, gambling and prostitution. And Starguard, of course.
I know exactly what kind of person is cutting my hair right now.
The shop is empty. I waited outside in the car, trying to get Phineas alone. Alexander, I should say. He’s a short man in a loud shirt, the collar open, a gold chain hanging loose. He’s bald himself, and shiny under the recessed spotlights of his black and chrome decor. He trims away at my locks with expert fingers; you’d think he’s been doing this all his life.
‘Not too much off the top, thanks.’
‘No problem.’
‘How did you choose the name?’ I ask him.
He blinks; I watch him in the large rectangular mirror before us, a slant of the summer sunshine falling across his chest, but he’s perfectly calm as he says, ‘Pardon?’
The sharp snaps of the scissor blades are loud in my ear. ‘The name of your shop. Nicky’s. Are you Nicky?’
‘That was my dad. He owned it. After he died I took over.’
‘I’m sorry. When was that?’
‘2018? Yeah.’
‘You weren’t a hairdresser before then?’