MIK: Of course it was about the sex. I was nineteen years old. We were all under twenty-five. Sex was a huge part of it. It was also the part that got the press hot under the collar. That’s how we came to their attention, actually. One of Nicky’s conquests had a brother who worked for a newspaper.
ROSE: Nicky had other lovers?
MIK: She was in love with us. She fucked other people on a regular basis. She used protection and we understood it, as a need. Sex is just sex. It was the least interesting thing about us, in a way.
ROSE: The film glossed over that part.
MIK: I said, it’s not that interesting. Plus the other producers wanted a 12 rating. What is it you want to know? We rarely did it as a big group. That stuff just looks good for porn movies but somebody always ends up feeling left out. Usually we did it in twos or threes, depending on who we felt close to. That changed all the time. Personal preferences are none of your business, no matter how much you threaten me over Gwen.
<Pause>
ROSE: You make me sound like a monster. I thought this was give and take. I help you, you help me, you know. I’m not, you’re not—
MIK: I know. I can leave at any time.
<Pause>
ROSE: So that’s it. I’ve become a monster now. I get it. Perhaps it was bound to happen. But I need to know, it’s been years of not knowing, I didn’t realise how it would feel, and then Petra died because of me, because of my problems—
MIK: She tried to stop Suscutin production because of you?
ROSE: Did you know Max was one of the original investors in Suscutin? He took it for years. Long before it passed regulations. He gave it to me too. As an early guinea pig.
<Pause>
MIK: Why you?
ROSE: That’s difficult to explain. Love does strange things to people. Perhaps the easiest way to explain it is to say that I have Extreme Moult Syndrome.
MIK: EMS? I heard Suscutin cures that.
ROSE: I didn’t want to be cured. I still don’t. Max thought I should be whether I liked it or not.
MIK: He didn’t want you to suffer.
ROSE: There are worse things in life than suffering. You fell in love, all six of you. You knew it would hurt when it ended. Knowing hurt is always coming, is only ever one layer of skin away, is not some evolutionary mistake. It happens for a reason.
MIK: I’ve heard that argument before, but it sounds a bit too close to a religion for my liking.
ROSE: Losing your skin is not the tragedy at the heart of the human condition. Feeling the same way forever, that’s the worst.
<Pause>
MIK: So Petra agreed with you, about the tragedy of the human condition, as you call it. She tried to burn down the Suscutin laboratories because of it.
ROSE: No. I don’t know what she felt about Suscutin. I asked her to burn it down, and she tried. She’d done it before. She was good at getting rid of things and people that shouldn’t be allowed to exist.
MIK: Who are you to make that call?
ROSE: She burned down empty office blocks that were being used to hold skin fights between trafficked slaves, and she burned down houses where teenaged girls were being groomed to fall in love with men who would then flay off their skin in videos. She burned down factories that specialised in clothes made from— look, however young and untouched you are, you can’t claim there’s any grey area here.
MIK: I, I— Yes, the world can be a horrible place, I know that, I know that. I’m sorry you’ve seen stuff like that.
ROSE: That’s not the point. Don’t make it about me. This is about you. You helping Taylor, when she deserves some sort of justice.
MIK: Is that what your friend Petra provided? Justice?
<Pause>
ROSE: Petra tried to help me, just as you keep trying to help Taylor. What makes her so special? What makes her worthy of your help?
MIK: I made her a promise.
2013. FLUSH.
‘You’ve just insulted the love of my fucking life,’ said Max, and smiled. He dealt the cards, flicking them across the green baize of the tabletop.
Mik smiled back, although he didn’t know why. Was it a joke? Nothing Max said could ever quite be believed; working together on the script and now spending time together during the shooting process had taught him that. Max liked to manufacture moments, saying or doing things for effect, even when there were only the two of them present. The mystery of him – the idea that somewhere under the Hollywood persona there was something more meaningful and less pretty that stayed smothered under the unrelenting need for personal perfection – was one of the things Mik liked best about his new friend. It was a battle he had fought himself, when the papers started to construct their own narrative of him as the toy-boy of the Stuck Six.
But it did make Max difficult to trust. Mik couldn’t spend long periods of time with him, in case he lost his own reality, so hard fought for. So he had refused the offer of a room of his own in Max’s Sussex mansion, and had instead opted for a trailer on the grounds once filming started. It gave him distance, and a space of his own. He found he needed that so much more after living as one of the Six. He struggled with concepts of his own possessions, and what sorts of embellishments he should make to his own living area; it was difficult to be totally responsible for himself and his surroundings, but necessary.
Friends were also necessary. Uncomplicated friends, if such a thing existed. If not – fuck it. Beer and poker, and a damaged superstar for company.
The third hand of cards sat next to a beer, before the seat Gwen always took, facing the door. Max regularly dealt her in whether she was present or not; he seemed reliant on the idea that they came as a team and her protection extended over him. She, in turn, insulted him in public, and was an attentive, maternal figure when it was just the three of them. Mik couldn’t imagine what they were like when they were alone – soulmates who discussed everything, or an old married couple who rarely exchanged words?
They played a few warm-up hands until Gwen arrived, her cheeks red.
‘It’s all clear,’ she said.
Max checked his watch. ‘That usually makes it – yup. Time for meds.’ He left the games room as she unbuttoned her jacket and draped it over the back of her chair. He took medication every night, and often sent Gwen out to fetch it. Mik never raised it as a subject. If it was an ongoing illness, a skin condition maybe, it wouldn’t have fitted with Max’s carefully guarded self-image and he never would have told the truth about it to another person anyway.
Gwen took a sip of her beer. ‘It’s really warm in here.’
‘No, it’s just cold outside tonight.’ But she was right, the room was very warm, the windows shut up tight and the green silk walls oppressive. It was not to Mik’s taste, but he supposed it was a traditional take on a games room, with a snooker table, and its own bar in matching mahogany with a row of optics to match. Above it, there was a painting of a chestnut horse with a sturdy body and elongated legs that Mik found disturbing, as if reality had skewed.
‘I’m really tired,’ Gwen said.
‘You okay?’
‘Yeah. Fine. I could have done without the cross-examination over my working methods today, that’s all.’
‘Who was that? The woman who was asking you about stuff earlier?’
‘Forget it,’ she said, and took another sip from her beer. ‘Listen, we get on well, right?’
‘Yeah.’ She was matter-of-fact, always serious with him, giving lots of eye contact in a way that seemed to him to be a plea for honesty on his part. It led Mik to think that she was very honest with him, as an act of reciprocity.