House of Silence Read Online Free Page A

town should not be read as a
reluctance to consummate our relationship. And if you were to put
your hand down my trousers now , you’d perceive the truth of
that.’ He kissed me again. ‘Another time. There will be another
time, won’t there? I’ve got to be on the set at 9.00am tomorrow -
costumed, made-up, coiffed and looking fresh as a daisy. Make-up
will have to use industrial-strength concealer on the bags under my
eyes.’
    ‘So stay over.’
    ‘No. I like to sleep in my own bed. Not
necessarily alone, you understand. Will you be on the set
tomorrow?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And the day after?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You’ll be around for a while, I hope?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Good.’
    Alfie stepped out into the road suddenly and
hailed a passing taxi. It slewed to a halt and he opened the door
for me. I kissed him on the cheek and climbed in. By the time I’d
given the driver my address and looked round to wave goodbye, Alfie
was gone. As the taxi drove away we overtook him, his hands in his
pockets, his head bowed. Pale-faced, pale-haired under the
street-lights, he looked slight and insubstantial, like a
ghost.
    I didn’t see much of Alfie in the next few
weeks. We were sometimes on set together, but his filming schedule
was punishing and my hours were long, so there wasn’t much time or
energy left over for socialising. We had a tacit agreement that the
friendship that might become a relationship was on hold
until we could give it our full attention. At least, I think that’s
what was going on. We flirted, touched, kissed in snatched moments
of privacy, but Alfie put no pressure on me to go up to London with
him and he never accepted my invitation to stay over in Brighton,
even though it was pretty clear I was no longer offering him the
sofa.
    It was an odd sort of courtship - and courtship is what it felt like, not just because he was in
Regency get-up most of the time we spent together. Alfie’s verbal
seduction of me left me in no doubt that his mind and feelings were
engaged, even if for the moment his body wasn’t. I had a sense of
his attention being lavished on me and I watched him to see if he
treated everyone in this way. He didn’t. He was friendly, funny,
respectful to the director and experienced members of the cast and
crew, but with me he was more open, somehow vulnerable. I can’t
think of a better word to describe it. I just had a sense of Alfie
being himself with me. Except that he wasn’t really. It was
so obviously a performance for my benefit: entertaining, endearing,
apparently sincere but also self-consciously charming. The
contradictions were what made him so intriguing. And so
infuriating.
    When I look back now, it seems to me that
the best and most convincing performance I ever saw Alfie give was
off-camera. As himself.
    It was the performance of a lifetime.
     

Chapter Two
    Gwen
    It probably sounds as if I was a pushover, besotted
from the outset. Maybe I was. I was certainly pretending, to myself
and to Alfie, that I wasn’t .
    When I said I didn’t have much experience
with men, I wasn’t referring to a lack of interest in them, nor to
an unprepossessing appearance. (I gather I’m attractive to men.
Slim, but not skinny, with shiny, straight, dark hair, as featured
in shampoo commercials.) My meagre love life was a result of
caution on my part and cowardice on men’s. They found me
challenging. I just wasn’t “girly”. I didn’t wear make-up. I didn’t
wear fashionable clothes, preferring vintage and second-hand
clothing. I didn’t wear heels. Not a feminist statement, or even a
fashion statement. If you’re 5’ 9” and single, you’d have to be
supermodel-confident to think you could wear heels and still have a
good chance of pulling.
    To make matters worse, I was intelligent and
articulate. Not exactly self-confident, but I was at least capable.
A “coper”. With a family like mine you learn to cope at an early
age. You accept that sometimes you are effectively the