The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements

Chapter Twenty

It was Marie who booked the flight to Montreal, and she came with Win on the plane. Her expression was grim, her voice clipped. They went over the situation in clinical detail: The Sun Also Rises had dumped her, of course. The producers at Paramount were skittish as ever. The studio had already wasted months waiting for Win to finish tending to her mother and start filming, and the delay until winter had messed up their schedules. The widespread reports that Win was so desperate for publicity she’d break up a marriage were the last straw.

She was also no longer in consideration for the thriller whose contract she’d been days away from signing, and Chanel had dropped her as their campaign lead. Patrick was trying to smooth things over, but there was a chance they would sue her for breach of contract; one clause had promised reliable, upstanding behavior as a brand ambassador. Win listened like a president being briefed on a series of military crises. She nodded at all the right moments.

Then they made their plans. Originally Montreal was only meant to be a quick flyby so that Win could be there for the ceremony before escaping back to work. But suddenly Win’s schedule was wide open, like a deeply set valley without a bridge, and she arrived over a week before the wedding. It was only temporary, Patrick had already assured her. He sounded comforting and patient on the phone in a way that reminded Win of Pritha’s doctors at her worst stages. They all agreed it would blow over, especially if Win was never so much as even photographed with Leo again. Producers weren’t stupid; Win’s name on a billboard would still significantly raise a film’s profile, and she had proved herself an asset on set. Hardworking, focused. Free from distractions. She had cried only once since the news broke.

Emil called when she was at the airport, waiting to board. His voice was quiet and comforting, and he didn’t bother with platitudes that he knew she wouldn’t believe, just told her that he was on his way to the East Sussex house to pick up her things. Marie had decided it was best not for Win to go back and get them herself, and she’d had to say goodbye to her mum on the phone.

Pritha’s voice had been sleepy and confused, and she’d asked if Win was okay. “Ma,” Win said, and felt her voice break. She sobbed for two awful minutes while Pritha said uselessly, “Whitman. Oh, shona,” until Win said she had to go. Her eyes still stung. She had to stop thinking about it.

“Thank you,” she told Emil instead, looking over the airfield, tracking the swoop of departing planes. She tried to inject some humor into her strained voice. “Sorry you’ve ended up caught in all my Hollywood shit. If you want out, I totally understand.”

Emil didn’t laugh, as she’d expected. He was quiet, and then he said, “Thank you, Win. I’m glad you said that.”

She listened to his resignation in numb silence. He swore it was nothing personal. “It’s just—the situation is too unstable for me,” he said. “I’m not as tough as you, or Marie—although you can’t ever tell her I said that. And I’ll serve a notice period, of course, as long as you need.” Win wanted to argue with him, but she didn’t know what to say. He was right to resign. He was ambitious, and she was a toxic entity with nothing to offer him by way of reassurance except money, which he could get elsewhere. Marie bristled and called him a coward, but Win understood.

After a lot of back-and-forth, Marie decided that Shift’s wedding would be a “good tone changer.” Win could hole up with Shift and be a dutiful bridesmaid, keeping out of view as much as she could without giving the impression of hiding. Win was relieved. She’d thought she would have to hide out from everyone and everything and worried that Marie would tell her to miss the wedding altogether. But Marie thought Win being a good friend in the background of a family ceremony would help, and the Vogue profile on Charlie was just the right amount of attention. It would be a signal that life was still moving, the world still turning, encouraging people to forget this mess. It was clear that Leo wouldn’t be there.

After the wedding she would find a new project, something small and independent but with enough clout to remind people of her talent. Win would stay busy, and in a few months, once they’d decided how they wanted to frame the narrative, there would be a scripted confessional interview, a few self-deprecating jokes, a new boyfriend. Win just needed to stay cool, and quiet, and as far away from Leo as possible.

Lila had posted to Twitter only once in the last seventy-two hours, brief and vague: lol…believe what u want to believe. It had been retweeted hundreds of thousands of times, her follower count climbing, her name trending alongside Win’s and Leo’s. Win wondered if she’d even noticed.

“It wouldn’t hurt her to come out with an apology,” Marie said as she scanned through the in-flight menu. Win hadn’t been able to eat since their early morning coffees. “You don’t think, if I reached out to—”

“No,” Win said. “That won’t be happening.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it,” Win said. “Don’t go behind my back on this one.”

Marie looked offended. She leaned back from Win in her seat, plush leather creaking. “You know I’ll never contact him without asking you first.”

“Unless you decide you know better than me,” Win said, filled with a kind of reckless righteousness, still stinging from the call with Emil. She thought of Leo’s admission in the gallery. I thought maybe I could help, he’d said, disconsolate and annoyed at having to admit it, and Win had felt it, then, the first real stirrings of danger. Something worse than the way they’d been fighting. Something less manageable. “You let me think that he—”

“I’m your publicist, Whitman,” Marie said. “I can’t be your relationship guru as well.”

“You should have told me,” Win said.

“You should have told me you were in love with him,” Marie said.

Win shut her mouth on a tiny noise. She felt like she’d been punched in the gut. She had never told Marie why Leo had been there first thing in the morning when Marie called. But she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised that Marie had worked it out.

Marie softened. “I would have found another way, if I’d known.”

“Well.” Win’s voice was very small. “I didn’t know, either.” But dwelling on it wouldn’t do any good, even if it was all she could think about, the awful realization that had come too late. “What did he—what did he say when he called you in September?”

She tried to pull the gray memories of two months ago into focus. Her anger had cut her off from everyone, like she was locked away in a tower. Then Marie had texted her, Turn on Radio 1, and everything had gone to shit.

Marie hesitated. “He said it wasn’t fair that you were on your own.”

Win turned her face to the window. Below the sleek wing of the plane, there were only clouds, harshly white and rolling away as far as she could see.

Win was at Shift’s house for two days before they talked about it.

She wondered if Shift was restraining herself from saying I told you so. But she just asked Win quietly if she’d already known about the divorce.

“No,” Win said. Her mouth twitched. She wasn’t sure if she was going to laugh or cry. “I think he thought it was going to be a nice surprise.”

Shift’s eyebrows went up, almost disappearing under her bangs. She had started wearing her hair in a high messy bun, which made her look like a beloved high school art teacher. “Would it have been a good surprise?”

“Yes,” Win said. She paused. “I would have been happy, I think.”

“Oh, babe,” Shift said.

For a long time Win had wrestled with her thoughts about Lila. She had spent months hating her, and feeling cruel for hating her, since it was Leo’s fault, and it wasn’t like Win had ever really had a claim on him. Then, at home, with Leo so close and her mother so sick, Lila had been like a phantom, reappearing late at night on Leo’s phone or in a skipped heartbeat whenever Marie called, or more and more when Leo looked at her, when he drew closer, when he made her mum laugh, when he ran by her side, and Win thought: Married, he’s married. On the final night in London, the last thoughts of Lila had burst like lazy fireworks, and Win had allowed herself to forget that Lila existed. Clearly, that had been a mistake.

Once, at her mum’s house when Win had still been so furious with Leo she couldn’t even speak to him, she’d spent an evening watching videos of Lila. She’d felt absurdly guilty, especially with Leo somewhere in the house, sulking in his room and on the phone to one of his siblings or even to Lila herself. She’d felt paranoid, like she was fifteen again and smoking a secretive cigarette before her mum got home.

In interviews, Lila was rude and quick-witted and untroubled. She hung back more than Win would have expected and let the rest of the band answer questions, smirking in the background and occasionally correcting them when she disagreed. Once an interviewer hinted that being a band with a front woman made it easier to get gigs, because venues had to fill their quotas. “Blow me,” Lila replied, and walked off camera without turning back. Win had thought, with a stirring of jealousy that wasn’t all about Leo, She says exactly what she thinks all the time, that girl has no filter at all, and wondered if that was what Leo wanted. But the next morning she woke to the sounds of Leo and Pritha making breakfast together, getting ready for another endless soap opera marathon, and realized she didn’t have any idea what Leo wanted.

Win was forcing herself to call Pritha once a day. Every day she came up with new excuses not to do it, and every day she propped her head in her hand at Shift’s crowded kitchen table and called the house in East Sussex. Pritha knew something had gone wrong, even if she didn’t completely understand the mechanics. Win tried to tell the truth about how bad things were, though she was wary of stressing Pritha out. It made it worse that Pritha herself was dead center of the scandal this time. Their strategy of an appealingly tragic Win had backfired. It was public knowledge that Win had continued the charade even while her mother was being ferried in and out of hospital rooms, flaunting her mother’s illness for sympathy points.

It was a physical effort for Win to loosen her resolve on the phone, the recurring embarrassment of getting to the age of twenty-seven and not knowing how to talk to her mother. But she told Pritha everything: Chanel dropping her, the Hemingway project gone, the producers who had stopped returning Patrick’s calls. Leo’s face in the blue of the morning. Pritha was still incredulous that anyone really cared about Win’s private life, let alone Leo’s—but she was patient on the phone. She didn’t interrupt. A romantic crisis seemed to baffle her, and she didn’t mention Leo, but she talked about other things. She told Win she was recovering well; her sister was coming down to visit in a few days. The cat was back to terrorizing seagulls in the garden. “Try not to worry so much,” she said, a few days after Win had left. “I think you’re handling things very well.” Win hung up almost shivering with relief.

*  *  *

Shift had announced that all wedding planning activities were confined to the garage, and the kitchen and living room were strictly off-limits for flowers, confetti, or tulle. In reality the whole house looked like it had been invaded by an overeager events company. Shift was exasperated by the clutter, and had a habit of knocking things over as she passed them, scattering sugared almonds over the floor or nudging piles of sample menus off the side of the couch. Three times already Win had witnessed Shift drag the seating chart out of the room, cursing, only for Charlie to cheerfully drag it back in a few minutes later.

“I’m sorry I’ve turned your wedding week into this,” Win said. She nodded in the direction of the front door, the blinking shafts of camera flashes through the mottled glass.

“It was always going to be a bit like this,” Shift said. “And Charlie loves it, anyway. Last night he asked me if he should take out some tea and coffee for them.”

“He’s too nice for his own good.”

Charlie proved her point when he came bounding into the living room half an hour later and expressed his deep, heartfelt gratitude to Win for helping to make the last few seating cards, something he confessed he had been “really worried about.”

It was only when Charlie had pulled Win into a tight hug in Shift’s hallway on the night of her arrival that Win realized she barely knew him, had met him just a few times, rarely for longer than an hour. Most of Win’s time with Shift was snatched when their schedules collided, which meant while Shift was touring through cities where Win was filming. Win would attend concerts and watch Shift leap around, self-contained and wild at the same time under the strobe lights, or else Shift would meet her for breakfast at dawn, when Win had already been up filming for three hours and was due back on set for another twelve. Win had always been secretly proud of herself for finding the time.

Over the last few days she had barely seen Charlie, who was busy with wedding errands and outings to scenic locations with his Vogue profiler. Now he pulled a carefully folded scrap of paper from his wallet and said, “Look, we made Hello! Canada.”

Win tensed—Marie had warned her she was on the cover this week—but Charlie only had a clipped article. In the photo Shift was tucked under Charlie’s arm while they stood in a parking lot, her face scrunched in a laugh, one hand held up to Charlie’s mouth, her thumb resting against his lower lip.

“Oh, come on,” Shift said.

“No, this one’s good,” Charlie said, and began to read the caption. “Adorable scenes this week from Montreal, where Charlie Washington and his longtime girlfriend, British EDM princess Shift, were seen embracing tenderly outside a local restaurant just days away from their wedding.”

Shift scoffed. “We have never embraced tenderly.”

“Of course we have,” Charlie said. “The pair will say their vows this week at the Rosemont Greenhouse with an intimate gathering of family and friends, including—well, whatever,” Charlie said, glancing up at Win. “It’s nice, though. The picture’s good, too. I might see if Georgia wants to include it.” Georgia was the Vogue journalist; Charlie had taken to referring to her as though she were a dear friend.

“It’s gross.” Shift plucked the clipping from his hands, scrunched it into a ball, and lobbed it into a corner of the room.

Charlie settled back into his seat, untroubled. “I have copies,” he said.

Shift gave Win a look out of the corner of her eye that Win thought was meant to convey exasperation. Her mouth was twitching.

“Sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay,” Win said.

“Oh!” Charlie said. “So you told her, then?”

“Told me what?”

“Oh,” Charlie said again, this time low and anxious. Shift tilted her head back toward the ceiling, her eyes closed.

“Told me what?” Win repeated.

“Come on.” Shift looped her arm under Win’s, tugging her toward the kitchen.

Shift whipped up whisky sours, the same in the kitchen as she was in her studio, hands flying about and always at least three things in the mix at once. She managed to look busy enough that Win couldn’t probe her further, and Win’s gaze wandered around the room instead, Charlie’s basil plants in the window and the fridge plastered with save the dates and invitation drafts and Polaroids. She caught sight of it, half-hidden under a caterer’s proposed menu: Leo’s face, a line of beer bottles, his arm slung around a shoulder that Win knew was her own, though the rest of the photo was out of view. Her stomach twisted, a flood of misery and nausea, and she said quickly, “You might as well just tell me. If it’s about Gum coming to the wedding, I already know.”

She wasn’t looking forward to meeting him, but hopefully he would be too caught up in his own drama to focus much on his little brother’s—he seemed the type. “Right, Geoffrey is coming,” Shift said. “Only…he called Charlie yesterday.”

She paused. There were fast, unhappy ripples in Win’s stomach.

“He won’t come to the wedding unless Leo does, too. Geoffrey says the whole thing is a plot to undermine him.”

Win’s chest tightened. “Okay.” She drew a breath. “Has Leo— Is he going to do it?” It hurt to say his name, like an allergy. A swelling and soreness in the throat.

“Leo’s said he won’t come unless you say it’s okay. But Charlie loves Leo, and he’s worried about Geoffrey. He’s very protective of him,” she added, looking briefly annoyed, “as if he’s some kind of sensitive child and not an—anyway. Charlie didn’t want me to say it to you, but I think he’ll be really crushed if they aren’t there.”

Keeping her voice deliberately level, Win said, “So are you asking me about this, or telling me?”

Shift winced. “Telling.”

“Right.”

“Win,” Shift started, but Win cut her off with a dismissive wave of her hand.

“Right,” she repeated. “So I guess Chilton isn’t coming, then?”

Shift blinked. “Chilton?”

“Georgia Chilton. The Vogue profiler. And whatever photographer she’s bringing.” Win was surprised that she had to spell it out. “They can’t be there if both me and Leo are. It’s too risky.”

She didn’t like the way Shift was staring at her, not quite taken aback but instead with narrowed eyes, her face slowly setting.

“You know how much that profile means to Charlie,” Shift said. “It’s not even about you.”

“You don’t think the fact that I’ll be there might make it in?”

Shift took a neat sip of her drink. “So Charlie has you to thank for it, then?”

“That’s not what I mean. If anything happens...”

“You’ll just have to control yourselves,” Shift said, and set her drink down. “I know it’s a lot. But I don’t ask you for much.”

Leo and Shift never thought they were asking her for anything, even when they were demanding everything. Win shook her head. “This is too much. I’m sorry. It’s either me and him, or me and the profiler. Not both.”

“Is that an ultimatum?”

“I’m not trying to force you,” Win said. “I told you, it’s just too risky.”

“Maybe you just have to take a risk.”

“It isn’t that simple. You know how hard I work.”

“You think Charlie doesn’t work hard? You can’t use your career as an excuse all the time.”

Win leaned back, stunned. “This isn’t an excuse.”

“No, it is. It always is.” Shift stood up, pushing off her stool. Her eyes were bright with anger, her chin tilted up. “You think you’re being professional and making smart decisions, but you just make easy decisions. You always do whatever’s easiest for you.”

“Nothing about this is easy!”

“No?” Shift folded her arms. “You’re sticking with what you know. You’re clearly breaking your own heart to do it, but that’s never stopped you before. You’ve always played it safe with Leo—”

Win gaped. “Safe?”

“Doing your stupid platonic publicity thing,” Shift said. She was speaking very quickly now. “You’ve always been obsessed with each other. Why didn’t you give him a chance?”

“I did,” Win said, standing up herself, her stool screeching across the floor. “It didn’t work out—”

“Seven years ago,” Shift said. “And you didn’t, actually, you slept together a few times and then you decided Leo was too useful for your career to risk anything with him. You treated him like a tool, and he loved you—”

“Believe it or not,” Win said, voice shaking, “I didn’t actually come here for relationship advice.”

“Good,” Shift said. “You’ve never listened to any, and I don’t—I don’t care, anyway, this isn’t about you, Win, hard as that might be to believe.”

“Oh, god, yeah, because I’m so selfish,” Win said, chest tight with fury. She felt worryingly close to bursting into tears. “That’s why I’m here, just selfishly wallowing around the place and making you talk about my problems. Shift, you’re the one who keeps making things worse. I don’t need a reporter from Vogue anywhere near me right now. Marie wasn’t even sure if I should come to the wedding. I’m here and I’m trying for you.”

“Marie also said that it would be a good ‘change of scenery’ for you,” Shift said. “I heard you talking to her, the night you arrived. Like my wedding is a set backdrop.”

“That’s not what she meant—”

“You have a busy life, Win, and a job that’s more intense than I can understand. But you forget other people want things, too, and even if we don’t end up on magazine covers, we’re still important. And I think you use your job as an excuse the moment you’re scared of something.”

“I’m not scared of Leo.”

“I think you are,” Shift told her. “And it’s not just Leo. You never want to commit yourself to anyone. Me, your mum—”

“Don’t talk about my mum!” Win was seething: everyone thought they knew her mother better than her; everyone thought they could explain Pritha and Win to each other. “God, I—I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Because it works for you,” Shift shouted back. “Do you think for one second you would have come if you’d known Leo was going to be here?”

“My career is on the line—”

“I’m your best friend! Win, I love you, but for years, every time we’ve hung out, it’s been on your terms!” Shift’s voice cracked, like she, too, was trying not to cry. “Sometimes it’s like you’re just fitting this friendship into your timetable to prove that you’re still down to earth. I know your career is important, but does it have to be the most important? Why can’t I count first sometimes?”

Pick me, Leo had said. Win turned away, slamming her hand down hard on the counter, taking ragged breaths. They didn’t understand; neither of them understood. They hadn’t had to work as hard for recognition as she had. They both looked the part, they had no reason not to be confident in being rewarded, and people loved them without their having to try.

And Win’s career had to be important now, it had to be the most important thing, because if that spotlight stayed jeering or worse, tracked away and left her in the dark, then everything would have been for nothing. All of Shift’s accusations, torn out of her like she’d been thinking them for a long time; Leo’s face wiped clean with shock when he realized what she’d meant that morning in London when she left.

Charlie appeared unsmiling in the doorway. “I heard shouting.”

“I’m going.” Win pushed past Charlie into the hallway and saw the lights flashing at the front door again. She stopped, swung around on her heel, and bit out, “To bed.”

As she stormed up the stairs, she heard Charlie say, “Baby,” and Shift saying, voice thick with emotion, “Fuck, it’s okay, I just— She’s just so fucking cold sometimes—”

Win slammed the door behind her and burst vengefully into tears.