When we emerged at the end of the ceremony, the award felt weighted, like I could swing it if it came to that.
Greta must have already left, but Joel, as always, was by Harper’s side. She curled into him like he was the better trophy, like she’d already won. But as I passed, I heard him say: “Easy to win when you’re not acting at all but reenacting your own fucked-up past.’”
I stumbled before I could decide whether to whirl on him or pretend I hadn’t heard. But when I turned, I wasn’t the only one who seemed furious. He was half-laughing and looking expectantly at Harper who glowered in return.
“Come on, I’m only joking,” he said when it became clear Harper wasn’t entertained.
She sighed. “You’re never joking, Joel. And it’s neveronlyanything.”
She walked away before he could respond.
I turned too, thinking of Cannes and the way he’d tried to warn me away from her. I didn’t need Joel trying to fight Harper’s battles for her and evidently she was just as irked—Iwas Harper’s to exsanguinate. No one else could bleed me quite like her.
Why was he trying to step into this?
But then, watching him follow, I truly took note of the words she said. And I realized it wasn’t about me at all.
I’d just beaten her on a global stage, and she’d already turned her focus elsewhere.
My fingers clenched in the pockets of my satin gown—one of my conditions of Amos’s return, no more death traps, and dear god, give me some pockets—and I put it down to the itch for another trophy to hold.
A need to best her again and again and again until she never thought to look at anybody else.
February 2003
THE WAR OF THE NOMINATIONS DWINDLED TO A TRYST. The expected flood nonexistent.
We were ignored by the Critics’ Choice Awards and the various Guild awards were a clear snub—though they’d never quite warmed to me anyway. Even when I won my Oscar, I lost the preceding SAG and wasn’t even nominated for the PGA. But those awards were normally such clear predictors of the Oscars that even if Ruchi hadn’t warned me of their prejudice against me, I didn’t dare hope for a nomination this time around.
So it was the BAFTAs.
America and its awards wanted nothing to do with us, but the British Academy called us home. The BAFTAs stood like a monolith: London was where we began, after all. A battle on home territory—and wasn’t that part of my tale too?
Maldon, but push it fifty miles to the west.
Strip it of its honor. Make it a conquest. And there we were, preparing to fight on the screens that made us.
Whenever I was forced back to England for premieres or filming, I was in and out as quickly as possible, like it couldn’t stick if I barely touched down.
But this was it, the final battle, the one to win.
I didn’t avoid the memories, I embraced them. I flew into London early to spend a few days retracing the city. I walked the bridge to Langstone House. I toured the CADS campus. I strolled the streets of Bethnal Green. I made calls—booked nights catching up with the British actors I’d filmed with over the years. Was it always so easy? Company this ready to find? Or were they just desperate to share in my spotlight?
We flocked to spas and bars and one very cheap pub in Shoreditch that I remembered was popular in my student days, shocked to find this my first time stepping foot in it. We went thoroughly unrecognized for the whole evening until we rolled into the kebab shop next door and the man at the counter shrieked with recognition before piling us with gyros.
Still, even while I chased the past, I’d opted stay out in Richmond to be on the edge of the city, away from its relentless buzz. Deciding I didn’t need a taxi that night, I ran all the way from the station to the hotel in the frigid rain.
I nearly collided with Harper as she left the elevator.
“Dear god, Nadine,” she wrinkled her nose. “At least wear a waterproof eyeliner if you’re going to be out in this.”
“I wouldn’t venture into it if I were you, you might disintegrate.” I reached to push my sopping hair back. Harper appearing where she shouldn’t was so common that it took myintoxicated mind a moment to catch up to the absurdity of her presence. “What are you doing here anyway?”
“A true mystery.”
“You know what I mean. Of all the hotels …”
“It wasn’t intentional,” she snapped. “Trust me, if Joel finds out you’re here he’ll be livid. We’re mostly staying at his—he still has a house in Berkshire. But we figured it might be useful to stay a little closer for the actual ceremony.”
