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“This will be! We can use some of the early footage of you with your face mashed up and hint that you’re struggling with the toll of back-to-back filming, the intensity of it and all that crap and?—”

“What about you? How about you struggling? Why do I have to be the only one battling health and relationship problems?”

Leigh shrugged one shoulder. “Well, to be honest, you are. You’re the space cadet slicing up your arms, not me. I’m fine. It would be less believable, and I don’t want people whispering behind my back that I’m cracking up.”

“There’s nothing shameful about having mental health issues, you know!”

Leigh sneered; I’d walked right into it. “If that’s the case, why do you want to hide them? You’re happy enough for the world to hear you bleating about your sore throat. Why can’t you admit your brain’s fried too?”

“Because…” I trailed off as my guts twisted like a snake and my heart rate ratcheted. How the fuck did he do it? Always, he managed to make himself out as the reasonable one, the rational one. The sane one. The victim. The one who had tried so hard to make our marriage work, but being married to me was impossible. That I’d forced him to look elsewhere.

A wave of skittish exhaustion rolled through me as Leigh’s features settled into smugness. Of course having mental health issues were nothing to be ashamed of; to hell with the stigma. But the fucking stupid thing about mental health stigma was that the people needing to fight it were the ones least capable. After fighting their own internal struggles, they had no fight left.

And I was seriously contemplating carrying on working with this man?

“You know why,” I said tiredly. “And my answer is still no. I don’t trust Jonas, and I don’t trust you. It sounds like you’re throwing me to the dogs.”

Leigh stood. “Whatever. But I’ll just remind you that Jonas has total creative control over this project.”

I frowned, with a fresh spasm of disquiet. “No, he doesn’t. We share that with him. The contract was the same as all the others.”

Wasn’t it?I cast my mind back to the meeting in his office. Our argument, Emma coming in late, my itchy scab, my desperation to get the hell out. The first page shoved under my nose had been a replica of all the previous ones. I hadn’t bothered with the subsequent pages. “He wouldn’t dare.”

“No, probably not.” Leigh smoothed down his shirt, preening. Admiring himself. He was good at that. “Let me give you some life advice, Caspy. Though a little too late. Read the small print.”

I cut my thigh after he’d gone. Slumped on the closed toilet lid with my trousers around my ankles. I only gave myself a little nick. Quite superficial, really. Just enough to release the evil humours and steady my hand sufficiently to gulp down an extra venlafaxine. The meds didn’t work like that, but sometimes, combined with the cutting, I could con my brain. And then, while I waited for the bleeding to stop, I hugged myself and wished I wasn’t quite so alone.

CHAPTER 9

MAX

I’m not obsessing. Pale cheeks. I’m not obsessing. Pale cheeks.I sorted through the day’s haul of empty oyster shells, searching for the nicest, telling myself it was good distraction, even though I was choosing a shell to paint for him. Which was okay because I was only painting one. Not five or ten or twenty or 100. Because that was not normal, just like making thirty rope pots was not normal or reciting the mean weight of every breed of dog.

I’m not obsessing, I’m not obsessing, pale cheeks, I’m not obsessing. Golden retriever 27.2 kilograms. Pale cheeks, I’m not obsessing.But, mon dieu, the urge was strong.

Colette had taught me a few handy tricks for moments like this. My favourite was to imagine I was steering a car down a narrow straight road with lots of side roads leading off. Each one looped back to a repetitive thought or idea or person. On this occasion, they circled back to Caspian, short-circuiting to his sad eyes and pale cheeks. Like a higher force determined to take a wrong turn, I craved to slip down each one, my brain fighting to override my hands on the wheel.

But I wasn’t going to take a wrong turn, because every side road I managed to drive past was a win, a score of ten points. I enjoyed counting. If I reached 100 points, the side roads petered out. I’d arrived at my destination. My boomerang brain had been defeated. I was strong.

Presenting him with one painted shell was quite normal, though, right? Caspian had presented me a gift, and so I could give him one in return. He’d picked up a painted shell and admired it. If it hadn’t been painted for Éti, I’d have let him keep it. So now Caspian would have his own, with a twisting green vine, not a seahorse, decorating it. And it would be perfect.

I was peculiar, a well-established fact. I could assign myself a label. I could sit around with clever doctors debating where I sat on aspectrum, as though choosing the perfect shade of blue on a paint chart, but what was the point? I was still me, my mind was still mine, and a label wouldn’t change that. So what if I came armed with a unique set of skills turning any potentially romantic situation into an awkward one? And that I’d never captivate people like Florian, or charm them like Nico? I just had to work harder at it than most.

After all, a few things stood in my favour. An unshakeable belief in my own worth, for one, even if few others shared that belief with me. My parents had gifted me that. Furthermore, I had my own home, money, and good teeth. And I was attracted to Caspian and not obsessing about him even though every atom in my oddly wired brain demanded it.

Not obsessing. Fighting it.Pale cheeks.Only painting one shell.

Navigating other people’s sense of self, however, especially gauging their emotions, remained an ongoing challenge. Some people read other people’s feelings simply by studying their faces for a few seconds. When I tried this, all I saw was chins and noses and blackheads.

Fortunately, I was in the presence of two experts. Nico and Florian had invaded my secluded corner of L’Escale.

“How do I know if he likes me?” I tucked my bag of shells under the table, away from prying eyes.

“Who?”

“The television man. Sitting over there with his friend.”

Like a couple of screech owls, Nico and Flor swivelled their heads around and stared really obviously at Caspian. And everyone saidIwas the odd one? Fortunately, he was deep in conversation with his friend, Emma, and didn’t notice.

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