A Nest of Nightmares

His service picked up the call. No, he wasn’t in; no, he had left no message for her; no, she really couldn’t say when he would be back. Sheila left her name with Victoria’s phone number. ‘Tell him to call me whatever time it is, morning or night. Tell him it’s urgent.’ She didn’t care if the ringing of the phone woke the whole house. The most important thing was to make contact again with her life in California, to convince herself that it was real and this place the fantasy. The sound of Damon saying her name would wake her from this nightmare of loss and confusion.

She tried not to think of what would happen if Damon didn’t phone back. She told herself that she was over-tired and that things would look better in the morning, even if it was Victoria who had said so.

Things looked different in the morning, but not better.

It began when Sheila lost a contact lens down the drain. In three years she’d had no problems, but after one moment of sleepy carelessness in a strange bathroom she had no choice but to put on her old glasses. Then she saw herself – really saw herself – in the big bathroom mirror, and she wanted to scream in protest.

She was not, she refused to be, the person she saw in the mirror. That was the old Sheila blinking through thick, smudged lenses, the self she had outgrown, with lank, greasy hair, dandruff, and pimples. That Sheila was so fat she could scarcely fasten her skirt, despite the fact that it had fitted the day before.

Sheila reached out, and the creature in the mirror reached, too, until they were touching. They were the same. She didn’t want to believe it, but she had no choice. She was trapped in that hateful body again, as if she had never been different.

Victoria’s voice came through the door. ‘Hurry up in there, we’ve got to get moving! Your guest-of-honour speech is scheduled for an hour from now!’

Her speech was inside the lost notebook. Sheila began to tremble. She had no idea what she had written, what the words said. She knew she couldn’t give a speech without that text. She unlocked the door and told Victoria.

Victoria, dressed like a Victorian governess in a high-necked white blouse and a long grey skirt, her face made up like a doll’s with smears of blue eye-shadow and rosy blusher, did not hesitate. ‘You’ll give the speech. I don’t care what you say. But you will give the speech.’

‘You can’t make me.’

Victoria settled her glasses. She didn’t look angry. There was the hint of a smile about her mouth. ‘We paid to bring you here, and people have paid to hear your speech. Those people aren’t going to be let down. Somebody is going to give Sheila Stoller’s speech, even if it has to be me.’

Sheila felt her mouth go dry.

‘I can talk about your book as well as you can, probably better,’ Victoria went on. ‘I’ve read it four times; I know it. You saw how I was as Kayli. I could be the author of Moonlight Under the Mountain just as easily. I can tell them what they want to hear – better than you could.’

Sheila believed her. She shook her head.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Victoria. ‘If you don’t believe me – ’

‘I’ll give the speech.’

Victoria’s smile settled and hardened. ‘I know you will.’

‘I need to make a phone call,’ Sheila said.

‘Who?’

‘My boyfriend.’ She clung to that last, fragile hope. Even though he had not returned her call, he had to be in now – it was a Sunday morning – and as soon as he picked up the phone and heard who it was, his voice would go warm and teasing. Her fears would all vanish in the sunshine of his love. ‘Damon,’ she said, savoring his name. ‘I told you about him yesterday – ’

‘Oh, come off it, Sheila! Nobody believes you. It’s childish to pretend you know Damon Greene.’

‘I’m not pretending!’ She tried to laugh, but it sounded more like a sob.

‘Oh, no? And did you have a nice little conversation with him last night?’

‘I couldn’t get through to him last night.’

‘Well, I’m glad you’re still in touch with reality to that extent.’

Sheila was shaking. She wished it was with anger, but it felt like fear. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’m not lying to you, and I’m not crazy. I’m in love with Damon Greene, and – ’

‘Oh, yes, I’m not questioning your feelings. But that doesn’t mean you can phone him up, or that you have any special privileges, you know.’ Victoria’s hands fastened claw-like on Sheila’s shoulders and she steered her down the passage, into the bedroom. ‘I’m going to show you something. Look there on the wall.’

She hadn’t noticed it before – individual photographs tended to get lost among the many taped and tacked up around the room – but now she saw the picture which had appeared in People Magazine, the posed shot of Damon and three of his costars from the new series. Her heart beat faster at his familiar smile. ‘Oh, yes, I know that picture – ’