The Turning Point: A gripping love story, keep the tissues close...

‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Scott but their glasses were empty and the bar was closed. Only the little old lady remained and she’d just asked for her bill. Scott was brought his though he hadn’t requested it.

They were going to have to go, really.

Frankie wondered, how do we leave these seats, this table, our little corner in which my world expanded? How can we stay in our bubble?

And then, in her mind, she heard Ruth saying go for it! and Peta saying don’t be so stupid.

‘If you get some time tomorrow,’ she said, ‘and I do too – shall we try and meet? Perhaps I could come to The Abbey Road?’ He was just looking at her, not speaking. ‘Or if not there, somewhere?’

‘Anywhere,’ said Scott softly. ‘Why don’t we make it happen, Frankie. Crazy as it sounds.’

* * *

As slowly as they walked across the atrium, soon enough they were behind the huge urns and bamboo, back at the lifts. As they stood waiting, Scott looked down on her head and thought how Frankie would tuck just under his chin. And Frankie glanced sideways at his chest and imagined laying her cheek against it. He had his hands in his back pockets and she wanted to link her arm through his.

Into the elevator, just the two of them. Her mind reeling through a thousand movie scenes of impulsive kisses when the doors slide shut, of fumbling with keys and falling into an anonymous hotel room shedding clothes, broiling with desire.

But Frankie and Scott just stood side by side.

Fifth floor.

‘This is me,’ said Frankie.

‘Tomorrow?’ said Scott.

Frankie tapped her watch. ‘Today.’

And she walked down the corridor on her own aware that, downstairs in the lobby, Kate Moss was still smiling on the magazine table.

Enormously tired. Stratospherically tired but high as a kite. Running that bath, eating chocolates left on the pillow, flicking on the television and zapping through the channels. One two three four five six seven scatter pillows pedantically rearranged at the foot of the bed. Four plump pillows and a waft of duvet enticingly folded back to reveal the downy comfort of a beautifully made bed. So long since she’d felt this wired, this alert, this sentient. So long since she’d had any of these feelings. Longing and kinship and warmth and attraction and wave after wave of desire. Something deep inside had stirred. Over the last few years, it was as if she’d switched off lights from necessity in those rooms within herself that she couldn’t afford to use.

She eased herself down deep into the bath, bubbles up to her chin, the soothe of a thick warm flannel over her face. The plastic shower cap.

If anyone could see me now.

Tomorrow.

Today.

Earlier yesterday.

Later today.

Frankie, says Alice. Who was that? Who was that man, Frankie? Will you write him into your life like you did me?

‘Can we get a rise on the string line?’

All of this was giving Scott a headache. There’d been too many interruptions and the music he’d written for a particular scene sounded all wrong today, with the full orchestra. Yet on first reading of the script three months ago, melodies had sailed through his mind like drifts of overheard conversation. His best work often germinated this way, subliminally almost. But today, though he’d watched the cut over and again all morning and asked the musicians to play it this way, play it that way, the music just didn’t segue. He felt as clumsy and inept as a child furiously hammering at the wrong piece on a shape-sorting toy. The film’s producers were in the studio today, along with the director, the music editor, the fixer and the technicians. Everyone making encouraging noises at Scott despite the stress clearly legible behind their eyes.

‘You’re a perfectionist – it’s why people love working with you,’ one of the producers said. What else could she think of to say? Sometimes she despaired at the amount of soothing flattery and ebullient bullshit her role necessitated when all she wanted to do was shake these creative types – these actors and musicians and directors – and say for fuck’s sake, get over yourselves and do the fucking job we’re paying you a fortune to do. But she’d worked with Scott before and had never known him so discontented. The director himself was concerned too. He’d worked with Scott many times. If previously Scott had struggled and vexed it had always been behind the scenes and out of earshot, before he brought a single sound to the table. He was always so quietly professional and capable, delivering excellent soundtracks on time with no drama whatsoever. Commissioning Scott to score a movie was as easy and satisfying as ordering a takeaway and having it delivered piping hot and utterly delicious exactly when you wanted it.

‘It doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do,’ Scott said quietly. ‘It sounds shit.’

The producer looked at her watch and raised her eyebrow at the director, both of them quietly calculating the cost of the studio against the days they had Scott over here for.

‘You know what? Take time out, Scott. Get out of here – go for a walk, go to London Zoo, go to Harrods or the Tate Gallery, go have a swim or a sleep. Clear your mind, then come back.’

He was watching the scene again.

‘Go for a burger, go to a strip club,’ she said, ‘I don’t know! Go and have a cuppa with the Queen at the bloody Ritz!’

It was three o’clock.

‘You’re fine,’ she said. ‘Go. Jimmy and the guys will have a play with what we’ve got so far. We just have piano this afternoon – you trust Lexi.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Scott and everyone brushed his apology away, relieved to see the back of him as he left the control room for Studio Two.

Midway over the legendary zebra crossing, his phone call to Frankie was finally answered.

‘Hey.’

‘Hello.’

‘Fancy a “cuppa”?’ he asked.

‘You sound like Dick Van Dyke,’ she said.

Scott walked straight past Maison Bertaux, reaching the end of Greek Street and having to ask at the minicab rank where it was. With all the previous talk of the Ritz and royalty, he’d been expecting somewhere grand to shout out to him, not a tiny little patisserie tucked behind a simple blue-and-white awning. However, once inside, the opulence of the pastries on display and the complex fragrances – fruit, vanilla, chocolate, baking – elevated the café beyond its modest setting.

Frankie had said on the phone that she’d find a table, now all he had to do was find her. Up the narrow crookedy stairs he went, wondering whether the café suddenly increased on the first floor, wondering if he’d have to negotiate white-clothed tables and velvet-backed chairs and little old ladies sipping their Darjeeling behind mountains of scones. But no. Just Formica tables and mismatched chairs jigsawed into a confined space. And there, in the corner, Frankie.

‘Hey.’

‘Hello.’

If he could have teleported himself to the studio right then, the whole movie could be note-perfect in the time it was taking Frankie to move her bag so that he could sit next to her. He marvelled at the madness of all of this. This place. Her smile. A cuppa. Little over twenty-four hours ago, he had no idea she existed. All these resurfacing feelings swirling and sweet as the cream and fondant on the trays of cakes downstairs.

‘You can’t work on an empty stomach,’ she said. ‘I’ve taken the liberty of ordering a selection of cakes.’ He wasn’t saying much. ‘Did you want coffee? I ordered tea for us. Is this place OK for you?’

The rickety chair and narrow table, peculiar art-college paintings on the walls, his knee touching hers, their arms a hair’s breadth apart. This place was perfect.

‘Tea’s just fine,’ he said.

‘Say – a cuppa.’

‘A cuppa.’

‘Sorry – I shouldn’t laugh.’

‘I like it that you do.’

A pot of tea, milk in a jug, cups and saucers and a plate of cakes in front of them. The two of them took it all in.

‘How’s your day been?’ Scott asked, nodding for Frankie to pour.

She tilted her hand this way, that way. ‘Arduous,’ she said. In each of her meetings, she’d sensed Alice beside her, protesting. You’re fibbing, Frankie – you’re a fibber – you haven’t written me a story at all.

‘How so?’

Scott watched her redden a little as she fumbled in her bag. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘I brought you this.’

‘Alice and the Ditch Monster,’ he read before flipping through the pages, lingering over the illustrations, charmed. He looked at Frankie’s author portrait in the back when her hair had been longer and it had been winter, by the looks of her turtleneck sweater. He read the dedication in the front. For Sam who’s braver than brave. Scott felt overwhelmingly proud of her. He turned to her. ‘Wow.’

She shrugged. ‘It’s just what I do,’ she said. ‘I’m not very good at much else.’ Adrenalin suddenly soured the tea.

‘You OK?’

‘I can’t write.’ She couldn’t look up either.

‘But by the looks of this – you can.’ Scott dipped into the book again. ‘Look at all these reviews. Prizes too.’

‘I can’t write just now,’ she whispered. She looked ashamed and it upset him.

‘How long?’

‘Months.’

He thought about it. ‘Anyone know?’

‘The children. My sister.’ She glanced up. ‘You.’

He speared a glazed raspberry from the tart, scooped crème pâtissièrre over it and handed her the fork.

‘I’ve been there, Frankie. I spent six months sitting under my piano, freaking out while everyone thought I was composing. A few years back – but the fear, the shame, is still vivid.’

She’d slumped a little. Gently, he nudged her. ‘It passes. Talent like yours? It evades you from time to time, for sure – but you’ll always have it.’

‘How did you get through it?’ Her eyes had gone glassy. He liked it that he knew exactly what she was feeling.

‘I drank a lot of caffeine,’ Scott laughed. ‘Then I gave it up completely. I tried Valium at night and beta blockers during the day. I got angry. I got sad. I broke a guitar. Two, actually.’

‘I just chew pencils and stare at nothing in particular.’

‘Probably cheaper – but not healthier.’

‘I am genuinely scared, not least because of the state of the industry. With all the discounting and cheap or free downloads, publishers are paying their authors less and less. A wonderful writer I know has had her advance cut by half. She feels decimated.’

‘I can understand that. It’s been the same in the music industry.’

‘But what if I can’t write at all, ever again? I’m the sole provider for my little family. What if that was it – my quota of books?’

It felt to Scott as if Frankie’s eyes were clinging to his for reassurance. ‘Has something happened?’

‘Not that I can pinpoint.’

‘But you’ve had all this upheaval – moving home. Don’t be hard on yourself.’

‘It feels utterly self-indulgent to give myself slack.’

‘I know. I felt that too.’

And it struck Frankie that Scott wasn’t saying any of this simply to cajole her into getting on with it, the way she anticipated her publishers might. It seemed he truly understood and more than that, he cared.

‘Tell me about Alice,’ he said, pouring more tea, reaching for the milk at the same time as Frankie, their fingers touching, their eyes connecting, time stopping.

‘Alice?’

‘Don’t say it like that – like you blame her. Tell me about the Alice you know.’

Frankie thought about her and suddenly felt a little contrite, as if she’d been impatient with a child who was irritating simply by being a child, just a little kid.

‘She’s a monkey,’ she smiled. ‘She lives in the countryside outside a village called Cloddington and, at the bottom of her garden where the hedge grows thatchety and the ditch is dank, He lives.’

Scott smiled. The colour was starting to come back to her cheeks and her eyes glinted. ‘The ditch dude?’

Frankie nodded.

‘Is he a euphemism? Did you consign your ex to a life in a quagmire?’

Frankie laughed, she really laughed. ‘Miles? Oh God – I wouldn’t dignify him with life in a ditch! I wouldn’t enlarge his sizeable ego with a character based on him. Actually, Miles is just Miles, a law unto himself. For one so smooth he has a lot of rough edges but he’s just Miles. Frustratingly, maddeningly Miles.’

‘You been apart long?’

That direct bluntness again. ‘Far longer than we were ever together.’

‘So if the ditch guy isn’t Miles, who is he?’

Frankie grinned. ‘He’s not anyone I know. He’s lovely – in a slightly unnerving way – a contradiction between being inept and clumsy but sensitive and gentle. He’s hideously ugly but really rather beautiful. He helps Alice and she helps him right back.’

‘Is he an imaginary friend?’

Frankie shook her head earnestly. ‘No. He isn’t. He’s real. But only Alice knows about him.’ She thought about it. ‘You could say they have a co-dependent relationship.’

‘One of those, hey?’ Scott said darkly but with a wry smile. ‘And Alice herself?’

‘Alice is Alice,’ Frankie said.

‘She’s not Annabel?’

Frankie shook her head.

‘Your artwork is gorgeous,’ Scott said. Confident, quirky line drawings bloomed over with washes of watercolour. ‘Is she always this age?’

Frankie nodded. ‘Ten-ish.’ She glanced at her drawing. She didn’t see it as being from her hand. It was just Alice, clear to her as a photo.

‘If Alice had a favourite song – what would it be?’

Frankie had never thought about it. ‘I don’t know.’

White chocolate striating the strawberries on crème pâtissière, atop a biscuit base. She loaded a fork and passed it to Scott. ‘Her favourite song would be – oh God, if I’m honest, most likely something by One Bloody Dimension.’

‘You know it’s Direction, right?’

‘I know – I like winding Annabel up. I reckon Alice is the same.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ Scott said quietly, opening the book and reading. ‘I reckon the guy in the ditch – he’s been around. I reckon he’s seen the Stones, Dylan, the Byrds. In fact, there were plenty of folk at Woodstock who looked pretty much like him. But I’d say he keeps Alice balanced – culturally. Those times when they’re not solving mysteries or saving the day – when they’re just at the end of the garden shooting the shit – I’ll say they talk about music and he steers her straight, eh.’

‘Are you saying there’s stuff about Alice I don’t know?’

Scott shrugged. ‘Maybe. You’re the secretary remember, not the puppeteer. Imagine what goes on behind your back. Imagine that.’

Frankie looked so shocked it made him smile. He split the gateau in two. ‘Why don’t you try to find out? You talk about her like she’s real – which I don’t doubt. But seems to me perhaps when you’re writing you lose sight of that.’ He ate cake and read on, quietly. ‘Seems like she’s a really nice kid,’ he said.

‘She is,’ Frankie said.

‘And Annabel?’ Scott said. ‘And Sam?’

Out came Frankie’s phone and a guided tour pictorially through her children’s lives.

‘How have they handled the move – to Norfolk?’

Frankie looked through the pictures of her children. ‘Oh well, Annabel could run the country tomorrow,’ she told Scott. ‘But Sam – he’s getting there. It’s been harder for him – less of an adventure, more of a disruption. He left his pals, a school he liked, an area he knew. He’s settling now – but there were a few hiccups to start with, a couple of occasions when he skipped school.’

‘Where did he go?’

‘He came home.’

‘But he knew you’d be there, right?’ Frankie nodded and Scott weighed it up. ‘So he’s happy at home?’

She looked at Scott. ‘He’s happiest at home. He likes to think of himself as the man of the house.’

A fresh pot of tea was ordered. The other tables emptied and refilled, not that Frankie or Scott noticed. They talked easily, eagerly and relaxed into the affable pauses in between. For all the sharing and conversation, it was privately and shyly that they revelled in each other’s physical proximity. It confronted her how the man she’d given relatively short shrift to at the station yesterday, the same man in whose company she’d felt herself unfurl during an evening she wished was longer, who’d caused her heart to race in the lift and who’d whorled his way through her sleep, was today someone known to her and trusted. Since yesterday, he’d undoubtedly become the most handsome man she’d ever met but it was the fact that she knew him, that she was herself with him, which thrilled her most.

‘Do you have to go back to the studio?’

‘Yes.’ He rubbed his eyes.

‘Not a good session so far?’

He pushed the crumbs on his plate into an S. ‘I have the music – but today, in the studio, with everyone there, it’s not right.’

‘Your music?’ Frankie asked. ‘Or the way it’s being played?’

‘If I say the latter, do I sound like a jerk?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s personal – I get that.’

And Scott sensed that she did.

‘Do you have to go back there soon?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘More cake?’

‘No – thank you.’

‘More tea?’

‘Sure.’

‘Say cuppa.’

‘Cuppa.’

The tea was now lukewarm but it didn’t matter. They put their cups down at the same time, Scott’s shirtsleeve just touching Frankie’s arm, their hands so close. If he didn’t do it now, he might never. So he did. He moved his little finger the short but loaded distance until it touched Frankie’s. She linked hers around his, like those symbolic promises she used to make in the playground with her best friends. Scott and Frankie regarded their entwined fingers and looked at each other and gently placed their heads together and, while Frankie closed her eyes, Scott brushed his lips against her forehead. A kiss without being a kiss.

‘Will I see you?’ she asked.

‘Of course,’ he said.

‘Not just later today – but will I see you? After? Again?’

‘Without a doubt.’

‘It’s all a bit – mad – really.’ She rested her head lightly against his shoulder.

‘It’s crazy, Frankie. It’s insane.’ He paused. ‘But I like it.’

‘I do too.’

Her agent appeared to know most of the other diners in the restaurant so Frankie had to smile a lot whilst fretting at the time this was adding to the evening. In the studio, Scott was utterly wrapped in his music; coasting on the vibrant energy from his afternoon with Frankie and all the Maison Bertaux calories. Why stop now? he said to the engineer – let’s get this down. When he worked like this, hours polarized into mere moments. It was two in the morning when he arrived back at the hotel. The bar area was closed and, though he wondered whether Frankie might pop out from behind a giant urn, she didn’t. He checked his phone. They’d spoken earlier – she’d ducked out of the restaurant telling him her agent was ordering a second bottle of wine but she should be back by eleven. At the time, Scott said he didn’t think he’d be much longer either. And, until he looked at his watch on leaving the studio, he genuinely thought he hadn’t been. Jubilance and frustration hand in hand. What a day.

So sorry – I’m only just back and I guess you’re asleep. Scott x

Frankie read the message and wondered what to do. It was the early hours and she’d woken with a start, reaching blearily for her phone. In the vast bed, in a froth of Egyptian cotton, she thought and thought until she infuriated herself. She could text back. She could pad off along corridors in the complimentary slippers, holding up the voluminous towelling robe like a ballgown. And then what? Knock on his door, wake him? Stand there, the both of them, with expectation oozing from one to the other. What would he do? Pull her towards him, shut the door behind them, tug her belt loose so the robe fell open, slip his hands inside to find her body, find her lips and sink his mouth against hers. Then what? Fumble and fondle over to the bed and fall together in a writhe of lovemaking. This is what she wanted and she didn’t doubt he wanted it too. But what would it be at this time of night? Sex for the sake of it because she was leaving tomorrow?

And it’s stupid o’clock.

Frankie switched the light off and settled back into the darkness.

Not now, Scott.

But if not now – then when?

Scott woke early and he thought, she’s going today. He thought, it’s Thursday and that’s that – Frankie’s going home. Suddenly he wanted to be home too, not on his own here, negotiating the pace of London, working peculiar hours, living in a hotel, eating too much red meat and spending too much time indoors. He wanted to be sitting at his favourite spot on the Lillooet River, with Aaron and Buddy and a couple of beers. The rivers and creeks had recently turned a milky eau-de-nil colour, the glacial silt causing the change and heralding summer until the rain run-off turned the waters clear again in November. What’s the sea like, near Frankie’s place in Norfolk? What colour are the rivers there? Where can you fish? Who do you come across, whose landscape do you share? Eagles and otters, beavers, bears?

He left the bed and walked across to the window, looking down to the street five floors below, the besuited hurrying to work, their stress palpable. If this were a scene for a movie, he’d underscore it with a fidget of bickering strings and just the occasional soft melodious piano trying to establish a refrain for the pedestrian walking slowly, mindfully, against the commuting surge. He turned his back on the day and sat down on the sofa, switching the television on and a few moments later, off again. He checked his phone.

Morning!

She’d sent it an hour ago. He phoned Reception. Had she checked out? No Mr Emerson, she has not.

He left his room on the fifth floor and walked along the corridor to hers. Funny how he hadn’t wanted her to know he was on the same floor, that first night. Yes, his heart had pounded in the elevator, the air between them thick and heady with attraction and desire. But something had told him to slow down, to give grace to what was growing so fast. He hadn’t wanted the premature pressure of your room or mine; for the first time in a long time, his head was steady over his heart, his cock. That night had been too good, had had such a novel impact, he hadn’t wanted to sully it with how things used to be. Standing there, outside her door, he thought back to how he’d let her leave then had to ride up before returning down to the fifth.

Quiet Please.

She’d hung the sign on the door. He could do quiet. It was a trait of his personality that most saw as a quality though it frustrated the hell out of all his exes. He knocked gently.

And Frankie thought, Scott?

The door opened and Scott thought Christ alive, the sun really does come out when that girl smiles. And Frankie simply thought it’s him, he came.

‘Good morning sir.’

‘Morning.’

‘Did you want to come in? It’s a bit of a mess.’

No it wasn’t. Her room was tidier than his. Funny how rooms which are identical can be so different. Same curtains, same furniture, same orchid, same grainy black-and-white artsy photographs, same background whir from the minibar. Yet Frankie’s room was distinct; it was the same when Jenna was at home with him – a space personalized and warmed, made smaller yet fuller by a feminine energy. He glanced around. Perhaps it was the Converse trainers placed neatly just under the chair. Or the way her belongings were in a tidy pile on the coffee table. A drift of perfume, maybe. He didn’t know, really, and it didn’t matter anyway because as he sat on the sofa he felt this was as good as being in her living room in Norfolk.

‘Coffee? Does your room have a Nespresso machine?’

He laughed. ‘Think you’re special?’

‘Aren’t I?’

‘No – I mean yes. And yes – to coffee.’