The Men in her Life

trailers. Sounds terrible.’ Ella put on an American accent, ‘He went looking for his daughter and he found himself...’
    ‘Oh God, really?’ Clare’s heart sank.

    The screening theatre was in the quiet area north of Oxford Street that people had recently started referring to as Noho. Philippa and Clare emerged from the darkened room and walked through the brightly-lit empty foyer, then stood outside the entrance, disorientated, unable to decide which way to go. A sudden burst of an ambulance siren approaching a nearby hospital smashed through the silence and unlocked their voices.
    ‘I read that there’s a wonderful fish restaurant somewhere round here,’ Philippa said, ‘shall we try to find it?’
    She didn’t want to go home just yet. She needed to wander a little, breathe a little air before returning to the house.
    ‘I’d like to ring Lucinda,’ Clare said.
    Philippa handed her her mobile phone.
    Clare rang the house. Tom was fine. He hadn’t stirred since they left.
    ‘Sorry,’ Clare said, handing back the phone, ‘it’s just that I’ve never left him with anyone but Ella before...’
    They walked along side by side, each absorbed in their own reflections about the movie. Finally Clare said, ‘What did you think?’
    ‘I thought it was very brave,’ Philippa replied, after long consideration, ‘to put so much of himself into it. I don’t know whether I would have thought that if he had been alive. I think I would have seen it completely differently.’
    She had wanted the movie to contain a message for her. A farewell from beyond the grave, and she had sat on the edge of her seat waiting, but it had not come. And yet, it had told her much about the preoccupations of the man she thought she knew so well. This was the one film he had struggled to make and she could now see why. He had used every cent of the box-office clout he had achieved to persuade the studio to undertake this movie — they had not originally wanted to. The endless rows about the final cut had kept him in Hollywood , and eventually he had won the argument. It was almost as if he had known that it would be his last film. Ironically, he had even said that, she now remembered, the night he returned from the States. The night before he died.
    ‘At this rate, it may be the last thing I direct.’
    She could still see him smiling at her with that wicked smile he had when he knew he had triumphed.
    ‘I suppose I admired it, more than liked it,’ Philippa said to Clare. ‘What did you think?’
    ‘I didn’t know what to think...’ Clare said.
    Paying for It was set in the bleak landscape of the homeless. In America , the early reviews were billing it as Missing meets Midnight Cowboy. It was about a man whose daughter runs away from home. In his search for her, he encounters a prostitute the same age as his daughter who refuses to tell him what she knows unless he pays her the normal rate for her time. As the story unfolds, the relationship between the girl and the man develops, and through her he begins to recognize not only his own deficiencies as a man, but also the failure of society to protect the vulnerable.
    ‘I couldn’t decide whether it was very moralistic, or just voyeuristic, and it felt uncomfortable being his real daughter... I mean, what on earth was he trying to
    say?’
    For a moment Clare wished that Holly was there beside her and not Philippa. Holly would have known what to think.
    ‘You mean the love affair...’ Philippa said, ‘I think perhaps he had to put that in for the studio. A controversial sex scene was like Jack’s signature on a movie. I think that was the trade he made for doing the picture...’
    It was the only tenable explanation for the very graphic, torrid sex scene between the man and the young prostitute at the end of the film, which had made her squirm in her seat, not with prudishness, exactly, but with the thought that there might be other areas of Jack’s life that she had not known about.
    They found the fish restaurant. It was late and most of the specials had gone. They both ordered homemade gravadlax. The waitress brought a basket of bread and a little pot of herbed butter.
    ‘I think I need a drink,’ Philippa said.
    The cold wine seeped through her body like anaesthetic.
    ‘So do you think I should give my blessing to the premiere?’ she asked Clare.
    Jack’s films had always attracted controversy, and Paying for It was clearly going to stir up a debate