Lucky Break (31 page)

‘True.' Nell had a pang, as she always did, at news of Dan. And then, as if the hurts had merged together, a vision of the stage manager rose up before her, his mortified face and desperate protestations when she'd misguidedly taken the train to visit him a week earlier than promised. ‘I'd better go.' Nell forced a smile. ‘Lovely to see you. And good luck with the panto. Where is it? Maybe I'll come.'

‘Basingstoke.' They kissed. ‘But honestly, don't worry.'

‘I'll try. I'll bring my nephew.' Nell ran up the steps and in through the door of the building. She gave her name and waited with a row of other girls to be seen.

Mary Peacock. Nell took a breath and pulled out her scribbled notes.
Stabbed and killed husband. Australia on a convict ship
. She could see Mary, a young woman in nineteenth-century clothes, a worn grey petticoat and a shawl. She imagined her life, up at dawn, cleaning out the grate, stirring porridge, keeping the children quiet while her husband slept. She was most likely limping, or wincing with the pain of a cracked rib, but Mary knew better than to complain. It was always this way. Or had been since a year into their marriage when their first child, a boy, was born all twisted round and wrong. An idiot, the baby was declared, with half a brain, and her husband had fixed his cold accusing eye on her. Now he turned vicious whenever he was drunk. Jibes and taunts, flashes of raw fury if any small thing was out of place. Mary Peacock had three more children, although the youngest, another boy, was weak as milk. She'd sat up late with him, soothing and rocking, until they'd both fallen asleep before the fire. ‘Will you drive me mad!' She was woken with a kick, and after hours of soothing, the child began to cry. ‘Please,' she begged, ‘have patience, I'll build the fire up again,' but he dragged her from the chair and flung her back against the wall. It was then, it must have been, that her blood rose so high it choked her, and blind with it, she seized the knife from the table and wheeled around. Nell felt her heart swell. What must it be like to take revenge? To lose yourself so completely in the moment that nothing else is there? She thought of Harold Rabnik and his wine-soaked tongue. And with Mary Peacock, she flung herself forward and plunged the knife into his chest.

‘Nell Gilby.'

Flustered, Nell stood up. ‘Yes. That's me.' She scrabbled for her notes, and her heart beating, her cheeks flushed, she walked into the room.

‘Right.' The casting director had found her photograph, the new one her new agent had asked her to have done. ‘So.' He looked at her, patient, already a little bored, but just as he was about to speak a police siren exploded in the street below. Nell, fresh from her scene of violence, started. ‘That's me they're coming for, most likely,' she laughed, and she saw something light up in the casting director's eyes.

 

Nell's agent was staggered. ‘The director wants to see you. Tomorrow, first thing. So it went well?'

‘I think so. It was odd. We started talking and . . . I don't know . . .' Terror overcame her. Now she'd got this far, all there was left to do was mess it up.

‘So, same place. Go along at 10. They'll probably put you on tape. I'll fax over some pages.'

‘Apparently,' Sita warned her later, ‘it's the first eleven seconds that are crucial. It's not to say it can't go wrong after that, but if you're going to get the job, you're going to get it then.'

That night Nell couldn't sleep. ‘That's me they're coming for, most likely.' The line that had saved her swam round inside her head, but she couldn't use it, not again. It seemed so tantalising that only yesterday there was nothing to lose. Now there was everything. ‘That's me they're coming for,' she twisted in her bed, clutching at the cool hot water bottle. ‘That's me.'

Sita brought her in tea before she left for work. ‘Remember,' she took hold of Nell's hand in both of hers. She had beautiful hands, fine and strong, with white gold rings on every finger, given to her by her father for each significant year. ‘They need someone to play the lead in this film or it won't get made.'

‘Yes,' Nell nodded. Fear still gripped her. ‘I see what you're saying,' and she promised to stay calm.

 

Nell scanned the faces of the people on the Tube. There was one girl, with auburn hair and clear pale skin, whom Nell felt sure was going to the audition too. But then she remembered how on her first day of college she'd been convinced that every person she passed was going to be in her year. Nell closed her eyes and thought about the women's hostel, and how in the middle of that first night she'd been woken by a scuffle. She'd lain there, paralysed, convinced that someone was trying to break in. It had happened before, the youth theatre director had told them. A man had come to the house, claiming to be an electrician, sent by the council to mend the heating, but when the door was opened, he'd pushed his way inside. He'd run from room to room, howling for his wife, and when he found her, he'd dragged her out on to the doorstep and stabbed her in the stomach.

But that night, there was no man trying to break in – just a woman, pleading to be let out. ‘Leave me alone!' There was a gasp, and Nell heard Pat, who ran the place, grumble and then swear.

‘I'm sorry,' the woman sobbed, ‘but I left the children. I have to get home.' The front door shuddered open, and Nell crept from her bed. She crawled past the sleeping bodies of her friends, reaching the window in time to see the doctor's wife step out into the night. Nell looked along the street, expecting the woman's husband to jump out from behind a bush, ready to attack her, expertly, so it wouldn't show, but there was no one there. The woman looked surprised too. She whipped round, and seeing no one, stalked off along the empty road.

 

‘Nell!' The casting director looked genuinely pleased to see her. ‘Let me take your coat.' The director was there too. He shook Nell's hand and looked her over with hungry, hopeful eyes. ‘Take a minute to read through this scene, it's just come through.' He adjusted a camera on a tripod, tilting it to point straight at her chair.

Nell read the new scene through so fast the words blurred before her eyes. Mary Peacock was in court, pleading for her life, while a judge summed up her crimes. ‘Shame,' someone called from the public gallery, and Nell felt her blood rise. Shame on
you
, she would have yelled back, but the script dictated she stay quiet.

‘Ready?' The director smiled at her when she looked up. He was tall, and palely handsome – shadowy, as if he'd been inside too long. The casting director took a seat beside her. ‘One minute.' The red light of the camera blinked. ‘OK. When you're ready you can start.'

Mary Peacock was defending herself. There had been no agreement that she should, but as the judge raised his hammer to proclaim the sentence, she pushed herself forward in the dock and begged to be allowed to speak. Nell imagined herself to be the doctor's wife, lunging round in terror in the empty street, and she wondered what had happened when that woman arrived home, whether for the sake of her children she'd endured her punishment, or whether she'd taken a knife from the kitchen and treading upstairs, soft on the soft carpet, she'd plunged the blade into her husband's heart.

Nell knew she was fighting for her life. Her voice was low and desperate, her eyes wild, and she kept in mind the hovering knowledge that even if Mary saved herself from hanging she'd lost all chance of seeing her children again.

‘Very nice,' the director mused, and the casting director patted her on the arm.

They read another scene. Mary was in Australia now. She was older by some years, and after several entanglements of a violent sexual nature, she'd found a saviour who'd taken her in. He'd conveniently died not long after, leaving her his house, and Mary had turned this building into a refuge for any woman who had been abused. But now, not for the first time, the house had been mistaken for a brothel. A group of men were baying outside the window while Mary pushed a chest against the door. There were three other women, one older, two hardly more than girls, but it was Mary Peacock who yelled down to the men to get off home or she'd come out with a shotgun and send them on their way.

‘You're a lot of ignorant, disgusting pigs,' she hollered after them, as she took aim from a window, and even after they'd turned tail she kept throwing insults into the night.

‘Very nice,' the director nodded, and he looked at her, searching, before asking her to read again.

 

As Nell walked towards the Tube, head down against the biting wind, she had an irresistible desire to call Charlie. She hadn't seen so much of her this year, as Charlie had been based in Manchester, playing a detective opposite an actor she considered second rate. She'd made the mistake of seducing him before they'd finished filming the first series, and after that, as she'd told Nell in various dejected late-night calls, she despised him more than ever.

‘So how are you?' Nell asked her now, and she slowed to take in the flow of woe and vitriol that poured into her ear. There'd been a perfect job, in America, playing some big star's girlfriend, but at the last moment the producer had insisted on another girl, a white girl, and as from today she was out of the running. ‘My agent says the producer's racist, but I'm not sure. I've lost my looks, that's the thing.'

‘Don't be silly,' Nell tutted, sympathetic, disbelieving. They'd had this conversation before.

‘And you?' Charlie asked, distracted.

Nell took her voice down to a casual tone as she replied, ‘Actually, I've just been up for a film.'

‘Really?'

‘I saw the casting director yesterday, and he wanted the director to meet me. Ciaran Conway. He made that . . .'

‘Yes.' Charlie was impatient. ‘I know Ciaran. I saw him a month or so ago for dinner. In fact I must find out what hap . . . It's not that post-apocalyptic thing, is it, tribes of lost souls wandering through a desert?'

‘This one's historical. But it is set in Australia.'

‘Not
Mary Peacock
?'

‘Yes.'

‘Bloody hell!'

‘I know.' Nell felt uncomfortable. Guilty almost. ‘It's starting straight after Christmas. Can you imagine being in the middle of the Outback for New Year?'

There was silence. ‘Fuck. I was still waiting to hear about that other thing.' She sounded winded. ‘I guess that's not going to happen now.'

Nell pulled her coat round her. ‘Well, I've no idea what's actually going on. I think they've got to send my tape over to America.' She turned her back into the wind, which was cut with splinters of sharp rain. ‘I'll tell you what. I'll call you later. When I know more.'

‘But Nell,' Charlie wasn't ready to let it go.

‘What?'

‘You're not up for Mary, are you?'

‘I think so . . . yes.'

There was a quick intake of breath. ‘That's brilliant. I'll tell you what, I'll phone Maisie for you now and see what's going on.'

‘Great,' Nell frowned. ‘Good idea.' And she ran into the shelter of the Tube.

 

Nell resisted phoning her own agent. She knew he'd be in touch if there was any news. She made herself lunch and looked over her Christmas present list, flicking satisfying ticks beside the names of those people she already had gifts for, and scribbling notes and question marks beside the more impossible members of her family – her father, her brother-in-law, her mother's boyfriend, Lewis. What could any of them possibly want? She sighed. Maybe that was the problem with men. They didn't need anything. At least, they didn't need anything from her. The phone rang, and her heart flipped. But it was only her mother. ‘I was just checking, you're not a vegetarian or anything at the moment?'

‘No,' Nell rolled her eyes.

‘And I was wondering, too. Will you be bringing anyone with you for Christmas? I'm imagining not, as you haven't mentioned it, but before I get everything organised I thought I'd better check.'

‘Actually, Mum,' Nell felt her heart quickening again, ‘I'm not sure if I'll get home for Christmas now.'

There was a silence, into which Nell felt all her mother's hopes and aspirations tumble together in confusion. ‘Is it . . . do you . . . ?'

‘Oh Mum, it probably won't happen. But I'm up for a film and if I get it . . .' Her mother squealed. ‘. . . if I get it, I'll have to be in Australia by the twenty-eighth, and everyone says it's better to stop, somewhere like Japan, on the way, so you're not so jetlagged, so I don't know if I'll have time . . .'

‘Don't worry,' her mother cut in. ‘It doesn't matter at all. Wait to see what happens and if it's at all possible, well, that will be a bonus. You know, someone, maybe even Lewis, could always drive you to the airport on Boxing Day.'

‘Oh, it probably won't happen.' Nell dreaded the thought of spending three hours in a car with Lewis, with his whistling and his attempts at celebrity gossip, and the polite need for a goodbye embrace which had never felt the same since one late night in the kitchen on a trip home from college, when he'd made a drunken grope for her. If only, she thought, she had the courage to become a lesbian, then the whole lot of them could go and fuck themselves. She let out a breathy gasp of laughter and her mother paused in her plans.