Lucky Break (39 page)

Dan avoided his dressing room during the interval, standing in the corridor, swigging water, mopping his head with a towel. He'd already torn the cards down, packed his books and blanket into bags so that it wasn't his any longer, and he didn't want to be reminded of this now. The audience were more sombre in the second half, as if they were heading with him to the end, or maybe just waiting to express themselves at the curtain call, which they did, standing, their raised hands clapping with all their strength. Dan's shirt stuck to him, his heart thumped and he clasped Michelle's fingers so hard she squealed. The audience laughed. The actors bent down for another bow, and when he raised his head, he felt as powerful as a lord.

Now he was glad he'd packed his bags. He couldn't get out soon enough. Toothbrush, comb, iPod speakers. He grabbed the orchid Lenny had sent him, scattering earth over the stairs.

The others were waiting for him at the stage door, their bags resting up against their legs. ‘So . . .' they looked at each other. ‘Anyone for a drink?'

But Dan knew already that Brian had to be on the set of a film in the Isle of Man first thing, and Michelle's parents had driven down from Newcastle to take her home. ‘Stay in touch,' they promised, and just then a man in overalls pushed past with a polystyrene rock. The shriek of drills and hammering echoed after him as the swing door swung. ‘You'd think they could have waited,' Dan frowned, ‘before they dismantled the set.'

Another man passed by, carrying a chair. Dan's chair. The chair he'd sunk down into only half an hour ago and cried. Brian patted him on the shoulder. ‘It's been great.' His forehead was creased, his face looked sorrowful, and suddenly, with no script left, all three were lost for words.

Michelle put her arms round Dan and kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘Thanks for everything,' she said, ‘it's been so special,' and turning to Brian she did the same. ‘I'll miss you.' There were tears brimming in her eyes, and picking up her overflowing bags, she ran out through the door.

Another polystyrene rock passed by them, and Brian's words to him were drowned out by an electric saw. In a couple of hours their set would be gone. By Monday morning the new set would be in place and the actors for the next play – a comedy – would arrive for their dress rehearsal and wander silently and strangely round it.

‘Take care,' they shouted to each other, and unable to face a bar full of strangers, Dan headed for home.

 

Sunday wasn't too bad. It was his night off anyway. But when Dan woke on Monday it was as if someone had died. Jemma nudged him. ‘Coming down for breakfast?' she said cheerfully, but he couldn't move. He went into town, had a coffee, dropped in on Lenny to find him uncharacteristically busy. ‘Sorry,' he mouthed, his hand over the phone, and he went back to what sounded like some complicated high-powered negotiation.

Mid-afternoon his voiceover agent called him. ‘How would you feel . . .' she hesitated, ‘about saying the words Erectile Dysfunction?'

‘Ummm. I'm . . .' Dan wasn't sure.

‘It's going to be a big campaign.' There was only the faintest hint of hilarity in her voice.

Dan tried out the words, just under his breath, spoken in a kindly, non-judgemental way. ‘No,' he decided. ‘I think I'll pass.'

‘Arthritis?'

‘Sorry?'

‘I know it's a long shot, but they need someone young to head up an awareness campaign, but it's got to be someone who's actually suffering.'

‘I could pretend . . .'

‘Shame,' his agent sighed. ‘That one really is going to be massive.'

And she promised to be in touch again soon.

 

That evening he sat at the table and watched the children eat. He helped Ben cut up his sausage, and wiped the ketchup whiskers from Honey's face. He stood out in the garden with the twins while they searched for snails among the mashed, bedraggled beds, and sat on the edge of the bath as, in batches of two, they bickered and splashed. He was exhausted and it was only seven. ‘Shall we get them to bed?' All he wanted to do was lie on the sofa and stare at the TV.

Jemma scowled. ‘If they go to bed now they'll be up at dawn. I try and keep them going till eight.'

‘Right.' He stood in the doorway of their bedroom and watched while Jemma hoiked their damp pink bodies into pyjamas. They laughed and slipped away from her and she chased them, padding happily after them on hands and knees, growling, miaowing and roaring until they collapsed in a slither of squeals.

Dan smiled weakly. It was as if he was watching from far away. He stood up and stretched. ‘Night then,' he didn't try and kiss them, fearful that they'd resist. ‘I'll start our supper, shall I?'

‘Sure,' Jemma looked away.

He walked into the garden and checked his phone. Nothing. Everyone in the world was giving him a day off. He scrolled down until he came to Brian. He let his finger hover over the name. No, he mustn't. Brian would be on set, still filming, or maybe sleeping off the long drive. Just then the phone buzzed in his hand. It was Michelle.

‘Hello!'

‘What time is it?' she asked him, laughing as she spoke.

‘Why?' Dan glanced back inside to the kitchen clock. It was 7.42.

‘It's the exact moment,' she told him, ‘when we meet on stage.'

‘It is.' He kept looking at the clock. Usually, right now, he'd be grabbing hold of her, snarling into her upturned face.

‘I miss it all so much,' she whispered. ‘I could die.'

‘Me too,' he sat down on the plastic step of the slide and leant into the phone. ‘So what are you up to?'

‘Nothing,' she sighed. ‘Maybe nothing ever again for the rest of my life.'

It felt as if it was the first time that day he'd actually been alive. ‘I miss you,' he said, and there was a small pause on the other end.

‘I miss you too.' Her voice was thick. ‘If I came down to London . . . I mean, next week or something, do you think . . . could we meet?'

Dan looked up at the window and caught sight of Jemma, drawing the curtains. She waved at him, and then, a moment later, the four faces of his children, flushed and blinking, appeared above the sill. ‘Daddy!' they pointed as if he were some exotic beast. ‘Dad! It's him.'

‘Sure,' he said, casually. ‘Why don't we speak again in a few days?'

‘OK,' her voice was small, confused. ‘I'll think of you tomorrow at this time.'

‘Me too,' he nodded, ‘7.42.' And hurriedly he clicked off the phone.

Royal Protocol

Nell ran herself a bath and looked at the sheath of silver satin, shrouded by plastic and looped by its hanger over the bathroom door. She'd been given ten tickets for that night's premiere of
Mary Peacock
, but, apart from Charlie, who had promised to accompany her, she wouldn't see the others until she reached her seat. Her mother would be there, her sister and her sister's husband, her aunts and uncle, and of course her mother's boyfriend Lewis. Poppy, from PR, had offered to come round and escort her to the cinema, but Nell said she thought she could manage the short journey in a chauffeur-driven car from Queen's Park to Leicester Square alone.

Nell rummaged through the suitcase which lay open on her bedroom floor. She'd bought Spanx to hold her tummy in and a balcony bra with detachable straps to wear under her dress. She'd found both these things in Austin, Texas on a weekend's break from filming on location in the desert, and they'd remained in their packets, and would have remained in their packets indefinitely, if it wasn't for tonight. The PR firm who were promoting the film had hired Tara Laurie to organise her dress. Tara had rung round the big shops, gathering together anything they had in her size, so that the day she arrived back in the UK she'd called to let her know that the dresses were on their way to her by cab. As they whisked through the London streets, Nell imagined she was about to meet a group of new and influential friends – austere, gushing, nondescript, casual, one flimsy green item, shy and demure. What if we don't get on, she found herself thinking, and she watched nervously as they were lifted up the staircase on their rail. Nell held her breath and tried them all, one after the other, keeping her highest heels on, swishing in and out from the bathroom for regular appraisals while Tara and her assistant Milly kept a constant beam of professional enthusiasm streaked across their faces. But right from the start it was the silver dress that Nell had hopes for. A floor-length swathe of mettle-dark satin, with nipped-in waist and one bare shoulder, which she imagined might transform her into the film star she was expected to become.

‘Oh yes,' Tara mused. ‘I think this is it. I really do.' And raising the bar on her enthusiasm, Milly gasped. ‘It's perfect.'

The Romanian seamstress who'd accompanied them moved in with her bracelet of pins. The dress was a little tight across the hips, but if she hoiked it up and drew it in under the bum, not only would Nell look spectacularly curvaceous, she would also be able to sit down.

 

In the three days since she'd been back, Nell had been consumed by interviews and photo shoots, phone calls, fittings, schedules and questionnaires. The London she'd left behind, a place of anonymity and indifference, of pavements pounded, buses missed, overcrowded Tube trains borne in silence, had transformed into a buzzing, swarming vortex of interest. In her. The people she met now were captivated by her, greedy for every detail of her life. They wanted to know about her early childhood, her parents' divorce, her move to London, her father's new start in the Highlands with his new wife, who refused to let them meet. Nell told them everything, uplifted by their attention, supplying names and dates and details, obedient to the last. ‘And is it true,' one powdery woman leant close, ‘that the director of
Mary Peacock
, Ciaran Conway, was so smitten with you that he's planning a sequel just so you can work together again?'

‘No!' Nell protested, heat rising to her face, ‘I mean, of course, I'd love to work with Ciaran again . . .' And flustered, she attempted to explain the close friendships that could develop on a film set, especially when people were stranded in the middle of nowhere for months on end. But what she really wanted to ask was . . . Really? Is that true? And if so, how does anybody know? She felt her heart pounding as she remembered the last time they'd seen each other, how she'd stumbled from the wrap party to find Ciaran, standing, smoking alone in the black night. Three months of longing and a recent double shot of brandy, must have given her the courage she usually lacked, because she'd stolen up behind him and snaked her arms around his waist. ‘This isn't what you need,' Ciaran had said, even as he turned to hold her. ‘You don't want to get tangled up with me.'

‘It might be.' She'd stayed in the circle of his arms. ‘It might be what I need.' And they'd clung to each other as he whispered what she already knew. That he had one family, already broken, back in Ireland, and for the best part of that year he'd be in Australia doing post-production on this film. ‘You have a whole new life ahead of you,' he whispered, and it was true, her bags were packed, a car booked to take her to the airport the next day to catch a plane to Moscow.

‘I'll miss you,' she said, ‘it'll never be the same, whatever else I do,' and he'd taken her hand and kissed it, and then, as if hardening his resolve, he'd lifted the canvas doorway of the party tent and shown her back inside.

Frustrated, Nell's interrogators moved on to the next film, listening intently as she described her time in Russia, the bleak grey sameness of the cities, the occasional romantic vision of a summer dacha glimpsed from the window of a train. But soon that conversation became tangled in the scandal of her co-star's attempt to throw himself from a third-floor window after being asked to repeat the same short scene for the twenty-seventh take. By the time they'd discussed her stint in Texas, an oddly peaceful three months playing a kidnapped pioneer, she forgot which film she was meant to be promoting.
Mary Peacock
, she wrote in large letters by the phone, and she stopped to place herself back in that winter morning, muffled and beautiful with snow, when this same telephone had woken her and spun her into a new life.

That first Christmas she'd spent flying. Reclining in business class with a small community of festive abstainers, she'd soared to the other side of the world. But the Christmas after, not wanting to be alone again, she'd brought her mother out to America to stay with her, and they'd worn cowboy hats and thick plaid shirts and eaten a BBQ dinner in a dusty windswept yard. A band had played, and later, fired with tequila, the heaviest, oldest, most awkward members of the crew had danced a square dance under a tarpaulin rigged up below the stars.

Dear Ciaran, Nell had written – postcards, emails, letters, describing the thrills and terrors of her new career, wanting him to know how she was using the skills she'd learnt from him on
Mary Peacock
. But she never sent them. She was too far from home to risk the chance of not getting a reply. And the possibility of that, if she allowed herself to think of it, was like a blow.