by Amy Huberman
‘Oi!’ Emma protested.
‘Sorry, girls, your mam wanted me to pass on those little bits and bobs to ye, but I didn’t really have the heart to do it head-on so I wrapped them up into nice little prayers.’
I wondered if Mum was a mind-reader with the hair-and-scissors thing. I’d only entertained the idea for a day or two, tops. I knew I wasn’t actually going to follow through as I’d already done as much of a Britney as I could handle by chucking the mother of all hissy fits for the whole world to see.
‘Izzy, is my pink eye shadow hideous?’ Emma asked, after Dad had left.
‘No, it’s not. You’re just a very colourful, sparkly person, and if you like it you should keep wearing it.’
‘You should be an advice-giver-outer in one of those magazines.’
‘Emma, apart from knowing that you should keep wearing whatever eye shadow makes you happy, I know pretty much nothing else.’
‘You know how to make me laugh.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, smiling in the dark.
‘And you know how to get your hair to sit in really cute waves. I’m glad you didn’t hack it all off.’
‘Wow, Em. Now that I know I can get my hair to sit in really cute waves, I don’t feel quite so much of a loser.’
‘You’re not a loser, Iz, you just got lost for a bit.’
‘I hope you never feel that way,’ I said, melting at the thought of my little sister ever feeling so unhappy.
‘I hope I didn’t upset you by telling you Cian and that transvestite were moving in together.’
‘It’s good to know these things, I guess.’
So why had he phoned me when he’d just moved in with her? To ask my opinion on interiors?
‘I forgot to tell you about the hideous photo of her in Social Scene. You have to see it! She’s wearing this awful dress that makes her look fat and her hair is a total mess.’
‘You’re kidding?’ I perked up immediately.
Emma shot out of bed, turned on the light and rummaged furiously among the magazines, which were now scattered across the floor. ‘Aha! Here it is!’ She flicked through the pages of Ireland’s celebrity magazine until she found what she was looking for, then thrust the open page right under my nose. ‘See?’
I scanned the faces. People I vaguely recognized from last month’s edition. Same faces, different party. Then I saw her and my heart sank. I lifted the page as close to my face as I possibly could without the picture going blurry. ‘Emma, are you having a laugh? She looks amazing!’
‘What? Are you blind? Look at her dress! Look at her hair!’
‘I am, and it’s killing me. She looks even skinnier than she did when I last saw her, her dress is a weird colour but stunning on her, and, yes, her hair does look a bit odd in a side ponytail but it’s still amazing.’
‘Well, I think she looks tacky. Like an eighties porn star.’ Christ, Emma shouldn’t be throwing such wild accusations around. She was a one-woman homage to Rainbow Brite and the Sprites.
I closed the magazine and threw it on the floor, feeling even worse about how stunning she was than I ever had before. ‘No wonder Cian’s moved in with her. I’d move in with her, just so I could stare at her all day.’
‘You’re insane. She’s a tacky glamourpuss with no class and no true beauty. My friend Millie was working at an event she was at recently and she said she was a right stuck-up cow, hanging off these loaded older men, getting them to buy her drinks all night. And who did she sleep with to get the part in your film? I’ve heard she’s as loose as a pair of your After jeans.’
‘Huh?’ I said. I’d been imagining Edna fronting the new Cavalli campaign.
‘Izzy, you’ve lost all the weight again. And more.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. You’ve never looked better. You may still be sad, Iz, but you’ve got a sparkle back in your eyes again… and, I don’t know, a certain… glow.’
I was right. Emma had definitely been watching Danielle Steel movies. Just then Mum banged on the wall to tell us to stop talking and go to sleep. Like old times.
We whispered for a bit more about Stephen being a reformed slut and how he’d held Deirdre’s hand the whole evening. It was so touching. He’d laughed at everything she said and couldn’t help gloating about her achievements. And I mean all of her achievements. He even told us about the gold medal she’d won in an Irish-dancing feis when she was seven.
‘Are you okay?’ Emma asked, after a few minutes’ silence.
‘I can’t be that upset about not winning an Irish-dancing feis, especially when I never even did Irish dancing.’
‘No, Izzy, I meant about Edna. The magazine and all.’
‘Yeah. I just really wish she wasn’t in the film. It’s like the final nail in the coffin.’
‘Well, there may be one more nail. Teeny tiny one.’
‘What?’ She actually was fronting the next Cavalli campaign?
‘I wasn’t sure whether to tell you or not, but I heard that apparently it was her and her mates who put the video up on Facebook.’
I blinked in the dark, letting the information sink in. I wasn’t all that shocked, but what an almighty out-and-out bitch.
‘Izzy?’
‘I can’t say I’m surprised.’
‘It’s her only form of attack. She’s jealous that you were Cian’s first love and that you’re far more gorgeous and fantastic than she is. Underneath all that front, she has no self-confidence. That’s why she feels she has to knock you.’
Sweet. If untrue.
‘Screw it, Emma. I’m getting there, honestly I am, and I’m not going to allow this setback trip me up now… Besides, I have a plan to sleep with our rideable producer from London, so who cares about Edna and her amazing life and her stupid friends and Facebook?’
I thought about telling her that Cian had called and texted, but I didn’t have the energy.
‘That is the perfect plan! I’m so proud of you. I was going to make you sleep with this guy in my tutorial class, but now that you have your own bloke, I don’t need to. That’s great, Izzy. It’s exactly what you need, some seriously hot rebound sex.’
Hear, hear!
Lying in a cocoon of my old teddies, I soon felt very sleepy. ‘Night, Em,’ I whispered.
‘Night, Izzy. I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
Snog Me Now, You Dublin Whore was well into its third week of filming and things were running smoothly. Or so Margaret kept telling me. I wasn’t so sure, but she kept insisting that it was perfectly normal to witness people having panic attacks at random moments in random places around the set.
Today Margaret was in particularly foul form, and of course it was the one time I’d stapled the script together in the wrong order. Little did I know that the day was about to get a whole lot worse. Just as I was convinced Margaret was about to lob her coffee mug at my head, there was a bang on the door and it swung open. One of the assistant directors was standing there, looking as traumatized as I felt. ‘Saffron needs you.’
Well, I needed her to piss off and stop destroying my life. ‘Okay.’
I knocked on her trailer door, telling myself I wasn’t going to take any of her crap.
‘Isobel!’ she cooed, as if we were long-lost friends reunited on Oprah.
Be strong. Be very strong.
‘I need you to run an errand for me.’
‘Of course.’ Bollocks.
‘If you could just pop down to the shops and get me a copy of Social Scene and a Diet Coke.’
Shoot me. I thought it was going to be something work-related, like printing off another script for her. But, no, she just wanted to exert her power over me by making me her personal lackey. ‘Fine,’ I said, not giving her the satisfaction of thinking it bothered me. ‘I was just on my way out.’
I returned with her stuff twenty minutes later. (I’d got her a full-fat Coke ‘by mistake’. Oops!)
‘Come in! Come in!’
she called.
‘I have stuff to do…’
‘Five minutes.’ I’m not quite sure why but I stepped inside her trailer. I felt as if I was entering enemy territory and my back instinctively became rigid. I perched awkwardly on the edge of the couch, sitting on my hands in case I was overpowered by an urge to slap her.
‘Oh, brilliant! My photo shoot! It’s here!’ she trilled, flicking through the magazine. ‘Look!’ she exclaimed, throwing it onto my lap.
‘Aaaah!’ I screamed. Jesus, Izzy, get it together. I tried to cover up by using Susie’s excuse: ‘Spider!’
Edna shrieked. ‘Where?’
‘Sorry, false alarm, it’s only a bit of fluff.’
Calm. Pretend to take it all in as if you don’t care. As if you have no idea who they are. Like the caption over the photos does not read: ‘Stunning actress and Dublin socialite moves in with her hunky top-exec boyfriend.’
I disguised another scream as a cough.
Contrived shots of her and Cian cuddling on the couch, eating oysters in the kitchen, lying on the rug reading the Sunday papers.
My flipping rug! I’d given it to him as a present and now they were lying on it. ‘Get off my rug, Edna McClodmutton!’ I wanted to shout.
They were obviously living in her apartment, but in all the photos I could see pieces of my past life scattered about. I’d had sex with Cian on that rug, for Christ’s sake. And they were my mugs! I’d hand-painted them.
Breathe.
Breathe!
She looked stunning in the photos. And even though I wouldn’t wear a Black Halo dress on a Sunday afternoon to read the papers, it looked natural on her. She probably went jogging in Malene Birger cocktail numbers.
And there was Cian, happy and smug and gorgeous! Even though he was wearing snakeskin boots and, to the naked eye, I was pretty sure he had blond highlights, the ache in my heart suddenly became unbearable. I felt as if the walls were closing in on me. I eyed the door, knowing that if I didn’t leave in the next three seconds and have a cigarette, I was going to die.
I glanced at Edna. She was scanning my face for tell-tale signs of trauma. I struggled to find something to say but, thankfully, I was rescued by a knock on the door. It was the AD again, Tom, still looking traumatized. Snap! He and I were so in sync.
‘There you are, Izzy,’ he puffed, out of breath. ‘Emergency on-set. We need you.’
Wow. I felt like Superwoman. Until he told me what the ‘emergency’ involved.
Eight minutes later I was dressed in a Lycra training top, shiny pink tracksuit bottoms, skanky runners and big hoop earrings, with my hair scraped up into a ponytail/council-estate facelift. When I spotted my reflection in a window, I let out my third scream of the afternoon.
‘Thanks for doing this,’ Tom said, still out of breath.
I was about to say, ‘What choice did I have after I was jumped by the costume department, stripped and re-dressed before I’d had time to object?’ but I thought it probably wouldn’t get me anywhere so I just nodded.
Why me?
Why today?
Honestly, why?
Some special extra had failed to show up apparently, and now they needed someone else to fill in ASAP. They kept repeating it and, believe me, I got the ‘ASAP’ of the situation when the wardrobe assistant gave me a chafe burn on my arse – she’d reefed up the hideous tracksuit bottoms too quickly.
Tom dragged me by the arm to O’Connell Bridge. ‘She’s here! She’s here!’ he shouted wildly, when we were within earshot of the director. The entire crew clapped appreciatively when they saw me coming and I nodded shyly, wishing desperately that I could have stepped in to play someone glamorous in a puffball dress and cute peep-toes.
‘Wow, they’re one tight pair of pants, Isobel. But if you squint, you can’t really notice the camel’s toes.’ Arrgh! Edna McClodmutton was absolutely fecking everywhere!
‘Isobel, my darling! Thank you! Thank you!’ the director called, as he approached me. ‘Now, this won’t take too long. Basically you just have to run down O’Connell Street with this tent as if you’ve just stolen it from a shop. That’s all.’
That’s all?
‘Erm, really?’
‘You’re a great sport, Isobel. We really appreciate it. Now, we have to get going right away,’ he chirped, ushering me towards the camera.
‘I, er, didn’t realize I’d have to actually do something,’ I said to him quietly. ‘I thought I was just going to be hanging around in the background.’
He laughed heartily. ‘Okay, first positions, everyone!’ he shouted. ‘Now, Isobel, when I say, “Action,” you just run and keep on running!’ He handed me the tent. It was rather large and quite awkward to get a hold of, and as I was trying to get a proper grip on it, he shouted, ‘ACTION!’
‘Oooh, me?’ I asked nervously.
‘Yes, Isobel. ACTION! ACTION! ACTION!’
I started running, partly because the director had frightened me by shouting like that. I didn’t hear anyone shout, ‘Cut,’ so I kept on running, as he’d said, hoping to God I didn’t bump into anyone I knew. How odd was this? Legging it down O’Connell Street, carrying a tent, dressed like someone from Odds and Sods. Oh, please, God, may I not bump into anyone I know! Least of all Cian coming out of the homewares in Clery’s with cushions to match my rug for his new love-nest.
Just when I was getting into some sort of rhythm, I felt myself being hoisted backwards, then lifted off the ground. I watched my legs still going mid-air, like a cartoon character’s. What the hell?
‘Where are you off to, young lady?’
I turned my head to see a store guard staring at me. ‘Em, could you let me down, please? I haven’t stolen this tent. I’m actually doing a scene in a movie.’
‘Sure you are, love,’ he said, still holding me off the ground at arm’s length by the criss-cross back-strap of my Lycra top.
As I swayed there, like a decoration on a Christmas tree, I wondered if today would make it on to my growing list of the Worst Ever Days of My Life. I was fairly confident it would.
‘Sorry! Excuse me! Sorry, sir, could you put her down, please?’
Hey! I recognized that voice. I peered at the figure pelting down O’Connell Street towards me.
Christ alive! It was Jonathan Ride Cunningham!
I was going to have to make a new list: Weirdest Ever Days of My Life.
‘Hi, Jonathan,’ I said, as he reached us, keen to seem semi-normal this time, despite the challenges at hand. ‘How have you been?’ I asked, trying to sound chipper.
‘Fine, Isobel,’ he said distractedly. He looked at the store guard. ‘Please put her down, sir. The poor girl was filling in as an extra for the scene we’re doing.’ He took out his business card. ‘I’m the film’s producer, so if you could just let her come with me now that would be great.’
I felt like a prize turkey being bartered over at a farm fair. All of a sudden the guy released his grip and I plopped back to my feet. Phew!
‘You seem to have the most intriguing job, Isobel. I’m on-set for two minutes and I see you pegging it down O’Connell Street dressed like Vicky Pollard and almost getting arrested.’
‘Regular day at the office.’ I shrugged, trying to smile, which was quite painful with my hair scraped up so tightly. He smiled back and my stomach flipped. Good God, this man was divine.
Jonathan’s mobile rang and he apologized, saying he had to take the call. I strolled back to the set. I couldn’t wait to get out of those clothes. I knew Edna had been trying to rile me with the camel-toes comment, but I strategically placed the tent in front of me just in case.
Just then someone called, ‘Oi!’ Then again: ‘Oi!’
I spotted a little man in dark clothes hiding behind the Daniel O’Connell statue, gesturing at me to come over to him. It was only when I’d nearly reached him that I noticed the giant camera looped around his neck. I flinched. I swear to Christ that if someone had just taken photos o
f me running down O’Connell Street in this clobber, with this tent so they could put them on Facebook…
‘I saw you talking to the film crew a few moments ago. You’re working on the film, are you?’
‘Yes,’ I said defensively.
‘I’ll give you twenty euro if you give me some dirt on Saffron Spencer.’
‘What?’
‘Fine, fifty euro.’
Fifty? I could buy that blouse in Topshop. And I could also get Edna back for exploiting my heartbreak on Facebook and generally ruining my life…
By the time I got back to the set office, Margaret had calmed down substantially and was not holding any mugs of hot coffee so I relaxed a little. Jonathan popped by later to check I was okay after the O’Connell Street episode, and I was mighty happy not to be wearing my tight Lycra jogging pants this time. The ‘I must sleep with him!’ chant popped into my head and I closed my lips tightly.
‘Listen, I have to head back to London tomorrow,’ he said suddenly, ‘but if you’re around later and don’t have any plans, maybe we could go for a drink or something.’
Good Lord! Had this cool, sophisticated, handsome producer really just asked me out for a drink? With my track record and all? Should I agree to go out with a guy who obviously had such bad judgement? Feck it! I couldn’t be too fussy with the whole rebound-sex thing or it would never happen. I had to accept that Josh Hartnett was not going to be ‘the guy’ and just roll with what I got. Not that Jonathan Ride Cunningham was too bad a substitute. Hang on! He hadn’t agreed to sleep with me yet, only asked me to go for a post-work drink.
One step at a time.
20
I spent the rest of the afternoon concentrating on not sweating because Jonathan Ride Cunningham was taking me for a drink after work and I wouldn’t get an opportunity to change beforehand. The office was stuffy – it was essentially a metal Portakabin – and Margaret asked me had I hurt my shoulders when she saw me walking around with my arms set at Barbie-doll angles. I couldn’t tell her it was to ensure air circulation to my pits as I was going for a drink with our gorgeous boss straight after work so I just said that, yes, I had hurt my shoulders – perhaps it was all the photocopying I’d been doing. She told me that a friend of hers had snapped a tendon in her finger from having to press the start button on the office shredder so I was to be careful.