by Liz Bankes
‘Can you two stop being so happy, please?’ I snap.
When they go, and they think they’re out of sight, Jamie puts his arm round Mia and kisses her on top of her head. I know it’s stupid to be jealous, but everyone goes on about how great Mia and Jamie are together. Especially now he’s got his flat – it makes them seem all grown up. Everyone thought Max and I were silly kids when we said we were going to get married.
I miss being kissed.
‘Don’t you know it’s rude to stare?’ says a voice.
I look up in surprise. It is the train guy who has a line in the show. Spencer Black. With his stupid hat.
He’s looking at me expectantly, perhaps because I didn’t answer the note he left on the coffee order. Asking me out. They’d started the read-through when I gave him his coffee so there wasn’t a chance to say anything then. But he glanced at me with crooked eyebrows and I felt a jolt. Which I quickly tried to forget because that is really not what I want to be dealing with at the moment. He was hanging around at the end of the day, maybe to talk to me, but I barged past like I had to leave really urgently because of something important.
I ended up going the wrong way and had to hide in the loo for a bit and come back out later.
When I realised he was behind me just now I felt the jolt again. Like the air buzzed between us. Something I definitely need to ignore.
‘Going in early?’ he says.
‘Yes.’
‘Keen.’ He grins.
‘How come you’re going in early, then? Are you going to read your one line loads of times?’
He laughs. ‘No. I’ve been out. The club we went to was . . .’ He stops to do a massive yawn. As he lifts his arms the bottom of his T-shirt rides up and I can see the hairline on his stomach. ‘. . . open till seven, so I thought I’d come straight in.’
He looks more stubbly than yesterday. I don’t usually like the scruffy look. Mia always had loads of pictures on her wall of musicians she fancied and I call them her ‘band of druggies who don’t wash’. I always liked people who are clean-shaven and wear cologne and do their hair. But there’s something quite cool about the way Spencer probably just rolls out of bed in the morning. Or doesn’t even go to bed.
‘You take acting very seriously, then?’
‘Well, as you’ve pointed out, my part is very small.’
I look at him for a second. His face is completely deadpan. Then we both start laughing. And I accidentally snort again.
He puts his arm round me. ‘Come on, runner. Let’s get to work.’
I shrug myself free. ‘Get off !’
But I can’t help smiling. Or noticing that when his skin touched mine it made me shivery.
‘Just being friendly,’ he says with a half-smile as we head towards the entrance to the Underground.
‘Or creepy,’ I reply.
As we go down the escalator he is behind me and keeps making the Road Runner meep meep sound, and doing an innocent face when I look round. It is reminding me a bit of when Max would try to get my attention by prodding me and saying ‘Oi,’ until I said ‘What?’ or – which happened more often – hit him.
But at the same time it’s completely different because I don’t know anything about Spencer. Maybe he always chats up girls on his way to work.
As we walk up from the station to the studios he tells me about his night. It sounds mostly full of drunken dancing. Then he says things got ‘sketchy’ when his friend sat on a plant pot in this pretentious bar in Clapham. So I tell him about the time I fell in a bin.
Apart from that, his life in London sounds about a million times more exciting than mine. He’s been a student here for two years and he’s still always finding new places to explore. He wants to live in London after he graduates and I ask if he wants to be doing acting, but he says he only auditioned for a laugh and for some ‘drinking money’.
It’s not a long journey, but it feels like we fit loads of talking in. He’s really easy to chat to – not that I often find it difficult to talk, but he seems genuinely interested and doesn’t stop listening, which some people do when I ramble on.
He doesn’t mention the note he left me about going for coffee. It was obviously just a joke. Maybe we will meet up as friends. It would be nice to have someone to chat to and to show me London. A London friend. As long as that’s all it is.
Chapter 7
Johnny Green smiles and nods as I hand him a coffee and then looks down at his phone. There doesn’t seem much potential for chatting to him, which is a shame because as well as being the fittest, he’s also one of the few of them who is nearly the same age as the character he plays. Most of the cast are in their late twenties, but Johnny Green is twenty. Spencer must be around that age too.
Johnny doesn’t seem to be much like his character either. Harry is the main guy on the show and a total player. The scene where he went to meet Jen at the London Eye to give her a proper date and be her proper boyfriend because he really did love her and didn’t actually enjoy sleeping with loads of girls but she chose her boyfriend (Adam with the squinty eyes) and the last shot of the series was Harry looking sad with a glass of champagne – well, that cemented my love for him.
The Halls is seriously the best programme ever. Series one went out on a Sunday night and on Monday mornings at college we would dissect every moment. Like every single scene between Harry and Jen that had us screaming at the TV for them to just admit they loved each other. Or the bit where Greg told the rest of the rugby team he was gay and they all stood up for him against his horrible roommate who was bullying him. And when he started having an affair with his married tutor.
There’s this couple in it that had been together since they were at school – Priya and Tom. At first Max and I were like ‘That’s us!’ because we were going to live together while Max was at uni. He got on a music course at Leeds, but we thought that was too far away, so he declined it and found a course at the college in town. I was going to go full-time at Radleigh and we’d get our own place, like Tom and Priya. Then they both cheated on each other and broke up.
I notice that the actors who play Tom and Priya are always sitting together, and wonder if they are a couple in real life. Or maybe they have lots of scenes together this series and are getting back together . . .
A loud ‘Ugh’ interrupts my thoughts. Heidi Adams, who plays Jas, just spat out a mouthful of coffee.
‘This,’ she says, as if she’s holding a cup of poo, ‘is not skimmed milk. I can’t drink this.’
‘Well, you probably could if you tried,’ I say without thinking.
‘Huh?’ says Heidi, turning to look at me.
‘Nothing!’ I start rearranging mugs.
‘Don’t be such a diva.’ Bex, who plays Jen, leans over holding out her drink. ‘Try mine.’
‘OMG, you are so rude!’ Heidi hits Bex playfully and takes a sip. ‘Oh yeah, this is fine.’
Bex winks at me. I trundle off pushing the trolley that I persuaded my new friend Dave the cleaner to give to me, slightly relieved, to the next person, who happens to be Spencer.
He is half smiling at me. ‘So, you serve coffee with attitude.’
‘Shh!’ I look around in case anyone heard him, but they are all engrossed in their own conversations. I think I’m safe. ‘Well, it’s stupid,’ I say quietly. ‘Of course she can drink it. It’s not like I’d weed in it. Although that’s tempting for next time . . .’
Spencer laughs. ‘You still haven’t responded to my proposal.’
I freeze for a moment and look at him.
‘We’ll go for our own coffee. A coffee that you don’t have to make,’ he says. ‘In some sort of coffee-making establishment – with baristas and sofas.’
So maybe he wasn’t joking. Am I being asked out? As in, on a date? With an actual man? This never happens to me. Well, it wouldn’t really, seeing as I’ve only ever had one boyfriend. But Spencer doesn’t know that.
‘Oh, no thanks.’
It comes out automatically. I want to say yes, but somehow I can’t. There’s a guilty knot in my stomach.
He does a pained expression and clutches his heart. ‘Cruel.’ He does actually look a bit disappointed.
‘I mean . . . I’m just . . . well, you know, I don’t feel . . . I’m in London and everything’s new and weird and I . . .’ All the words are tumbling out of my mouth at a million miles an hour and I take a breath. ‘I’m quite mental at the moment,’ I say finally.
His eyebrows are raised and he looks surprised at my outburst. Then his expression softens into a smile. ‘Okay. Well, how’s this – a strictly friendly coffee with your new London tour guide?’ His eyes sparkle at me. ‘Nothing untoward – and you can be as mad as you like.’
I smile at him, relieved. And hoping we can both forget how I just freaked out.
My first date with Max was the lunch buffet at Pizza Hut. We’d met at Year Nine drama club and it was in the days when he shaved the sides of his hair off and lines through his eyebrows because he wanted to look like a footballer. But he was really funny. I got him to give me his number in case I ever needed an emergency drama partner and sent him some light-hearted texts (which took Mia hours to write), then he asked me out.
He brought three friends along and I brought Mia, Han and Weird Laura from school. All the boys sat along one side of the table and the girls on the other. For the first five minutes everyone hid behind their menus and didn’t speak. Except for me and Max. I didn’t feel nervous at all talking to him. It felt like I already knew him. But at the same time, every sign that he liked me was like a jolt of electricity.
The other dates didn’t go as well. Rob, sitting opposite Mia, was trying to impress her by talking about shoplifting sweets from the newsagent’s. We would find out very soon that the one sitting opposite Han had the nickname Wandering Hands Pete.
It went well for Max and me, though. Until I got a bit over-excited and tried to order champagne and we had to leave.
Chapter 8
I wish I felt as relaxed and calm as I did with Max. Or that I was fourteen and it would be socially acceptable to bring all of my friends with me on a date. Not that this is a date. This is just a friendly drink with my London tour guide, who has nice curly hair and a bit of a beard. Which isn’t my type. And fit arms. I mean ‘fit’ in a friendly way.
I should have brought a list of witty, sophisticated things to say. With Max I just used to say things like, ‘I love your sexy bum.’ I never had to think about what I said. I could see if Rosie would text me some. She is good at knowing what to say, or at least she thinks about things before she says them and never blurts.
We left the studios and came into Camden. After Spencer had shown me round Camden Lock and the market, we ended up in a trendy coffee bar. Spencer says that his usual style is Tesco economy tea at home, but this is his first paid acting job so he is celebrating by drinking outside of the house.
We are shown to a table and the first thing I think is, Those are really tall chairs. I half-consider asking him to give me a leg up but instead put a foot on the lowest rung of the chair, move like I am getting on a horse, and end up straddling the seat facing the wrong way.
‘I’m sorry, I’m not very dainty,’ I explain, finding my balance and turning round.
‘Well then, I don’t think this is going to work.’ Spencer grins. ‘I’m incredibly dainty.’
The fact he’s said something slightly flirty gives me a leap of excitement. I always thought that all the uncertainty of not knowing if someone liked me would drive me mental, but it also gives me a sort of thrill.
The coffee arrives and the cups are absolutely tiny. The finger sandwiches aren’t much better and I think that calling them ‘toe sandwiches’ would be more accurate. It takes us about a second to finish everything and then we look at each other and laugh.
Spencer twists his mouth in an awkward expression, which I do find a bit sexy even though I’m not supposed to be fancying people due to being unstable.
‘Shall we make this a coffee crawl?’ he says.
The next place is a little Moroccan café down a side street. We lie back on low sofas that are really comfy and order honey and mint tea, which the waiter pours holding the gold teapot really high in the air.
‘I should try that when I get back to Radleigh,’ I say. We’ve been chatting easily the whole walk here and covered my family, Spencer’s Film course and our jobs. Relationships haven’t come up.
‘A few people might get scalded, until you get the hang of it,’ he says, turning his head to face me.
‘I’ll do the people I don’t like first,’ I reply, meeting his eyes.
‘Are there many?’ He’s looking at me quizzically.
‘Yeah, I have a list.’
He laughs like that’s a joke but in fact I keep the list behind the bar.
He shifts round to face me on the sofa. He’s telling me about all the things I should try to see while I’m here. He’s so at ease, but at the same time you can tell how much he loves London. It sounds like every night out he has is some random adventure that ends at a rave in a warehouse or getting invited into someone’s houseboat. His eyes stay steadily on me as he talks and he leans in and gives me a friendly nudge at different points. Is he a touchy-feely person or are these ‘moves’? It’s like he’s focusing completely on me. But that’s what someone who has ‘moves’ would do, isn’t it?
He’s talking about how the pub next door has a really good comedy night that we should go to.
Without thinking I say, ‘Max went through a stage of wanting to be a stand-up comedian.’
‘Who’s Max?’ Spencer asks, his gaze still fixed on me. His expression is so open and friendly. He has no idea he’s just asked a question that’s started off a whole montage of sad thoughts in my brain.
‘My boy . . . chum.’
‘Your boy chum?’
‘Yeah, my boy chum from home. I have boy and girl chums. Do you?’
‘Um, yes,’ he says, peering at me suspiciously.
It is probably because I hardly ever lie that I’m not very good at it. Usually the truth just slips out without me thinking about it. But I suddenly felt like I shouldn’t tell him about Max. Instead I’ve babbled at him about chums. I need Mia. She’s good at being sneaky. She had a full-blown secret affair with Jamie last summer. Which obviously I’ve forgiven her for, but I do bring it up when I’m trying to get her to do stuff, like let me finish off a bag of Wine Gums I found in her room or do my packing for London.
He gets a text and shifts round to get his phone out of his pocket. I take a deep breath and stare at the table, forcing the images of Max back into the dark little corner of my brain where they are supposed to stay hidden. Then I look round at Spencer, who is angled away from me and texting.
He does have a nice bum.
Not that that is important. Nor is the fact that I can see a bit of tanned stomach at the top of his jeans and it looks quite sexy.
I should check my phone too in case there’s anything from Gran. I texted her earlier to let her know I’d gone for a drink and would be a few hours late. She said, With a man? I said, Yeah, but not like that.
I find she’s replied, Hoo. I think she meant to write Hmm. She texts with one finger, looking over the top of her glasses and doesn’t understand predictive text.
It reminds me of the time she was a bit drunk and called it ‘protective dicks’ by mistake and then cackled for about an hour. It makes me snort-laugh loudly into my tea.
Spencer puts his phone away, and won’t let me get away with not explaining.
‘It won’t be funny if I retell it!’
He leans over. So close that his curls brush against my forehead. ‘Come on! You can’t giggle like a lunatic and not tell me why.’
We both keep slipping into little laughing fits as I tell the story. He lies back again when I finish and laughs properly, but he’s closer now and our arms are touching. I can feel hi
m shaking. When it finally subsides we both turn our heads at the same time and look at each other.
I still can’t get my breathing under control.
He walks me to the station and stops outside the entrance. ‘So,’ he says, holding his hands in the air. ‘First day with your guide. Are you pleased with the service?’
‘Apart from the tiny cups,’ I say.
He nods. ‘I can only apologise. And promise you that next time the cups will be of an acceptable size.’
A next time would be nice. Only in a strictly friendly tour guide way, obviously.
‘Good. Well, I better go. Thanks for the tour.’
I wait for him to move out of my way so I can go through the ticket barrier.
‘Don’t I get a goodbye hug?’ He raises his eyebrows at me and holds his hands out. This feels more than strictly friendly.
‘Um, okay. But keep your hands to yourself.’ I narrow my eyes at him and he laughs, which makes me smile.
We hug and for a moment I am pressed against him. He smells good – sweet and fresh. A bit like apples, or something.
He moves back a bit and pauses. Our faces are centimetres apart. He turns his head slightly and arches one eyebrow. ‘Goodbye kiss?’
I swallow. It couldn’t hurt to have a kiss, could it? It could just be a one-off, random thing. After all, I’m supposed to be single and I can go round kissing people if I like.
But I don’t feel like I’m single.
‘You promised – nothing untoward!’ I say.
I see his cheek twitch into a grin and he moves away. ‘Ah, you can’t blame a guy for trying.’
Chapter 9
The next day I’m told I will be sent to work with the location team, who are finishing up getting the university buildings ready for filming at the weekend. This is where it all happens. Well, the scenes that are set on campus. They use the real student bar and club and some of the lecture theatres, because they can film here in the holidays. I’ll be doing stuff like sweeping the floor, but at the same time I can scout out for places where I might be able to accidentally wander into shot.