‘Can I go and say hello to Bwian?’ Archie said, waving to the staunch Northern Ireland props guy in his mid-sixties who was unloading a plastic box of heads from the back of a tatty van.
‘Sure,’ I said warily. The last time I’d come across Brian and Archie chatting I thought I’d heard the words ‘Sinn Féin’ and ‘active organisation’. ‘But don’t get in his way.’
‘OK!’ Archie trotted across the lively courtyard.
‘And leave that bag alone!’ I called out as I saw him about to reach into a bag of pre-bloodied intestinal prosthetics.
I was shown to a converted barn attached to the main house by a covered walkway, which Archie and I would share with Martha and Tilly. My heart sank. I’d be kept up all night by the crinkling and rustling of crisp packets. And I bet she snored. My visions of accidentally-on-purpose bumping into Andrew in his boxers on a trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night vaporised. But the barn house was cosy. Sliding glass doors opened on to a living room with a long velvet sofa and two armchairs set round a log burner. Fluffy sheepskins covered the wooden floor and a mini-kitchen in the corner was already stocked with Martha’s snacks. It was understood that I was not welcome to help myself. I sighed a contented little sigh as I put my Kindle next to the four-poster bed. I was looking forward to the next adventure, and not least because I was away from London where Ned was searching for Sophie’s clitoris.
‘Paris?’ I said into my mobile. ‘Paris?!’
‘Sorry.’ Helen had just had the unenviable job of telling me Ned had taken Sophie to Paris for her birthday. ‘He’s a wanker.’
‘He’s a cunt wanker fuck-beard,’ I said, pacing outside in the early morning sun. Archie and Tilly were playing on the grass with the manor’s huge Irish wolf hound called Ivan and his sidekick, Wayne the Jack Russell, while waiting for their call to set. Martha stood nearby, eating.
‘Fuck-beard? Sounds like a pirate pimp.’
‘How’d you find out?’
‘I called Sophie to wish her Happy Birthday—’
‘What?! You called her?’
‘I’m not angry with her. You are.’
‘Yes, I am. Couldn’t you join me in moral judgement? Like any good friend would?’
‘I am a good friend. But I kind of feel sorry for Sophie. She’s with Ned.’
I grumbled my displeasure. I was very tired. Martha had snored all night and, while we were not sharing a room, the wood-panelled walls of the barn house were not thick enough to drown out the noise she made. It sounded like someone vacuuming an octopus. I’d missed out on dinner with the film crew in the manor, and had instead eaten an early dinner of chicken nuggets and peas with Martha and the kids in the barn house, Martha making it piously clear our duties lay with the children. I felt like I’d been grounded on the night of a party. At six in the morning Martha, wanting to take the children for an awakening stroll round the lake, dragged me from slumber. I’d told her to bite me again. One day she was going to take me up on my offer. But in the end I’d trudged round the lake and had come back to the lit fire in the barn house feeling quite glad I’d made the effort. Not least because I got a glimpse of Andrew and Scott Vander going for a run in their sweats and vests, and Scott Vander was every bit as hot as he seemed in the tabloid pictures. But Martha had ruined my good mood by telling me she’d seen Amy and Andrew looking very cosy at breakfast. Not that I was entertaining the thought I had a chance with Andrew (OK, I wasn’t just entertaining the thought. I’d cooked it a four-course meal and invited it to live with me permanently.) I was a very man-repellent five months pregnant with another man’s baby. But I was sure there were looks he had given me. Holding my gaze for a moment too long that had made me think, maybe he can look past the swollen belly and ginormous breasts and see the single yummy mummy on the other side. Or maybe it was the ginormous breasts that so captivated his gaze . . .
‘Emma, while I am in total agreement about Sophie being a senseless nut-bar with a ridiculous sense of colour, she didn’t set out to hurt you. It’s not like she jumped Ned the moment you broke up. It wasn’t a planned thing. I think they genuinely like each other and are both genuinely surprised about it all. She’s devastated about upsetting you. She really is.’ Helen was being much more practical than I was used to.
‘Poor Sophie,’ I sneered.
‘Forget about them. Pray they slip over in French dog poo and get sick from unpasteurised cheese. Now, have you seen Scott Vander’s penis yet? Helmet or ant-eater?’
At the end of the day, after convincing Martha that it would be fine for me to go and have dinner with the crew, seeing as Archie and Tilly were asleep and she was sitting in the living room eating a family-size pack of Maltesers three yards from their bedroom door, I slipped out of the barn house. Much to Helen’s dismay, I’d not seen Scott Vander’s penis. And I was unlikely to see his penis because, despite her argument that ‘I could just say I’d got lost’, I was not going to accidentally find myself in his cottage in the wee hours with my camera at the ready.
Congenial chatter drifted from behind the door to the ‘smoking’ room. I pushed it open and was instantly enveloped in the warmth coming from a roaring fire. Three rustically battered chesterfield sofas were arranged around the hearth. Cast and crew were perched on the arms and squashed up against each other with glasses of wine and pints of ale, their cheeks ruddy and pink from a combination of alcohol and proximity to the flames. It had been a gentle first day of filming at the manor (just Archie, Tilly and Scott setting up a tent pre-zombie-cat arrival) and the moderate pace and change of scenery had everyone in good spirits.
‘Hey. Martha let you out?’ Caroline appeared at my side with a generous smile. ‘Come and sit by the fire.’ She scooted a stoned-looking Steve out of his spot. ‘Drink?’
Caroline introduced me to some of the girls playing ‘campers’ (girls in bras) and we chatted like a group of mates out in town. Dinner was served in a dining hall with a long wooden table in the centre and ancient oriental carpets scattered across the vast stone floor. Heads of slain animals looked down on us reprovingly as we ate mouthfuls of their tender distant cousins with jus and prosciutto-wrapped runner beans.
‘My mum smoked weed when she was pregnant with me and my bruvva and we’re cool.’ Steve, the lanky boom op, was trying to convince me to smoke a joint with him after dinner.
‘I’m OK, thanks,’ I said, swishing the last forkful of sticky date pudding round my bowl.
Most people had finished their meals and were leaning back in their chairs, drinking, laughing and talking with exaggerated volume.
‘Suit yourself. I’ll be down the lake if you wanna join. Unless you have a Vander invitation.’ Steve made an attempt at a snooty face. He really was a very unfortunate-looking man, the snooty-face attempt only making him more so.
‘A Vander invitation?’
‘Oh,’ he said with a smile, ‘you don’t have one?’ He seemed happy.
‘What is it?’
‘Scott Vander,’ Steve made his snooty face again, ‘is having people up to his digs. But you have to be invited.’
‘Oh,’ I said, feeling like the stinky kid who doesn’t get picked for a team in sports and has to sit with the teacher.
‘You have to be somebody,’ he continued. ‘Somebody with drugs. Somebody shaggable. Or “Somebody”.’ He did the inverted commas thing with his smoked-stained fingers.
‘I’m none of those,’ I said pathetically.
Steve nodded his agreement. I glanced round the table at Claire and Caroline chatting in a group of skinny-jeans-clad minor cast members and some of the more muscular lighting guys with their tight jaws, tattooed arms and ruggedly on-trend five o’clock shadow. Even though Caroline and Claire had just finished a thirteen-hour shoot day, their hair and make-up were immaculate and they were in new outfits. Amy sat on the knee of a cameraman old enough to be her father, flicking her hair. Andrew was deep in conversation with another cameraman, the continuity
lady and a wardrobe girl who looked like she should be front row at Chanel. Art department guys and girls leant against the fireplace talking about interpretive naked theatre or whatever it was arty people talked about. They would all be invited to Scott’s. I turned back to Steve, who was watching me with a little smile.
‘Are you invited?’
‘Me?’ he said, taking a battered old tin out of his pocket and starting to roll a joint in plain view of the rest of the table. ‘Nah. Couldn’t give a toss, neither.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
At breakfast the next morning it became apparent who did and did not have a Vander invite. Dark glasses remained on the noses of those suffering from stonking great hangovers, and only a mere handful possessed bright eyes, colour in their cheeks and the ability to eat scrambled eggs without retching. Even Steve’s boom op mate with the shaved head had bleary eyes and a slight whiff of vomit about him.
‘Sorry lot, aren’t they?’ Steve said as he piled his plate high with bread and bacon, a post-breakfast joint lodged behind his left ear.
‘Yeah.’ I tried to hide my resentment at being left out. ‘Do you know what they did?’
Steve shrugged. ‘Probably some cocaine, maybe acid. Definitely E. Claire brought a whole bag.’
‘I didn’t mean what drugs,’ I said, although I was mildly shocked that Claire had brought a bag of E. ‘I just was wondering what went on up there.’
‘They partied.’ Steve looked at me like I ought to up my medication. ‘You have been to a party, haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said witheringly.
‘EVERYBODY ON SET FOR BLOCKING!’ the first AD’s voice screeched through the radio clipped to Amy’s waistband.
‘See you soon,’ Steve said, throwing a couple of rashers of bacon into a bun and sloping off to set to watch the block (a technical term for the placement and movement of actors; effectively a “you stand here, then you run this way and shove the tent pole in his eye, and you; you die right here, but make sure you land with your head facing that way so we can end on a close-up of your empty eye socket.”).
Around mid-morning filming took a small break while Scott had zombie eyeballs fitted. These were like contact lenses but they covered the entire eyeball, were very rigid and had to be fitted by an optometrist. Normal contact lenses could be fitted by the make-up artist or the actor themselves but the full lens was difficult to get in, very uncomfortable and, being opaque, rendered the wearer almost sightless. Which is probably why Scott was using delaying tactics and had become a lot more ADHD than usual.
‘OH, YEAH! OH, YEAH!’ Scott, shirtless and out of the make-up chair yet again, twerked to his own tune. Admittedly, with his shredded trousers, an overtly gruesome bullet wound to the torso and zombie facial make-up, he looked hilarious. But I found it hard to laugh along with the rest of the crew knowing I’d been scorned in the invite department.
Steve caught my eye and made his Snooty Scott face again. Archie sat on my lap, transfixed by the entire eyeball process. I’d stopped checking if he was frightened because he seemed so unfazed. He was curious and wanted to be told how everything worked. He’d made friends with the SPFX team and now knew more than I did about blood squibs and low-grade explosives. And I’d been in the industry for six years.
‘Know your lines, son?’ the director said to Archie, who nodded. ‘Good, good.’ He pulled out a bag of seeds and nibbled anxiously.
‘They’ve got five more minutes to get those god-awful lenses in before I call time on the children.’ Martha sank heftily into a chair and directed Tilly’s attention to what looked like a mathematics book.
‘Chill, Martha, the kids are OK.’
Eventually the optometrist, two costume assistants, a very stern-looking First AD and Caroline managed to keep Scott in the chair long enough to fit both eyeballs and he was led by the arms towards his first position on set. As he passed Martha, Tilly, Archie and me, who must have seemed like moving orbs behind those lenses, he made a terrifying face.
‘RAAAARRRRRHHHH!’ he roared at the kids, who giggled, whereas Martha squealed like Nathan Lane in The Birdcage.
‘What kind of parent exposes their child to this kind of movie? It’s indecent.’ Martha pressed her lips together, yet she ogled Scott’s bare chest as if it were a glazed Christmas ham and she the only guest at the table.
Filming commenced and the collective hangover kicked into high gear. People yawned and burped discreetly into their fists. Caroline sipped Berocca; Claire popped pills. Cameramen leant on their tripods, the shaved-head boom op leant on his boom and the standby art director, while spurting blood from a shampoo-like bottle over a lone limb at the back of set, had paused and lingered nauseously over the rubber leg, her eyes glassy and bulging.
I ran a hand over my forehead. It was only a matter of time before Uncle Mike found out this movie was not, as Sinead had told him, a period drama/comedy like Pride and Prejudice mashed with Little Miss Sunshine.
The morning dragged. The boom op kept dipping his boom into shot, zombies forgot their lines (I mean really, how hard is it to say ‘aarrggghhh’ at a specified moment) or a key prop was missing. Stupid hung-over people. Hung over and flaunting the fact they’d been at a party when I’d sat on the sofa in the barn house watching Martha work her way through a bag of marshmallows without offering me even one. I sat behind the director’s monitor, watching him nibble his way into an edgy, time-watching frenzy.
Lunch was called and the hung-over crew gratefully decamped outside grabbing coffees, dark glasses, cigarettes and Berocca. Food was devoured in a rush and the crew disappeared to various dark corners of the property to sleep for the remainder of the break. Archie and Tilly rubbed the bellies of Ivan and Wayne while Martha sat on a garden bench with Steve discussing puff pastry versus filo. I switched on my phone and was immediately rung by voicemail. Joe’s upbeat voice left the first message.
‘Hey Em, hope all’s going well on set with the famous Scott Vander. I met him at a product launch once. Good guy, I reckon. Went home with three of the models, if I remember rightly. Anyway, I just wanted to check something. Harriet and Arthur are heading to Cornwall for a family birthday or something and can’t take Brutus. Harriet’s asked me to look after him because he’s not so good with strangers yet. He tries to attack them. Would it be OK to have him here for the weekend? They’re back on Sunday so it would only be for two nights. Apparently he has to have risotto on Friday night and casserole on Saturday night. Let me know. Oh, and don’t worry, I’m not wearing any of your knickers and will only wear your bra when I host the Lady Gaga Appreciation Night next week.’
I smiled, saved the message and listened to the next one. Joe again.
‘I forgot,’ his voice said immediately into the phone. ‘Brutus stole my house keys yesterday and buried them somewhere on the common. We looked everywhere but couldn’t find them. So I had to get your locks changed. Also more flowers got delivered.’ I felt my jaw clench. Ever since I’d blocked Sophie’s calls she’d resorted to sending flowers with grovelling apology notes. ‘They’re from Sophie again. She also sent a bottle of stretch-mark cream. It’s really gross – smells like rotten oranges. I think it’s home-made. Oh and there’s a package here from France from someone called Diana George. Is that your mother? Shall I open it? It says “lingerie” on the packing slip. I think I should open it. OK, well . . . yes, that’s all . . . OK, bye!’
I giggled. The next message was from the hospital confirming my scan for two weeks’ time. We had a long weekend coming up. Archie and I were heading back to London and the rest of the cast and crew to their friends and family around the country before returning to set for the remainder of the shoot. I saved the message then listened to the final one. Mum.
‘Hi, darling. I’m in Paris looking at wedding dresses for Alex. It’s all total rubbish here. I think she should go British. McQueen, maybe. But the girl wants to wear vintage. Vintage? What she’s saying is “second hand”. Disgusting. Any
way, I was in Montmartre looking for “vintage” and I saw Ned and that friend of yours, the one with the stripy clothing, sitting in a café. I’m sorry to have to tell you this but I thought you’d want to know. In the fashion capital of the world, and that bumpkin was wearing striped tights, a moss-green corduroy skirt with brass buttons down the front and what looked to be Joseph’s Technicolor Dreamcoat from a 1970s community theatre show. Unforgivable. Alex said I shouldn’t tell you but I just had to, darling. You don’t mind? When are you off that movie and back in London? Must go, love you.’
Ugh. Sophie and Ned again.
I dialled my home number with a quick check on Archie, who was inspecting a worm in Tilly’s hand.
‘Hello, Lady Emma’s residence, Butler Joe speaking, how may I be of service?’
‘Is that really how you answer the phone?’
‘Yep. And I answer the door wearing a pinny. Only a pinny.’
‘Ha ha.’
‘You have a caller ID-reader box thingy.’
‘Do I?’
‘Harriet gave it to you, remember?’
‘Oh, yeah. You hooked it up?’ Harriet had brought round the caller ID reader a few days before I left. I had the feeling she thought the caller ID would state the name and occupation of each caller. Paul Ellis: Residential Photographer. 5 ft 11. Salt and pepper hair. Supports Chelsea. Andrea Cammell: Organic Vegetable Box Delivery Girl. Blond, tall and bossy. Lee Rayner: thieving sex pest with a bad case of scurvy and his eyes on your electrical goods. I’d chucked the caller ID box on the kitchen bench and forgotten about it.
‘Yep, hooked it up this morning. I’ve also started a herb garden. You’re growing rosemary, mint, parsley and basil. And I colour-coded your linen cupboard. Which wasn’t too taxing, being that all your linen is white.’
‘Jeez, you need to get back to work. Why aren’t you working? Are you independently wealthy?’
‘Ha! I live cheap. And I’m freelance. If I don’t do any work I’m not letting anyone down but myself, and I’m OK with that these days. I’ve got a few contracts ticking over so there’s a bit of money coming in. There’s no holes in my undies yet, so I’m all good! Anyway, it’s quite fun going through your stuff. I found some poems you wrote.’
How Not to Fall in Love, Actually Page 17