‘Brilliant?’ He laughs. ‘Don’t we all. Look, you know better than me how to make this script work. You’re the one who pummelled Tammy into revealing she’d even done the rewrites. And you’re the queen of being likeable. You can do this standing on your head.’
‘I don’t think I can.’ I try to make it sound like this is a casual conversation, not my darkest fears given an airing. ‘I’m not feeling it. Every line I say comes out dull and … bleurgh. I don’t believe the situation. I don’t believe in me. It’s easy in LA. Everyone …’
Everyone tells you you’re great even if it’s a lie. And here I don’t know what I’m doing.
Alec sighs. ‘God, Sophie, what do you want me to do, read you out some Eckhart fucking Tolle? Listen. Just because you’re used to being surrounded by people telling you how amazing you are every time you fart on set doesn’t mean your acting’s any better. Trust me. I know what they’re like. Those guys like to make you think they’re essential so they keep themselves in a job. And it’s crap.’
‘Maybe you’re right.’
‘Maybe?’ He rubs his forehead. ‘They’ve made you think these things are important and they’re not. You’re a great, natural comedian. And a bloody good actress. Grow up and get over yourself.’
I blink at him. ‘Wow. Thanks for going easy on me.’
‘You know what I mean. I yell because I care, sugar tits. Take responsibility for your own happiness and all that. I got rid of everyone and moved back to the UK last year and it’s been so much better ever since.’
‘I hate the way people assume the UK is morally right and LA is automatically some cauldron of evilosity,’ I say crossly. ‘Like Mordor.’
‘Well, it is.’
‘It’s not. Just a lot of people there are.’
‘So don’t let them tell you how to have your hair, or what you’re doing next, or all of that. And definitely don’t let them put you in pink dresses with sleeves.’ He raises a wicked eyebrow. ‘Apart from the pit stains, darling, pink is so not your colour.’
‘You bitch.’ I jab him in the arm, laughing, because it’s true, though no one says that to me any more. ‘I’ll flounce off set and then you really will be screwed.’
‘You wouldn’t dare and you know it.’ He kisses me on the head, then something catches his eye and his expression changes. ‘Oh, fuck. Listen, Soph. Can you do me a favour? Look out the window.’ I peer out of the old wooden casement. He stands behind me.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘What do you want?’
‘Er – um. Is Eloise out there?’
I can see a group of people from the crew standing by the willow cabin, in massive kagoules and padded jackets. They’re pissed off, if their crossed arms and tight expressions are anything to go by. At the edge of the group are two women.
‘I think I see her,’ I say. ‘She’s got some large garden shears in her hand. The thin, beautiful one with straggly split-endy hair?’
‘Yes.’ Alec shudders, and moves a little closer, so he’s just slightly leaning against me. ‘She’s a nutter, Soph. What am I going to do?’
I try not to laugh. ‘Alec, you make your bed, you know, darling.’
As I turn around he grabs my arm. ‘She was waiting outside my door this morning. She writes me notes. I gave her my mobile—’ He smacks his forehead. ‘Why the fuck did I do it? She rings me, texts me, all the freaking time.’
‘Hold on, when did you – er, actually sleep with her?’
‘About a week ago.’
‘And then you shagged Helen.’ Helen is the runner, a bright, bouncy twenty-year-old with enormous tits. ‘And now Eloise has gone mad. She’s French, Alec, they don’t like that sort of thing. She’s not some English slapper you can bonk and leave.’
‘You weren’t a slapper, don’t do yourself down,’ he says.
‘Har-di-har-di-har,’ I say. ‘Well, she’s the one who’s about to get us kicked out. All. Because. Of. You.’ I jab him on the chest.
‘Oh, God. Why?’ Alec’s thin face grows pale.
‘She went mad with some shears after lunch and over-trimmed the willow cabin. It’s ruined.’
Alec looks pale. ‘Oh, shit. Oh, shit.’ He stops. ‘What’s a willow cabin, when it’s at home?’
‘Make me a willow cabin at your gate,’ I say. ‘And call upon my soul within the house. Come on, Alec! If I know that, you must do. You were the one quoting Shakespeare downstairs to that old biddy.’
‘Margaret. Don’t be rude. Anyway, I only knew it because it used to be a Tetley advert. Where’s the willow cabin from?’
‘Twelfth Night,’ I say, pleased with myself. ‘Olivia. I listened at school, you see.’
‘You were a no-mates at school,’ Alec says acidly. ‘Shit. What am I going to do?’ He clears his throat and then looks mournful. ‘You know, I don’t want to, but I think I’d better skive off the bar tonight, just to be safe.’
I laugh in outrage. ‘If this is some crap ruse to get out of buying the drinks, don’t even try it.’
He turns out the pockets of his trousers. ‘Look. I’ve got no money.’
Alec is notoriously tight. Though it’s very generous of him to introduce me to Margaret as the star of the film, he must be earning more than anyone else on this picture. He’s the one that’ll pack them in in the leafy suburbs, not me. I know that. I may have secured the vital piece of US funding, but everyone here knows I’m the risk on a project like this that’s so much about word of mouth and repeat visits. We’re all on small fees and big profit shares, but I know for a fact Alec got $15 million for his last movie. Yet he is so super stingy he actually claimed a packet of tissues he bought from a petrol station back from the film company last week. It cost 65p.
‘You’re buying the drinks,’ I say firmly. ‘You made the bet with Bill. I saw it. About ten people were witnesses. If you slept with Eloise, you pay for drinks one evening.’
‘Oh, I loathe you,’ he says grumpily.
‘Don’t be rude, Alec. Come on. Splash the cash around. We all have. It’s your fault, anyway. You shouldn’t be such a slapper.’
Alec turns back, an evil grin on his face. ‘How’s it going with Slick Rick, anyway?’ Rick is the cute cameraman. ‘Have you pulled him yet?’
I shake my head. Rick reminds me too much of Patrick, I’ve realised.
‘Come on, Soph. Lure him to your Sophie Security Bunker, where that silent Germanic-looking prison warder watches over the two of you all night to make sure he’s not a psycho killer.’
‘Shut up. It’s not funny.’ I look out of the window, trying not to look flustered. ‘Who’d have thought filming this would be a rerun of my holidays on the Isle of Wight,’ I say, changing the subject. ‘Peering out the window every two minutes, saying, “Ooh, I’m sure it’s getting brighter.”’
Alec touches my arm. ‘Hey, sorry, Soph. Don’t mean to joke about it. Well, I did, but it’s not funny. Sorry.’ His voice is low; I can feel his breath, tickling my ear.
‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘I’m being stupid. Just – don’t like thinking about it.’ I turn back so I’m facing him, sitting on the edge of the window ledge. ‘You haven’t told anyone, have you?’
He moves closer, so he’s between my legs, and we’re millimetres apart. ‘Of course I haven’t, darling,’ he says. He kisses my cheek, holding my chin in his hand. ‘I really am sorry. It must be awful.’
I can smell him, he’s so close. There’s something so comforting about him, so familiar. He reminds me of home, if I knew what home was. But he’s always, always picking out the next face in the crowd to shag. Like it’s a game, and love doesn’t come into it. I just want a hug, someone to hug me. I wonder if Sara would hug me, if I asked her, as part of the job? How weird would that sound? Well, very weird. Knowing her though, she’d probably do it to be helpful, and the thought makes me smile.
I look up at him. ‘I’m fine, Alec.’ There’s a scream from the garden, and we turn round to see an elegant figure br
eaking away from a knot of people and striding towards one of the Winnebagos, clutching some shears. Alec shrinks away from the window. I jump off.
‘I’m going down,’ I say gleefully. ‘You’d better stay here. See you in the bar. Mine’s a glass of Cristal, by the way. Start saving.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THERE’S NO MORE filming today. An air of unease hangs over the set, and back at the hotel. Sara and I eat dinner in the restaurant, just the two of us, with Angie and Gavin at the next table. They never acknowledge us; at one point the waiter drops a pepper mill on the floor and Angie’s eyes swivel round, her hand shoots out almost simultaneously and she snatches it up before it’s even reached the ground, then hands it back to him, expressionless, and goes back to carb-loading in silence. I watch her, open-mouthed. I have so many questions I want to ask her and Gavin. Where did you train? Have you saved someone’s life? Can you do the running up buildings and flying like in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? Could you really save me, if someone tried to kill me? But she won’t tell you anything about herself. Not even where she’s from. It really is like getting Alec to buy a round of drinks.
It’s still raining and the restaurant is pretty empty. The crisis meeting in the residents’ lounge along the corridor has been taking place for the past hour. Tony Lees-Miller, the famous producer everyone keeps talking about whom I haven’t met, has even come down for it. It does make me smile sometimes, the contrast between here and Hollywood: this is one of those times. A prep meeting for a film would be a four-day affair in a Ritz-Carlton in downtown LA with PowerPoint presentations, scripts, and each department head from the studio, endless men called Ryan or Jerry and no decisions taken without recourse to studios in Culver City or suites in Beverly Hills.
Well, there was no prep meeting for this film, and the crisis meeting to save it is taking place in a room with an orange-and-brown five-piece suite and a coffee table with old copies of Reader’s Digest fanned out across it, metallic-flavoured tea and rattling window casements, but it is no less important. Top of the agenda must be Cara’s replacement, who they can afford, and whether they’re properly insured to replace her with someone people have heard of. Second: money. Third: the willow cabin that Eloise desecrated has now led to the Anne Hathaway house people officially saying they don’t want us there any more and they don’t care if we sue them. Presumably they know that if we sued them the film would collapse.
‘How was your day?’ I ask Sara, picking at my salmon and trying not to stare up every time someone appears in the doorway. ‘Did you do anything fun, or did the rain get in the way?’
Sara looks up and smiles. ‘Oh, yes, thank you! I had such a great time. I got in the car, and I drove to Bristol. It was beautiful!’
‘Wow,’ I say. ‘Didn’t you want to go to Stratford?’
She looks momentarily confused. ‘Oh. Well, I wanted to – I didn’t want to run into you guys. Thought it’d be interesting to visit someplace totally different.’
‘Did you like it?’
‘It was so great but it was raining a lot so I didn’t hang out there too long. But I saw the big tower, and the shops, and the docks, and everything. Yeah, my grandpa always said we came over on a ship from Bristol like, hundreds of years ago.’
‘I didn’t know that, how cool,’ I say. ‘You should send him a postcard.’
‘He’s dead.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry. I know you were really close to him,’ I say, embarrassed.
‘That’s my other grandpa,’ Sara says. She smiles. ‘It’s OK though, thanks for even remembering!’
There’s an awkward pause. Sara chews furiously, swallows a tiny morsel of salmon, then looks up with relief. ‘I didn’t tell you a bunch of stuff, either. I heard back from Deena about house-sitting. She said thanks for the offer and she’ll move in tomorrow. She said she appreciates it.’
‘Great,’ I say. That’s fulsome, coming from Deena.
‘She’s funny,’ Sara says, laughing a little. ‘A character.’
‘You can say that again,’ I say grimly. ‘She’s a—’
I stop myself. What’s really that odd about Deena, after all? If she were a chain-smoking tanned leather-wearing middle-aged man with a penchant for video sex, people’d say she was a good guy, one of the lads. She’d be George, in fact. What’s she done wrong, other than grow old? I start to get indignant, then I remember the missing Chanel earrings and the silver fountain pen I never found again and I don’t feel quite so indignant, then I fall silent again, chewing my nails.
‘So,’ Sara begins brightly. ‘They cast a bunch of people in Starlight.’ I look blank. ‘You know, the script that went for millions of bucks? I’m getting it for you. The whole town is talking about the writer apparently. I spoke to someone at WAM – the word is it’ll never work because it’s so big already?’ As she carries on talking I can feel myself starting to sweat. I don’t care about this stuff like I should, and it’s probably a big mistake to have taken myself out of LA, out of the game. Like when I go back they’ll say, ‘Sophie Leigh, huh? Used to be hot, then she went off to England to do that crazy movie about Shakespeare going back in time and she put on ten pounds and came back ugly, and she’s what? Thirty now? She’s totally like box office poison. Alec Mitford? Oh, sure. Didn’t he just win an Oscar for something, that amazing Shakespeare film?’
Sara’s still talking, and I try to look interested.
‘… stopped at a lovely pub! In this village called Shamley, down towards like somewhere called Swindon?’
She pronounces it Swin Don. I’m about to put a forkful of spinach in my mouth but when I hear her I drop the fork. ‘Shamley? You didn’t,’ I say. ‘But that’s where I grew up.’
‘No,’ she says. ‘No way. You? Grew up there?’
‘Yeah. I’m sure I mentioned it? It’s in my—’
I stop. It’s in my biog is a dickish thing to say. Why would she remember?
She looks upset. ‘Sorry, Sophie – would you rather I hadn’t gone there? I didn’t …’
I pour myself the rest of the wine. ‘God, no. Just weird, knowing you were there. I haven’t been back for – well, ages.’ I glug the wine.
‘Really?’
‘They named the new gym after me,’ I said. ‘I went back then. It was kind of strange. I was like, twenty-seven, and …’ I trail off.
‘You didn’t know what you were doing there and all your old teachers stared at you like they wanted to kill you?’ she asks, then mimics a grouchy old guy: ‘“Her? That girl? We’re naming the new gymnasium after that girl?”’
She’s so spot on, the way she suddenly becomes this old British man, the accent, shoulders back, jaw protruding, eyebrows wrinkled, that I laugh. ‘Exactly! That’s totally it.’
Sara shrugs and smiles. ‘So what about your parents?’ She spears some broccoli. ‘Don’t you go see them?’
‘They usually visit me in LA.’ I shift in my seat. ‘My mum came for a month last year. Or we meet when I’m in London or somewhere else in Europe – they stay with me.’ I sound like I’m making it up. ‘They’d rather come and see me somewhere nice, I suppose. Shamley’s not all that nice.’
‘It didn’t seem so bad.’ Sara puts her arms on the table. ‘Where did you live then?’
‘About five minutes’ walk from the school. Near the garage before you get back onto the main road,’ I tell her. ‘Mum and Dad are still there.’ And I still haven’t been to see them.
‘OK. I ate at a pub around the corner from there? Something crazy like the Hand and Racquet, the Hand and Bracket?’
‘I remember the Hand and Racquet,’ I laugh. ‘It’s on the same road as my parents’. Wow, Sara, that’s so random. What was it like?’
‘It was great, very atmospheric,’ Sara says politely, though that can’t be true. The Hand and Racquet used to be totally rank. You’d get blokes pissing up the wall behind before they went home.
I push my food aside. ‘You grew up in LA,
didn’t you? Did you ever live anywhere else?’
She shakes her head. ‘No, ma’am. Lived there all my life. Pacific Palisades.’
‘Gosh, I didn’t realise that,’ I say. ‘This must be a bit of a comedown from the Palisades.’
Sara shakes her head. ‘No way. It’s all so fake. That’s why I wanted to be an actress.’ She catches herself and gives a twisted half-smile. ‘That didn’t work out either. This job is great, Sophie, honestly. I get to see the world. It won’t seem like much to you but if you’ve been in LA most of your freaking life –’ she stops, and her face is flushed – ‘you think nothing else matters, nothing but fame and all that.’
‘Do you miss it? Acting, I mean?’
She touches a little mole on her forearm with one slim finger, not looking at me. ‘Sure. Sometimes I miss it a lot. It was my life. I grew up watching movies, I’d beg my mom and dad to take me to New York every year in the school holidays, and I’d just go from play to play, so happy?’ She rolls a coil of silky hair around one finger. ‘Daddy’s surgery was next to our house. I’d see these totally famous actresses going into his office, so beautiful already and they didn’t know how lucky they were and they’d come out of hospital a month later looking like stuffed dolls. You know? I mean, I was proud of my dad, he did some great work with people, burn victims, and this woman who had her face blown off by some dick boyfriend. He stitched her back together again, made her look good as new, better even. But it’s the stupid movie people who made him a millionaire. When I grew up and I realised I wasn’t beautiful enough … it hurt.’ She takes one long, ragged breath in.
‘You’re a really talented actress,’ I say. ‘It’s true. I don’t know if that’s helpful or not, but you are. And you’re beautiful too.’
She opens her mouth to say something, then shuts it.
‘Go on,’ I prompt her, intrigued.
‘Thank you. But – I mean, I studied at UCLA for four years. I auditioned for every fucking part going. I knew I was better than so many people, and one day Daddy stops me on my way out and asks me if I don’t think a nose job wouldn’t help just a little with my career.’
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