The (Im)Perfect Girlfriend

by Lucy-Anne Holmes

  ‘Eamonn, man, sorry, no car came,’ Leo Clement panted. He lifted the bottom of his T-shirt up and wiped his forehead with it. The gesture revealed his whole tummy to just under his nipples. It was tanned and toned and there was a line of glistening dark blond hair up to his navel. The sight caused drool in my mouth. So much so that I could have done with one of those spit suckers dentists use. ‘I had to run here.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘Malibu.’

  There was a wave of taken-in breath. I deduced that was quite far.

  ‘That’s Sarah over there, she’s playing Taylor. Sit next to her.’

  Everyone now had licence to look at me. They took it. I did what I could by way of a smile.

  He was coming towards me. I didn’t think he’d recognize me as I’d been marinated in Indian spices since I last saw him on the flight.

  ‘Hey,’ he smiled.

  I nodded and tried to look like a professional actress instead of someone with thrush who’d been boiled.

  ‘We met on the plane.’ Some of his sweat landed on my hand when he sat down. I watched my hot skin instantly absorb it, as it did half a tub of Nivea earlier that morning.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, feigning vague recognition terribly.

  ‘You love California?’

  It took me a moment to work out that he was talking about my hoodie.

  ‘Oh yeah, I love California. The sunbathing is great.’

  He gave me one of those direct eye-to-eye looks again. His eyes were baby-boy-gift blue. He said something. It sounded like, ‘How’s your little problem?’ but I couldn’t be sure. I opened my mouth to say, ‘Pardon?’ but Eamonn spoke first.

  ‘Right, let’s get going.’

  Everyone opened their scripts. I clenched my bottom cheeks fiercely.

  sixteen

  I clenched like I was touching cloth for the entire thing. I was terrified but it went quite well . . . considering. I had two laughs. I’d been hoping to get some laughs. I wanted the audience to be sorry when I was strangled rather than pulling their fists down in front of their faces and going, ‘Yessssss’. So laughs were good. But I was trying not to be too pleased about them because they could also be bad. The problem with laughs is that once you’ve had them, you always want them. If you say a line one day and it gets a laugh and then you say it another time and it doesn’t . . . oh dear.

  It’s like going out one night and pulling Brad Pitt and then going out the next and only being able to pull a one-eyed drunken Irish man whom the barman calls Pirate. What do you do the next time you get out there? You put on too much make-up and try too hard and even Pirate doesn’t look twice. Any natural allure you once had rots in your own neediness to be loved. I managed to concentrate even though I was very aware of Leo Clement next to me throughout. I could smell his fresh man sweat. It’s my favourite smell after bacon frying.

  We all realized how stonking the film was going to be. Eamonn Nigels is one of the most successful British directors in Hollywood. He is known for assembling casts of largely unknown actors in his films. He doesn’t like, or to put it more accurately, ‘Can’t-fucking-stand, excuse my French,’ working with the egos that can surround Hollywood superstars. His films have launched a lot of superstar careers though. Not that I was expecting to get lobbed into loopy fame land. I only had seventeen lines, three of which were two ‘yes’es and a ‘hmmm’. I was just amazed to find myself part of such an accomplished group. Had touching skin been possible, I definitely would have pinched myself.

  As soon as the read-through was over people relaxed and smiled and walked around. Other people, that is. I just sat there. My heart was still pounding. I so wanted to do the job well. Erin came over to me.

  ‘Well done, Sarah.’

  ‘Oh, thanks, Erin.’

  ‘I was real scared for you in that last scene.’

  ‘You made me cry. You were so perfect, Erin.’

  She looked uncomfortable with being praised.

  ‘Your face looks much better.’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  ‘There’s definitely an improvement.’

  That was like saying Mr Bobbitt’s second wife was an improvement. But I didn’t tell Erin that because she was trying to be kind.

  ‘I laughed when Eamonn said breast.’

  ‘Did you? I didn’t notice,’ she smiled politely.

  When Eamonn read out the stage directions as I was doing my scene with Leo, he said, ‘His hand reaches out for her breast. Her nipple hardens at his touch.’ I giggled like I was seven. Then because it’s a rape scene I tried to make my giggle into a scream. It ended up sounding as though I’d sat on a cat.

  Leo jumped up from the table as soon as it was finished. He didn’t say a word to me. I assumed he was on the phone to his agent trying to get me recast.

  Eamonn appeared and enveloped Erin in a hug.

  ‘Wonderful. I’m so excited to be working with you.’

  I looked down in the way one does when a director is praising another actress.

  ‘And you!’ he exclaimed, clamping his hand on my shoulder.

  ‘EAMONN!’ I hollered.

  ‘I loved it! Sarah, you made her so warm. And she was so funny. Terrific!’ BOLLOCKS.

  ‘Now then, there was something else you did that I liked. What was it? Oh yes! You did this ridiculous girlish giggle at the start of the murder scene.’ His eyes started to glisten as he spoke. ‘I’d seen it as horrific because obviously it is. But you’re right. The horror comes later. At first he woos you. He wants you. Here’s a man in a hedge with you. It’s night. He’s a good-looking man. It’s sexy. THEN it turns nasty,’ he shuddered. ‘Terrific!’

  I noticed that Leo was standing behind Eamonn holding a plate. He must have been starving after his run.

  ‘Ah, Leo. Great. I was just talking to Sarah about the rape scene. I want it to start like a tender love scene that gets darker. We don’t know whether it’s arousing, whether he’s playing rough or whether . . . my apologies, I’m thinking aloud. I do that when I’m excited.’ He stopped and smiled. ‘It’ll be great. Well done, Leo. Welcome aboard.’

  Eamonn and Leo shook hands. I looked at the plate. It looked like it was full of wet flannels.

  ‘What you eating?’

  ‘Oh, oh,’ he almost stammered. ‘These are for you.’

  ‘Um.’

  ‘They’re cold milk patties.’

  I wondered whether Leo was mentally ill.

  ‘My mom used to say it was the best thing to soothe sunburn.’

  I touched the top of one of the flannels. They were chilly and divine. He placed the plate in front of me on the table. I looked down. Then like someone killed in a murder mystery, I leant forward in slow motion and lowered my face into it.

  ‘I’ll leave them with you,’ he said.

  I couldn’t currently thank him because my face was in flannel heaven. The reading was over and my face was cool. Bliss. The only thing that could have made that moment better was a gin and tonic.

  I felt a hand on my back. But I couldn’t bring myself to surrender my flannel heaven. Not yet. I heard a stern male voice.

  ‘Sarah, I’m Miles Mavers, the voice coach. We need to talk.’

  seventeen

  And Miles Mavers certainly did want to talk to me. At length. About how dreadful my American accent was. And I must admit this surprised me. I’d worked phenomenally hard on my American accent for months. So fearful was I of doing the American equivalent of a ‘cor blimey’ Dick Van Dyke that I had even spent quite a lot of money going to see a voice coach in London.

  In spite of this, Miles Mavers had spotted so many mistakes he requested that I have a private coaching session with him the following day. Now, call me British, but I would have thought that a good time of day to do a voice class would be late afternoon or late morning or after lunch or after brunch. So I was surprised when Miles confirmed our lesson for marginally after dawn. On a Sunday! He wanted to meet me at 8 a.m. on a S
unday. I will repeat that. AT 8 A.M. ON A SUNDAY. You’d never get that in Britain. You’d be lucky to get a roll over and a small fart at 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning in Britain. AND, it wasn’t even any 8 a.m. on a Sunday. It was an 8 a.m. on a Sunday after a party. And not just any old party. A martini party for the cast and crew to get to know each other. Luckily for Miles Mavers I wasn’t planning on going to said party. There were to be no glamorous LA film parties for the solar afflicted, so I had been happy, well, relatively happy, to accept his proposal.

  I wonder now whether I had a sixth sense about Miles Mavers, because try as I did, I couldn’t warm to him and I definitely wasn’t looking forward to his class. As I lay on my bed that Saturday afternoon thinking about why that was, I came to these conclusions:

  1 He was a squat little man with a tan. If I was being honest I would say that his face looked as though it had been made with Plasticine and then squashed by something angry. However, despite the somewhat challenging landscape of his visage, he had the aura and swagger of a man who believed he looked like Brad Pitt. It was curious.

  2 He wasn’t in any way encouraging about my accent. He didn’t say, ‘Gee, you’ve so nearly nailed it, just a little bit of work on your vowels and girl, you’ll be giving Sandra Bullock a run for her money.’ He didn’t even say, ‘Not bad.’ He just went, ‘This needs work,’ and ‘This, this and this need a LOT of work.’ Now, I prefer ‘stroke then poke’ people. People who say, ‘Darling, you really do have a rare gift for the stage, but shall we just have a little go without the windmill hands and the bit where you said the other person’s lines?’ Miles Mavers clearly didn’t stroke before he poked. He poked, poked, and then poked REALLY hard.

  In many ways it was fortuitous that I didn’t like Miles Mavers because it meant that for a short period I’d stopped worrying about Simon and Ruth. Sadly, it was to be just that: a short period.

  ‘Knock, knock,’ I heard a tap and a man’s voice at my door.

  ‘Knock, knock,’ I imitated back. I listened to how I sounded. I was sure I sounded American. I assumed it was my room service burger at the door. Although I was a bit surprised because I’d only ordered it five minutes ago.

  ‘Won’t be a minute,’ I shouted in my American accent. It was a lie. I was moving so slowly a dribble of syrup would have beaten me. I removed the milk patties from my naked body and slid off the bed, trying to keep sunburnt skin from touching other sunburnt skin on my body. I put on the giant-size towelling dressing gown that the hotel provided and shuffled to the door. Please, God, I thought, can the burger be cooked so I don’t get E.coli and can they have remembered the ketchup, mayonnaise and mustard and have got really carried away when dishing up my chips.

  ‘Come on burger, come to Mummy,’ I cooed in American as I opened the door.

  ‘A fax for you, ma’am.’

  ‘Gee, thanks,’ I said in my American accent, demonstrating that Miles Mavers was mistaken and I could actually be a native.

  The man squinted at me.

  ‘Australian?’

  Bugger.

  ‘Um, no, British.’

  ‘I have a cousin in Chester.’

  ‘Lovely place,’ I said, having never been there.

  I opened the envelope. It was bound to be a list of all my accent mistakes from Miles Mavers, which, in light of that Antipodean attack, I needed. But it wasn’t from him. It was a whole page with Simon’s illegible scrawl all over it. Bless him! I thought foolishly. I assumed he was wondering how the read-through went.

  ‘I have the best boyfriend in the world,’ I told the man, who was still in front of me. I didn’t mention the fact that my perfect boyfriend was unfeasibly broody and sexually obsessed with his ex-girlfriend. I felt it best we should keep it on a need-to-know basis.

  He stood there smiling at me until I finally fathomed that I was supposed to give him a tip. I shuffled back into the room to get my wallet and he waited patiently for me to return. I had no idea about this tipping thing. I gave him $10, which I took by his departing smile was too much. I settled onto the bed to enjoy Simon on paper.

  Sarah, I need to say some stuff before I see you again.

  Its to do with Ruth.

  I love Ruth.

  She’s a great girl and I spent a good deal of happy time with her. I will always love her and she will allways be part of my life.

  I don’t see why I should have told you that she couldn’t have kids. Its not really the sort of thing you go on about.

  Anyway I’m with you now. It’s you I want. It’s you I think about when I wake up in the morning with an erection; its you I think about for the rest of the day.

  But I’m angry that you are behaving so childishly about that photo. It’s just a bloody photo of a friend, Sarah. I don’t want to be in a relationship were there’s jealousy. I want you to trust me. Because you can. Don’t ruin what we have by these petty thoughts. I beg you.

  I had to get all this off my chest, because most of all we must be honest with each other in this relationship. That’s the most important thing I think.

  Anyway you silly cow. I love you. Lets put all this behind us.

  Me

  xxxx

  I stared at it. Then I made the sound ‘urgh’ as loudly as I could.

  ‘I’ve made him angry. I’m childish! Jealous!’

  I picked up my mobile phone. I was shaking. I started to write the longest text in the world.

  I can’t believe you sent that. I told you I didn’t want to think about it while I’m here. This job is a big deal for me Si! That fax was all about you. Think how I feel. I used to hear you shagging loudly in the room next to me. I know you used to have hot sex with her and then I find a photo of her in your filofax. It’s not just any old photo Si. She’s in her pants with her bum in the air!!! So don’t insult me by calling me jealous. Anyone would feel the same.

  ME

  PS. The reading went very well. Thank you.

  I lay down again with the milk patties. Negative thoughts were multiplying at a terrifying rate.

  I needed the medication that was Mother. I knew it would cost a small fortune but I didn’t care. I reached for my phone and called my parents’ number.

  ‘Mum, what do you do when Dad really, really annoys you?’

  ‘Oh, hello darling. Are you having a nice time?’

  ‘Yes, oh well, no, kind of . . . Mum, I’m really sunburnt.’

  ‘Oh, darling, that was silly.’

  ‘I know!’ I moaned. ‘Look, we have to keep this really brief because it’ll bankrupt us both. But I’ve just had a foul fax from my Si. What should I do?’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like your Simon,’ she said, obviously thinking that he was in the right and I in the wrong. ‘I’ll tell you what you do. Nothing. Don’t respond in the heat of the moment, Sarah, for God’s sake. Calm down, have a gin and tonic. And talk about whatever this is another time.’

  My mum always knows best. I let her words register.

  ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘Oh, Sarah, you didn’t.’

  ‘Oh, Mum, I did.’

  ‘Oh, darling, that was silly.’

  eighteen

  The next knock on my door had to be my burger. Or so I thought. But no, it was Rachel Bird standing before me in a cream evening dress with Maid Marian hair. She looked beautiful and oddly innocent. Sadly, she still had the mouth of a disgruntled builder and the will of a girder.

  ‘You ARE coming!’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘You bloody well are.’

  ‘I bloody well am not.’

  ‘You . . .’

  ‘Rach. Please, I am not going to the party in a wall hanging.’

  ‘No, you can’t go in the SAME wall hanging.’ She pointed at the huge holdall at her feet. ‘So I brought you all the wall hangings we had for you to choose from.’

  That was actually very sweet of her. So I smiled.

  ‘Oh, hi, Erin,’ I shouted to Erin as she walked down the
corridor.

  Erin stopped and hovered behind Rachel. She eyed the bathrobe I was wearing and the wet flannel over my head.

  ‘Oh, Sarah, aren’t you coming?’ She sounded disappointed.

  ‘No. Sorry, lovely. It will be full of people and if anyone accidentally touches my skin I’m liable to impale a martini glass in their neck. Which is incidentally what I’ll do to Rachel here if she continues to harangue me.’ I smiled sweetly at Rachel. But Rachel was staring open-mouthed at Erin.

  ‘Rachel. Erin. Erin. Rachel. Rachel is Eamonn Nigels’s girlfriend. I’m going to go back in my room now. So have a brilliant night. I want to hear all about it tomorrow.’

  Erin smiled and held out her hand to shake Rachel’s, clearly oblivious to the fact that they’d met before and discussed G-spots. Rachel linked her arm ominously through Erin’s. ‘Now then, darling, what are you going to wear?’

  Erin blushed. I had a very bad feeling.

  ‘Do you have anything a bit less Little House on the Prairie?’

  Erin stood stock-still and continued to blush.

  ‘For God’s sake, chicken, you can’t go in that.’

  ‘Erin, do you want to come in and try the dress I was going to wear tonight?’ I offered.

  ‘It’ll be massive on her.’

  ‘Cheers, Rach. No, seriously Erin, try it on. It’s a stretchy material. It would look amazing on you.’

  Rachel marched Erin past me, into my hotel room and towards my wardrobe. She pulled out my black dress.

  ‘Is it a Herve Leger?’ Rachel gasped, yanking it off the hanger.

  ‘Is it bugger. It’s H&M.’

  ‘Sarah’s right, for once. That will be amazing on you! Now come here, sweetheart.’

  Erin trundled meekly towards Rachel, who grabbed the end of her French pleat, pulled the toggle off and started to free her hair from the plait.

  ‘Oh, thank God for that,’ sighed Rachel when her hair had been released. Erin looked like she’d just put a finger in a live socket. It really suited her.