‘Huh?’
‘To rehearse our scene.’
Chelsea started noisily doing the time step or Time Warp or something next to him. We both looked at her.
‘Oh, sorry, Chelsea. You’re great.’ She beamed and stopped tapping. Then Leo turned to me. ‘Chelsea reads with me in my sessions with Miles.’
Cow.
‘Lovely.’
‘Did you get my text?’
‘Yes, yes, I did, sorry I didn’t get back to you. I’ve just been jet-lagged to buggery the last few days.’
‘No worries. But if you wanted to practise one day . . .’
I smiled.
‘Leo, I’d love to.’
fifty
Things that reminded me of the man I’d lost:
Bananas, chicken, wetsuits, cameras, football kits, Bobby Davro (it’s staggering how often he pops up when you’re forlorn), bathrooms, comfortable tracksuit trousers, Viagra, the Internet, songs with the word ‘love’ in them, charities, people doing exercise, couples kissing, couples not kissing, old couples, young couples, couples of indeterminate age, couples who look happy, couples who clearly hate each other, women on their own, mad old alone women, Threshers, children, schools, buggies, toys, pregnant people, phones, men, going to bed, waking up and thinking.
So it was getting better. The nights were the hardest. I was glad of the time difference so I could Skype Jules.
‘He hasn’t texted back!’
‘How many have you sent?’
‘Three!’
I sent the third twenty-four hours after the last. It said
I wish you’d reply. Please. I’m feeling really low. X
Rachel would have killed me if she’d found out.
‘Oh.’
‘What should I do?!’
‘Give him space. I thought he wanted space.’
‘I can’t give him space!’
‘Jesus, Sare, you’re going mad.’
‘Thanks, Jules.’
‘OK. He’s ignored the texts.’
‘Ah, rub it in, why don’t you! I know he’s ignored the texts.’
‘Sarah, I’m trying to think. Stop the wailing.’
‘OK.’
‘Right, there is something we could do. But I’m not sure if you’re in the right mental state.’
‘What mental state is that?’
‘Well, like, sane.’
‘Jules, I’m sane.’
‘Well, do things like calm down, breathe, talk about something other than Simon and a text message, and I might agree with you.’
‘OK. Look, I’m breathing. Lovely breaths. Now then, what is this thing we could do?’
‘Fuck me, I wish I hadn’t said anything.’
‘Well, you did. So hand it over.’
‘OK. Well, we could make him a little bit jealous.’
‘Oooh. Hardcore.’
‘Yes, that’s what scares me.’
‘Jules, I’ll be fine with it. It’s me.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So what do I do?’
‘Just, oh God, I can’t believe I’m encouraging this.’
‘It’ll be fine. Tell me.’
‘OK. A while back, I was a bit worried about Carlos and a club promoter. I’m not proud, but I used and abused Facebook to make him wonder if I was as loyal as he thought. Anyway, it worked.’
‘Ah, poo,’ I said sadly.
I hated Facebook. I called it Sit on My Facebook. I liked it when I first joined. I spent six days stalking all the people I’d ever met or snogged. I uploaded the only flattering photo ever taken of me for my profile picture. I tried my best to accrue more friends than my nine-year-old nephew. And then the seventh day happened. On the seventh day, I had twenty-two facebook updates. ‘Oooh, you must be popular,’ someone of my mother’s generation might cry. But as anyone under the age of thirty-five will recognize, out of these twenty-two updates, seventeen were people tagging me in photos. Not just any photos. Photos I didn’t know were being taken at the time. Photos that I was blissfully unaware existed. Photos where I had between one and all of these characteristics:
1 A yellow period spot on my chin
2 A heartfelt smile giving me an obese man’s belly where most people have a neck
3 A stunned expression as though someone had sharply inserted something unexpectedly up my rectum
4 A perfect one-chin-only smile but the presence of a nearly vomiting rugby player making a swearing sign behind me
5 A deliberately unattractive and comedic face while everyone else in the photo looks like they’re part of an elite models’ party
The other five messages on the seventh day were from people I barely remembered meeting asking me to join pointless groups. Matey you met once wants you to join a pub group nowhere near you. Do you accept? Er, no.
I made a pact then and there that I would only go on Facebook to un-tag everything.
‘Well, that’s the only advice I can think of. If you’re going to be fussy, I’ll fuck off.’
‘Well, tell me exactly what you did before you go.’
‘OK,’ she yawned. ‘I got Nikki’s cousin, you know Daryl, to go on and write flirty posts that everyone could see. And then I went through my old photos and got Nikki to upload all the ones where I looked gorgeous and was in the vicinity of a hot male.’
‘OK, how can I do that?’
‘You must know some handsome actors who can write messages on there.’
‘Dunno.’
‘Look, I’ll see if Carlos has got any tasty friends and then I’ll see if we’ve got some photos to put up. I promise, I’m on to it. Now, go, before I get the sack.’
‘OK. Thanks, Jules.’
When we hung up the Skype connection, I went onto Facebook. I clicked on Simon’s profile. I looked at all his photos fifteen times while listening to Lily Allen’s ‘Littlest Things’ on repeat. And that was how I spent the night before shooting my first Hollywood scene.
fifty-one
‘Bye, Ned,’ I said and it sounded English. And I was standing in the wrong place. I was supposed to be standing on a different mark. I wouldn’t be in the bloody shot.
‘Sorry!’ I said, putting up my hand.
‘OK, get ready to go again,’ boomed a weary voice.
‘Sorry,’ I repeated, for about the thousandth time.
‘And action!’
‘Bye, Ned.’ That sounded as though I was from Turkey. I tried not to wince. I kept walking to the mark on the right. But then I remembered that I didn’t have my handbag. I needed my handbag for continuity. They couldn’t use the shot if I didn’t have my handbag.
‘I don’t have my handbag!’ I cried. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’
‘OK, hold it there.’
‘Are you all right, Sarah?’ It was Eamonn Nigels. He was speaking through one of those speech funnel things.
‘No, I’m not OK! I don’t know how to speak any more. I say a line. But then I hear it in my head and I know it’s all wrong. I can’t relax. I can barely breathe. And I really need the loo.’ But of course I didn’t say that. I put my thumb up in the air instead. I could see Miles Mavers on one of those upright seaside chairs behind Eamonn. He was mouthing something. I think it was the vowel sound ‘o’. I was surprised he didn’t bring his daughter, Anna-I’d-love-to-see-your-head-in-a-Pavlova.
OK, Sarah, you can do this, I told myself. It was five lines. I had to leave the strip club, have a joke with Ned on the door and then get in the pick-up truck and start the engine. The stupid thing was that I knew it was easy, but the combination of walking and talking and trying to remember which side of the car I entered and how to bloody speak in an American accent had made me so tense. I had loads of good stuff prepared for that scene, too. I was going to give Ned the finger when he insulted my driving and do this little dance, because in my back-story I quite fancy Ned. Suddenly I couldn’t even look at Ned. That was the worst thing. I knew I could do it. But I was so bloody worried abo
ut it all that I’d gone to pieces. It was heartbreaking.
A lady approached me to touch up my make-up. I was wearing Sunflower Oil’s body weight in make-up because I was supposed to have just been working at the club. I looked like Marilyn Manson’s muse. That lady had probably powdered Angelina Jolie’s nose. Everyone there was a bona fide Hollywood person. I was Sarah Sargeant from outside Croydon. And I’d been found out. I didn’t think I could do it. A career in waitressing suddenly didn’t look so bad.
‘Sarah,’ it was Eamonn Nigels, in person, not on a loud speaker. ‘Are you all right, darling?’
The director had come all the way over to talk to me because I was so crap. Everyone was looking.
‘Oh, I’ve lost it, Eamonn,’ I whispered.
‘What’s worrying you?’
‘Everything.’
‘Would you like an Eamonn hug?’
I smiled because Eamonn Nigels hugs are the best.
‘No, I think that make-up lady would have a coronary.’
‘Hollywood’s intimidating for the first time. All these people around. But you have a right to be here. The buzz was all about you and Erin after that read-through. I mean it Sarah.’
‘But my accent’s shite. My vowels are all wrong.’
‘Your accent?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Your accent’s great. Let’s do it again in rehearsal. We’ve got plenty of time. This is the last shoot today.’
‘Yeah, but that means everyone wants to go home.’
Eamonn looked at me seriously.
‘Hold it together, please, Sarah.’
I was embarrassing him. He brought me into his film. I was the only English actress. I wasn’t nearly as experienced as everyone else.
He clocked the panic on my face.
‘Try and do it as terribly as you can.’
‘What?’
‘Sarah, you’re so worried about not letting yourself and me and everyone down that you can’t let go. Just say, “To hell with you all.” Allow yourself to make mistakes. It’s all OK.’ And then he hugged me. I started to murmur objections.
‘Fuck the make-up woman,’ he said.
fifty-two
‘Now then, do you agree we need to go back to basics?’ Miles said the next morning.
‘I don’t care what we do, Miles, I just want to be able to speak again.’
I was so tired. Another sleepless night. Not a word from Simon. My first experience on a Hollywood film set kept being played in my mind. It was basically me going, ‘Sorry!’ over and over again. Eamonn hoped that by telling me to be bad I would be good. Oops. He won’t do that again. You should have seen his face when I showed him just how bad I could be. I just wanted to cry. At the very end we managed to get a take. I even did the finger and the little dance to Ned. But it was still rubbish.
I had lost the cockiness I had before and Miles Mavers was acting like a very ungracious winner. He was smug.
‘You see, Sarah, you don’t just paste an accent onto your lines.’ He laughed at the concept. Then he got up and walked to the corner of his desk and perched there. His thighs in the shell suit shorts spread over the mahogany. Miles Mavers was the sort of person who knew that he was attractive and young-looking. No one else saw it though. ‘You need to learn to speak again.’
‘Yes.’
‘So.’ He leant further towards me. His thighs spread more. I could hear the shell suit material stretching. He caught his scrotum in the fabric. He jumped off the desk and made a quick adjustment.
‘Chelsea will join us later, to read with you.’ He waited for me to protest. But I was too tired.
He started me off with some vowel exercises. I repeated them conscientiously. I was mid-flow when his mobile phone rang.
‘I’ll take this outside. You carry on,’ he said, and opened the patio doors to take the call in the garden. I didn’t know why he bothered as I could hear every word he was saying.
‘Yar . . . yar . . . uh huh. Not great,’ he laughed. ‘Yar . . . yar.’ I stopped my vowel exercises and started to imitate him. ‘Yar, yar, uh huh,’ I said to myself in a deep whisper. ‘Yar, yar.’ But I stopped taking the Miles Mavers Mickey when I heard this sentence:
‘Well, if it doesn’t improve, she’ll have to be recast.’
Maybe he said something else? No, I definitely didn’t imagine it. I couldn’t have misheard him. He was a voice coach, for God’s sake. He knew how to speak. And I knew he was right. If I didn’t improve, they would have to recast me. He must have been on the phone to Eamonn Nigels. I couldn’t catch my breath. I felt like invisible hands were strangling me.
Miles walked back in the room.
‘So, where were we?’
I couldn’t look at him. I honestly felt I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was dying. I’d never felt anything like it before.
‘Sarah? Are you OK?’
I shook my head.
‘You don’t look well. Is there someone I can call to pick you up?’
I shook my head again.
‘I have to go.’ I gasped the words. I didn’t even wait for him to answer. I stumbled out of the house. I couldn’t breathe! I thought about calling Rachel Bird. I thought about calling Simon. I really wanted to hear his voice. It was getting worse. I felt everything was slipping away and I couldn’t catch it. My relationship. My career. And I didn’t know what I’d done wrong. I’d tried so hard. I was crying. I was standing outside Miles Mavers’s house gasping and crying. I heard the rat dog yap. I had to get back to the hotel and call my mum. I walked slowly and tried to breathe. Breathe. I didn’t know what was happening but it had to be something very bad.
My phone. My phone was ringing. ‘Oh Simon, please be you,’ I sobbed. ‘Please.’ It wasn’t him. It was Rachel Bird.
‘Sarah! Eamonn wants you come for dinner tonight.’
And I knew what was going to happen. He was going to tell me I’d been recast. He’d just got off the phone to Miles Mavers.
‘Sarah, are you there?’
‘Rachel . . .’ I gulped.
‘Sarah, what’s the matter?’
‘Rachel, I c-c-c . . .’
‘Sarah, what are you doing?’
‘I c-c-c-can’t breathe.’
‘What?’
‘I know I sound hysterical. But I can’t breathe!’
Rachel was silent for a moment.
‘Yes, you can,’ she said calmly.
‘No, Rachel, I can’t. I feel like I’m being strangled.’
‘That’s what it feels like.’
‘Ah, ah, it’s getting worse.’
‘Listen to me. You can breathe. You are breathing.’
‘No, no, I’m not.’
‘It’s anxiety.’
‘Rachel, I’m serious. It’s really bad.’
‘Ah, Sarah. That’s how it feels. The first one is terrifying.’ She listened to my sobs and gasps for a few seconds.
‘You’re having a panic attack. Tell me where you are. I’ll come and get you.’
I was getting sacked from the film, my boyfriend didn’t want me and now I had an anxiety problem.
‘I’m a mentalist,’ I said quietly and I slumped down on the kerb.
fifty-three
‘Wow, look at you!’ I said to Rachel later that night. She’d just got out of the rooftop swimming pool to greet me. She was wearing a bikini. There were fairy lights in the plants around the deck area. It was all a bit James Bond.
‘You’ve got an amazing figure. I would give anything to have a body like yours,’ I said, staring like a man.
‘I’ve lost weight, actually.’
‘You don’t have any cellulite at all.’
‘You have to work for it, Sarah. You don’t get it by eating burgers.’
‘Oh yeah. You’ve got really nice boobs as well. I wish I had nice boobs. Mine fly under my armpits when I don’t have a bra on.’
‘They’re not bad are they?’ she smiled. ‘But they’re not re
al. And I think I’ve got trouble with this one. It’s hurting. I can barely sleep at the moment.’
‘Go to the doctor.’
‘Yeah, yeah, I should. How are you feeling?’
‘Battered.’
That was the only way to describe it.
‘Have lots of wine tonight and knock yourself out. You’re not shooting tomorrow and we can see Sunflower late afternoon.’
‘Hmmm.’
I didn’t think I’d have a job tomorrow. I’d be on a plane home to pain. I wondered whether they flew you home in Economy when you were sacked from a Hollywood movie. I wondered how I’d cope with the humiliation. What would I say to people?
‘Sarah!’ It was Eamonn Nigels.
‘Eamonn,’ I said, walking towards him. Then I lowered my voice so that Rachel didn’t hear. ‘Look, I know why you invited me over.’
Eamonn looked uncomfortable.
‘What? Sarah. Damn it. I need to take this call. Blast,’ he said, looking at his iPhone.
‘Will you do those gins, darling?’ he shouted to Rachel without looking at her.
I saw her jaw tighten.
‘Yes, darling,’ she sang sarcastically.
‘How are things?’ I whispered when he’d gone.
‘I don’t think I exist any more. I’m just some muppet who makes Eamonn drinks and lies in bed next to him at night.’ She walked over to the outside kitchen area and started to pour three massive gins. ‘I started stripping for him last night.’
‘Did he like it?’
‘He fell asleep.’
‘Oh.’
‘Don’t laugh!’
‘Sorry.’
‘Oh, bloody laugh if you want.’
‘Rach.’
‘What?’
‘Thank you so much for today. I thought I was going to die. I don’t know what I’d have done if I hadn’t spoken to you.’
‘Sarah, it’s cool.’
‘Have you ever had one?’
‘About a thousand.’
‘No.’
‘Well, maybe not a thousand. And I haven’t had one for ages. But I got loads at school.’
‘At the convent?’
‘Yeah.’
‘But you were the girl everyone wanted to be!’
The (Im)Perfect Girlfriend Page 18