What They Do in the Dark

Vera’s appearance wasn’t even scripted – it had come to this. But Mike had decided, at the very end of the third scene, that he’d like a look from her, a connected passer-by, at Colin’s impotent rage, and they’d summoned her from London. Since they had now had to stump up for a third week (her agent always negotiated for a weekly, not a daily rate, commercials apart, bless him), Vera was more than happy to get back into her headscarf and mac and settle down for the day.

It was always strange, leaving a set and coming back, like missing school and having to find your feet again. One of the make-up girls was different; Vera’s favourite had already left to start on a Hammer shooting in Wales. Hugh wasn’t about, and the American girl had gone off to Italy, apparently promising to be back for the wrap party. The remaining familiar make-up girl, Julie, had told Vera that before Quentin left she had approached the grip, whose name Vera had now forgotten, for downers or uppers – pills of some sort. Apparently he’d put her on to the boom operator, as a joke, because the boom (whose name she also couldn’t presently recall) was the steadiest man in the business, as he had to be occupationally, and wouldn’t take so much as an aspirin in case it interfered with his professional capacities.

Vera felt sad on Quentin’s behalf, hearing about all this, but hadn’t she said – if only to herself – that the girl was too heart-on-sleeve? She had probably been on drugs all along. It explained her clothes, for a start.

Vera established herself with her ciggie and cup of tea in a good spot, out of the way of the crew but with a view of the action. The school playing fields were part of a larger public space, the haunt of dog walkers and idlers, and, now that it was the school holidays, children. Some of their classmates were being employed to play rounders with Lallie, and word was bound to get out. But while the shadows were long, the fields remained almost empty.

It was a shame there was no one to natter to; the girl playing the teacher had been talkative in make-up but she was needed now, and Dirk of course couldn’t be relied upon for conversation. Anyway, Mike had buttonholed him and was talking over something to do with the scene, Dirk nodding judiciously. Everyone felt a tiny bit off the leash, Mike included, she thought. His stammer had relaxed, for one thing. The absence of producers may have accounted for the change in atmosphere, or it might just have been the demob-happy rush of the last day.

Lallie’s mother – what was her bloody name? – dragged a chair next to Vera and plonked herself down in it, juggling her own tea and fag with all the ostentation of a music-hall turn.

‘That’s better. You don’t mind, do you?’

Vera smiled warmly and told the woman to be her guest.

‘Can’t believe it, me. Last day.’

Vera agreed that it was impossible to believe. The mother huddled up to her tea, as though it was cold. Perhaps there was the faintest undertow of autumn in the air compared to the previous weeks.

‘Lallie said when I got her up, Mummy, what are we going to do tomorrow? I said, have a lie-in for a start, hen!’

Vera laughed with her, easily. ‘What are you going to be doing next?’

The woman’s face jumped. ‘Now you’re asking.’

‘She’ll be rolling in offers after this. Everyone’s full of how marvellous she is. Anyway, I thought they wanted her in America.’

‘Aye. Well.’ The mother took a furtive drag of her cigarette and leaned into Vera, lowering her voice. ‘That’s what the producer was talking to us about, Quentin …’

It wasn’t that much of a shocker, given the vagaries of the business. Apparently, after Quentin had given the child and her mother some flim-flam about flying them over for screen tests, the mother had forked out for flights herself. Then Quentin had turned a bit elusive, and taken off for Italy before Katrina managed to pin her down about it. Katrina had heard people thought she’d started drinking.

‘You don’t know what’s going on,’ Vera reassured her. ‘Anything could happen. She could lose her job if she’s got a drink problem.’ Unable to resist, she added, ‘I heard it was drugs.’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’ Katrina sizzled her fag end into her last inch of tea. ‘I can’t be bothered with it, to be honest. Our kid’s got a contract with LWT, they want her to start shooting a Christmas special in October. I just thought we could fit it in, since she’s been so mad about the States. I mean, you do it for them, don’t you?’

Vera agreed that you did.

‘We can’t get the money back, for the plane. I asked. Looks like we’ll just go on holiday, like.’

Vera accompanied Katrina’s bleak gaze to where Lallie was running about with her stand-in, both of them dressed in aertex shirts and gym skirts.

‘Won’t get her dad’s ticket back, though. Have to ask me mam to come with us instead.’

Vera saw, as the twin figures swooped and chased, that Lallie was now very slightly taller than the adult pretending to be her.

‘Doesn’t your husband like flying?’

‘Oh, no, he’s fine with flying.’ Katrina toed the polystyrene cup further under her chair. ‘It’s me he’s not keen on.’


74. EXT. SCHOOL PLAYING FIELDS. DAY.

JUNE is playing rounders with her school class. COLIN watches.

The rounders match was incidental to Dirk watching in tortured fashion, so they went close in on the girls, pick-up shots really of them running, hitting the ball, calling to each other; Lallie found and then lost among the melee. Mike left it to Tony. And then it was the reverse close on Dirk. During all this, Katrina confided that her husband, Lallie’s dad, liked to put it about a bit. Katrina admitted that she’d gone right off sex after having Lallie, and gave graphic details of her episiotomy scarring. She didn’t feel right, down there. And she knew how squeamish he, Graham, was; he’d told her it would have finished him off to watch her give birth, not that she was asking him to. Anyway, she knew what went on when she was away with Lallie. She put on a brave face, for her. You had to, didn’t you?


75. EXT. SCHOOL PLAYING FIELDS. DAY.

JUNE, at one of the rounders posts, spots COLIN. She carries on playing, but from now on she’s aware of him watching her.

Mike wanted a little track laid hugging the rounders pitch, so the camera could mimic Colin’s circling while Lallie ran, post by post, to home. It was always a fiddle, laying tracks, but the ground was flat and the grass negligible, so it was no more than an ordinary fiddle. During this, Lallie came over and asked Katrina for a drink, so Katrina resumed her brave face and Vera got on a bit with the crossword. The stand-in walked the posts so that Tony could assess timings for the camera’s movement along the track. Vera looked up from a bugger of a clue and was surprised by a clutch to her gut of strong feeling for Tony, so intent on getting it right. There was no one quite like him, after all.

Lallie came back from drinking a glass of squash with an orange clown-grin at the edges of her mouth, and had to be taken to make-up to remove it, with Katrina shouting at her. Once the child was back on set, mouth restored, Katrina confided that lately, things with Graham had changed. She’d had wind that there was someone in particular, if you got her drift. No one would blame him for looking elsewhere, Katrina didn’t, it was as much her fault as his, with her away so much for Lallie’s sake; but there was a bit on the side and there was something more serious.

‘If he’s moved her in, that’s that,’ said Katrina. ‘I’m not having it. If the papers get hold of it, it’ll be all over.’

‘Awful,’ Vera agreed.


76. EXT. SCHOOL PLAYING FIELDS. DAY.

The rounders match is dispersing. Children, including JUNE, gather the posts and other equipment. COLIN goes to approach JUNE but the TEACHER [MRS GREAVES] intervenes.



TEACHER



Can I help you?

COLIN



I just wanted a word –

TEACHER:



What about?

COLIN



It’s none of your business –

TEACHER



During school hours it certainly is – do you know this man?

JUNE



No, Miss.

COLIN



June – she’s having you on.

JUNE



I don’t know him, Miss.

COLIN



What are you playing at?

TEACHER



I think you’d better leave her alone, don’t you?

She starts to lead JUNE back towards the school, with the other children.

After a run-through where Mike made a few adjustments, they went quickly into a take. There was a momentum now: everyone could scent the end of the day, the end of the job. On take one, the first AD spotted one of the rounders-playing children looking straight at the camera. He was castigated, and they moved swiftly on to take two.

‘What about you?’ asked Vera. ‘Is there anybody … in London?’

Katrina was taking a cigarette out of her packet. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you? Who’d want me?’

‘You’re an attractive woman.’ Which she almost certainly would be, if she would just put down the foundation bottle.

‘When would I see a feller?’ asked Katrina, watching Lallie. She was checking her position with the continuity girl, whether she’d been holding the rounders bat in two hands up against her chest as she spoke or dangling it one-handed at the side. Oh, she was a pro, that one.

‘Aye, aye, it’s started,’ said Katrina, eyeing a knot of small girls with their mothers who jigged excitedly at the margins of the action, waiting for autographs. She liked the fans, Vera had noticed; another chance of a chat, perhaps. It was hard not to feel slightly insulted about one’s own listening efforts when she got up to go and talk to them. Katrina told them they’d been lucky to catch Lallie, it being the last day. Big party tonight, then back to London. Yes, lovely thank you. The Barrington. Spoiled us rotten. A real home away from home. All the time, Katrina was assessing when she could extract Lallie from the action and get her to sign the little girls’ bits of paper. She was hushed by Derek as they went for a take. The mums watched, rapt. As soon as ‘cut’ was shouted, Vera heard one of the women point at Dirk and ask, ‘Wasn’t he in those films?’

To Katrina’s annoyance, Mike was firm about going straight on without taking time for autographs.

‘This is the end of the story they’re doing then,’ said the Dirk woman, disappointed.

‘The end of the filming,’ Katrina corrected. ‘They do it all out of order. Does your head in!’



COLIN



June!

The children and TEACHER walk on.

COLIN



June! [HOPELESS] How do I know her name then, eh?

They did Lallie walking away first, so she could knock off for her tutor.



COLIN



June!

Dirk howled, which Mike didn’t go for. He asked for restraint, and the next time it was like a wounded old dog someone had trodden on in its sleep. The concentration moved on to the girl, and her walking away. Too fast. The fans, bored by all the stop-start, had wandered off.



COLIN



June!

She made more of a meal of it, this time. A little laugh with her friends, not too much.



COLIN



June! [HOPELESS] How do I know her name then, eh?

Lallie gave a look back, on the second cry, a taunt and a challenge. Take it down, Mike encouraged, maybe this time just stop and don’t quite turn. Keep rolling. Turn over. The pace was quickening. They had so much to do.



COLIN



June! [HOPELESS] How do I know her name then, eh?

Oh, and that worked perfectly, Vera could see. The decision not to turn, the contempt in that – I’m not even going to turn, you pathetic old bastard. Devastating, it would be, with Dirk’s anguish cut against it. So no wonder he’d do what he was going to, the scene they’d already got in the can. Come with me, little girl … They went one more time, for good luck, but she’d lay money that was the take they used.

Katrina had finally run out of chat. In any case, it was Vera’s turn now, once they’d cleared the shot of clutter. It had taken Mike’s fancy that Dirk/Colin might turn out of his last line to the teacher and there would be Vera/Woman watching him, some distance away, for a single (but Vera hoped quite long) conscience-lancing moment.

‘You see – that point of contact, it’d be nice, I think – you become the audience,’ Mike told her. His stammer hovered, almost landing on the ‘p’ in ‘point’. ’Tis all one, darling, she didn’t say. Put me wherever you like, tell me which face to pull. You’ve got me for the day and you’ve paid for me for the week. As Mike moved away from her, Tony winked, deadpan. Oh, she loved the man.

Derek came to get her into position, breathing his foulness upon her. Wide wide wide, Mike wanted, then bang in on her: the very last shot they had time for. Vera trotted up to the top of the field with Derek, he and Mike semaphoring back and forth to light on the exact place. Once there, Vera could see where Mike had got the idea from. The field formed a natural bowl with her perched on the lip, near the road. As flies to wanton dirty old men and what have you. Derek plodded back and Vera started breathing through her nose again. Poor boy. When would anyone ever tell him?

Vera felt like the outfielder in a game of village cricket. Eventually, she would get the thumbs up and spring into life. But for now they were back crowded round Tony and the camera. Two little girls were passing her. They’d come down from the road, one an absolute urchin with fierce eyes and a thatch of odd dark hair, the other blonde. It was the blonde one who spoke, politely.

‘Excuse me, is Lallie Paluza down there?’

Vera told the girl that she had been but that now Lallie was in one of the trailers parked up by the road, ‘doing lessons’.

‘What kind of lessons?’

Vera explained about tutors, and missing school.

‘It’s the holidays,’ the dark one objected. ‘Ey, there she is!’

She back-handed her friend, pointing to Sue the stand-in, who was having a fag with some of the crew. She still had her wig on, ready for the wide shot. From the distance they were, it was genuinely hard to tell she wasn’t Lallie, although to Vera her demeanour seemed entirely adult. The blonde girl’s eyes were perfect saucers of shock and disapproval.

‘She’s smoking.’

They were already heading off. A funny pair; certainly not sisters, and hard to put them together as friends. They’d soon see for themselves it wasn’t Lallie, if they got close enough before they were chivvied away. Maybe the real thing would appear and make their day.

Vera stood, alone once more, waiting for the sign. When the camera came close enough, she would be all judgement and wisdom, but for now, it was enough just to stand, hands on hips. She watched Tony, the dip of his head, the command of his fingers. Maybe that was why she was alone in her old age: all the men she had felt closest to loving were the ones who were absorbed by something else. She doubted that the men themselves knew this – either that she’d loved them, or the lack of threat her love posed to their greater concerns. Not that it mattered, in the end. Even if you did wear your heart on your sleeve, more often than not it all went to the bad. Like Quentin and Hugh, if she wasn’t mistaken. And look at the girl’s parents. Vera was sure the poor child would work out the lie of the land fairly soon, even if Katrina wasn’t telling her. That was, if she didn’t come across it in the papers first.

IT HADN’T BEEN Pauline’s idea to go and see the stupid f*cking filming. She had been stood there, outside Gemma’s house, like so many days since she had found out about her mam, waiting to see her. She had worked out they must be away, which was why she had only been going off and on. But that morning, the curtains were open, and Gemma’s bike was out propped by the garage, so she knew they must be back. There was a sign, as well, on a post hammered into the lawn: ‘For Sale’. Pauline, excited by Gemma’s reappearance, didn’t consider the implications of this. There was no point ringing the doorbell, so she settled herself on the kerb a few houses off and waited. Sure enough, Gemma got sent out to the shop – the milkman must have forgotten to start delivering again. Pauline hid at the mouth of the alley and jumped out at her. Gemma screamed. Good job she wasn’t on the way back from getting the milk or she’d have smashed it. She tried to run off, but Pauline grabbed her arm.

‘Let go of me, you gyppo!’

Pauline knew she was much stronger than Gemma. She hung on till Gemma realized she was getting a Chinese burn from twisting so much.

‘I just want to talk to yer!’

‘What about?’

Gemma had stopped thrashing, but Pauline was now unsure what she wanted. ‘Just talking.’

Of course she wanted to tell her about her mam, of course she did, but if she told her, it would happen again.

‘Just wanted to, thought we could walk around or summat.’

Gemma told her that she had to go to the shop, but allowed Pauline to come, on the understanding that she’d wait outside, like a dog. But when she came out with two bottles of milk, she’d bought them both a chew with the change. She’d got brown from her holiday. As Gemma was unwrapping her chew, Pauline smeared her finger along the top of her bare arm, half wondering if the new colour would come off, like paint. Gemma flinched away theatrically, as though Pauline had hurt her.

‘What you doing?’

Heading back, Gemma warned her that she wasn’t allowed to come near the house or she’d get done, but she said she’d come back after she’d dropped off the milk, so Pauline hovered by the alley, watching her go in. The chew shocked a bad bit on one of Pauline’s teeth, and she switched it to the other side of her mouth. She was hungry, she realized. Being back at school would be worth it for the dinners.

The chew was just a splinter of sweetness by the time Gemma came out again. Pauline had started to wonder if Gemma had been stringing her along by saying she was coming back out, but finally there she was, carrying a cardigan her mum had made her bring out, she explained, and her library ticket so that she could go to the library and come straight back.

‘What’s that doing there?’

Waiting, Pauline had considered the ‘For Sale’ sign. Gemma stalked away, convulsed in exasperation. ‘Some sort of mistake or something, I don’t know. They came yesterday and put it up.’

‘Are you moving away then?’

‘I don’t know, do I? We don’t even live there, not really.’

‘Where do you live then?’

‘Shut up!’

They really did go to the library, to begin with, because Gemma said otherwise her mum would know, and she’d get done. Pauline had never been inside it before. She’d always assumed the red-brick Edwardian building was some kind of church, another category of building closed to her. Inside, Pauline breathed in the respectable stink and closed her eyes while Gemma scanned the shelves. She prayed for her mam. She was actually praying for her to come back, something she’d never allowed herself to do while Joanne was still alive. The trick of the prayer was pretending that Joanne was still just in Leeds, and that prayer magic was being called on only to summon her quicker. That night, Pauline would get home, and there she’d be, drinks and food laid on, a trip to the launderette, calling her gyppo like Gemma did, charging the place with her danger.

You couldn’t spend much time with your eyes closed, which was why Pauline hadn’t been sleeping at night since it happened. The worst was when she saw a picture, more real than a dream, more like a film come to life there in her bedroom, but you knew if you touched it it would be solid: it was Joanne, but Joanne melded with the bag in the picture the police had shown them, flayed, boneless and terrible with blood. The blood was dark, like the stain she’d seen on the bag, but liquid and pouring. Even there in the library, her nodding at a table, it lurked. She snapped her head back. Gemma loomed, holding a couple of books, their dull covers loosely wrapped in protective plastic.

‘Come on then.’

She was so wholesomely like herself, Gemma, socks pulled up, books one on top of the other, fringe exact. Pauline had started to think that if you put your finger out you might poke a hole in people or tear them, but not Gemma, standing there with her cardigan folded over her forearm, her hair bobbles aligned. There was always a smell about her, clean, from her clothes. Suddenly, Pauline wanted to hit her with a hammer. She followed her out of the library.

They walked on to the Town Fields. Gemma was asking her about meeting Lallie when they’d done the filming at the school, and Pauline was telling her all sorts, because the thing she remembered most was the drama of her own hair and what they’d done to it. Lallie or whatever she was called had come in near the end, after they’d already been in a class with an empty desk, where they had to look serious because she’d been killed in the story. After that they were having to be noisy and stuff with Lallie at the desk, nicking a pencil from the nig-nog’s table. She looked older than them, even in the same uniform (Pauline had been given a newish one for the day and had managed to walk off in it at the end without anyone stopping her). Lallie hadn’t bothered talking to them really, but Pauline invented a conversation which expanded to fit the many questions Gemma was then driven to ask about it, starting with what Lallie had been wearing (‘School uniform’ – ‘Did you see what she was wearing before?’ ‘Erm, yeah, sort of jeans and that’ – ‘Not dungarees?’ – ‘What’s them?’ – ‘You know, with a bib and braces’ – ‘Oh aye, them, with like flowers on’ – ‘What colour?’ – ‘Purple’) and progressing to her invitation to Pauline to go on holiday with her to America (‘She never!’ – ‘She did and all, they’ve got a swimming pool and she was supposed to be taking a friend but she got really poorly so she couldn’t come so she said I could come instead.’).

That was when Gemma noticed the cameras and the people down in the bowl of the field and got all excited. She asked a lady who was stood at the top ridge if Lallie was around, and she seemed to know what she was talking about, although Pauline caught her out on saying she had lessons during the holidays.

There was no stopping Gemma then. She started to go on about how Pauline might be able to get Lallie to invite her on holiday as well, if they managed to find her. Or Gemma could talk to her mum and dad and they’d arrange to be on holiday at the same place, even though they’d just got back from Spain, because Ian was an accountant and was rich. It was a relief to Pauline when they saw Lallie smoking and Gemma went mental about it, even though she barrelled down to the middle of the field to see properly and goggle at the outrageous sight. They got stopped before they could get too close, headed off by a mardy-looking bloke in a T-shirt.

‘We’re busy here, girls, if you don’t mind not interrupting.’

He hadn’t been around the school the day Pauline had joined in the filming, but he sounded like a southerner, like all the rest of them. Beyond him, the back of Lallie’s head blew an insolent, perfect smoke-ring as she laughed with another couple of blokes in T-shirts. One of them, one of the shirts that is, looked familiar to Pauline. She remembered then, its block of striped green and white, like a spearmint chew, seeing it as she ran towards town the day she’d bought her mam the guitar charm, thinking she’d get in trouble for disturbing the filming. The stripes had flashed out at her, along with his white bum poking out of his slackened trousers and the motion of the girl’s little hand on his cock, through the trees as she ran.

‘I saw her with him before, wanking him off.’

She could see Gemma, scandalized by the smoking, didn’t have a clue what she meant. Pauline pumped her hand.

‘Down his kecks.’

Gemma stared as what’s-her-name toed her cigarette end into the grass. Pauline thought Gemma was going to cry. Her face had that disintegrating look, and she’d turned a bit red.

‘Liar.’

‘I did! Down Hexthorpe Flats. They was in the trees.’

Gemma set her mouth. ‘D’you think her mum knows she’s smoking?’

Why did that matter? Pauline shoved her. ‘I’m not lying!’

‘You’re a liar, you!’

Unusually, Gemma pushed her back, taking her by surprise. And then they were grabbing at each other, hitting, clawing, tumbled to the ground. Pauline was stronger, but Gemma was heavier and using her advantage. Pauline knew she was bound to win, because unlike Gemma she didn’t care if she got hit. But Gemma wasn’t hitting, she scratched, which hurt in a different way.

‘You lie! You’re that mucky, you! Say you lie!’

‘I’m not lying, you fat cow!’

The shock of being clawed in the face made Pauline lose her grip, allowing Gemma to roll partly on top of her, pinning her down. She squirmed astride her, legs near her neck.

‘Say you’re lying.’

‘I saw it!’

All Gemma’s weight was on her chest, making it hard to breathe. She tried to snake out from beneath her, but Gemma just bore down harder. And now she gouged her nails into Pauline’s cheeks, threatening.

‘Say it.’

‘It’s true, I saw it, you can ask her.’

Gemma dug her nails in, but Pauline was determined now. She could kill her if she liked, she didn’t care. Truly. So it was weird that the tears were coming to her eyes and spilling, that her chest was trying to force them out despite Gemma pressing down on her.

‘I can’t breathe.’

‘Just say you’re a liar.’

Pauline sobbed. ‘I’m not.’

Gemma roared, and scratched. Pauline screamed, thrashed a leg enough to knock Gemma off balance for a moment and writhed free. When she held her cheek, blood came off on her hand.

‘You’ve hurt me, you f*cking cow!’

Gemma looked shocked by what she’d done.

‘I’m bleeding!’

Gemma offered her something from her dress pocket, as though that was going to help. It was a folded pad of white cloth, yellow-edged. At one corner there was a matching yellow flower embroidered on it, with a sky-blue middle.

‘What the f*ck’s that?’

Gemma shook it out so Pauline could see it was a handkerchief, offered for the bleeding. She took it and clamped it to her stinging cheek, spotting the white with her uncopious blood. There was only one deepish scratch where the nails had pierced her skin. Holding the handkerchief so close to her face suffused her with Gemma’s washing-powder smell. The material had creases in it from where someone had ironed it. Her mum, of course. Pauline balled up the cloth and chucked it back at Gemma. She picked the hanky up from the grass as Pauline wiped her full nose on her arm.

‘I’ve got nearly a pound,’ Gemma cajoled. It wasn’t what Pauline was expecting. ‘We can get lollies. Or chips.’

Pauline was so hungry that even the word, chips, had salt and vinegar on it.

‘Aren’t you going to talk to her?’

But what’s-her-name, Lallie, had gone off to the bus parked up at the ridge on the main road. The people and their camera had moved up as well, where they seemed to be concentrating on the lady with the headscarf they’d asked about Lallie in the first place. So the lady wasn’t a real person at all. The surprise of this suited Pauline. Maybe most people weren’t real, just pretending to be. It helped when you knew that, that they might be ghosts, like you. Unless that meant the people you only had a chance of meeting as ghosts, like Joanne, were less likely to be ghosts themselves.

She and Gemma ambled to the road, almost friends.

‘I’ll get done,’ Gemma said. ‘I was supposed to come straight back, me mum’ll be really worried about me.’

And then she looked down at herself. She saw the grass juice staining her knees and hem, which led to her discovering a tear under the sleeve of her bright dress.

‘Oh, God,’ she said, and this time she wasn’t playing. ‘She’ll kill me.’ Pauline could see she meant it. She was terrified. She definitely couldn’t go home.

FRANK DIDN’T TAKE a holiday, as a rule. In his opinion, holidays were overrated, unless you could afford to stay somewhere in the lap of luxury, which was beyond his means. The crotch of luxury, as Lol called it. Fortunately he did quite well with invitations to the country, weekend jollies which made a nice change, although there was still so much talking to do to earn his keep, and after a week of yapping, what Frank craved was peace and quiet, emphasis on the quiet. Sometimes he thought that was why he and Lol rubbed along so well, because God knows it hadn’t been for the sex since nineteen ought dumpty. Lol knew when to be quiet. If he didn’t actually soothe, he certainly didn’t agitate.

The one concession Frank made during the August exodus was to work the odd day from home, since Veronica insisted on her two weeks, and he couldn’t get on with breaking in temps, except for typing letters. Inducting an eighteen-year-old into the arcana of which clients to put through to him and under what circumstances, let alone in a fortnight, was plain impossible. So Frank resigned himself to the modest difficulties of a stretch of doing his own phone work, which was lighter in any case because most people were away. And on the days he was at home, he knew that only the chosen few had the number to the hotline in the study.

Which is how Katrina got him, on an afternoon when he was putting his house in order, appraising the contents of his sock drawer. He didn’t even hear the phone. As usual, it was the boys – as Lol said, Jack Russells were traditionally agents’ dogs, bred to alert you to the phone ringing even through walls. They trotted in to find him, then both accompanied him, weaving eagerly through his short stride, to the study.

‘Have you spoken to her?’

It was left to Frank to work out who was on the line. Quite a few of his clients did this, as though the unique umbilical connection meant it could be only one person. But Katrina had been phoning a lot recently, so he had no difficulty.

‘We’ve left messages,’ he soothed. ‘The Yanks say they don’t know anything about it, and the Italian lot don’t seem to know where she’s got to.’

‘Never mind that, she’s supposed to be coming to the party. What about the plane fares?’

Frank put the unpaired socks he was holding down on the arm of a desk chair. He never sat during calls, but paced, as far as the telephone cord would allow, which was almost as far along the corridor as the bedroom, the boys running shotgun all the while. Lol was out, and he was their best chance for a doubleyew ay ell kay. These bloody plane fares. Katrina really didn’t seem to care any more about the kid’s screen test, or the film, so long as she got the money back, which you might reasonably say was holiday money, which the family could in any case well afford from what he happened to know Lallie had earned last year, however much they claimed it was all salted away for her until she was eighteen.

‘I’ll talk to the studio direct, my love, go over the producer’s head. She’s not really the producer anyway, it’s the way they are over there, all chiefs and no ruddy Indians.’

It might be worth a try. He knew that girl had been off-kilter when she’d rung him to ask which team Hugh played for. Although evading her financial responsibilities was pure producer. Professional enough really, if a bit on the cheap side for a studio boss. At the stretched limit of the cord, Frank and the boys began the route back to the study. ‘But while I’ve got you …’

He had been sent a script which was top of the pending pile there on his desk. LWT were punting a comedy, what the Yanks called a sit-com, Lallie as a kid living with her dad and vetting his new girlfriend, who was a zany girl-about-town, working title ‘Me Himself and Her’. The title you could take or leave, but it was a cute premise. He pitched it to Katrina, along with the fact that it had come from Dennis Morel, who practically had a clause in his contract obliging you to put ‘best in the business’ after his name whenever it was mentioned. Frank also touched on the possibility that Richard O’Sullivan might play the dad, which was more a notion of his than a possibility. But that’s how he, Frank Denny, made things happen.

‘What about the specials?’ was Katrina’s first, suspicious response. But he could tell he’d got her attention.

‘This is additional to the specials,’ Frank reassured her. That, at least, went down well.

‘How many episodes?’

There was talk of six, to begin with – of course they’d have to get the scripts ready, but from the look of the pilot it wouldn’t take them long. It wasn’t his cup of tea, but then left to his own devices the only thing he’d willingly watch on TV was Crossroads, if he was back in time before supper. And according to Lol that might as well have been radio, since his eyes closed as soon as the theme music started up.

Frank flicked the pages of the script against his thumb.

‘We’ll get you a copy.’

It would be decent money, on top of the whack for the specials, and taking it all into consideration, nobody would lose out on Lallie not going to the States. Of course that would have been silly money to begin with, but if he was honest Frank knew she was never going to have the profile over there, even if the film was a smash. Here, even his ten per cent of her personal appearances and panto was something to write home about. And the thing about telly was it went on and on; another couple of seasons and she’d be a national treasure. As long as they could get her through the terrible teens, who needed a pension? It was as plain as the nose on your face. Which reminded him. He’d had a nasty jolt the other day, glancing through a consignment of cuttings. He’d only met Lallie’s dad once, back when she did the audition at Tyne Tees, but seeing a shot of him with Lallie and Katrina taken months before at some charity beano, Frank had stopped short. Lallie’s facial future was there, bar some five o’clock shadow (please God), and the future had a massive conk.

It would be money well spent, sorting that out now, and not the shock it might be if they let things get out of hand. Of course Cilla had been very upfront about her nose job, and everyone had loved her for it. It might play differently in a pre-teen though.

When he said this, Katrina, as he had hoped, wasn’t offended in the least.

‘I’ve always worried she’d end up with our Graham’s nose,’ she confided. ‘It’s bad enough on him like, but can you imagine on a girl?’

As far as she was concerned, the sooner they could do something about it, the better. The thought seemed to lift Katrina as much as the prospect of the comedy show, and finally prised her away from her preoccupation with the thwarted journey to America. Mission very much accomplished.

Frank promised to have a dip into Harley Street to investigate ways and means. Not out of his way, given his recent trips to the specialist. He didn’t mention this, of course. As far as clients were concerned, he was immortal. He’d always followed that line himself more or less, so it had been a bit of a blow to discover they were all mistaken. Only Lol knew, although Veronica must have suspected, since she kept his appointments diary and had seen the entries spreading over the last couple of weeks. Heigh-ho. She’d never ask until he told her, but she must be curious. After all, it was her future too, in a less essential way.

He wasn’t in any pain that a couple of aspirin couldn’t dull, the same echo in his waterworks that had finally impelled him to make a doctor’s appointment, but from the way the specialist had promised future discussion of pain relief, Frank knew there was worse to come. Well, there was worse to come anyway, pain or no pain. Finishing the call, he dropped into the desk chair, dislodging the orphan socks. One of them, a burgundy Jermyn Street cashmere Lol had treated him to one Christmas, had a hole worn in the ball of the foot, where he always wore his socks and even shoes through – probably from pacing, from appearing so light on his feet. He chucked the sock in the bin. Frank allowed himself one moment to close his eyes and feel sorry for himself before he snapped out of the chair to find a manila envelope and put the comedy script into it for the afternoon post. Onward and onward. What else could you do?

NOW THAT QUENTIN was back in England, it was tough to grasp why being there had seemed so urgent when she was in Rome. Despite a great deal of what she’d been hankering for ever since she’d landed in Europe, including mind-clearing coke and real coffee – although of course no decent shower – Italy just hadn’t done it for her in the way that Poland West seemed to. It was Hugh, of course, that damned elusive Hugh. Particularly as she hadn’t seen him before she took the Italian trip, ha ha. In his absence, well, her absence, Quentin had gone through quite a lot of scenes where she expressed to him just how uniquely she understood him and he, in return, noted her private sorrow. It was good stuff. It was shit, of course. And now she was back in the grey, the singed yellow-brown, she was going to see him really, which sucked. A verb to be avoided. Perhaps he’d been out of it, the night of the three barrels? Of course he hadn’t. And she mustn’t take on so. It was unsophisticated.

She had f*cked two guys successfully while she had been away, if you counted success as humping to orgasm – theirs, obviously. And there was no more than the lightest dusting of self-loathing about f*ck number one, a fleshy but well-tailored studio executive from Cinecittà in his fifties, and absolutely none about f*ck number two, a grip of god-like beauty who had fixed her up with the coke and some joyful grass and had the muscle definition of a Renaissance statue or a Santa Barbara porn star. So that was all fine. She should be getting back here like a girl in a perfume ad, hair swinging, stride co-ordinated, the world at her command. It was just a wrap party, for God’s sake, and having seen how they did everything else round here, and given the start time of six thirty, she was guessing it wasn’t going to give Truman Capote a run for his money. In the Black-and-White-Ball sense, that was, although it might veer a little more in the direction of In Cold Blood. Oh, wasn’t she the snippy one.

They put her right back in her old room at the hotel. Quentin assumed no one else had stayed there in her absence, which helped with the whole skin-cell thing. She’d barely arrived when Bri, the antisocial projectionist who had run the first dailies for her the night she’d met Hugh, turned up with a muttered injunction for her to see the final batch. In case Hugh was part of the deal, she brushed her hair and spritzed a little Cristalle (she truly was that girl), and followed Bri to the suite. But it was just the two of them, in the unsuccessful dark. She sat down. The thin drapes could only tranquillize the glare of the day into a woozy dimness, bisected, where the fabric didn’t meet, by a brutal sliver of sun that sliced into her eyes. Bri adjusted the drapes until she stopped squinting, then started the projector.

‘They’re not in order,’ he told her, grudging the words. ‘Well, just in the order we got them back from the lab.’

So the first shot she saw was possibly the last of the movie. A classroom, kids at desks, solemnly regarding the camera, which would be the POV of the cop, she guessed, as it roamed among them, hand-held. The kids were unromantically plain and tousled. The camera cherished their scabs and surfaces, then stopped among them at the empty desk, the empty chair.

After this came a double run of a more stately pan, close in over the desk and chair, marking out the kid’s absence for any numbnuts who hadn’t got it yet. Maybe they wouldn’t use that, maybe it’d be beautiful and essential in the assembly, maybe she and her bosses would be yakking on about cuts and it would go in the end.

Suddenly, at the end of the slow journey, Lallie’s face reared, hijacking the end of the shot in a real-life cameo, home-movie style. Huge and partial and unfocused in the frame, she roared mutely, exposing her fillings, then was consumed to black. Never out of the picture for long – she must have turned up from make-up just as they were finishing the shot. The contrast when she appeared in the next sequence gave Quentin a drop in the stomach. So real, when she was pretending. Restored to life for a scene that would come right at the beginning of the film, before all the bad stuff started, there she was, among her snaggle-toothed classmates, lifting a pencil from her pal at the next desk, just one of the gang, although you knew to look at her. And again, and again. She’d break their hearts, if they had hearts left to break. How did the kid know to be ordinary in her pretending, when in truth she fought every moment of her life to stand out from the crowd?

But hey. Dead kid sad. Let’s all agree that on the whole, killing children is a bad thing. It was an entertainment, a fake constructed of glued-together sequences, whatever Mike’s solemn pronouncements about the ending offering ‘no consolation’ (and those certainly made Hugh and her and all the studio guys prone to conversations behind his back). The rushes were finished. What was she, Quentin Montpellier, even doing here? Pretending to have a job which pretended to help to make pretend shit. A butterfly who dreamed she was a producer. A botch job.

Quentin plucked at the secret sore places on her arms. She needed something. The party should at least be good for that. Even Hugh should be good for that, if there was nothing else on offer but his magic beans. There was something wrong with her, that’s what people didn’t realize, although you’d think they could see it, the way her skin didn’t hang right. Everyone else’s seemed to, even Bri’s, whose one scampering glance at her tits as he tweaked the curtains had been underlyingly furious. She wondered if she could play chicken with her self-love to the extent of screwing him, an old game of hers. It could be dangerous, and not just for the ego, and was really only possible drunk or stoned.

‘That’s it, unless you want to see the last batch as well.’

Quentin declined, saying she had to get ready for the party. Was Bri coming to the party? He was, unenthusiastically. She left him, diverted by film cans, and headed back to her room. Had Hugh set up their little session to keep her out of his way? Would have served him right if she had screwed the little jerk. As. If. He. Cared. Oh God, how she dully, truly hated her own company. It was like a holiday in hell. An unending cruise with a nagging, overweight country cousin, whose polyester gingham wardrobe gave her BO which permeated their tiny, shared cabin.

She stuck on false eyelashes for the party. Why not? When Quentin looked in the mirror she didn’t recognize herself, which was always a bonus. Why hadn’t she got hold of something in Rome, instead of freaking out about being stopped at Customs? Prescription medicine, after all, wasn’t illegal. She was even shambolic about self-abuse. OK, if she devoted herself to acquiring a stash of some kind she would become a professional pill-head, but the amateurism was getting her down. And the hotel room. And her cancer was troubling her.

It was just a trip down the stairs to the party. Straightaway, to be on the safe side, she stopped at the bar and downed some warm vodka. The function room was packed with people Quentin didn’t recognize, or not enough to speak to. Just as the vodka was stroking her nerve endings, there he was.

‘No Dirk, I’m afraid. He hit the M1 the moment they called it a wrap. He’ll be somewhere near London by now.’

Midnight-blue suit, white shirt, close shave. A good smell. Bay rum? Or maybe she was fantasizing that he was a cocktail.

‘Lucky Dirk.’

‘Indeed.’

He gave her the smile. She saw the trademark flash of wrist and cuff as he smoothed his hand over his hair. Maybe she’d been in love with his watch all along. Maybe it was a translation issue. Because if you took away the accent, and the suit, and the way he held himself, Hugh was just like every guy who’d left her staring at the complicated reality of her shoes as she took a leak in his bathroom in the small hours, wondering if this really, truly, could be all there was.

‘Don’t you look wonderful.’ Hugh cradled her elbow and kissed her. That good smell. That thick shirting. Bastard. An intimate squeeze for the elbow, that well-known erogenous zone. But then, suggesting she say hello to Mike, Hugh’s hand moved to the small of her back, where her dress wasn’t, and the confident pressure of his dry fingers went straight to her cunt. Better than shoes. Realler than shoes. It wasn’t nothing, when all was said and done.

They reached Mike, who leched her formulaically, although his actual interest, as ever, was himself. ‘Have you seen the rushes?’

‘I cried,’ Quentin claimed. ‘Real f*cking tears. The chair …’

Mike’s teeth showed, which was his version of a genuine smile. He swigged some gin and tonic. ‘Oh, I was pleased with the chair.’

Hugh tossed her a look. They were in it together. She liked that. Just at that moment, Quentin felt fine. Not as in OK, as in the full Katharine-Hepburn-Philadelphia-Story-CK-Dexter-Haven fine. As fine as Hugh. Yar.

Mike looked even shiftier than usual. ‘I was just saying to Hugh, if there was any chance of doing a few pick-ups—’

For once, being hijacked by Lallie’s Groucho Marx was a relief. Quentin had no desire to try and hold a line with Mike. It was a goddamn party. And Lallie seemed momentarily to be Katrina-less. Quentin saw that the kid hadn’t gotten over her little warmie for Hugh. Hey, who could blame her. She was capering, doing the voices. In a few years she’d learn that she was on the wrong track – as far as men were concerned, personality was never a bonus. Hugh was sweet with her, though: Quentin recognized the trick. He made you feel like he was paying attention. He insisted on getting the fat teenager behind the bar to mix Lallie a ‘cocktail’ out of Coke and stunted bottles of fruit juice. Quentin followed his lead and pretended she was into it too, while Mike dropped away. Nobody had heard of a Shirley Temple, and in any case Quentin was pretty sure it contained things like ginger ale and grenadine that didn’t exist here. She told Lallie and Hugh about how her dad used to order them for her whenever they went out for dinner on custody weekends.

‘This was actually at the Brown Derby, you know.’ They didn’t. ‘Where all the big movie stars used to hang out.’

Her dad had wanted it to be a thrill for her and got annoyed when she, silent with devotion, didn’t deliver the goods. She didn’t say that, obviously, the way his disappointment and irritation invoked his better, shadow daughter to sit beside them: blonder, thinner, more vivacious and appreciative – a sort of Skipper to her new stepmom’s Barbie. She just mentioned the Shirley Temple as companion to his highball, a cute little father–daughter vignette.

‘My dad’s coming,’ said Lallie. ‘He’s getting the train after work.’

‘Don’t get drunk then,’ said Hugh.

Lallie beamed and giggled. It was hard not to feel jealous of such simple happiness. Her tutor, blotto of course, waylaid the kid with a maudlin hug. The woman had a peninsula of zits along her jawline, despite being middle-aged. How did that happen to people? The two of them bounced off to check out the jukebox, Lallie leading the way. Quentin couldn’t say she was sorry to see them go.

‘Is your dad still around?’ she asked Hugh. He slicked his hair one-handed as he knocked back his drink with the other.

‘Alas, no.’ She waited. ‘This’ll be the first time he’s been down, you know, since we started shooting.’ It took her a second to work out the diversion to Lallie’s father. She ignored it.

‘When did he pass away?’

‘Nearly ten years ago.’ Hugh and his glass of whatever communed, antsy. ‘He was a remarkable man.’

‘I’ve heard a little about him. From Vera.’

Who was there, somewhere, in the throng – Quentin had glimpsed her, suddenly striking with her own hair and clothes.

‘Ah yes, of course.’ Hugh focused on some invisible screen. Quentin tried to work out if his pupils were unusually contracted. ‘He had this amazing energy, drive, always. On the go from morning until night, everyone always said Sidney Calder could get more done in a day than most people managed in a week. Quite hard to live up to, actually.’ He finished his drink.

‘It wasn’t until he popped his clogs … He used to have shots, vitamin injections, you know. Pure amphetamine, as it turned out. I was rather devastated about that, stupid, actually, but I’d spent so bloody long trying to keep up with him. It was exhausting.’

So now she knew. Oedipal substance abuse. Oh God, now she loved him again, offering her his confidence with his pristine smile. She would have lain at his feet like a dog, right there. Was this a good time to ask him for a little something to make the evening go faster than the vodka?

‘Cooee,’ Katrina trilled, clamping Quentin by the waist, her nails making escape a hazard. Always a pleasure. Quentin could see Hugh was immediately on the front foot to go. Traitor.

‘Has Katrina seen the rushes?’ she asked. Desperate.

‘The what, pet?’ Katrina was drunk.

‘Any of the, er, you know, footage.’ Hugh ducked an admonitory glance at Quentin. ‘We thought it was best not to let Lallie see anything along the way. Makes you horribly self-conscious. It’s bad enough with older actors!’

But Katrina had other things on her mind. Her nails indented Quentin’s side.

‘Anything from the studio, pet?’ she asked. ‘About the Princess film, like?’

Quentin wasn’t drunk, but she wasn’t sober either. She was tired of running, that was the truth, bone-tired, like Hugh keeping up with his old man. Italy hadn’t solved anything. Removing herself from the equation still left a whole page of algebra. This is why you should never try to do anything, Quentin, ever. What did it matter, if Lallie had the meeting or didn’t have the meeting? Who was she kidding, thinking she could protect the kid from her mom’s ambition, in America or out of it? Wasn’t it even possible that America, and the brutality of the studio system, might even dilute Katrina? Yeah, right, we’re actually doing you a favour, kid. If she’d been at home, at an industry party in the Hills, with ice in the drinks and lines on the glass-topped table, maybe she’d have been able to summon a little backbone. But here, in this nowhere place (the wallpaper was furred, that had to be wrong, and Lallie’s dwarf double had her hand on Mike’s ass, which was probably also furred), who could blame her? Get used to it, baby. Producers are phoneys. Hollywood is a cesspool. How d’you like them unsurprising apples.

‘You must give me your travel details, we can fix something up before I go.’

I landed her for you, Clancy.

Katrina’s nails spasmed into her back in delight. Hugh had shimmied away, mouthing ‘drink’. Lallie had caught him again on the way to the bar, she and her tutor attempting a conga. Seemed the tutor had the hots for Hugh as well. Form an orderly conga line, ladies.

‘Oh, she’ll be made up when I tell her,’ said Katrina, in that exaggerated way that made everything she said seem as fake as the stripes of blush on her cheek. ‘She’s been on at me about it non-stop! Not a wink of sleep for either of us, I tell you. I’ve aged ten years, me. Doesn’t show on her, mind.’

With a final pinch, she detached her nails. ‘Lallie, love! We’re going to America!’

The last thing Quentin was expecting to see was the unguarded confusion invading Lallie’s face.

‘But what about the other show, the comedy? You said Frank said—’

‘Never mind about that—’

Katrina shovelled Lallie close, wielding those claws to silence her. Hugh turned, curious.

‘Hollywood, here we come!’ Katrina crowed.

‘A toast,’ said Hugh, and nodded for more drinks.

‘You’ll be able to tell your dad when he arrives,’ said Quentin, amazed to find herself cheerleading. At the very least she’d been expecting to give Lallie what she wanted, however badly it turned out for her. Hugh was pissed too, which wasn’t so surprising. ‘He’ll be excited.’

‘Oh, he’s not coming tonight,’ said Katrina, reaching for a new glass. ‘He couldn’t get away. We’ll tell him on the phone, eh, pet? Maybe in the morning.’

Lallie’s face curdled into tears. She pulled away from her mother and ran for the door. It took Katrina a second or two of gin-delay to register what had happened. Then she ran after her. ‘Lallie!’

Hugh, fielding a surplus glass, grimaced.

‘She’ll be all right. She’s a trouper.’

Quentin took the drink. ‘It’s all they’ve talked about. The mom’s practically turned into a travel agent.’

‘I’m sure she’s thrilled. Just disappointed Daddy’s not coming for the party.’ He left a moment, clear-eyed. ‘And since you rather left them dangling, darling, I think Lallie had got it in her head that she was going to do something over here, closer to home. Closer to Dad. She talks to me, you know. Father figure.’

She was damned if she was going to take that one sitting down.

‘Weren’t you thinking of signing her up for something, Hugh?’

He warded her off with his glass. ‘I wouldn’t dream of treading on your toes.’

You’d cast him like a shot as the trusty family doctor, his hand in his pocket like that, the other with his drink but confident enough for a pipe, radiating wholesome energy. Not just as good as the real thing, but better. Quentin could feel herself weakening. Unchilled, the oily vodka entered your body intimately, formalde-hyde in a corpse. Then it opened up a little space, high in your skull behind your eyes. Hugh leaned close, that intimate, devastating invasion. If it had been a movie …

‘Although it does strike me as odd that you want her to go to America to film an English part in an English book. Why not shoot it here? Cheaper all round, for a start. I could handle it at this end. We’d be a team. Licence to print money.’

She was Wile E Coyote, pedalling the air before the fact that she’d run out of cliff caught up with her.

‘We’re both adults,’ he insisted.

She plummeted. ‘You know what? You are so f*cking wrong about that.’

And she launched herself off, landing near Mike, who had been abandoned by the dwarf. When she saw Hugh again, towards the end of the night, he had gathered in both Lallie and Katrina. Lallie was back doing impressions, urged on by cast and crew. Personally, Quentin was truly beyond caring. Until next time, she wasn’t going to care about anything ever again.