The flush that crept into Lainie’s cheeks had nothing to do with fever. She avoided her mother’s amused gaze. “I...it’s complicated.”
“You’re not updating your relationship status on Facebook. I don’t think it’s at all complicated. Unless you go around kissing and cuddling all of your castmates, in which case we need to have a word about priorities. And I don’t recall you muttering anyone else’s name in your delirium.”
“Mum.” Lainie’s face was burning now. She started to reply, but broke off when she heard her agent’s voice. “Message from Carey. Shit. I should have let her know I’ve been sick.”
“Richard rang her.”
Lainie’s head shot up. “Richard rang her?”
“Eye on the ball, that one.”
She wasn’t sure how she felt about that, but Carey’s three-day-old message wasn’t going to pause to let her reflect. She listened, and her hand stilled on the blankets. When Carey’s clipped, businesslike tones came to a halt and she had ended the call with a brief, “I hope you’re feeling better soon,” Lainie glanced at her watch and then tapped the screen to bring up her agent’s number. She followed Carey on Twitter, so she knew she was regularly awake and still working at this time.
“Problem?” Rachel asked, watching her daughter’s impatient fidgeting.
“It’s that period drama I auditioned for,” Lainie told her, putting her finger over the receiver hole in case Carey picked up while she was speaking. “The adaptation of Mollie Blair’s Somerset County. The casting director bumped up the callbacks to this week. They wanted me to come in yesterday.”
“Oh, dear. Can you reschedule?”
“I hope so. I—hi, Carey, it’s Lainie...Yes, just starting to improve, thanks. Look, I just got your message about the Somerset County audition, and...Oh. Is there any chance of rescheduling? I think that...Yes. Yes, I know...I see...Yeah. It is unfortunate.” Lainie scrunched up her face, and Rachel made a sympathetic grimace in response. “Okay...Yes, might as well have a look at it. You never know...Okay, thanks, Carey. Talk to you in a couple of days.”
She ended the call and stared down at the phone. “Crap.”
“No joy, obviously.”
“No. Apparently the producer has a one-shot policy. Show up at your allotted time, or don’t show up at all.”
“I’m sorry, darling.”
Lainie set her phone aside and leaned back against her pillows. She felt completely drained of both energy and enthusiasm. “Me too. I really wanted that role. Even after all my back-and-forth about it.” She sighed. “I confessed my little confidence crisis to Richard.”
“Oh? And what words of wisdom did he offer?”
“He told me to grow a spine and get over it.”
That startled a laugh from Rachel. “He doesn’t beat about the bush, does he?”
“He bulldozes right over the bush.” Lainie hesitated. “I told him about Hannah too.”
“Did you, darling?” Her mother’s smile was a little wobbly. “Good. I’m glad you talk about her. I hope he was sensitive about it.”
Lainie’s eyes were unfocused as she thought about the past—both last year and far more recently. “Yeah. He actually was.”
Rachel nodded, and Lainie put her hand over her mother’s and held it for a moment. Hannah had been her parents’ miraculous late-in-life baby, born ten years after their elder daughter, twenty years after their sons. At the funeral, their dad had called her an unexpected gift, a child they had been blessed to receive and to keep for as long as they had. It was one of the few fragments of speech she could remember from that day, which had passed in an unreal blur. Even when a death was inevitable, when there was theoretically time to mentally prepare, it still...stunned in its reality. She couldn’t imagine what it was like trying to adjust in the case of an accident, when life changed—and vanished—in a split second of tragedy.
“She would be so chuffed about everything you’ve been doing.” Rachel smiled at her. “Not just the charitable work, which, let’s face it, would just bring on more groans about Saint Lainie—” Lainie rolled her eyes “—but all your career success. It would have made her year to read about her big sister in the tabloids. Endless mockery would have ensued.”
“I know. I thought about that on the opening night of the show. That she wasn’t there.”
“Who knows? Maybe she was watching,” Rachel said, and then paused. She made a face. “Or maybe not. Jacobean drama—not really her thing. She was more likely enjoying a free screening of the latest Channing Tatum film.”