Lucky Break (20 page)

After another month she rang Amanda. ‘If it's convenient I'd like to pop in – (pop in!) and see you, just for half an hour . . .' and as she spoke she looked at herself for signs of idiocy in the hall mirror.

 

The first thing Amanda did when Nell was shown into her office was thrust forward her hand. ‘Look!' Nell stepped back, confused, and then she saw it – a huge glittering engagement ring studded with stones. ‘He finally came up with it.'

Nell smiled weakly. ‘It's lovely,' she said, and as Amanda made no effort to do so, she slid the vase of flowers to one side of the desk.

‘I'm really worried.' Nell came straight to the point. ‘The play finished in April. It's now August and I've only had one audition. I mean, have you been sending out my photos, my CV and reviews? It's pretty clear the play isn't going to transfer.'

Amanda looked amazed. ‘Of course we have. Constantly. Now . . .' She stood up. ‘Where's your file?' She began pulling open drawers, and finding nothing she picked up the phone and spoke into it, imperious. ‘Please bring in Nell Gilby's file. Right,' she smiled, ‘I know it's been disappointing. But I have been talking you up and it's just, over the summer, it's often a slow time. September is when things tend to get busy again.'

‘Really?'

There was a knock on the door and a timid, middle-aged woman put her head in. ‘Here's Nell's file, but I'm afraid there's nothing much in it.'

Amanda rose up out of her seat. ‘Nothing in it?' She glared. ‘What on earth is that about?'

The woman looked at her as if she had no idea.

Nell stared at the desk.

‘Sort it out. Photos. CVs. Reviews. They must have gone astray. Unless . . .' There was a pause, ‘we've run out.'

Amanda sat down and opened the empty file. One CV fell flatly to the side. ‘You'll have to order more photos,' Amanda told her. ‘I'd no idea we'd run out. So sorry. Now. If there's nothing else, I've got to dash. I've got a screening. Rupert's in rather an exciting new film.'

Amanda pulled on a gauzy shawl and picked up her bag.

Nell stared at the file. ‘But could you have really used 100 photos? Are you sure they're not somewhere . . . I mean.' Nell remembered the sheer cost of having the last batch printed. ‘And the reviews I gave you. Wouldn't you have photocopied them?' She saw the long-ago clip from the paper –
A talent to watch
– sliding away into the bin.

‘Well,' Amanda did pause, ‘I'll talk to my secretary about it. Shall we go down?'

It was awkward in the lift. Amanda, her whole self gleaming, her hair bouncing, her nails buffed. Beside her Nell felt dull – three months of pizza suppers and late nights, of wearing the same red cotton T-shirt and black skirt, of running between tables, mindful of the orders, the side salads and garlic bread, the ever important tips.

‘Bye then,' Amanda hailed a taxi. ‘Golden Square,' she ordered, and she was gone.

 

When Nell got home she wrote to Lyndsey.
I've made a terrible mistake. I wish I'd never left. Is there any chance at all of you taking me back on? I understand of course if you can't. Please let me know
. She signed and sealed it, and marking it ‘private', ran to the postbox and sent it on its way to Ethel Dabbs's.

Four days later Lyndsey called. ‘What happened?' Concern almost masked a whisper of clear joy.

Nell poured her heart out to her.

‘I have news too,' Lyndsey told her. ‘When you left, I had to admit, I was pretty shaken. I actually went home and cried. And then I thought. It's not me, I know that, I couldn't have worked harder. It's the agency.' She giggled. ‘Ethel Dabbs.'

Nell pressed the receiver hard against her ear.

‘So. I applied for a new job. I'm working for A.G. Blythe. In Covent Garden. They've got a wonderful client list. Much more vibrant, and I love being in town.'

‘So . . .' Nell felt her heart thumping. ‘Is there any chance . . . I mean . . . I . . .'

‘Oh darling.' Lyndsey's voice was all regret. ‘When I got your letter I showed it to my colleagues, and the thing is . . . it's such a problem, but we've got another girl on our books who's rather like you.'

There was a silence in which Nell still allowed herself to hope.

‘It just wouldn't be fair,' Lyndsey continued. ‘To her. Or to you for that matter. I'm so sorry.'

‘That's all right,' Nell managed.

‘I mean,' Lyndsey obviously felt bad, ‘I do see it's been a disappointment, but Dove Coutts do have an excellent reputation. It may still work out.'

‘Yes.' Nell felt like weeping. ‘Thank you, Lyndsey. And I'm so sorry to have upset you . . .'

‘No, I should thank
you
. Really. If you ever feel like having lunch, as friends, you know where I am.'

‘Bye then.'

‘Bye.'

Nell phoned her mother and sobbed. ‘It would all have been all right. But they've got someone else. Like me.'

‘You poor love,' her mother sounded anguished. ‘It's just you've been working so hard, that's all, why don't you change your mind and come away with us on holiday? There's still time.'

‘Oh, Mum, you don't understand. The thing is, I haven't been working. Not really. And the last thing you feel like doing after no work is going on holiday.'

‘But you have been working, in that pizza place . . .'

‘No, you don't understand. It's not working really, it's sort of . . . waiting . . .'

Nell sniffed and they both laughed. ‘Maybe next year.'

‘And Nell . . .'

‘What?'

‘There's no one else like you.'

 

Nell took the bus to Soho and found a three-day-old copy of
The Stage
in a newsagent's on Old Compton Street. She sat in a café and leafed through the adverts. This was where she'd found most of her work before she had an agent. A children's theatre tour in which she'd played a penguin, the production of
Romeo and Juliet
Lyndsey had seen her in above the Chiswick Arms. Today an experimental company was looking for an actress with physical theatre skills, and a small outfit based in Balham needed a girl who could do an Irish accent for a play by Brian Friel.

Knobs and Knockers, Nell doodled a box of her own. Inventive performers needed for cabaret and improvisation. Singing, dancing, juggling, cake-making, ironmongery . . .

When she got home Sita was lying on the floor. ‘Are you all right?' Nell asked, but Sita said she was exhausted. ‘I've been screaming at Harish all day. “I'm too young to be married. Don't make me do it. Don't marry me off to that old man.” By the end I just wanted to fly to Pakistan and have done with it.'

Nell sat down with her back against the sofa. ‘Why don't we put on a show of our own. We don't have to go to Somerset. I mean look at this,' she opened up
The Stage
. ‘There are adverts here for all sorts of crazy things all over London. We could do Knobs and Knockers. We could have sketches about, I don't know, anything . . .'

Sita pulled herself up. ‘I've always wanted to do a show about working as a waitress . . . you know, the first job I ever had, I had to dress up as a giant prawn. It was in a fish restaurant.'

‘Yeah, we could both be actresses, dreaming of stardom, and . . . you know a friend of mine worked in a burger bar where she had to rollerskate from one table to the next.'

‘Right.' Sita leant over for a pen. ‘Let's write it ourselves. What do you want to be called?'

‘Ummm.' Nell considered. ‘Belle?'

‘Right. I'll be . . . Rita. God, we're imaginative. So,' she began to scribble. ‘ “Two girls, on rollerskates, one dressed as a lobster, the other as a prawn . . .” This is going to be so good . . .'

They hunched over the paper. ‘We'll start with really dreamy music . . . and then each girl can have a monologue . . . about their hopes and aspirations . . . and then . . . loud voice over. “Table ten is waiting. Hop to it.” '

‘Yes.'

Just then the phone started ringing.

‘It's probably my evil agent,' Nell said.

‘Don't answer it,' Sita challenged her.

‘OK, I won't.' And they sat, pens poised while they waited for it to stop.

‘That's better. Right, where were we? “OK, Hop to it, prawns, Table ten is waiting.” Then what?'

‘I know.' Nell held up her hand. ‘A kind of mad rollerskating dance between the tables with more and more plates. Can you juggle?'

‘Not really.'

‘Fuck it, we'll learn.'

The phone rang again. Nell didn't look at it. ‘So,' she said, leaning over to flick on the answerphone. ‘Prawns. Lobsters. Juggling. Music. Right, what next?'

‘A glitter ball.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes, we have to have a glitter ball, and then the lights will dim and the whole black stage will be full of tiny silver reflections.' A woman's voice began to talk, nonchalantly into the machine. Sita twisted down the volume.

One glitter ball
,
Nell wrote, and she sat back and admired her work. ‘How about a sketch with all the worst chat-up lines we've ever heard.'

‘You're Taurus. I'm Aries. Just think. Two horned creatures in the same paddock.'

‘Oooh, I remember him. Creepy.'

‘But, as it turns out, a source of good material.'

‘And how about, “You're looking tired. An all-over body massage might do the trick?” '

‘The manager of the Fulham Road Pizza Express! Promise I get to play him.'

‘OK,' Nell wiped her eyes. ‘He's all yours.'

Sita looked at her. ‘Will we really do it?'

Nell smoothed down the sheet of paper. ‘I'll phone the Chiswick Arms tomorrow and book a date and then we'll have to, won't we?'

‘I guess so.' Sita began scribbling stick figures on a set. ‘I've always wanted to use that Clint Eastwood music, you know, at the beginning of
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
? We could have cowboy hats and guns, and whip them out when the customers are rude.'

‘I love it.'

‘I love it too.'

‘But will we still be dressed as lobsters?'

‘Possibly . . .' Sita stood up and began pushing back the sofa. ‘Or,' she was panting, ‘one long strip of Velcro and we're free!'

Location Wars

Dan could hardly contain his excitement. ‘You can come too,' he told Jemma. ‘That's the beauty of it. They'll pay for you to fly out. And Honey.'

‘Really?' Jemma stood very still. ‘That's amazing.' He could see that she was struggling. ‘It's an actual offer then?'

‘Look, you don't have to come for the whole time.' Dan peered into the Moses basket where their daughter lay, a centrepiece of exquisite fascination on the kitchen table. ‘Fly out in the middle, for a month, or a couple of weeks. Whatever you want.'

Jemma nodded, but she didn't speak.

‘Come on, Jem, I haven't worked since February. I turned down that ITV drama because they couldn't promise to release me for the birth. And I know it's not great, location-wise, with Honey so little and everything, and it's winter there, but . . .' he needed her to understand. ‘It's a properly exciting job, something relevant, and anyway, I've already said yes.'

There was silence while Dan filled the kettle.

‘So,' Jemma lifted their sleeping girl and held her against her shoulder, ‘what's it about, then?'

‘It's set in the Gulf War. The SAS. Hard men, behaving heroically, or not so heroically at times. I expect there'll be lots of young actors, flexing their muscles. I thought I'd grow a moustache.'

‘No women?'

‘Just one. I don't know who they've cast yet.' He turned away to pour water into a cup, scalding the tea bag so that it swelled and floated to the top.

Jemma was swaying from side to side, her head turned to stare into Honey's squashed asleep face. ‘I'll have a read of it later,' she said softly.

‘OK, but I'd better warn you. I get captured, and tortured. And there's . . .' he sloshed in milk, ‘a bit of sex.'

‘Really?' Their eyes met. They hadn't managed sex yet since the baby, or, in fact for some long months before, and just saying the word felt fraught. ‘Tea?' he offered, realising he'd only made one cup. Jemma nodded quietly.

‘So, what . . .' she began once she'd taken a precarious sip. ‘You're beaten and in prison and they smuggle this woman in to you, or how does it work? Or are you having homoerotic sex with the other inmates?'