2
A few days later I’m standing outside the building where my screen test will take place in exactly ten minutes’ time.
Nat, as always, called me half an hour ahead of my slot to wish me luck, but it didn’t soothe me as it usually does.
It’s my first screen test, and I’m about to encounter a man who I thought I’d never see again, so the nerves are even worse than usual. Spinning around inside me like a Catherine wheel, setting fire to everything in sight.
Possessed by some force outside myself, I pull out my phone and scroll down to my old text conversation with Avi. Our chat is a meandering thread, peppered with link after link to covers of our favourite songs.
I take a breath and do something in this moment that I haven’t considered doing once in the last three years: I delete the entire thread.
A year, trapped in time. All evidence that we ever knew each other gone in a second.
If I am going to work with Avi – if I am going to be able to face him, even – I need to start on the most even footing I can find. He might be attends-the-Oscars-famous, and my greatest screen achievement to date might be an advert for soap, but I’ve got to go in strong. I’m auditioning for the lead and he’s the love interest, not the other way around. It’s why I was so attracted to this role – finally, a female character who could hold her own. So I have to hold my own in there, too. No matter how he might make me feel.
I close my eyes, take a breath and enter the building.
‘Lara Francis?’ a voice calls, the sound of stilettos echoing in the broad, bright corridor. After I entered the building, I was ushered up to the fifth floor and settled in a surprisingly comfortable chair to wait.
This process is a far cry from the usual audition scene. I’m usually crammed in a hot, overcrowded room full of women who look a bit like me. Who I have to make a conscious effort not to compare myself to unfavourably.
But here, there’s no need; there’s just me and sunlight streaming through a window, a view of London spilling into the distance. It’s peaceful, and the lack of distractions gives me enough time to do a few meditative breaths, my eyes fixed on the skyline as the heels approach.
I tear my eyes from the window to find a small, sharply dressed woman about my age, holding a clipboard. Her expression is not unkind, but there’s a steel in her gaze that tells me she means business. This industry isn’t just brutal for the actors: to make it, you have to have an unshakeable nerve. Or a relative in the industry – that always helps.
She leads me down the corridor to a door marked ‘Screen Test Room 1’. I hardly have time to wonder where Room might be before she opens the door and ushers me through. If I thought the meditation breaths had calmed me down, I was wrong: adrenaline kicks through me as the door swings shut and I’m face to face with 6ft of messy dark hair, a chiselled jawline and dark hazel eyes that used to crease at the edges when I told a bad joke.
Shit.
In the half-second before the nausea hits, I manage to see that he looks a little harder around the edges than he used to. Smooth. Polished. As professional as the handshake he’s now extending to me.
‘Lara,’ he says, his voice turning over my name as if it’s alien to him. As if he hadn’t called it a hundred times across the bar.
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you,’ he continues. The nausea deepens, edged with a flicker of anger and hurt. It makes sense that he’d try and hide the fact that we’ve met before. He has a new life, now – and he made it very clear he didn’t want me in it.
Even still, despite myself, disappointment and confusion cloud my vision momentarily.
I grasp his hand, doing my best to shake it firmly.
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you too, Avi,’ I echo. Something flashes in his gaze for a fraction of a second – something that looks like warmth. Old familiarity. It throws me, completely.
I blink, frozen for a second, my hand still clutching his.
‘Lara, thank you so much for coming in today,’ a voice from my left says, clearing their throat gently, and I realise how stupid I’m being.
Well done, Lara. Three seconds in the room and you’ve already screwed up.
The table across the room of producers and casting directors should’ve been my first port of call, but I was so distracted by Avi that I forgot they were there. I notice the director isn’t present – or at least no one that looks like the Google Images I’ve searched of him – and balk for a second. Perhaps he’s in Screen Test Room , with another actor. But then you don’t get much higher priority than Avi Kumar.
Breathe, Lara , I say to myself as I turn away from Avi and cross the room to shake their hands. A row of people who are about to decide my future, but who aren’t registering at all on the Richter Scale of my nervous system compared to the man behind me.
‘Alessandro sends his apologies,’ the producer says. ‘He was held up in Italy, so we’ll be handling the screen test today and he’ll be reviewing the tapes.’
I swallow, processing the magnitude of his statement. This footage is all the director will have to make the decision that could impact the rest of my life. I’d hoped to at least be able to make a good impression in person, too.
Shit . A flash of nerves arrives so suddenly I almost want to run. This is feeling incredibly, inescapably real.
‘Right,’ the casting director says, getting up from the table and moving us to our marks. My hand shakes as I take the script from him. ‘We’ll start with an early scene, half-way through their first meeting. Could you please read from page two to page seven?’
I nod, swallowing as I look down at the script and try to focus my gaze.
‘Sure,’ Avi says, his tone smooth. His voice makes me jump and I look up, his eye catching mine. I look back down at the script.
Channel it, Lara , I say to myself as the producer returns to his table, breathing out and getting into my body. He is just any other actor. You know these lines. You know this part. You are Amelia.
You’ve got this.
‘Okay, and go,’ the producer says, and my head snaps upwards again.
‘Amelia,’ Avi starts the scene.
Miraculously, a calm washes over me as I take my cue.
For the length of a scene, I’m able to detach myself entirely from the fact that I’m currently in the room with Avi, and disappear into the character. The feeling is comforting and familiar, the edges of myself blurring into the background as I sink into it. This is what I’ve always loved about acting – its detachment from reality. The possibilities it opens up to live a thousand lives other than your own. The possibilities it’s opening up, in this moment, to pretend the man in front of me doesn’t make me feel a million things that make me want to leave this room and never come back.
And despite my unease, there’s a strange comfort in doing this with Avi. Our rapport is smooth, trading lines like we’ve been doing it for years, falling easily back into our old rhythm when we’d practise for auditions in the empty theatre above the pub after closing time. It’s... easy.
Alarmingly easy.
The feeling comes out of nowhere and jolts me out of character momentarily. Avi falters, watching as I grasp for the next line.
‘Sorry,’ I murmur, glancing over at the table to my right, that feels suddenly like a courtroom jury, before returning my gaze to the script as a blush of mortification creeps across my cheeks.
‘That’s OK,’ one of the casting directors says, standing up, and for one horrible second I think I might’ve messed it all up.
But he stays where he is, folding his arms and looking between Avi and me with great interest.
‘I’d like to move on to a later scene, now,’ he says, clearing his throat. ‘The one in the pub.’
Oh, shit. Avi’s eyes flash to mine and I can see he’s caught the meaning, too: that scene is a kissing scene. A kissing scene in a pub. It’s so ironic I almost – despite everything – want to laugh. I swallow instead, my throat suddenly bone dry.
‘If you’re not comfortable— ’ the casting director starts, his gaze flicking to the clock above the door.
‘I am,’ I interrupt quickly, avoiding Avi’s gaze. ‘It’s fine.’
The casting director says nothing, just gestures for us to start, and we flick through our scripts to the right page, the silence almost unbearable.
Once we’ve oriented ourselves, we start the scene.
I look up at Avi, his hazel-brown eyes trained on me.
There’s a question in them, and I can’t tell if it’s the part he’s playing or if it’s him coming through. Checking I’m OK with this. My heart kicks.
A rush of feeling warms my skin and I nod, infinitesimally. Staying in the moment, in the character. Stemming the tide that’s telling me that the man in front of me is not his character, but someone else.
He takes a tentative step towards me, and a shiver runs down my spine.
Shit. This is happening. This is actually happening.
He winds his arm around my waist, my skin coming alive at his touch. His hand clenches around the fabric of my shirt and it’s a struggle not to gasp aloud.
He leans down and delivers his line, his voice low.
‘I know you, Amelia Blackwood,’ he says, and my breath catches in my throat.
For a moment, I almost forget myself.
But before I know it, my line slips out, falling off my tongue.
‘Do you?’ I ask.
And that’s his cue: his grip on my waist tightens and he leans in.
Anticipation rushes through me, and I lean towards him, tilting my face upwards.
‘Cut!’ the casting director shouts, and the breath rushes out of my lungs.
Avi’s hand drops from my waist, leaving a ghost of warmth, and he steps away. A crashing disappointment moves through me, followed by a wave of embarrassment that almost knocks me off my feet.
Oh, God. What was I thinking?
There’s no way he was actually going to kiss me. Kisses in screen tests require prior warning, these days. Nat would have given me a heads up, and we’d have discussed it. Cleared it, ahead of time.
But, for just a moment, I had really thought it would happen.
Had hoped it would.
What in God’s name is wrong with you?
The casting director is standing in the same spot on the other side of the room, arms still folded, expression as unreadable as before. I hardly dare to look at Avi, my heart is beating so hard.
‘Thank you very much for your time, Lara,’ he says, finally, after a beat of silence. He returns to his previous position behind the desk and shuffles some papers, then sits down, looking up at me as he does so.
‘We’ll be in touch,’ he says, by way of dismissal.
I swallow, and manage to speak, thanking them for having me and saying some other things I’m not fully aware of – my focus is suddenly on getting out of this room as fast as possible.
I glance at Avi, the nausea from the beginning of this audition rising up suddenly. Half of me is desperate never to see him again, the other half already reliving how it felt to have his hand on my waist. Disappointment flooding through me that even now, after all this time, he still has such an effect on me.
Get your shit together.
I manage a nod in his direction and burst from the room.
I’m downstairs and halfway through reception moving numbly towards the revolving doors when a voice calls out.
‘Lara!’ it says, again.
I turn to find Avi panting at the bottom of the stairs. The receptionist openly gawks at him from behind her desk – it seems that even for a studio, a huge movie star rushing down to reception to call after a random nobody is an uncommon occurrence. But I can’t register Avi as a movie star in this moment. The flannel shirt might be gone, but everything else is still there: the slight hunch of his shoulders, the half-smile that used to show me he was nervous or having an off day.
The parts that I thought made up a whole – a person I thought I knew like the back of my hand.
Who, as it turns out, I didn’t know as well as I thought.
And this means I can’t say anything either, apparently. My lips have parted but no words are coming out.
He runs a hand through his hair. ‘It...’ he falters, looking momentarily as unhinged as I feel. ‘It’s good to see you,’ he finally says, then lets out a breath and swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
I’m not sure what to say to this, so I just nod stupidly.
‘Anyway,’ he continues, ‘I, uh...’ he glances up at the clock above the reception desk. ‘I’ll see you, OK?’
I nod, again, suddenly unable to speak.
What is wrong with him? Where are we possibly going to bump into each other?
‘See you,’ I finally manage, then I watch as he runs to the lift and disappears into it, glancing at me once more over his shoulder before the doors close.
My heart hammers, the old feelings rushing back all at once. Now I’m no longer having to stay professional for the audition, it’s like a dam has broken.
Hurt. Confusion. Anger. A headache that feels like it’s going to split my head in two.
All of it clearing into one, impossible realisation: until last week, landing this role was my greatest dream.
Now, I have no idea what I’m going to do if I get it.