Chapter 3 Cynthie
I am not, not, not about to be late for my first ever table read.
It cannot happen, I will not allow it. I sit, thrumming with anxiety at the top of the bus as it crawls along Piccadilly, stuck in an endless stream of traffic.
It’s late summer and approximately a million degrees in central London.
I run a clammy hand over the crumpled linen of my skirt.
Hannah and I went through every single item in our combined wardrobes before settling on the pretty, floral-patterned skirt and black T-shirt.
At the time, I thought the outfit struck a sort-of boho-artist feeling, but after the long, hot journey it looks more like I’m wearing an old dishrag.
At least the black T-shirt should hide how sweaty I am.
I can also feel my hair expanding outward, the humidity creating havoc with my thick, not-quite-straight, not-quite-wavy locks. I close my eyes for a brief moment, wondering for the hundredth time what possessed me to have it all cut off.
Well, I know what possessed me—it was the misguided belief that I would look like Audrey Tautou: elfin, chic, French .
I thought I’d be fricking Amélie, and people would describe me using words like gamine , before offering me elegant, skinny cigarettes, which I would then smoke without coughing while sharing my thoughts on existentialism.
(In this scenario I understood existentialism because of my haircut.)
Instead of this, my hair is an awkward frizzy triangle that is threatening to take over the whole world.
And the bus still isn’t moving.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I hesitate for another long moment and then reach up and press the bell. I’ll walk the rest of the way, and by walk, I mean run. It’s not too far. I’ve still got—I look at my watch, wince—seven minutes.
Flinging myself from the bus doors the second they open, I start sprinting down the road in what I hope is the right direction.
I have the map that I printed out with directions clutched in my sweaty fist, and I gaze up at the improbably tall buildings, looking for a road name.
Bloody London, with its bloody looming architecture and a million pedestrians striding confidently along like they know exactly where everything is.
By the time I reach the swanky hotel where the table read is happening, I am wheezing and my enormous hair is now also damp and sticking out in a variety of wild tufts around my face. But I’m here, I made it. With about five seconds to spare.
I’ve never fully appreciated the phrase “he looked down his nose at me” before, but that’s exactly what the man behind the reception desk does. I swipe at my sticky face and smile brightly.
“Hello.” I try to get my breathing under control, because I currently sound like someone squeezing an asthmatic accordion.
“I’m here for the table read. A Lady of Quality ?
” when he says nothing, I blink. “The… film?” The word comes out quavering, because, honestly, if this whole thing is some sort of extended break from reality, it would still be less weird than the situation I believe myself to be in: attending a table read for an actual, real film of which I—Cynthie Taylor—am the star.
“There you are,” a voice says, and I recognize the woman bustling toward me with a clipboard as Marion, the first assistant director. I met her at the audition I attended, but I haven’t seen her in person since they offered me the part.
“Hi,” I exhale. “Sorry, the bus got stuck in traffic and—”
Marion flicks her steely blue gaze over me, and her brow furrows. “Why did you get the bus?” she asks. “We could have sent a car.”
“Oh,” I flounder. “I didn’t know that was an option.”
Her brows pinch tighter. “Jasmine put you in touch with Gayle, right?” Marion speaks the same way that she moves: briskly, economically, like she’s a busy woman who doesn’t have time for any nonsense.
“Yes.” I swallow, still barely able to comprehend that the Gayle Salt wants to represent me.
“I mean, I haven’t actually spoken to Gayle…
Ms. Salt. I’ve been dealing with one of her assistants.
We haven’t sorted out all the paperwork; it’s been a bit of a whirlwind. I only got the call two days ago—”
“Well, get on with it.” Marion takes me by the arm and begins steering me through the gilded lobby toward a corridor.
Despite being slightly taller, I have to jog beside her like a show pony to keep up.
A short, sturdy woman in her late fifties, with a cap of light silver hair, she has the energy of a person who could single-handedly run a small empire, never mind a film crew.
“You need to have an agent and manager in place as soon as possible.” Her face softens for a fraction of a second.
“Make sure you have a team that works for you . The film business is like the Wild West, and you need people looking out for your interests.”
“I will,” I say fervently. The idea that I have interests is—in itself—thrilling.
“Good. Here we are.” She stops outside a polished wooden door with a brass sign that discreetly indicates it is a meeting room.
“I thought I could just freshen up a bit fir—” I start, but she’s already opening the door and thrusting me inside.
“Found her,” Marion says loudly, which effectively cuts off the gentle hum of chatter that was filling the air, and all eyes turn in our direction.
Oh, god. So many eyes. The room is crowded with people, clustered in small groups around its edges as they help themselves to tea and coffee. In the middle of the space a number of tables are arranged in a large square.
I try again to smooth my skirt, with little effect. “Hi, everyone.” I lift my hand in a feeble wave.
“Cynthie, there you are.” Jasmine Gallow comes toward me, and I feel a flicker of relief. Even though Jasmine doesn’t emote a lot of warmth, I’ve had a sense from the beginning that she’s somehow on my side. I want, with a borderline unhinged intensity, to impress her.
Jasmine is slim and tall with pale, elegant hands that drift about when she talks.
Despite the heat of the day, she is dressed top to toe in black.
Her ice-blond hair is pulled tightly back from her narrow face.
She’s just over thirty, with a quiet air of authority.
She smells faintly of cigarettes and sandalwood perfume.
Her gray eyes drift over me, only the slightest thinning of her mouth confirming that my appearance is… not great.
“Let me introduce you to everyone,” she says, and unlike Marion she doesn’t take my arm, only moves forward, safe in the knowledge I will follow right behind.
“We’ve kept it pretty small,” she says. “Cast, directors, producers are here along with Marnie from casting, and a couple of the department heads.”
She moves around the room, introducing me in a flurry of names that I make sure to repeat, burning them into my brain.
I’ve met hardly anyone in here before. When the actress who was supposed to be playing the lead withdrew last minute because of scheduling conflicts, the Gallow siblings decided to place an open casting call, and it was through this unusual route that I ended up here.
The audition process was hasty, and I’d almost talked myself out of applying several times, finally recording a monologue on Hannah’s dad’s video camera.
Hannah and I did a good-luck ritual over my clunky laptop, which involved smudging the keyboard with sage before pressing send on the video file.
It stank out my room for a week, and my dad attempted to have an awkward conversation with me about drug use.
As he and I rarely exchange more than a few words despite living in the same house, this came as something of a surprise.
I didn’t expect a callback. The only acting experience I have is a handful of stage roles in amateur productions, and a single voiceover gig for a toothpaste ad, which up to this point I considered the height of glamour.
I scrimped and saved for the best part of a year in order to attend an intensive six-week acting class in London last summer, but it wasn’t the A-Star-Is-Born experience I’d been hoping for.
Still, when I read the pages—or sides , as I now know they are called—for the audition, I immediately fell in love with Emilia, the protagonist of A Lady of Quality .
Even that tiny glimpse into her character sparked something inside me.
It was something the Gallow siblings and Marnie, the casting director, must have seen too, because they invited me to London to audition in person.
Hannah and I fell into hysterics after the phone call, and she suggested we speak only in Regency English until the audition so I could get into character.
(This ultimately prompted my dad—clearly exhausted from his previous effort—to leave a pamphlet about Narcotics Anonymous on the kitchen counter.)
Immediately after the solo audition, I was called back for a chemistry read.
Speaking of which…
“And of course you remember Jack,” Jasmine says.
Jack Turner-Jones is as heart-stoppingly gorgeous as the last time I saw him. When I first walked into the audition room and saw him standing there, my insides all temporarily rearranged themselves, as if I were falling from a great height, and today I get a repeat performance.
He’s tall, lean, with snapping blue eyes, and light brown hair that’s cut short at the sides but longer on top.
He wears dark jeans and a dark T-shirt, a pair of black Ray-Bans tucked into the collar.
There’s a braided leather bracelet around his wrist, and he’s wearing expensive trainers that have been carelessly worn in.
His teeth, when he smiles at Jasmine, are perfectly straight, his posture relaxed.
Everything about him screams that he belongs in this room.
The smile he gives Jasmine drops a little, and his eyes widen as he takes in my tragic haircut, but he recovers quickly.
“Cynthie, hi.” His voice is cool with just the right touch of gravel.
“Nice to see you again.” I nod, trying my best to look unaffected.
In truth, Jack was part of the reason I summoned the courage to send in my audition tape. As the son of two of the biggest legends of stage and screen—Max Jones and Caroline Turner—perhaps it was no surprise he ended up following in their footsteps.
I first saw him perform when I bought a cheap ticket to the Royal Shakespeare Company theater in Stratford-Upon-Avon to watch a production of Love’s Labour’s Lost .
Jack had been playing Berowne, and I was captivated by his performance, scouring the program for information about him.
At twenty-two, he’d just graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and was already playing lead roles with the RSC—it was impressive, and envy overtook lust as I watched him prowl the stage, the audience hanging on his every word.
The following year, he had a small role in a BBC adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities, which thrust him more firmly into the limelight.
“You too,” he says now. “Did you have a good journey?” It’s a polite question, delivered in his posh-boy, private-school voice.
“Bit of a nightmare, actually,” I admit, the jitter of nerves making me chatty.
“The trains were all late because it’s hot, which I don’t even get.
I mean, snow on the tracks—sure, but how can it be too sunny for the trains to run on time?
” I shake my head. “The most British problem. You know, we have a special ‘fallen leaves’ timetable where I live, too? Like it’s simply unimaginable that we could find an efficient solution to deal with the leaves that fall off the same trees at the same time every single year. ”
He looks a bit startled by this breathless rant. “I think it’s something to do with the rails expanding in the heat,” he says finally.
“Ah,” I reply. “Yeah, that makes sense.” There’s an awkward silence (hard to believe when I am providing all this classic train timetable chat). “So, I guess you’re ready to get going,” I say finally, gesturing to the table.
He nods. “It feels like it’s been a long time coming. For me, anyway. Bit of a whirlwind for you.” Although his expression is mild, there’s a tension in his voice that wasn’t there before.
“Mmm, that’s an understatement,” I agree.
“The chemistry read went well, though,” Jack says, and for some reason I feel more like he’s trying to reassure himself than me.
The chemistry read had actually passed in a blur, almost an out-of-body experience. They had us go through a couple of scenes together several times, while Jasmine or Logan said cryptic things like, “Let’s try that again but… give us something different this time.”
In the beginning, I was thrown by Jack’s presence, but soon I stopped seeing Jack at all.
Instead, he was Edward, the standoffish younger brother of the man Emilia was supposed to marry.
After the first few minutes I lost myself in it.
The thrill of slipping into a different character, the fun of performing: the pure joy of it.
When the audition ended, I’d lost all sense of time and place.
The way I had to peel myself out of Emilia’s thoughts and feelings was almost unnerving, as if the room around me was coming slowly back into focus.
Clearly it had gone well… well enough for them to offer me the part. I only wish imposter syndrome wasn’t currently hitting me quite so hard.
“Yes,” I reply. “I think so—it’s all a bit of a haze. I guess my adrenaline was working overtime.”
He frowns at this. “But you’re prepared for today, right? I mean, you’re ready to jump in?”
I fix a bright smile on my face. “Oh, absolutely,” I say, even as my stomach ties itself in knots.
Hannah once described me as “embarrassingly confident,” which, when you think about it, is obviously not a compliment, but it is largely accurate.
I’ve always loved to be at the center of things.
For my whole life I’ve dreamed of acting professionally, have chased that improbable dream in every way I could manage, fueled by a frankly insane level of self-belief.
Finally, the moment has arrived. I’m being offered what I’ve always wanted…
and for the first time, I wonder if I can actually pull it off.
“Right.” Jasmine claps her hands together, breaking through my reverie. “Now that everyone’s here, let’s get started, shall we?”
Deep breath. I guess we’re about to find out.