Chapter 10
The following morning, I reach WHAM a little later than usual thanks to a later call time, but Sarah is just as bright and pleased to see me as she always is.
I’m still feeling a little off-kilter after how I left things with Avi last night, but I’m determined to put that aside for today.
I need to focus on the role, on what’s best for the film.
And if that’s the Olivier Awards, then fine.
I just need to keep going – for the good of Amelia.
‘You seem more confident these past couple of weeks,’ Sarah says as she draws a brush across my face. ‘Filming going well?’
‘I think so,’ I reply tentatively.
‘I take it Mr Kumar is making you feel welcome?’ she asks, and the way she says his name implies familiarity.
‘Do you know him well?’ I ask, surprised.
‘Oh, yes,’ she says, with a bit of a knowing look. ‘Alessandro hires me for most of his films, so I’ve worked with Avi quite a few times in the last few years. Has a bad habit of fidgeting in the chair. I had to glue his sideburns on three times the other day.’
‘What was he like when you first met him?’ I ask before I can stop myself. Curiosity about his life when he left the pub getting the better of me in this moment, erasing some of the anger I’m feeling towards him after last night.
‘Well,’ she says. ‘You’ll know more than me what he’s like.
’ I don’t know about that, I think. ‘Most of what I do is paint peoples’ faces,’ she continues.
‘But you can get quite a good idea of a person from doing that, I suppose. Sometimes they spill their secrets.’ She pauses, leaning in and gently blushing my cheeks.
‘He was very green, his first film,’ she continues. ‘Polite, always on time. Not demanding, like some others. You know, asking me to source make-up from some natural mineral in Timbuktu because it’s the only thing they’ll wear on their face.’
She finishes putting on the blush and reaches for some lipstick, painting it across my lips with the small brush she’s been using for precision.
‘But there was something there,’ she says when she’s done.
‘Something that I’m not sure has gone away since.
It might be that girlfriend of his – goodness knows they’ve been on and off more times than I can count in the last few years.
But he’s always struck me as…’ She pauses as she leans over the counter to reach for the setting spray.
‘What?’ I ask, my attention rapt.
‘Well,’ she says as she spritzes my face. ‘I suppose he’s always struck me as… a little bit sad.’
I frown as she steps back.
‘Right,’ she says. ‘You’re all done.’
I’m out of WHAM an hour ahead of my call time, and bored, so I end up wandering around set a little. I’ve grown tired of sitting in my trailer alone these last couple of weeks.
I walk across the lot to an echo of ‘Lara to craft services’. I’m almost used to it now, but not quite.
I stop at the breakfast area first to pick up some food.
I still have breakfast in my trailer, most days.
But that can always be supplemented by the huge spread they have for cast and crew.
There’s pretty much every kind of fruit you can imagine, pastries, sandwiches, vegan muffins, which look pretty disgusting to me but which I’ve seen Sienna eating pretty much every day, and a large array of different cheeses.
I pick up a plate and load it with some fruit and cheese, then make my way over to where they’ll be shooting.
I don’t know who is filming this morning, but it’s an open set so I’m allowed near the sound stage.
Crew members rush past me every few seconds. The energy buzzing and exciting.
It’s cool to view it from this angle, as an observer, and not the one in the hot seat.
I stand at a safe distance from where they’re filming, craning my neck to see who it is.
My breath catches a little when I realise it’s Avi.
Jackson and Amelia have their history, but she’s said she’ll never marry him.
So he sleeps around with most of London’s high-society courtesans.
One of whom – I realise with a rush of recognition – is Sienna.
I forgot that that was her role. It’s part of the reason why Jackson becomes so invested in the case.
About halfway through the film, Sienna’s character is murdered by the satanic cult they’ve been researching and Jackson’s motivations change.
He becomes obsessed with bringing the killers to justice, dropping all of his previous scepticism and worry about Amelia and throwing himself into the case entirely.
But her character isn’t dead yet.
Sienna is wearing a scanty nightdress and Avi’s shirt is discarded on the ground next to him, his abs on show for all to see.
I hate myself for how much I’m enjoying the view.
He was always toned, back at the pub. But he was leaner back then.
He’s definitely been spending some time in the gym.
Stop it, Lara, I think, embarrassed by my own thoughts.
Why are you even thinking about this? He has a girlfriend.
Stop being a creep. As I watch, they press their bodies close to one another, kissing.
I want to look away; it almost feels too intimate for me to be watching.
That’ll be you, in a week’s time. I ignore the anxiety that flickers through me at the thought and spear a piece of fruit on my plate.
Avi is dressing now; apparently their encounter has just ended and Jackson is leaving for his club.
He smiles and delivers his lines – which I can’t hear from here – with a sparkle in his eye that I’ve not been conscious of enough to truly notice when we’ve been working together.
Even from here, without headphones to hear the dialogue, I can see how effortlessly he embodies Jackson.
Embodiment techniques he’s been helping me with, during our rehearsals some evenings: gestural vocabulary, sense memory, somatic acting.
He’s a very physical actor, excellent at commanding space.
I’ve often leaned more subtle, but I’ve been learning from him – and I realise here, watching him move, just how much he’s rubbed off on me.
‘Cut!’ Alessandro shouts. Avi and Sienna both look up at him.
Avi lets out a breath. And I see something else too, something I haven’t been able to notice from up close either.
Because I’ve been so in my head, in my own thoughts.
It’s like the light going out of his eyes.
Like the spark was turned on just for Jackson and now that he’s no longer in the scene, something has darkened.
It’s so subtle I could dismiss it for tiredness. But Sarah’s words from earlier ring through my mind. He’s always struck me as a bit sad.
Before I can dwell on it any further though, his eyes wander across the room. And fix on me. And something flickers through me – something that feels like caring about him, something that scares me more than I’d like to admit.
Once I’m finished with filming for the day, George picks me up, ready to take me back to the hotel. But as I get in the car, a text pings on my phone. It’s Spencer. On the off chance you’re out of filming early, we’re meeting at the Queen’s Head in Hammersmith, it reads. 8 p.m.
A lump forms in my throat. And for a second, I almost type out my usual response.
But I’m still feeling a little weird after watching Avi on-set this morning.
Alison’s words ring through my head again too.
Your life could be so much bigger, Lara.
And it’s irritating, how piercing they are.
How quickly she’s able to identify my weaknesses and expose them to me.
And I don’t know if it’s this film or the fact that being on-set does have me feeling a little isolated from the world, but they hit harder than they should.
I check my watch: 7.30. I have time to get there and I only have to stay for a few hours.
Before I can really consider what I’m doing, I ask George to take me there instead of the hotel.
I arrive within twenty minutes; it’s a quick journey, since the studio is in West London.
‘Thank you,’ I say to George as I get out of the car. ‘I’ll see you later.’
‘No problem, miss,’ he says. ‘Just text me when you need picking up. And let me know if they have a good Islay selection, will you?’
I frown for a second, not sure what he’s talking about, then remember abruptly – he’s a whisky fan. ‘Of course,’ I reply, smiling as I close the door.
I uselessly brush non-existent dust off my jeans before entering the pub, feeling suddenly nervous. This will be the first time I’m seeing Hannah and Spencer since leaving the flat, and the first time ever in a social setting – if you don’t count our goodbye dinner, which feels like ages ago now.
I pull open the door and step through, scanning the room, then find them sitting in a corner.
Spencer looks up and sees me, his face lighting up in a way that makes me instinctively smile.
He waves me over and I sit down, then he abruptly gets up to order me wine.
Hannah jumps immediately into telling me about a theatre workshop she’s running, which is pulling some kids who haven’t historically been interested in theatre into acting.
Asks whether I might be interested in helping her run another one, at some point.
I tell her I’ll consider it and before either of us can say anything else, Spencer places a glass of wine in front of me.
‘So glad you could make it, Lara,’ he says. ‘We’ve missed you.’
‘We have.’ Hannah nods and my heart clenches. Because I’m realising now just how much I’ve missed them too.
‘So tell us everything,’ Spencer says. ‘What’s it like?’
I sip my wine and try to paint a picture. The chaos of the set. The runners everywhere. Never being able to have a moment’s peace, but honestly not minding because I’m part of such a big operation. Because it feels good, to be a part of it. To fulfil my role.
‘That sounds honestly great,’ Hannah says. ‘I mean, I could never. But it must feel good to be pursuing your dreams.’
‘It does,’ I say. But something catches a little, as the words settle.
The fear, still there, that I might mess up and have it all taken away in a moment.
The beautiful, blonde potential understudy who is waiting in the wings if I do.
The emotions I experienced looking at Avi this morning.
Emotions that felt a lot deeper than they should, for someone who is just my colleague.
Emotions that made me almost feel like I might still care about him as a friend.
‘Is everything okay?’ Spencer asks.
I nod. Because it feels too scary to say it out loud: to admit there’s a problem. And there’s no way I can get into it all right now – everything with Avi. But then it occurs to me: maybe I don’t have to share exactly who it is. Maybe I can ask for their advice without needing to reveal everything.
‘It’s just…’ I try to find the right way to phrase it. ‘There’s someone on-set – someone I have a bit of a history with.’
‘What kind of history?’ Hannah asks.
‘We were friends,’ I say, taking a sip of my wine.
‘We – we worked together. And then he moved away, but we still kept in touch. But then…’ I pause, the details of what happened coming back.
The postcards and texts gradually tapering off.
His return, for the Christmas party. Our kiss, the surge of feeling I had when he pulled me in.
The sense of something clicking into place between us.
Then his abrupt departure. The flurry of regretful texts the next day.
‘He came back and we kissed, and I guess he regretted it. Sent me a load of texts the next day telling me it had been a mistake. And I was hurt, so I lashed out. Told him he was wrong, to put our friendship on the line like that. And we haven’t really spoken since.
I kept waiting for him to reach out – thought that maybe after some space, we could fix things. But he never did. And…’
I take another sip of my wine, trying to shrug off the pain that’s resurging at the memory of it. ‘Well, I guess we’re not friends any more. And now I have to see him on-set every day. And I’m worried I’m going to do something stupid that might ruin everything.’
Spencer and Hannah are both silent for a few seconds. I wonder whether this was a bad idea, whether I’ve shared too much.
‘It sounds,’ Hannah says, ‘like you’re more in control of this than you think.’ Spencer nods, as if he agrees.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
‘I mean,’ she says. ‘This obviously isn’t an ideal situation – I’d hate to work with any of my exes.
But you just said it yourself: you’re worried about your own actions, not his.
You can’t control what he does and you can’t control how you feel about him.
But you’re a true professional – Spence and I know that.
We’ve watched you run those lines like a machine, night after night.
Going after what you want with everything you have.
I don’t think the person you are is going to let anything get in the way of that. ’
Spencer nods. ‘I think you can trust yourself a bit more, Lara,’ he says. ‘I mean, look how far you’ve come. Look where you are. I really don’t think this is going to mess that up. You just have to show up and do your job, and be professional. Nothing else is really under your control anyway.’
I nod, something fluttering in my chest. Because I’ve been trying to deal with this, alone, for the last few weeks.
And I might not have told them everything, but even sharing this feels like a huge weight off my shoulders.
And I know they’re right, that I need to just keep my head up and do everything I can.
But there’s something about feeling understood, about having the qualities that make me feel lonely, sometimes, reflected back to me in such a positive way, that gives me renewed confidence.
Confidence I desperately need, ahead of going to the Olivier Awards in a few days.
‘Thanks, guys,’ I say, a warmth passing through my chest.