JULY 1993
IT TURNED OUT IVAN WAS ABLE TO PULL THIS TOGETHER so quickly because, like everyone else at CADS, his family had money.
His investors were predominantly his uncles, one of whom had a business contact with land in Austria—miles of dense woodland that felt like you might walk for days and never find civilization again.
It was perfect for Dreadbase, as we were now calling it.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were loaded,” I muttered.
“I’m not, my family is.”
Which was, in my estimation, something only rich people said. But in Ivan’s case, it didn’t stop him being damn talented, even if he couldn’t have made it this far without help. Besides, I wanted to be rich and famous and successful, so I figured I ought to stop pouting about those who were.
That first day on set captured me—there’s no other way to put it.
The towering trees, the wheeled cameras, the people rushing about, the noise and the silence in perfect balance, and the way I floated above it all, guided by a PA from trailer to set, given rundowns by health and safety, asked my coffee order and shown the craft service table, all these things in place, all these people working so that I could focus on the one thing I had to do: perform.
Everything revolved around artistic pursuit, attention to the tiniest detail, a harmonious effort that felt magnanimous to experience, the very fiber of the world realigning to center around one single story.
I finally, finally, understood that hunger inside myself.
It had clawed out, ravenous and depraved, when I took that necklace, when I kissed that boy—and I’d denied its existence.
But now I knew, feeling the magic of that set, that I would have done anything to be there.
I hadn’t because I hadn’t had to. I’d just gone to school. Met the right person. Got lucky.
I wouldn’t wait for luck next time.
My regret began to fade and a hideous certainty replaced it: Harper was right. I was down in the dirt with the rest of them, and here—surrounded by towering trees—I was lost in the woods with her once more. I felt her picking me apart. Could practically smell her perfume and—
“Adeline, I take it?”
I turned so quickly I might have believed the name my own, one I responded to with sudden, intense recognition. Or perhaps it was the voice that yanked some cord within me—low, melodic, a soft, rolling accent that could have brought me to my knees.
The owner of it wasn’t bad either—a mop of dark, messy curls that felt too gentle for the chiseled face: the sharp jaw, the slashes of brow, the ridges of a twice-broken nose.
He seemed just as taken with me, which I was still getting used to. I’d been pretty before, but for Dreadbase, I’d been asked to bleach my hair, get eyelash extensions, and hit the sun beds. Now I was platinum incarnate, a prize to be won.
“I’m Oisín Connellan,” he said, holding out a hand that I immediately took, feeling the broad span of it enclose around my own.
“Nadine Heywood. And yes, I’ll be Adeline. Who are you?”
He flashed a blinding smile. “I’m your Howard.”
My on-screen love interest.
Hopefully I had more luck with this one than the last.
———
Our first day of filming wrapped early, and the rest of the cast began discussing plans for the evening.
Just as I was preparing my excuses and bowing out, Oisín turned his gaze sharply from the huddle of fellow actors and met mine.
Almost as though he knew—could read my hesitation, not from my expression but an attunement born of a day pressed up together for the camera.
Our characters had to reach for each other without their notice, glance to each other before they looked to the rest of the collective, and constantly move a little closer, as though they might hasten to safety but by each other’s side was the only true haven.
It was not so easy to drop once the cameras stopped rolling.
“Please,” he said, those verdant eyes piercing mine. “It won’t be half as fun without you.”
I was nodding before I was even conscious of it.
(It should be noted that I was nineteen and he was twenty-five. I think that explains a lot.)
At the bar, as we clinked tequila shots, our group solidified. And for once, I was on the inside.
There were six of us and for the duration of filming we were practically inseparable.
On our rare days off, we flocked to Vienna and drank wine spritzers in the squares before lining up shots at the bars, kicking our shoes into the corners and dancing until the early hours, flirting with the constant array of backpackers rolling through the city.
Casper Short and Damian Ryan played brothers and behaved that way off set too; Damian’s joviality and Casper’s more jaded wryness empowered a comedic duo.
Rafi Habib (yes, that one—moved away from acting and into perfumery shortly after, now stocks half of Selfridges) was our driving force, dragging us to one last bar or an after-party or, a few weeks into our time there, letting the revelry dwindle out so that he and Casper could mysteriously disappear within ten minutes of each other and come back looking decidedly disheveled.
Sasha Wallace was the only other girl and the only person I recognized—just three years my senior, she’d already featured in a few made-for-TV Marlowe adaptations that we’d studied in class.
I took an immediate liking to her from the moment she’d clasped my hands (her skin was soft, her fingers long and slender, but it was her perfume, pomelo and violets, that made me take note of her, reminding me of something I couldn’t quite place) and said: “Dear god, two girls in a horror? But which of us will die first? And will we be shagging in a car when the blade strikes to punish us for our harlotry?”
And, of course, there was Oisín. Who’d set all this in motion, his eyes pinning me in place as he begged for my company.
He was here, as committed to the film as I was, but so utterly carefree regardless.
In the car rides to Vienna, he’d turn the radio up and sing along badly and loudly, straining his voice like it was funny, and it wasn’t until suddenly it was, and then I couldn’t breathe for laughter.
He went to the gym before work, turning up still damp from the shower, those curls plastered to his forehead in little flicks that he’d shake at me, the icy drops spraying onto my skin as I shrieked.
One day the rain called off our shoot, and he insisted we make the most of it, taking us to Salzburg, where we got immediately lost before wandering into a tiny little pub where the only space was at the corner of the bar.
I hopped onto its counter as he pressed against my legs, and I wanted to keep the weight of him there forever.
I’ll admit I was attracted to him from the moment I met him. But I didn’t truly want anything until weeks into filming, when I fell in love with the person I became around him: I danced on tables, I skinny-dipped in the Danube, and I said yes again and again and again.
And I was giving the best performance of my life, all at the same time.
If the students of CADS could have seen me, they wouldn’t have recognized me.
I’m not sure when we crossed that line from teasing mischievousness to a palpable us everyone else on set seemed to see before we did.
I thought maybe Oisín was like this with everyone: the complete undivided attention when I spoke, the offers to run lines late, the compliments on my performance—and god, he was always so good at that.
The right words, the heavy weight. He was a leading man, and he could deliver a line like a woodsman might levy an ax: a single blow, an assured buckle.
On the night we filmed my death scene, he filled my hotel room with roses and left a note: I’m sorry I killed you today. Let me make it up to you? And I realized there was no going back from this.
“You seem happy here,” Ivan commented the day before Oisín finally kissed me in a hazy sort of rain beneath the lamplight of a Viennese café. “It looks good on you.”
I was. So very happy.
And we all knew we were making something special.
Ivan had provided a brilliant script, but together it came alive. We sparked. We soared. We created the sort of chemistry that could transform a low-rate movie into a hit. And with a brilliant one, well, our hopes were high.
There was a publicist on board already. There was talk of whether Sundance or Cannes would be better for the film’s debut. They were not even discussing if they could get it into those festivals, just which one to pick.
Dreadbase wouldn’t just be the horror movie of the year, it might be the movie of the decade.
But then the rain fell harder. Equipment was damaged. Sets closed. Filming was delayed. Extended. First only by a week, but then there were retakes and new arcs Ivan wanted to add, and finally I had a decision to make.
“I can prioritize your scenes,” Ivan told me. “I can even rewrite some things. We can fly you out at weekends. We’ll make it work, Nadine.”
“No, I’m in this. All of this.”
My decision was so instantaneous I didn’t even need to think about it.
Here was where I belonged—not the lonely house of my childhood or the green-gray hills surrounding it, not the school I was pushing myself so desperately to feel I deserved, not with girls like Zoe and Maisie to tell me I didn’t and Harper to make me believe it—I belonged here.
Sat before the screen in my grandfather’s cellar, inching across a theater stage, and here in front of these lenses, on this set.
Ivan bit his lip, hesitating. “I can’t ask that of you.”
“You didn’t. You asked me to be Adeline. Now I’m asking you to let me be Adeline.”
CADS began its new term in September, and I was on a set in Austria making the film that was going to change my life.
It was a risk, but that’s what the industry was.
And I was finally bold enough to take it.