Chapter 26
Twenty-six
I WAS SITTING ON the tube when I saw it. I was on my way back from a dreary four-hour matinee at the Royal Court Jolly had booked us tickets for, before ditching me to spend time with Terrence. I picked up the discarded Evening Standard on the seat beside me and peeled the damp pages apart.
Rising star Victoria Parker-Tilley on the arm of director Dexter King, seen emerging from Annabel’s in Mayfair.
With her free hand she was ruching her gown from the gutter.
Although her forehead was dipped she was staring down the lens of the camera, almost challenging the viewer to look away.
The man beside her, meanwhile, had been captured in a tableau of love-struck awe, his eyes fixed on the beautiful young woman who clung to his side.
I felt my innards crunch in on themselves.
Of course.
Suddenly it all made sense.
At the train station the next morning, Victoria had been convivial but distant.
When Jolly and I arrived back in London, I tried not to let slip anything about what had happened that night, careful to nurture mine and Victoria’s secret until the moment was right to reveal all.
But then there was the silence of the past week; the fact she hadn’t responded to any of my texts or emails.
It was never you she wanted.
Victoria had found someone else.
With trembling fingers, I tore the picture from the newspaper and stuffed it inside my bra. When I got home, I flattened the wrinkled photo across my desk and stared at it, her, the two of them. I opened my laptop and typed in his name.
Dexter Mungo King is an English-Dutch actor, model and director.
King was born in Camden Town, London, the second son of acclaimed British film director Jeremy King and actress Priscilla MacLean (née Van De Stadt).
King was educated at Tower House School and Westminster School before reading English at Cambridge University.
At the age of 22, King undertook classical actor training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts . . .
I clicked the link to an article.
I ask King whether he always wanted to direct, to which he laughs and replies, ‘I know people won’t believe me, but I honestly never even thought about it.
Being a director, you have a lot more power than as an actor.
And, I don’t know.’ At this point King blushes.
‘I guess I didn’t really have the confidence to say, “I’ve got ideas too, you know?
”’ King takes a sip of his builder’s tea and thinks for a moment.
‘But I’m lucky I can talk to my dad about these things.
’ I ask King whether his father’s influence has helped him in his career.
‘Not at all,’ he replies. ‘I didn’t receive any help when I was entering the industry as a director, or from my mum when I was focusing on acting.
’ (King’s mother is celebrated actress Priscilla MacLean.) He continues, ‘In fact, I think my parents would’ve preferred it if I’d chosen a “real job”, you know?
Something steady. I should’ve been a plumber.
’ He laughs again, and I notice several female heads turn from the tables surrounding us.
King certainly is a young man who commands a lot of attention.
He continues, ‘I’ve worked just as hard as any guy off the street to get to where I am today.
Directing is tough. And I know that just as much as anyone else. ’
When Jolly returned that evening, I appeared in the kitchen and, trying to appear nonchalant, asked him what he knew.
He sniffed and said he had no idea she was seeing anyone, that he hadn’t spoken to Victoria since Godwin.
I asked him whether this Dexter guy and her were in a relationship, how long they’d been together, if Obi knew about the two of them. Jolly got annoyed at me then.
‘I’m not her personal secretary, Shannon. If she chooses not to tell me things then there’s not much I can do about that.’
Later, he apologized for snapping at me. He said that he and Terrence had had a difficult month and he wasn’t sure if things would last much longer between them. I gave him a hug, which he accepted with lukewarm enthusiasm before returning to Victoria.
‘Who knows if she’ll even turn up on Monday. If she really is banging Dexter King, she probably needn’t bother.’
VICTORIA DID TURN UP, and she’d cut her hair.
The new style was confident and coquettish, a short bob that curled up and around her sharp cheekbones.
On our first morning back, I slunk over to her and the group she was speaking with, desperate to tease out whether she was willing to acknowledge what had happened between us.
But when I tried to catch her eye, she tossed me a fleeting Hiya and carried on her conversation.
Humiliated, I returned to the other end of the room and continued my warm-up, alone.
Victoria’s new hairstyle, coupled with the gossip flying around about her love life, seemed to put a wall around her.
She wasn’t just Victoria any more; she wasn’t our classmate, plodding along with the same worries as the rest of us: Does Frida like me?
Will I pass? Will I get an agent? Victoria had an aura about her. She was different now, an untouchable.
I noticed other people treating her differently too. The teachers gave her a wide berth. The new first-years lowered their eyes when they passed her in the corridor. I saw Poppy sidle up to her at lunch and ask if her boyfriend or anyone from her agency was coming to see our third-year shows.
Victoria shrugged and nibbled on a stick of celery. ‘Maybe. We’ll see.’
Victoria dipped in and out of school those first weeks back.
She was always on the phone, always in demand.
We got used to her mobile going off in rehearsals, the low buzz coming from her leather satchel, and then her apologetic whisper as she crept from the room.
‘I’m so sorry, I have to get this, it’s my agent. ’
Frida and the other tutors didn’t seem to mind the disturbance. When Frida took the register each morning, she barely looked up at the silence that followed Victoria’s name.
Things had changed. We’d splintered. It was obvious that after the events of Godwin, Victoria was avoiding me, but she wasn’t speaking with Obi any more either.
Stefano was always off with his new girlfriend, a moon-faced second-year whose coy smile transformed into a scowl whenever she saw me, and Jolly was spending an increasing amount of time outside the school gates bickering down the phone with Terrence.
But Victoria’s growing absence wasn’t entirely to blame.
School was different. Third year had altered the oxygen in the room.
Every day the tutors reminded us that the clock was ticking, that the industry was waiting, that you only get one chance to make a good first impression, that it was every man or woman for themselves.
ONE LUNCHTIME, A FEW weeks into our first term of third year, I spied Victoria eating alone in the cafeteria.
In the last few days, she’d begun to acknowledge me a little more.
We never spoke about what had happened between us at Godwin – I sensed she’d never allow it, that she was in complete denial about the events of that night – but as long as I continued to behave like her pathetic little friend, her dutiful shadow, she seemed willing to let me near her again.
Besides, I had something I needed to ask her.
The question had been eating away at me for weeks.
The year already felt like it was slipping through my fingers, and I was desperate to find out what I could do to improve my chances after graduation.
That term, we had regular classes on writing to agents, speaking to casting directors and improving our audition technique, but Victoria would often snort and roll her eyes in these sessions.
At those moments, everyone in the class looked to her.
After all, what did the teachers know? They’d been stuck inside the school for the last twenty years.
Some of them hadn’t performed since the seventies.
Victoria was out there now, she was in the field.
If she thought a piece of advice was passé, we tended to believe her.
She sighed and skewered a forkful of salad into her mouth.
‘OK, so, like I don’t really know what you can do to improve per se’ – she wiped an escaped bead of ranch sauce from the corner of her mouth – ‘but there’s something you ought to know.
Something they won’t teach you here.’ She looked at me as if to ask, are you sure you want me to continue?
I nodded.
‘OK, so there’s this thing called the graduate glow. Agents and casting directors deny it exists, but it’s totally real.’
I frowned. ‘Graduate glow?’
‘Yeah, so, like, when you graduate, you have this glow. You’re like a newborn actor baby, you’re pure, fresh, kind of like a virgin, and agents and casting directors, they love that.
They all want to be the one to discover the next big thing.
They all want to find that rough, untouched diamond.
’ She leaned in close and lowered her voice.
‘The thing is, people say there’s a ladder, but it’s a myth.
There is no ladder. If you don’t make it in your first year, before the new crop of graduates comes out, all glowing and new and covered in amniotic goodness, then you’re fucked.
You’ve either got that glow’ – she shrugged – ‘or you’re nothing. ’
I tore off a piece of baguette and put it in my mouth. I focused on the act of chewing, imagining my teeth like a machine grinding the bread down into a pulp.
Victoria picked at her salad. ‘I mean, you have to feel sorry sometimes for all the people in our year who aren’t going to get agents.
’ She sighed and scraped her fork along the plate.
‘Like, they’ve gone through the whole three years here, they think they’re hot shit, they’ve learned all this stuff’ – she shook her head and smiled dreamily – ‘but in reality, they’ve got no chance. ’
Sometimes she’d do that, chat away like she’d forgotten who I was and all that we’d shared. Or maybe she knew exactly what she was doing. Maybe she was twisting the knife on purpose. You don’t have an agent, Shannon. You don’t have connections or interest or glow. You’re no diamond.