Chapter 18 #2
She disappeared, and Finn paced up and down barefoot, his floppy white shirt hanging open, his braces half-buttoned.
He tried to run through the sequence of the family scenes in his head, but all that was there were the pub scenes they had been supposed to shoot, so well ingrained into his brain for the day that they refused to leave.
His dyslexia had been picked up in his first year at drama school.
A tutor had taken him aside one day during the first semester and asked him if he was dyslexic, and had forgotten to mention it on the admission forms. He was affronted at first and didn’t understand what she had seen in him that made her think this.
As they talked, and she reflected on what she had noticed, it felt like someone had given him permission to admit he was struggling.
For the first time in his life, he could consider the idea that the things other people found so easy, but felt so hard for him, might not be his fault.
She explained that he might want to undertake an assessment.
If it turned out he was indeed dyslexic, the school could offer him more support, and he might be able to access funding for support programmes or equipment to help him.
He had expected a diagnosis might bring relief but was surprised when he also felt grief and anger.
Grief for all the times he had not felt good enough and assumed he was stupider than other people.
Grief and anger for all the arguments with family or friends about being disorganised or late.
Sadness that he had tried so hard to hold himself to standards he couldn’t always meet without help.
Eventually, grief gave way to relief that it didn’t need to be that way anymore.
The diagnosis felt like letting go of a weight that he hadn’t even known he was carrying.
It opened up avalanches of understanding with family and close friends, and tears were shed, and apologies offered.
His mum had cried at length and wrung her hands for not knowing, and he had reassured her that she had not failed him in any way by not realising. He had masked it well.
As the years passed, he learnt which tools and systems worked for him.
He became more organised, his timekeeping improved, and he worked out how to function effectively in a career that pivoted around reading and memorising vast tracts of information.
But when things went off track, like today, it still threw him.
He wasn’t secretive about his dyslexia, family and close friends knew, but he saw no reason to broadcast it to everyone.
He was still pacing when, true to her word, Violet returned a few minutes later. She had two copies of the new script sides for the day and a large red pencil case.
‘You printed it in big font,’ Finn said as he looked at the pages she handed him.
‘Yes,’ she said evenly. ‘I saw that you did that with your other script pages.’
She dragged a chair over to the table.
Finn watched as she set up. ‘You have a pencil case with you at work?’
‘Of course. People never expect a stationery emergency, but you’d be surprised how often it comes in handy.
’ She smiled. ‘And this,’ she waggled the pencil case, ‘is your line-learning first aid kit. Now,’ she shook some of the contents onto the table.
‘I don’t know if I have the exact same colours that you seem to use to colour code, but I think we can get close.
’ She fanned out several highlighters in her palms and held them out to him. ‘Will these do, do you think?’
Finn looked at her as she stared up at him, waiting for him to choose pink, yellow or green. He normally did this in private.
‘Don’t you need to be somewhere else?’ he asked, hovering by the banquette seat.
‘No,’ Violet said firmly. ‘I told Rachael you needed some help to prepare for the changes, but I said nothing about dyslexia. She told me that it was fine, as they are still setting up at the cottage.’ She smiled. ‘We have at least thirty minutes.’
She seemed to sense his hesitation then, and her smile faded.
‘Of course. You’d rather do this in private. I’m sorry, I understand.’ Her chair scraped back, and she pushed the highlighters across the table. ‘I can leave these here for you. I’ll collect them later, no rush. And here’s a ruler, and some gel pens—’
Items from the pencil case clattered onto the table.
‘No, stay,’ Finn said, sitting down across from her. ‘I just didn’t want you to get into trouble.’
She stopped emptying out the pencil case and looked at him.
‘That’s so unlike you,’ she said, quirking an eyebrow.
‘People change,’ Finn replied quietly, reaching for a pink highlighter.
They sat together for a few moments, Finn quietly marking up his script, Violet passing him pens and making some marks to her own copy. He felt calmer already, working alongside Violet, the soft sounds of highlighters dragging across paper almost the only noise.
‘I can’t believe you still have a pencil case,’ he chuckled, as he reached for a yellow highlighter.
‘Don’t mock, Finn. You are now a direct beneficiary of my stationery obsession.’
‘Don’t they have stationery on the production truck?’ Finn asked, as he dragged the pen over Mark’s lines.
Violet looked affronted. ‘Nothing of this quality! And it’s practically rationed. They would never have let me take more than one highlighter at a time.’
She pulled a scandalised expression, her green eyes bright.
Finn smiled and looked at their handiwork, bright multi-coloured lines across the pages. ‘Okay, I think we’re done. Can you pass me that, please?’ he said, pointing to a blank sheet of paper.
Folding it, he laid it across the page so he could use it as a reading guide.
Violet was staring at him, a flush on her cheeks. She rubbed at the side of her nose and sniffed.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. I just….’
‘Don’t get all sappy on me, Vi. No one knew at college. I didn’t know.’ He laughed. ‘Even I thought I was disorganised and lazy.’
She didn’t look convinced. ‘Maybe,’ she said, considering him.
‘And I didn’t tell you now, because…there was no reason to. Until today.’
‘Hmm…’
‘Now, do you mind if we actually run these lines?’ He felt the nervousness kick back in. ‘We don’t have long.’
‘Sure.’ Violet cleared her throat and looked down at the script. She was reading all the other characters, so Finn could read Nathanial’s lines. The opening gambit was from his mother.
Violet took a deep breath. ‘Where do you think you are going?’
He nearly laughed out loud at the shrill voice she used.
Forty minutes later, when Violet’s radio called her, they had run the scene several times, and Violet had drilled Finn on his lines.
She held a finger up as she listened, said, ‘Copy that,’ then looked at Finn.
‘They ready for me?’ he asked.
Violet nodded. ‘Are you ready? Do you want to run through once more? I don’t mind. I think I’ve got a good voice for little Euphemia now.’
Finn burst out laughing. ‘No, you’ve done enough.’ He gathered his jacket and shrugged it on over his shirt and braces, before hurriedly pulling on socks and boots. ‘I feel much better.’
Violet pulled a tiny stapler out of the pencil case and clipped the pages together. ‘There,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring this version with us and put it by your seat.’
He nodded and helped her gather up all the pens and highlighters scattered over the table. As they reached for the final highlighter, their fingers brushed.
Violet snapped her fingers away. ‘Sorry.’
Her cheeks flushed, and she ducked her head as she shoved the pencil case into one of her roomy pockets before leading the way out of the trailer.
‘Travelling Finn,’ she murmured into the radio as they walked side by side across the estate lawns to the cottage location.
Violet led the way to the little easy-up green room, ducking inside and placing his colour-coded script face down beside his chair.
‘Thanks,’ he said, as she straightened.
‘No problem,’ she said brightly, turning to go.
On reflex, Finn reached out and grabbed her wrist. She looked down in surprise at his fingers encircling her wrist, and he dropped it as suddenly as he had grabbed it.
‘Sorry, I didn’t.. I just… I mean it. Thank you, Violet. Really.’
‘You’re welcome.’
She flashed him a broad, infectious smile that made him grin right back at her.
He was still grinning a few moments later when Leanne came to walk him onto set.