Chapter 32
Violet
Violet was hovering in the corner of the sound stage, polishing off the last bites of her lunch.
Catering had outdone itself with a delicious lasagne.
After delivering everyone else’s lunch to them, Violet had hurried off to scoff hers in the few minutes she had left before they started shooting again.
As she scraped the tub almost clean of béchamel sauce and cheese, her radio crackled in her ear.
‘Jake to Violet, Ethan and Leanne.’
‘Go for Ethan,’ ‘Go for Leanne,’ they chimed. Violet hastily swallowed and scrabbled for her radio switch. ‘Go for Violet.’
‘Okay, so we are wrapping early today. Leanne, please come to unit base to see Rachael. Violet and Ethan, do a quick tidy up on set, then you can head off. Unit call tomorrow is 08:00, but watch out for the call sheet for your call times.’
‘Copy that,’ Leanne piped in.
Violet frowned as she wiped her mouth with a napkin. She was confused. It was only early afternoon. To lose several hours of the shoot day seemed odd. But if Leanne and Ethan weren’t asking questions, neither would she.
She had learnt to streamline what she brought to the studio each day.
Weeks of being on her feet, rushing from place to place, and needing to have everything she might require about her person meant she no longer carried a huge rucksack around with her.
She had given up much of her precious stationery and used her phone for most things.
A jacket with multiple pockets inside and out held anything else she might need on a given day—paracetamol, lip balm, plasters, keys, a small notebook and pen, and a refillable water bottle.
It meant that when she was told she could go, she had nothing to fetch.
It was an odd feeling to simply walk out of the building without needing to do a mini wrap-up of her own.
Wandering into the green room to check it was tidy before the next day, she caught the scent of Finn’s aftershave lingering in the air and bit her lip.
She picked up a couple of half-drunk water bottles and a discarded call sheet and sides, and straightened out the table and chairs.
As she turned to go, she heard footsteps approaching outside and paused so that she didn’t step out of the green room and directly into their path.
She heard Ed, the director, say, ‘It’s his mother,’ then Emma, voice hushed and concerned, replied, ‘Oh dear. Do we know what’s happened?’
The voices and footsteps faded away, and Violet gave one last glance around the green room, then emerged onto the stage.
She disposed of the rubbish she had gathered, then headed round to unit base to put her radio on charge, unhooking her earpiece as she went.
Entering the AD truck, she saw the 1st and 2ndADs sitting there, faces serious.
‘Hi, Violet,’ Rachael said, smiling wearily. ‘All done?’
‘Yes.’ Violet smiled back. ‘Just putting this on charge and heading off.’
Rachael nodded, and they went back to talking.
As Violet settled her radio into the charging rack and wound up the cord, she heard Rachael say, ‘So, do we know when he’ll be back?’
‘Emma is going to call him later and check in, see what is going on. But for now, we need two draft schedules for tomorrow—one with Finn, and one without. We’ll know later which one we’re running with.’
Violet froze with the radio cord wrapped around her fingers. She looked across at the ADs, heads bent over the schedule. She couldn’t ask them what was happening. She was the overgrown trainee who ran errands and fetched coffee. She had no business asking about cast and scheduling.
She lingered as long as she possibly could, winding and rewinding the radio cord, tidying the charger rack, tidying the other things on the counter around the rack.
But all they said was things like, ‘We could pull this forward from Friday,’ and, ‘That’s currently held as weather cover, but we could shoot that if he’s not in. ’
Why wouldn’t Finn be in? she wanted to shout. Is he ill? Has he had an accident?
She had a phone in her pocket, she could just message him herself. But she’d just look nosey and inconsistent. She couldn’t have it both ways—telling him they couldn’t be anything to each other one minute, then demanding the details of his life the next.
Turning, she left the trailer, nearly colliding with Leanne, who was stepping onto the bottom step. Leanne reached up for the door, but Violet closed it behind her, keeping them both outside. She didn’t care if she seemed rude; she needed to know.
‘Hey Leanne,’ she said in as casual a tone as she could muster. ‘How come we’ve wrapped early today?’
Leanne looked surprised. ‘You don’t know?’
Violet hoped she looked nonplussed rather than irritated by the question. ‘No, no one said.’
Leanne lowered her voice. ‘Oh well, Finn’s mother had an accident. I don’t know how bad it is, but he had to go immediately. He didn’t even change, he went to the hospital in his costume.’
Violet felt the blood drain from her face.
Oh God. Poor Finn.
‘Is he…ugh…do we know…’
Leanne shook her head. ‘That’s all I know.’ She reached out and squeezed Violet’s wrist. ‘It’s a shock for us all, I know. We’ve all come to like Finn. Get yourself home, and I guess we’ll know more later.’
Violet nodded and glued on an expression that she hoped conveyed the kind of polite concern and compassion one has for a colleague one doesn’t know all that well.
She sat in her car for several minutes, unable to leave the studio. Her heart ached for Finn. She knew he wouldn’t have left set if it wasn’t serious.
Deciding a text was perfectly fine under the circumstances, she pulled out her phone.
A text would be okay. In fact, it would be weird if she didn’t text him.
He would know that eventually everyone would hear about what happened.
It would be strange if she didn’t reach out.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. She vacillated back and forth between several versions, but in the end, she simply wrote, I hope your mum is okay.
I hope you’re okay. She hesitated, then added an X at the end and hit send.
Back at home, she suddenly had all this extra time in her day and no idea what to do with it.
She was rarely home before seven pm on a good day, and today it wasn’t even three pm yet.
The extra few hours stretched ravenously before her.
She had laundry to do, the neglected bathroom needed cleaning, and the dishwasher needed loading.
Feeding a load of laundry into the washing machine, she checked the time. Four minutes had passed. She loaded the dishwasher and tidied the kitchen counters. That killed another six minutes.
Twitchy and restless, she paced back and forth between the living room and kitchen.
She pulled a bottle of wine out of the fridge, looked at it and put it back again.
The flowers Finn had brought her a couple of weeks earlier, after the mini-bus accident, were wilting and dying by degrees, but she couldn’t bring herself to even thin them out, let alone throw them away.
As she stared at the flowers, stuffed into the largest vase she had, a red rose petal peeled away and fell silently to the worktop below.
Fumbling for her phone, Violet checked that her message had sent. It was showing as delivered but not read. Maybe that was because his mum was in worse shape than expected. Or maybe he didn’t want a message from her at this time, so was ignoring her.
She wandered into the living room, flopped down on the sofa and picked up a magazine, flipping to an article about creating the perfect cosy night in.
Create a special night for you and your loved one.
Pictures of candlelit dinners, fluffy blankets on sofas and couples sharing desserts swam before her eyes. She couldn’t take in a word. All she could think about was Finn, worried out of his mind at a hospital. Tossing the magazine on the floor, she jumped up and grabbed her car keys.
It took fifteen minutes to get to the hospital and almost as long to find a parking space.
As she walked in the main entrance, she realised she had no idea where to go on the vast site. Hurrying up to reception, she hesitated, then asked where Mrs Ellington’s room was. The woman behind the desk appraised her.
‘Are you family?’
Violet hesitated for a split second, then said, ‘Yes, I’m her daughter-in-law.’
The receptionist nodded and showed her on a map where to go.
Marching through the maze of corridors and navigating the banks of lifts and colour-coded arrows, Violet eventually found the right ward. Asking a passing nurse where Mrs Ellington’s room was, she suddenly slowed as she approached.
All she had thought about was getting here. Now that she had arrived, she had serious doubts about her decision to come. This was a private family time. What if his mum were in a bad condition? He wouldn’t want her intruding.
Slowing to a crawl, she edged up to the entrance to the room and peeped through the crack in the partly open door.
An elderly woman with a bandage on her head was using a frame to walk back from the bathroom to the bed.
Beside her and towering over her was Finn, in full costume, leaning down so he could hook an arm gently under his mother’s, guiding her steps.
As she reached the edge of the bed, she turned, and Finn helped to move the frame.
Then she leaned on the edge of the bed and pressed a hand to her chest. Finn moved the walking frame to one side, then bent down and lifted her up and into the bed.
He settled her gently against the pillows, then carefully pulled up the blankets, tucking them in around her.
Something he said made her laugh, and she swatted at him.