At the sound of knocking, Ella sat up in bed. ‘Hello?’
‘It’s me.’ The voice that answered was Callum’s. ‘Jessie sent me up with a tray, m’lady. Is it alright to come in?’
‘Yes.’ She sat up in bed as the bedroom door creaked open and he arrived bringing a much-needed mug of tea, hot-buttered toast, paperwork and a cotton shoe-bag.
He gestured towards the window. ‘It’s all go out there.’
‘Yikes. What’s the time?’ She’d set the alarm on her phone for five-thirty only to switch it off as soon as the wake-up tune sounded, and fall back to sleep.
‘Eight o’clock.’ He put the tray down on the bed. ‘Your breakfast, Madam.’
‘You make an unusual lady’s maid,’ she teased blearily. He walked across to the window and opened the curtains, letting in the light. ‘I’d better hurry up.’
‘Relax. I spoke to Hetty. She doesn’t need you until after lunch.’ He picked a copy of the script off the tray and dropped it onto the bed. ‘You have the morning to get to grips with that, she says. Oh. And this.’ He handed her a sheet of paper.
‘My call sheet? Exciting!’ She honestly hadn’t expected to see one of those again with her name on it.
He passed her the drawstring bag and she opened it up to find a pair of eighteenth-century-style shoes in sea-green material with fancy buckles. Luckily, she and Lily both had size-six feet. There was a note inside the bag from Nick reminding her to build her character from the shoes up. It was a drama school tip of his brother’s which they’d both used before.
She picked up the script, looked sceptically at the title on the cover, flopped back against the pillows and groaned. ‘What have I said yes to?’
Callum frowned. ‘You mustn’t feel obliged to do anything you don’t want to. If you’ve had a change of heart, tell them, they’ll understand.’
‘I don’t want to back out. It’s only nerves.’
‘Caffeinate yourself.’ He took the script and the call sheet from her hand and replaced them with her tea mug.
‘Thanks, how did you know how much I need this?’
‘I have special powers.’ He sat on the end of the bed.
‘Do you now?’ She giggled. She was such a fool for him. She sipped the tea.
‘Not really. Jessie made a pot of tea. I’m making myself useful. It’s official, you’re looking at the new temporary “caretaker of Karadow”, seeing as you are otherwise engaged. I’ve promised to stay until Friday.’
‘Wow, thanks Callum, Jessie will be happy to have the extra help…’ The production team had a runner, and plenty of crew, but after Karl’s injury, it would be reassuring to have someone familiar around. ‘Me too.’
She peered into her mug, pleased that he would be on set all day every day for the duration of filming.
‘I’ll fire off a few emails, but for the time being, there’s nothing for my China plans I can’t deal with from here.’
He picked up Ella’s script. While he studied one of the pages marked with a yellow sticky note, she sipped her tea, thinking. She was excited to have more time with him. He’d be someone to hang out with in the long waits between the nuttiness of being on set. She’d better not get hooked on him any more than she already was, she warned herself. But a few more days wouldn’t hurt. Surely, she could handle that, if only for Jessie’ sake.
‘Eat.’ Callum set down the script and passed her the plate of toast.
She sighed.
‘What’s up?’
‘The shoot is brilliant for boosting Jessie’s finances…’
‘But?’
‘Well, if I hadn’t set it up, they’d have found another location, Karl wouldn’t have been hurt, Lily wouldn’t have a broken arm, and Nick and I wouldn’t have gotten dragged into this.’
‘Wishing things were different is a waste of time and energy. Nothing can be changed by it.’ He ran a hand over the night’s growth of stubble on his chin. ‘Believe me. If I figured one thing out while I was away, that’s it. I finally made peace with it.’
Glad to hear that he’d moved on, Ella snatched up the script and flicked through it, looking for her scenes. ‘Yikes. There’s a love scene.’
Callum frowned. ‘Does that change anything for you?’
‘No. I’m cool with it.’ She tried to appear blasé about it and failed. She and Nick had been onscreen partners in Vampires but working with him after all this time, and as different characters? She wasn’t sure how that would go. ‘It’s work,’ she said, determined to convince herself that it would be okay. ‘I’ll be in character – a whole different person. It’s not me kissing Nick, it’s Hortensia kissing…’ She checked the page she’d been looking at. ‘Arthur.’
‘That’s alright then.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’ He pinched one of her slices of toast and bit into it.
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Make yourself at home, why don’t you?’
He laughed, but she detected a vibe from him that she couldn’t put her finger on.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t say yes in May – when you offered to stay.’ She blurted it out because she’d thought about it in the night. She’d lain awake wondering what it would be like to have him right there and be held by him.
‘That’s okay.’ He shrugged. ‘Seems things worked out well without me. I was surplus to requirements.’
‘I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to you,’ she said truthfully.
‘You did though.’ He swallowed another bite of toast.
‘If you’d come back with the campervan, I’d have asked you to take me away with you.’ She spoke softly, embarrassed by her honesty. Usually, evasiveness came more naturally. ‘Going with you would have been aimless. You’d have got bored of me. Or I’d have got bored of you. We’d have ended up hating each other’s guts.’
A tiny smile flickered on his lips. ‘What makes you so sure I’d have said yes?’
‘I don’t know. I guess I hope that you would have.’
‘For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t have got bored. But I did need to be by myself – for a while.’
What neither of them was saying was that when they met, Callum still carried the agony of losing his wife. Now it felt like the perplexity of that had diffused, his heavy sadness had lifted.
‘What you’re very politely not saying is that I’d have been a disaster waiting to happen.’ She attempted to lighten the conversation with a throwaway remark. She failed, because pain flickered on Callum’s face.
‘Not true. I wouldn’t have taken you with me because you deserve to be with someone who can give you what I can’t.’ Briefly he touched a hand to his chest. ‘I have nothing left in here. I’m done with the life I had before. Since I’ve been on the road, I’m a fully paid-up loner. And you deserve so much more. You’re sweet, and kind, and sexy, and you should be with someone who makes you feel good. There’s a fantastic guy out there for you somewhere.’
She flung another bad joke at him. ‘I expect he’ll be along any minute. I’ll know when he gets here. He’ll be walking on water across Porthkara Bay.’ She regretted the tinge of sarcasm. It was self-preservation.
‘Anyway.’ She took a deep breath and let it all go at once. ‘Drifting had stopped being fun for me. I was failing at life. I needed something different.’
‘Staying here gave you that?
‘Yes.’ She folded her arms defensively. ‘Jessie was going to advertise for someone to help after her fall. I offered. The truth is I needed her more than she needed me. She didn’t just give me things to do. She gave me somewhere to belong.’
‘You did the right thing.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘I think staying in one place has been good for you.’
‘It’s not any old place though, is it? Let’s face it, it’s Porthkara.’ She had so much on her mind, but she had a thought which wouldn’t leave her alone. Nick based himself here, and made it work. His brother Alex and his wife Maggie had a place in London and their cottage in Porthkara, and they made it work. What if she was to buy Karadaow Hall, and finish turning it into a worthwhile business opportunity? She had saved a lot of money, but at a rough estimate it would stretch her savings to the limit and then some.
* * *
Later, after Callum had left, Ella stood under the shower letting the warm water soak her hair and spritz her body. Eyes tight shut, she tipped her face up into the stream of water, her head in a muddle. She and Callum had been trading mixed messages. On the one hand, they could be good together, on the other hand… he’d been clear, he didn’t want to be in a relationship with her.
So what? She wasn’t hungry for promises. That moment together in May had gone in an instant. But couldn’t they recapture a tiny piece of the magic? Something was still there. He could be that “fantastic” guy. For just one night, before he left for good.
* * *
After a morning of going over her lines and getting to grips with her character, she found herself in the cove wearing one of Lily’s hastily adjusted costumes, being put through her paces by Hetty.
The scenes they worked on in the afternoon were key to the plot, and a lot of fun to do. Extras had been brought in to mill around with the other actors, repairing nets and selling fish. Basically, Ella was playing Hortensia’s ghost, apparently seen wandering on the beach by the assembled day players and extras, two years after her death. She gives one of the women a ring, and asks her to find Reverend Farthingale, raising the big question – is Hortensia really dead? Ella lost count of how many times she staggered along the water’s edge, acting – as Hetty had asked – like someone with amnesia. The weather wasn’t too cold, and the breeze in the cove was light, but getting every single detail exactly how Hetty wanted it, took a long time.
Before they lost the light, they filmed the follow-up scene with Drake. Having shown the ring to Farthingale, who recognises that it belonged to his daughter, the woman brings him to the place where she left Hortensia, but she has gone. The woman can see her walking away in the distance, but Farthingale and the other villagers see nothing, and he accuses her of theft.
Every now and then between shots, when she was chatting to another cast member or one of the crew, she would catch a glimpse of Callum, standing apart from everyone else, watching. There was no room in her head for that now though, so she dismissed her desire, to get him out of her system as nothing more than a really bad idea.