Nell dressed in the same clothes she’d worn to the audition. A large blue, cotton-knit top over faded jeans, with her hair tied high, so that when she turned her head the pale ends of it swished against her face. Yes, she thought, as she checked herself in the mirror, smudging a line of black under each terrified eye, that’s good, and she held tight to the thought that however plump and freckled, she was the same girl who, six months before, had stood before the board of Drama Arts and performed a Shakespeare monologue and a modern.
‘You off?’ It was her landlord, leaning over the banister from his rooms above. Nell forced herself to smile up at him, unshaven, a mug of coffee in his hand. It embarrassed her, this unexpected involvement in her life. ‘First day,’ she told him, and heaving her bag on to her shoulder, she swung out through the door.
The bus was packed. Nell squeezed on and spiralled up the stairs, and pushing her way towards the back, she clung to a pole as slowly, haltingly, the bus moved forward along Holloway Road. Beside her a man jammed an elbow into her side as he wrestled with a newspaper, and a woman on a nearby seat struggled with a small boy. ‘Shh,’ the woman said, ‘stay still, why don’t you,’ and she tried to slide the slippery weight of him up on to her knee. No one knows, Nell thought as she looked down on the hurrying heads of the people below. No one knows that I’ve been chosen. And she almost flew forward as the bus came to a stop. The doors swished open, passengers streamed off, and one girl clattered up the stairs, breezy and beautiful, a silk scarf wound round her neck. Nell’s heart clamped tight. What if she’d been chosen, too? Nell knew it was crazy, but this was exactly the kind of girl that should be starting drama school, and she imagined them arriving together and being told, sorry, we’re over-subscribed, only one of you can stay.
The bus swung into the middle lane, and turned right by the prison. Nell watched the open plains of the triple-width road as the engine heaved and churned, and gathering speed, thundered up the hill. Large houses lined the way, flaking, dirty, with makeshift curtains, a sign for bed and breakfast beside one yellow door. Her parents had lived on this road once, right here, at the top of Camden, and then, when Nell was a baby they’d moved to Wiltshire, to a tidy, leaf-green village, where, after only a year, her father had declared that he was stifled. Nell began to count the roads, marking them off on her fingers, straining for the junction with York Way when the bus would slide under a bridge. She glanced at the girl, her face turned into sunlight, and pressed the bell. She didn’t move, didn’t even look round. And flooded with relief, Nell squeezed past her, and ran down the stairs.