Nell scribbled the details on a pad she kept by the phone. Mary Peacock. Stabbed and killed husband. Australia on a convict ship. Set up own refuge for women. ‘I should warn you,’ Nell’s new agent added, ‘they’re seeing everyone, the world and his wife, or should I say husband?’ He coughed, embarrassed. ‘The thing is, they don’t know what they’re looking for. A quality apparently, so just go along and . . . meet.’
‘They’re seeing everyone, apparently,’ Nell repeated the news to Sita when she came in from work.
‘Well, they’re not seeing me.’
‘True,’ Nell bit her lip.
Sita was temping as a receptionist for a software company specialising in games. She’d been working for this same firm, on and off, for a year, and although she insisted it was boring, it was clear to Nell she was unusually content. Sita emptied the contents of her carrier bag on to the table, – apples, satsumas, and a string bag of mixed nuts – hazels, walnuts and brazils. Their shells clinked seasonally. ‘Do we have a nutcracker?’
‘Probably,’ Nell pulled open a drawer. ‘Look, why don’t you call your agent and ask straight out, why you’re not being seen?’
‘I know why.’ Sita reached for the scissors and snipped through the taut diamonds of the orange string. ‘As far as the whole bloody business is concerned, I’m Asian, and no one wants to look beyond that. Anyway, the boss at work has asked if I can do maternity cover for Belinda. I’ll have to do a training day and commit to a minimum of six months.’
‘Six months!’ Nell retrieved the nutcracker from a dusty corner where it had lain since last Christmas, undisturbed.
‘I know. But then I thought, why not?’
Nell made tea and set it on the table. She still had the black-and-white polka-dot teapot Charlie had never bothered to reclaim. As soon as she’d become a film star Charlie had bought everything brand new. New furniture, new cutlery, new clothes. True, she wore the same flint and khaki outfits, casually thrown on, but instead of cotton, frayed and creased, now they were spun from cashmere and silk. If she ever made any money . . . Nell looked around the kitchen and sighed.
‘Maybe . . .’ Sita pulled out a chair. ‘I’ll let fate decide. I’ve got one more week before I have to commit, and if my agent hasn’t called by then . . . Can you imagine how my Dad will react when I tell him I’ve got a proper job? He’ll probably burst a blood vessel and die from sheer relief.’ Happily, Sita dug her nails into the skin of a tangerine.
Nell watched her. ‘None of this has anything to do with that guy Raj in Accounts, has it? I can just see it, after all your years of rebellion, you’re going to find a nice Hindu boy, get a reliable job and settle down.’
Sita’s eyes were shining. ‘You know what I will do if I take this job?’ The peel had come off in one soft piece, spongy as a starfish on the table. ‘I’ll book a holiday. An actual holiday. One where I’m not worried I’ll miss out on the chance of a lifetime the minute I arrive in the Algarve.’
‘Remember the time I gave in and went to Spain with my Mum and missed the audition for Twelfth Night? The director had asked for me specially, I’d done a workshop with her at the Actors’ Centre, and I know it’s stupid but I still think, that could have been it.’ Nell felt sickened, even now, just thinking about it. ‘But maybe it’s never like that. Maybe there is no such thing as a lucky break. Maybe you do well, or you don’t do well, and that’s how it is.’
‘Maybe,’ Sita shrugged. ‘But then there are always those stories about someone who didn’t work for five years, and then, just when they were about to go and train to be a plumber, it turns out they’re the only person in Britain who’s right to play Paul McCartney, and suddenly they’re in a West End musical, out at the Ivy every night, their wedding paid for by Hello!, going, “Oh, yes, I do have various projects in the pipeline, but I’m not sure which one I’ll do next.” ’
‘So how do people ever give up?’ Nell chose a hazelnut and with all her strength pressed down on the flimsy silver ends of the nutcracker. ‘There should be a support group – we could start one – Actors Anonymous.’ The nut slipped from its vice and flew across the room. ‘It would be so popular. In fact it’s probably why so many actors in LA go to AA. Most of them don’t even have a drinking problem. They’re actually looking for tips on how to give up acting.’ Nell sat back in her chair. ‘Sita. Do you remember when we were in youth theatre, and we did that improvised play about a women’s hostel, and that mad director, what was her name, made us all go off and spend the weekend at a battered wives’ home?’
‘Sure. But they’re not called that any more.’
‘True. It’s just this part, it’s for a woman – a victim of domestic abuse – who set up the first ever refuge in Australia. It’s a film about her life.’ Nell had a vision of Sita, as she was then, sixteen years old, sitting with the others in the basement kitchen of the hostel. She had her hair tied high up on her head, as if her mother might have done it, and she was wearing bright make-up, pink lipstick, and eye shadow of variegated blues. They’d all sat around that kitchen table, cradling their mugs of tea, turned away politely from a tall thin woman, newly arrived. The woman was dressed smartly, in dark trousers and a short belted coat, a doctor’s wife, they found out later, and she’d stood by the barred window, a handkerchief held up to her nose, her handbag tucked under her arm, and quietly cried.
‘Honestly, what were we thinking?’ Sita frowned. ‘Those poor women. Can you imagine? You finally escape your violent relationship only to find seven teenage members of a youth theatre looking you over and taking notes.’
‘We should never have gone.’ Nell could still feel the chill of her discomfort, watching the women on cooking duty, stirring metal pots of mince, drifting in and out of the steam of the potatoes boiling, ghostly, preoccupied, sad. ‘I mean, if we could have done anything to help, that would have been different, if we could have made them a meal, or . . . I don’t know, entertained them, sung some songs. Remember Binny? She was brilliant on the guitar . . .’
‘No more, no more,’ Sita began to sing, ‘no more . . . beating.’
Nell had forgotten there’d been songs, but unable to resist she joined in on the next line. ‘Women are not made for . . . hitting.’ Their voices swooped and chimed like Japanese. ‘Woman are not made for this.’
‘But what if it was good?’ Nell reconsidered. ‘If it made some kind of difference? Even if one person . . .’
‘I suppose that’s what we hoped,’ Sita agreed. ‘Someone saw it and thought, no, I’ll stand up for myself. Get help. Do you remember that girl who’d had to leave her baby?’
Nell had seen her, standing in the hall, holding on to herself so hard her fists were claws.
‘Is that hostel still there, do you think?’
Nell didn’t know. How strange to think it might have been there all these years, with its scarred front door, its empty windows, the silent hull of its basement kitchen, while she’d done A levels and struggled through drama school, played a penguin over one entire winter of five a.m. starts, won and lost agents, driven to Edinburgh, the mirror ball sparkling on the back seat of Sita’s car, performed fourteen sold-out shows at the festival, had an affair with a comedian. She’d endured ballet classes, tap classes, diets, jogs around the park, productions in cellars and above pubs all over London, and then they’d taken her and Sita’s show back up to Edinburgh, where, mysteriously, it had failed. ‘I hope it is still there,’ she decided. ‘I just hope it’s nicer now, that’s all.’
Nell expected nothing from the audition.
‘They’re seeing everyone,’ Hettie told her when they bumped into each other on the steps. ‘I was only in there for five minutes. The casting man looked girl-blind.’
‘How are you?’ She had on a purple coat with a fake fur collar and she looked more than ever like a little girl, dressed up.
‘Good,’ Hettie smiled. ‘I’m doing panto. Jack and the Beanstalk. I love this time of year, at least I always work. And you?’
‘Yes.’ Nell nodded. ‘All good.’ She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t mention she was still doing shifts at Pizza Express. ‘Have you seen any of the gang?’
‘Umm. Let’s think. Samantha. She’s not been working much. But she’s married. Unbelievable. They moved to Brighton. Jonathan’s not too bad. He’s helping out at the Terence Higgins Trust. It’s a miracle really. These new drugs he’s on. And Pierre. My God! Who’d have thought he’d be such a big shot at business? Have you seen his new offices? You know he’s done a deal with Saudi Arabia. He’s virtually in charge of all the telecommunications in the middle east.’
‘Yes.’ Nell beamed. ‘And Dan?’
Hettie clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘Did you not hear? Jemma’s pregnant again. With twins!’
‘No.’ Nell frowned. ‘But didn’t they just have another baby?’
‘I know. It was an accident, apparently. They went away without the children. For the first time in God knows how long, and . . . well . . . they must have got carried away because when they got back . . . last time I spoke to Jem she was in tears . . . but then she cheered up and said at least there’d be lots of people to visit them when they’re old.’
‘True.’ Nell had a pang, as she always did, at news of Dan. And then, as if the hurts had merged together, a vision of the stage manager rose up before her, his mortified face and desperate protestations when she’d misguidedly taken the train to visit him a week earlier than promised. ‘I’d better go.’ Nell forced a smile. ‘Lovely to see you. And good luck with the panto. Where is it? Maybe I’ll come.’
‘Basingstoke.’ They kissed. ‘But honestly, don’t worry.’
‘I’ll try. I’ll bring my nephew.’ Nell ran up the steps and in through the door of the building. She gave her name and waited with a row of other girls to be seen.
Mary Peacock. Nell took a breath and pulled out her scribbled notes. Stabbed and killed husband. Australia on a convict ship. She could see Mary, a young woman in nineteenth-century clothes, a worn grey petticoat and a shawl. She imagined her life, up at dawn, cleaning out the grate, stirring porridge, keeping the children quiet while her husband slept. She was most likely limping, or wincing with the pain of a cracked rib, but Mary knew better than to complain. It was always this way. Or had been since a year into their marriage when their first child, a boy, was born all twisted round and wrong. An idiot, the baby was declared, with half a brain, and her husband had fixed his cold accusing eye on her. Now he turned vicious whenever he was drunk. Jibes and taunts, flashes of raw fury if any small thing was out of place. Mary Peacock had three more children, although the youngest, another boy, was weak as milk. She’d sat up late with him, soothing and rocking, until they’d both fallen asleep before the fire. ‘Will you drive me mad!’ She was woken with a kick, and after hours of soothing, the child began to cry. ‘Please,’ she begged, ‘have patience, I’ll build the fire up again,’ but he dragged her from the chair and flung her back against the wall. It was then, it must have been, that her blood rose so high it choked her, and blind with it, she seized the knife from the table and wheeled around. Nell felt her heart swell. What must it be like to take revenge? To lose yourself so completely in the moment that nothing else is there? She thought of Harold Rabnik and his wine-soaked tongue. And with Mary Peacock, she flung herself forward and plunged the knife into his chest.
‘Nell Gilby.’
Flustered, Nell stood up. ‘Yes. That’s me.’ She scrabbled for her notes, and her heart beating, her cheeks flushed, she walked into the room.
‘Right.’ The casting director had found her photograph, the new one her new agent had asked her to have done. ‘So.’ He looked at her, patient, already a little bored, but just as he was about to speak a police siren exploded in the street below. Nell, fresh from her scene of violence, started. ‘That’s me they’re coming for, most likely,’ she laughed, and she saw something light up in the casting director’s eyes.
Nell’s agent was staggered. ‘The director wants to see you. Tomorrow, first thing. So it went well?’
‘I think so. It was odd. We started talking and . . . I don’t know . . .’ Terror overcame her. Now she’d got this far, all there was left to do was mess it up.
‘So, same place. Go along at 10. They’ll probably put you on tape. I’ll fax over some pages.’
‘Apparently,’ Sita warned her later, ‘it’s the first eleven seconds that are crucial. It’s not to say it can’t go wrong after that, but if you’re going to get the job, you’re going to get it then.’
That night Nell couldn’t sleep. ‘That’s me they’re coming for, most likely.’ The line that had saved her swam round inside her head, but she couldn’t use it, not again. It seemed so tantalising that only yesterday there was nothing to lose. Now there was everything. ‘That’s me they’re coming for,’ she twisted in her bed, clutching at the cool hot water bottle. ‘That’s me.’
Sita brought her in tea before she left for work. ‘Remember,’ she took hold of Nell’s hand in both of hers. She had beautiful hands, fine and strong, with white gold rings on every finger, given to her by her father for each significant year. ‘They need someone to play the lead in this film or it won’t get made.’
‘Yes,’ Nell nodded. Fear still gripped her. ‘I see what you’re saying,’ and she promised to stay calm.
Nell scanned the faces of the people on the Tube. There was one girl, with auburn hair and clear pale skin, whom Nell felt sure was going to the audition too. But then she remembered how on her first day of college she’d been convinced that every person she passed was going to be in her year. Nell closed her eyes and thought about the women’s hostel, and how in the middle of that first night she’d been woken by a scuffle. She’d lain there, paralysed, convinced that someone was trying to break in. It had happened before, the youth theatre director had told them. A man had come to the house, claiming to be an electrician, sent by the council to mend the heating, but when the door was opened, he’d pushed his way inside. He’d run from room to room, howling for his wife, and when he found her, he’d dragged her out on to the doorstep and stabbed her in the stomach.
But that night, there was no man trying to break in – just a woman, pleading to be let out. ‘Leave me alone!’ There was a gasp, and Nell heard Pat, who ran the place, grumble and then swear.
‘I’m sorry,’ the woman sobbed, ‘but I left the children. I have to get home.’ The front door shuddered open, and Nell crept from her bed. She crawled past the sleeping bodies of her friends, reaching the window in time to see the doctor’s wife step out into the night. Nell looked along the street, expecting the woman’s husband to jump out from behind a bush, ready to attack her, expertly, so it wouldn’t show, but there was no one there. The woman looked surprised too. She whipped round, and seeing no one, stalked off along the empty road.
‘Nell!’ The casting director looked genuinely pleased to see her. ‘Let me take your coat.’ The director was there too. He shook Nell’s hand and looked her over with hungry, hopeful eyes. ‘Take a minute to read through this scene, it’s just come through.’ He adjusted a camera on a tripod, tilting it to point straight at her chair.
Nell read the new scene through so fast the words blurred before her eyes. Mary Peacock was in court, pleading for her life, while a judge summed up her crimes. ‘Shame,’ someone called from the public gallery, and Nell felt her blood rise. Shame on you, she would have yelled back, but the script dictated she stay quiet.
‘Ready?’ The director smiled at her when she looked up. He was tall, and palely handsome – shadowy, as if he’d been inside too long. The casting director took a seat beside her. ‘One minute.’ The red light of the camera blinked. ‘OK. When you’re ready you can start.’
Mary Peacock was defending herself. There had been no agreement that she should, but as the judge raised his hammer to proclaim the sentence, she pushed herself forward in the dock and begged to be allowed to speak. Nell imagined herself to be the doctor’s wife, lunging round in terror in the empty street, and she wondered what had happened when that woman arrived home, whether for the sake of her children she’d endured her punishment, or whether she’d taken a knife from the kitchen and treading upstairs, soft on the soft carpet, she’d plunged the blade into her husband’s heart.
Nell knew she was fighting for her life. Her voice was low and desperate, her eyes wild, and she kept in mind the hovering knowledge that even if Mary saved herself from hanging she’d lost all chance of seeing her children again.
‘Very nice,’ the director mused, and the casting director patted her on the arm.
They read another scene. Mary was in Australia now. She was older by some years, and after several entanglements of a violent sexual nature, she’d found a saviour who’d taken her in. He’d conveniently died not long after, leaving her his house, and Mary had turned this building into a refuge for any woman who had been abused. But now, not for the first time, the house had been mistaken for a brothel. A group of men were baying outside the window while Mary pushed a chest against the door. There were three other women, one older, two hardly more than girls, but it was Mary Peacock who yelled down to the men to get off home or she’d come out with a shotgun and send them on their way.
‘You’re a lot of ignorant, disgusting pigs,’ she hollered after them, as she took aim from a window, and even after they’d turned tail she kept throwing insults into the night.
‘Very nice,’ the director nodded, and he looked at her, searching, before asking her to read again.
As Nell walked towards the Tube, head down against the biting wind, she had an irresistible desire to call Charlie. She hadn’t seen so much of her this year, as Charlie had been based in Manchester, playing a detective opposite an actor she considered second rate. She’d made the mistake of seducing him before they’d finished filming the first series, and after that, as she’d told Nell in various dejected late-night calls, she despised him more than ever.
‘So how are you?’ Nell asked her now, and she slowed to take in the flow of woe and vitriol that poured into her ear. There’d been a perfect job, in America, playing some big star’s girlfriend, but at the last moment the producer had insisted on another girl, a white girl, and as from today she was out of the running. ‘My agent says the producer’s racist, but I’m not sure. I’ve lost my looks, that’s the thing.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Nell tutted, sympathetic, disbelieving. They’d had this conversation before.
‘And you?’ Charlie asked, distracted.
Nell took her voice down to a casual tone as she replied, ‘Actually, I’ve just been up for a film.’
‘Really?’
‘I saw the casting director yesterday, and he wanted the director to meet me. Ciaran Conway. He made that . . .’
‘Yes.’ Charlie was impatient. ‘I know Ciaran. I saw him a month or so ago for dinner. In fact I must find out what hap . . . It’s not that post-apocalyptic thing, is it, tribes of lost souls wandering through a desert?’
‘This one’s historical. But it is set in Australia.’
‘Not Mary Peacock?’
‘Yes.’
‘Bloody hell!’
‘I know.’ Nell felt uncomfortable. Guilty almost. ‘It’s starting straight after Christmas. Can you imagine being in the middle of the Outback for New Year?’
There was silence. ‘Fuck. I was still waiting to hear about that other thing.’ She sounded winded. ‘I guess that’s not going to happen now.’
Nell pulled her coat round her. ‘Well, I’ve no idea what’s actually going on. I think they’ve got to send my tape over to America.’ She turned her back into the wind, which was cut with splinters of sharp rain. ‘I’ll tell you what. I’ll call you later. When I know more.’
‘But Nell,’ Charlie wasn’t ready to let it go.
‘What?’
‘You’re not up for Mary, are you?’
‘I think so . . . yes.’
There was a quick intake of breath. ‘That’s brilliant. I’ll tell you what, I’ll phone Maisie for you now and see what’s going on.’
‘Great,’ Nell frowned. ‘Good idea.’ And she ran into the shelter of the Tube.
Nell resisted phoning her own agent. She knew he’d be in touch if there was any news. She made herself lunch and looked over her Christmas present list, flicking satisfying ticks beside the names of those people she already had gifts for, and scribbling notes and question marks beside the more impossible members of her family – her father, her brother-in-law, her mother’s boyfriend, Lewis. What could any of them possibly want? She sighed. Maybe that was the problem with men. They didn’t need anything. At least, they didn’t need anything from her. The phone rang, and her heart flipped. But it was only her mother. ‘I was just checking, you’re not a vegetarian or anything at the moment?’
‘No,’ Nell rolled her eyes.
‘And I was wondering, too. Will you be bringing anyone with you for Christmas? I’m imagining not, as you haven’t mentioned it, but before I get everything organised I thought I’d better check.’
‘Actually, Mum,’ Nell felt her heart quickening again, ‘I’m not sure if I’ll get home for Christmas now.’
There was a silence, into which Nell felt all her mother’s hopes and aspirations tumble together in confusion. ‘Is it . . . do you . . . ?’
‘Oh Mum, it probably won’t happen. But I’m up for a film and if I get it . . .’ Her mother squealed. ‘. . . if I get it, I’ll have to be in Australia by the twenty-eighth, and everyone says it’s better to stop, somewhere like Japan, on the way, so you’re not so jetlagged, so I don’t know if I’ll have time . . .’
‘Don’t worry,’ her mother cut in. ‘It doesn’t matter at all. Wait to see what happens and if it’s at all possible, well, that will be a bonus. You know, someone, maybe even Lewis, could always drive you to the airport on Boxing Day.’
‘Oh, it probably won’t happen.’ Nell dreaded the thought of spending three hours in a car with Lewis, with his whistling and his attempts at celebrity gossip, and the polite need for a goodbye embrace which had never felt the same since one late night in the kitchen on a trip home from college, when he’d made a drunken grope for her. If only, she thought, she had the courage to become a lesbian, then the whole lot of them could go and fuck themselves. She let out a breathy gasp of laughter and her mother paused in her plans.
‘Nell?’
‘It’s nothing. Look, I shouldn’t have said anything. Really. Assume I’m coming, on my own, gagging for turkey, and I’ll let you know if anything changes.’
‘OK, my love.’ Nell felt her mother smile. And she thought not for the first time how much they both needed her to succeed.
Nell sat with the phone in her lap. How did she know she wouldn’t be happier with a woman if she never tried it? She felt again the swirling, melting lick of fire, as Charlie’s narrow tongue pushed into her mouth. But she’d never wanted to be kissed by any other girl. And not really even by Charlie after that. In her dreams it was a man she longed for. Someone without the inquisitive chatter, the endless intricate memory for who did what and when. A stranger was what she wanted, mysterious, unknown. She dreamt quite regularly about this stranger. How he’d lay his body over hers, draping himself across her feet. I love you, I love every part of you, he’d repeat through her sleep, and Nell would wake, filled up to the brim. Once she’d dreamt about Sita, the two of them, their bodies entwined, their fingers tracing patterns on each other’s skin, but that was only after the stage manager had asked if they’d ever had an affair. ‘No!’ she’d laughed, and she’d attempted to explain how deeply, passionately, girls could love their friends.
The next time the phone rang it was Charlie. ‘Right.’ She was matter of fact. ‘I’ve spoken to Maisie and what she says is this. There are two actresses in the running and they’re both unknowns. The execs in LA will watch their tapes, and then they’ll decide.’
‘Really?’ Nell glanced at herself in the mirror. ‘The money men. Is it really up to them?’
‘Not always, but sometimes. Or occasionally the director likes to make them feel they’ve made the decision. But usually he’ll push forward his favourite.’
‘By when, did Maisie say? I mean, when will they decide?’
‘Soon, I imagine. Maybe today.’
‘Oh my God.’ Nell gasped to catch her breath. ‘I wish I knew who she was. The other girl.’
‘There’s always another girl,’ Charlie said wistfully. ‘Although, occasionally, the other girl is you.’
Nell sat for a while in the chilly flat, and then, pulling on her thickest coat, she slipped her mobile phone into the pocket and went out for a walk. The street outside was quiet and grey. A car sped by, racing over puddles, sending out an arc of filthy spray. Nell kept close to the cropped hedges, releasing a shower of chandelier droplets each time her shoulder nudged against the hidden twigs. At the roundabout she ran across the open plains of tarmac, trudged up and down the humpbacked bridge, thinking as she always did of Billy Goat Gruff heading for the meadow, and as if she really had evaded the ogre, there ahead of her was the green oval of Queens Park. It was bordered by large houses with bright painted doors, curlicues of white wooden detail on their eaves. There was a playground in the park, which must have always been there, but which Nell had only noticed as her thirtieth birthday loomed. There was a café too, from which she bought a takeaway cup of tea. She wrapped her hands around the cardboard cup, and ambled on under the great bare trees, glancing across the road as the houses grew even larger, imagining their warm wood interiors, the mess of Wellington boots and toys, the smell of fish fingers, cakes cooling on a tray. In one doorway a woman was haranguing two small girls, buttoned up in woollen coats, their faces tilted in mute bewilderment. ‘I don’t want to say it again,’ she scolded. Nell turned away, unwilling to have her fantasy interrupted, and walked on round the perimeter path. There was her favourite house, a dolls’ Regency villa in one window and in another a stained-glass nativity scene made from tissue and black card. Light from a lamp illuminated the colours, the gold of the star, the red flames of the fire flickering between brown twigs. That’s what I’ll do, she decided, I’ll decorate the window of our flat, and stopping at the newsagent at the end of her road, she used her Saturday night waitressing tips to buy a stack of tissue paper and some card. As she left the shop she checked her phone. There was one missed call, how could that be possible? But when she pressed on it she saw it was only her sister, acting, she imagined, as their mother’s envoy for more news.
Nell laid out the card on the kitchen table, and carefully sketched a palm tree, a camel and a star. She attempted a baby in a manger, but it looked like a banana, so instead she drew three kings with crowns like castle turrets, their bodies draped in capes. Slowly she began to cut, and as she sliced into the card she dreamt up her new life. She’d move from here. Leave behind the draughty bedroom, the condemned boiler in the bathroom, whose words of warning she’d read so often they’d lost all sense of threat. She smiled to think of her landlord’s surprise when finally, after all these years, she’d tell him she was going. Would he apologise for not making the promised repairs, never replacing the mouldy carpet or mending the leak in the roof? Maybe he’d offer to reward her in some way for the floorboards she and Sita had spent a weekend painting after they’d pulled the carpet up themselves. More likely than not he’d insist that they replace it. Nell glanced up at the pale-blue kitchen, the cloud effects they’d sponged on to the ceiling, the stencils of fruit and vegetables they’d sprayed on to the cupboard doors. But maybe Sita wouldn’t want to move? Maybe she’d want to keep the flat on, split the rent with Raj?
Her mobile rang and she nicked her finger in her rush to answer. ‘Hi,’ she said, and she tensed her whole body for her agent’s news.
‘Right.’ He sounded neither exuberant nor mournful. ‘You’re in the running. That’s the good news. But there are two other girls.’
‘Two?’ Nell mouthed hopelessly.
‘It’s ultimately up to the director to make his choice, but the money men have to agree it. They don’t need the girl to be well known, they’ve got a big Australian soap star, Wayne Hull, playing the male lead, and a grand Dame of the theatre – Judi possibly – doing a cameo.’
Nell pressed the phone against her ear. ‘So . . . will . . . when do they have to decide by? I mean, do they want me to go back in, read again or anything?’
‘Maybe. But not for the moment. Let’s just sit tight.’
‘OK.’ Nell was too stunned to ask him anything else.
‘We’ll talk later, all right?’
‘OK.’ Nell took up her knife again and sliced out the first king, giving a jagged ridge to his crown, leaving a sliver of light the length of his staff. She tore off a corner of tissue and pasted it over the star, and deciding it was insufficient, she glued on two more layers. She held it against the window to admire her work, and realised with a shock that it was dark. She was due to start her shift at half past five. Hastily she piled everything up at one end of the table, changed into her uniform of black skirt and red T-shirt, the material of which she’d come to hate. No news yet. She scrawled a note for Sita, and she ran out of the door.
It was only when she reached the Tube that she found she’d forgotten her phone. Alarm coursed through her, and she had to reach out and steady herself as if the phone was as integral a part of her as the joints in her knees. Should she go back? She could do it in ten minutes if she ran, but she was late already, and the thought of being reprimanded by the manager Sadiq – until last week a waiter himself – made her baulk. I’ll call when I’m there, she decided, and she stepped on to the escalator.
Sadiq eyed her dispassionately as she rushed in. ‘We’ve got a party of twenty booked for six fifteen,’ he said. ‘I’ve put them in your station, so you better get going.’ The tables were empty. No knives and forks or napkins, just sprigs of flowers in thumbnail vases. Honestly, she thought. It was already five to six. She’d lay up and then ask if she could use the phone, say it was an emergency, her mother was ill. No, she couldn’t risk her mother’s health. She didn’t even feel willing to hex Lewis, much as she despised him. She clattered down the cutlery, and flew round with a pile of napkins. Her grandmother then, who was already dead. She was setting out water glasses when the group of twenty appeared at the door, coats and hats and umbrellas dripping, laughing and talking, released from the office early. Nell approached the manager. ‘Can I . . .’ but without waiting to hear her he thrust a pile of menus into her arms. ‘Get their orders fast as possible, this table needs to be free again by 7.45.’
Nell turned away. There was probably no news anyway. What did it matter? She’d be working here for the rest of her life, she might as well accept it, and smiling the length of the long table she handed the menus round.
The worst thing about large groups was that no one could remember what they wanted to eat. ‘Calzone,’ they’d linger over the menu, ‘or salad Niçoise? But twenty minutes later, although they’d opted for the calzone, there was not a single nod of recognition when the food arrived. ‘Calzone!’ Nell would shout, the plates hot and heavy in her hand. But there was only a babble of talk and a bank of flushed and blinking faces. Occasionally a meal had to be taken back to the kitchen, unclaimed, and it was only when everyone had been served and one customer sat forlornly at an empty place, that they’d finally remember – the word dawning on them like a brand-new thought: calzone.
Nell didn’t get a break till nearly ten. She took her salad and a glass of diet Coke to the steel table at the back of the kitchen. ‘How you?’ Dragan, the Croatian washer-upper, asked. Politeness dictated that she respond with a question of her own, but it always seemed cruel to torment him. His English, even after all this time, was almost non-existent, and when he did finally manage to make a sentence, the news he had to impart was usually sad. ‘My girlfriend, she gone home,’ he managed. ‘My baby. She not well.’ Nell scrunched her face in sorrow and crunched a lettuce leaf with Thousand Island dressing. What if she never did come to work here again? She looked round at the white tiled walls, the tall tin prep tables, the towering piles of crockery. At the open kitchen, their faces to the diners, the chefs performed in their pirate-striped T-shirts, spinning dough and sprinkling cheeses, arranging olives, sliding pizzas in and out of the furnace of their ship.
It was after twelve before the last customer was ushered out, the tables cleared and wiped, the tips divided. Nell pulled on her coat, and as she was about to step out into the night she turned and ran through to the kitchen where Dragan was loading coffee cups into the machine. ‘Goodbye,’ she said, and seeing his surprise at this unnecessary exchange, she wrote her mobile number on a napkin. ‘Just in case you ever need advice or anything . . . to talk to someone . . . you know . . .’
Dragan didn’t attempt to reach for the well of words that usually evaded him. Instead he smiled, and with a solemn dip of his head, he tucked the napkin into his pocket and turned back to his work.
Outside, the temperature had dropped. Nell took in a deep cold breath of air and lifted her face into the night as one white, star-shaped flake floated down towards her. ‘It’s snowing,’ she said to two men heaving drunkenly by, and for a moment they took hold of her arms and the three of them swung along together down the street. Nell laughed and disentangled herself. There were more flakes now, soft as feathers, melting as they neared the ground. She wrapped her coat around her and hurried towards the Tube. Outside, she bought an Evening Standard, her attention caught by the photograph on the front page – a gaunt, bearded Saddam Hussein, looking up at the uniformed legs of American soldiers from a hole in the ground. Everywhere she looked people were staring at the image. A tyrant brought low. How long had he been hiding in that hole? she wondered, and she had to fight off the impulse to feel sorry for him.
When Nell got out at her stop the snow had thickened to a blizzard. Fat flakes swirled and settled, picking up again, gusting on to rooftops, lying still. The grey streets were transformed. Roof tiles made beautiful with icing, window ledges sweet as gingerbread. Nell kicked her way along the road, smiling at anyone who passed her, assuming a temporary truce in the malevolence that was usually brewing at this hour of the night. Her footsteps fell silent, her face tingled, and occasionally she caught a wafer-thin offering of snow on her tongue.
At home the lights were out, all except the one lamp Sita left on for her if she’d gone to bed, but even from the foot of the stairs she could see her phone on the hall table, blinking out the news of a missed call. She laid her hand on it, and fumbling with her gloved finger, she pressed the message. ‘Must have missed you.’ It was her agent, breezy, cheerful. ‘Call me back. Soon as you can.’
Her heart pounded. Her face scalded, red, and then the cold that had been collecting froze her blood. She listened to the message again, straining for meaning in every inflection. Was that actually excitement there? Or was it simply his professional determination to continue now that they knew the worst? Nell tiptoed along the corridor to Sita’s room. The light was off, but even so, she stood hopefully outside her door. Just as she was about to turn away, she heard Sita’s sleepy voice. ‘Nellie, is that you?’
Nell inched her door open and crept into the gloom. She sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘What do you think?’ Sita held the phone to her ear.
Sita sat up. ‘Must have missed you.’ Her agent’s voice vibrated between them. ‘Call me back. Soon as you can.’
Sita frowned and examined the phone as if its small stout body could reveal the truth.
‘Have I got the job?’ Nell winced, when Sita didn’t speak, and Sita laid her head back on the pillow.
‘I actually, honestly, think you might have.’
The two girls screamed and clutched each other’s hands. ‘But I’m only guessing, it’s just why would he phone like that if you hadn’t?’
‘I know, that’s what I was thinking.’ Nell hadn’t allowed herself to think anything of the sort, or if she had, just for the smallest second. ‘Soon as you can,’ she echoed. She leapt up and tugged at the blind. ‘Have you seen?’ A cotton-wool curtain of snow fell vertically down.
Sita took up the phone again and pressed it to her ear.
‘What are you doing?’ Nell asked.
‘I’m calling.’
Nell wrestled it from her hand. ‘It’s one in the morning,’ she was laughing, ‘and anyway, it’s an office, there won’t be anyone there.’
‘But it’s so exciting,’ Sita insisted.
‘I know.’ Nell climbed into the warm bed beside her. ‘Or it might be,’ and they chatted and planned and watched the snow plunging past the window, inching themselves towards morning and the moment when, officially, Nell’s life might be about to change.