Chapter Eight
Lila
When the storm broke, it was like summer had arrived. The shooting schedule settled back to daytime hours after a couple of long, wet nights and they finally concluded filming in the field and around the tree. The grass turned dry and crunchy underfoot and the sun rose, making everything around them warm and vibrant. Lila felt like a little burst of that sunshine was glowing in her heart too.
She was doing it. She was working on a film, as a junior MUA and not entirely screwing it up. She was in a beautiful country with people who had been strangers but who she was gradually getting to know. Sibyl was still terrifying of course, and she knew she was being labelled as “the quiet one” but that was okay.
Some days she was exhausted, but it wasn’t as easy to tell whether that was from being around everyone or just from the long days. And when she was lying in bed at the end of the day, her mind still tried to follow paths to all those awkward moments in her day. But just as often she remembered how Rowan had seen her: drunk, crying, confessing to her irrational level of anxiety, and that he’d treated her just like normal.
His “normal” being kind and comfortable – and honest as well, she thought. There was a level of trust between them now because she’d bared a piece of her soul and found him to have nothing but compassion for her.
Taking the continuity photos and removing his makeup was, without doubt, the moment she most looked forward to every day. Like he’d said, they weren’t doing anything wrong, so she didn’t need to worry about people talking about them. It was ten to fifteen minutes of them doing their jobs and wrapping up for the day. No one had made any insinuating comments about them. No one had even noticed, as far as Lila could tell.
She was used to people not noticing her of course. But Rowan was a different matter. People still talked about him dating Cassandra and she supposed that all the while that rumour was floating around, the idea that anything would be happening with someone like her was just too ridiculous to consider. Not that anythingwashappening of course. But being locked in the storeroom together and him taking her back to his villa would have raised eyebrows. This easy familiarity and enjoyment of each other’s company was entirely innocent.
Okay. Not entirely. She had a massive crush on him. How could she not? The more she got to know him, the more she saw what a genuine person he was. As beautiful inside as he was on the outside, and she counted herself lucky to be getting to know him. He was proving things to her, like how not everyone would think she was a freak, and how it was possible to live your life without worrying about what people thought of you. She wasn’t anywhere near that yet, but just knowing youcouldbe like that, and still be a compassionate person, was helpful. She loved what he’d said about caring how he made people feel, rather than what people thought about him. It was like a mantra she knew she could do with fixing permanently in her head. And the simple fact of how he chatted to her proved that famous, attractive people were just people too.
She was trying to keep that front and centre in her mind this morning, because Stan Gillian was arriving for his first day on set. Sibyl had arranged for them to all be picked up twenty minutes earlier than usual so that they could make sure the trailer was spotless and bring in a selection of food from the canteen for him, because apparently that was the routine he preferred.
Sibyl was at the morning meeting with Wesley and the other “heads of”, and Ruth had nipped out to the honey wagon, so Lila decided to take a moment to do something she hadn’t done in months. Read the letter she’d received from her brother.
Dear Lila
I want to introduce myself to you. I’m Stephen and I’m your half-brother, who you have most likely never heard of before. I only found out about you this summer, so I’m sorry, I know this might come as a shock that leaves you feeling off-balance, angry and sad. I felt all those things too.
I’m thirty-three years old and I’m British, like our father, Trevor. He left me when I was three and I only tracked him down this year because my mother, who passed away recently, left him something. Actually, that wasn’t the only reason I tracked him down. I also wanted to draw a line under my connection to him. His reputation has haunted me my entire life. The way he let my mother and I down has haunted me all my life too. I don’t like him. I don’t think I can ever forgive him, and I wanted to look him in the eye and show him that he missed out and that his leaving was actually the best thing that ever happened to me. I wanted to show him he didn’t matter to me in the slightest and then move on and forget about him.
But then he told me about you. About how he’d done the same thing, all over again to another woman and another child in New York. That I had a sister. And I was livid – not just because he had been so irresponsible and selfish again, but because he had made it impossible for me to forget and walk away. I already have a brother; his name is Nick and he’s five years younger than me. My mum remarried an amazing man called David, who showed me how a real dad was supposed to act, and Nick came along shortly after.
I don’t know if you have any other siblings but, for me, the relationship I have with my brother is something so valuable to me, it’s inconceivable for me not to want to reach out to you and tell you that I’m here. Nick and I argue and clash, but ultimately, no one understands me the way he does, no one gets what it was like to grow up in our house, with our family, what things spark nostalgia, what things bring back bad memories, and who our Mum and Dad (the dad who raised me) truly were behind closed doors, tucking us in at night or telling us off. I know we can’t ever have that shared bond, but we understand something about each other that no one else can as well.
We know what it’s like to have a biological father like Trevor, who didn’t deserve us.
I would love to meet you and get to know you, but I will also understand if you never want to even think about me, ever again. I’m going to be working in New York for the rest of the summer but my girlfriend lives here in New York so I will be visiting as much as I can. Let me know a time and place and I’ll do my best to make it happen.
If you decide not to, I wish with all my heart that you have a good life and that you don’t let Trevor’s treatment of you and your mother taint your view of yourself or the world. And if you ever need me, I’m just an email or a phone call away.
Stephen
It was funny but the thing she’d always remembered most clearly from reading it before was how he said he could never have the same bond with her as he had with his brother Nick.
But that wasn’t entirely what he’d been saying. He was also saying that because he was so close to his brother, it was compelling him to seek her out. It sounded like he was optimistic that they could share a different kind of bond. Maybe that made it worth at leasttryingto sit down and write an email to him.
She folded the letter up and was just putting it away in her handbag when Stan Gillian arrived.
Lila’s heart hammered hard at the base of her throat when he strode in. He wasn’t a big man physically. In fact, he was surprisingly short, but then Lila was coming to realise that camera angles could do all sorts to distort reality. For two days they’d been capturing the part of the film where Rowan had been stuck in the middle of a tree, but in reality, he’d only been sitting on one of the lower limbs. It still hadn’t looked very comfortable though.
‘Good morning, young lady.’ Stan smiled at her and headed straight for one of the chairs. He turned the chair towards her and reached out his hand for her to shake. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Lila.’ She walked over and offered her hand in return.
‘Lila,’ he repeated, closing his other hand over the top of hers. The added weight on her outstretched hand forced her to lean forward awkwardly. ‘Very pretty name for a very pretty girl.’
She flushed, wanting her hand back from where it was sandwiched between his thick fingers and uncomfortably warm palms, but short of yanking it away, she wasn’t sure how to do it.
He looked her up and down with a smile and leaned back. ‘Don’t say much, do you? Will you be doing my makeup this morning?’
Her mouth immediately dried up and she felt the dreaded blush suffusing her cheeks. She swallowed to try and get some moisture back, wishing that everyone else was here.
