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I turned and carried on up the hill and then, after a decent amount of time had passed, I looked back. She was going into M&S too, her bag over her shoulder, her ponytail swishing from side to side as she walked. Even if she didn’t seem that enamoured with her job, it must be nice to have a normal routine, to be home at a reasonable hour and know you were getting a pay cheque at the end of the month. I craved that sometimes. Maybe if I’d done better in my GCSEs and not lost confidence in myself at the final hurdle, I could have had options now. Not that I wanted to give up on acting, I loved it too much. But it would be nice to know that there was other stuff I could do if I wanted to.
At the pub, I checked my phone for about the hundredth time that day. Still nothing from Lightning Productions. I sneaked into the staffroom before I started my shift and tried calling Chad to see if he’d heard anything, but his gatekeeper of an assistant informed me that he was currently taking phone calls from LA only and would be unavailable for the rest of the day. Chad had a handful of A-list clients who between them were cast in about ninety per cent of the decent roles on British TV and had mostly broken into Hollywood. This was another downside to having a top agent: they were literally impossible to get hold of.
When I got back out to the bar, a pissed off-looking guy was waving a tenner at me.
‘Sorry, mate,’ I said. ‘What can I get you?’
I pulled his pint of Staropramen, wiped the bar down, refilled the tonic waters, all the while itching to look at my phone again. One call could change everything. I needed one chance, that was all. I could do a brilliant job with Samuel, I knew I could; I’d proved it at the audition.
‘Earth to Jack,’ said Luke, sidling up behind me. ‘What’s up?’
Me and Luke had worked together at The Lyndhurst, a decent enough pub ‘in the heart of Hampstead Village’, since I’d started there three Christmases ago. We’d hit it off right away, despite being different in almost every way possible. He was perfectly happy working in a pub, for example. He had absolutely no ambition to be anything else, and in some ways I envied him that. This relentless feeling that I wanted more, that I needed more, meant that I was rarely – if ever – satisfied.
‘I haven’t heard anything about that casting,’ I said, propping up my chin in the heel of my hand. Thankfully, it wasn’t a particularly busy night and I couldn’t wait for my shift to end.
‘How long’s it usually take, then?’ asked Luke, opening the glass washer and letting out an explosion of steam.
I shrugged. ‘Could be an hour, could be a month. You never really know, that’s what’s so stressful. It’s not like you can think: oh well, it’s three days since my audition and I haven’t heard anything so I can’t have got it.’
‘Don’t they even let you know?’ asked Luke, wiping his hands on the front of his straight-cut jeans. He always wore indigo denim and brown desert boots; when he found something he liked, he saw no reason to change it up.
‘Nope,’ I replied, absent-mindedly polishing the beer tap.
‘So you’re left hanging?’
‘Crap, isn’t it?’
That was an understatement. Luke was the only person at The Lyndhurst I’d really talked to about my acting stuff, but even he had his limits. I didn’t want to sound miserable all of the time.
Luke reached across me to put some glasses on the shelf. ‘You might still be in with a chance, you know. What would the next step be, then? Would you have to go in and do one of those chemistry tests with some hot leading actress?’
I laughed. ‘Doubt it.’
‘Shame,’ said Luke. ‘It’s a tough industry, dude. I don’t envy you, man.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s what I love doing, though, that’s the thing.’
Luke looked dubious. ‘You could find something else to love.’
A group of lads came in. They looked like a bunch of estate agents from one of those posh offices on the high street, just finished work by the look of it. I got ready to take their orders.
‘It’s not as bad as it sounds, you know,’ I said, wanting to convince Luke that I wasn’t completely nuts. ‘The buzz you get from being on stage, the chance to be somebody else for an hour or two, it makes it all seem worth it.’
‘I suppose,’ he said, conscientiously wiping smears off a wine glass. ‘I couldn’t do it.’
It was hard for people who weren’t actors to understand why you put yourself through it when the odds of success were so low. I wondered for a second what Rebecca did. Whether it was anything creative; whether she’d get it. I didn’t think so; I reckoned she had one of those jobs where a ruthless determination to move up the corporate ladder (which I imagined she was very good at) was the only thing that mattered.
I quickly checked my phone again as one of the estate agent lads approached the bar. Nothing. It was nearly seven; I was hardly going to hear now, was I?
