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14
Jack
I popped into Le Pain Quotidien on the corner and treated myself to two chocolate croissants. I clearly wasn’t going to get a Tom Hardy-esque body if I kept eating like this, but it was one of those days when I thought: Fuck it, I need junk food.
Just as I’d stuffed a fistful of flaky pastry into my mouth, my phone rang. I chewed manically, wiping my hands on my jeans.
‘Hello?’ I said, swallowing hard because it was Chad calling and that could only mean one thing, surely. Good news. Otherwise why would he bother? He didn’t usually.
‘Jack, it’s Chad. I got your voicemail.’
‘Yeah?’
‘And your emails.’
I winced. ‘OK. Yeah, I just … I thought it went really well at the casting and I was just wondering whether I—’
‘You didn’t get a recall.’
I stopped dead, right there in the street. ‘What?’
Chad was doing that thing where he was typing an email to somebody else at the same time as having a conversation with me. I knew that whatever I said, he’d only be half listening.
‘What did they say?’ I asked.
It was always best to know, that was my policy. However hard it was to hear at the time, however demoralising, you might be able to take something away from it. All that learning lines and staying up to think about character and rewatching endless hours of Middle-East-set dramas wouldn’t have been for nothing.
‘They said they really liked you and thought you did an excellent job with the script, but they went with a name in the end. They’re going to keep you in mind for something else.’
I pinched the top of my nose. ‘So that’s it, then?’
‘No need to sound so miserable, Jack. I think it all sounds very positive.’
This was not Chad trying to soften the blow, this was him trying to get out of having a maudlin conversation with me about why my career had stalled. Not once had he ever been sympathetic or kind or any of the other things I’d naively thought a theatrical agent might be.
‘I’m getting a bit desperate here, Chad, to tell you the truth.’
‘Sorry, Jack, I’ve got another call coming through. I’ll let you know when something else comes in,’ he said, hanging up.
I stared at my phone, gripping it hard, feeling so badly like launching it onto the pavement and smashing it into a million pieces. Fuck Chad. Maybe I needed a new agent, how about that? Somebody who actually thought I was worth fighting for. And fuck Lightning Productions, too. Why hadn’t they just offered it to a big name in the first place, then, and saved everyone else the trouble of believing they were actually in with a chance?
I chucked my croissants in the nearest bin, I couldn’t stomach them now, and carried on up the hill, slightly bent at the waist, like I was battling my way through a storm. What I really wanted to do was turn around and go home, drink a bottle of wine, even if it was only five o’clock in the afternoon, and fall asleep on the sofa with The Chase on in the background.
When I got to the pub ten minutes later, I was feeling even worse if anything. The whole way there, I’d been replaying the audition in my mind. Deconstructing everything I’d said, every comment they’d made. Mumbling the lines – which I still remembered and would for a while – under my breath, imagining how they’d come out, whether I should have done them differently, whether that might have made them want to take a chance on someone like me.
‘You’re two minutes late, mate!’ said Luke as I pushed through the door, which felt like a huge effort for some reason.
‘Whatever,’ I replied, avoiding looking him in the eye. I couldn’t deal with his ridiculous manager routine today.
Keeping my head down, I went straight to the staffroom, dumped my stuff, took a swig of my water and tried to pull myself together. How was I going to get through my shift if I could barely muster the energy to speak? It was going to be a nightmare.
I took a deep breath and went out to the bar. Luke was opening a bottle of wine, looking sheepish.
‘I was only joking,’ he said.
I shrugged, taking my place at the bar. It was filling up already, what with it being a Friday evening. Staff from the hospital, teachers from the schools. The locals came later – the couples from the Victorian conversions that surrounded the pub who earned god knows how much even though they were probably younger than I was.
‘Everything all right?’ asked Luke, sliding over. ‘You seem a little … upset.’
