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2
Jack
I groaned, grappling with the stupid front door which, for some fucking bizarre reason, was refusing to open. God only knows why a third-floor flat in one of the most exclusive areas of London required multiple locks so stiff that you had to use brute force to turn the key.
At last: success!
I flung myself inside, shutting the door behind me with a frustrated flick of my heel. I dropped my bag on the floor and kicked off my trainers, massively pissed off about my run-in with my incompetent, charmless neighbour. How could she lose my package in a flat this size?
I marched barefoot into the bathroom, turning on the hot water, letting it run without the plug in. If Rebecca was right – and, oh, I bet she just loved being right – there was probably no chance of a hot bath until much later, but it would be extremely satisfying to prove her wrong.
In the bedroom, I tore off my T-shirt, wrinkling up my nose at the stench of stale beer, an unavoidable aroma, unfortunately, when you worked in a pub. I consoled myself by imagining how much worse it would have been back in the days when everyone smoked inside. I’d have been risking my health, basically, and for what? To serve overpriced wine to a bunch of rich twats, that’s what.
Just as I pulled my joggers down, I thought I heard something. I stood still, tuning into the tinkling sound, eventually realising it was the faint trill of my phone.
I raced into the hall with my trousers around my ankles, falling dramatically to my knees to unzip my bag and yanking out my phone.
‘Shit,’ I said, glancing at the caller ID and grappling with the handset; there was no way I could miss this. ‘Chad!’ I answered, standing up so fast I got protein floaters. I ruffled my hair, trying to get my head together. ‘What’s up, man?’
For reasons I’d never quite understood, whenever I spoke to Chad, I had that feeling you get when you’ve been sent to the headmaster’s office (which happened fairly often, much to my parents’ disgust). You know, that sense of waiting anxiously in a deathly quiet corridor, adrenaline pumping, knowing you’re about to get a massive bollocking? I didn’t think this was how you were supposed to feel about your theatrical agent – my tutors at drama school had tried to insist that agents worked for us, that they needed us. It was a nice thought, but for me it had always felt as though the opposite was true. Chad was the ringmaster in our relationship (if you could even call it a relationship) and I was the desperate, sometimes-pathetic puppet.
‘There’s been a change of venue for your casting tomorrow,’ barked Chad, sounding angry at me for presumably absolutely no reason. ‘Got a pen?’
‘Yep,’ I lied, whirling fruitlessly around, as though I was going to find a random pen on the floor of my hallway. I waddled into the bedroom, flinging open the drawer of my bedside table, relieved when my fingers finally closed around the plastic casing of a dodgy-looking biro. I scooped my trousers over my heels and ran back into the hall in my pants, grabbed my script out of my bag and hooked my phone between my shoulder and my ear. ‘Ready when you are!’ I said, scribbling wildly in the corner of the page until the biro came to life, revealing a blob of scratchy blue ink.
Chad reeled off an address in Soho and I wrote it down, my stomach already churning over how much was at stake tomorrow. This job was a big deal. Not that Chad cared. Pep talks were definitely not his thing. I supposed that was the downside of having a ‘superstar’ agent: there was a hierarchy amongst Chad’s clients and I was clearly right at the bottom of it, which didn’t sit particularly well with me. I’d worked out that now and again I actually did need some reassurance, although it pained me to say it, because I liked to think of myself as a very un-needy person in general. In any case, there was nothing reassuring about Chad. I had the distinct impression that he thought he was doing me a massive favour by representing me. He had his A-list clients to make him loads of money in commission; he didn’t need me for that. In fact, I was pretty sure he didn’t think he needed me full stop.
‘And don’t be late,’ sniped Chad. ‘They’re squeezing you in as it is.’
‘When am I ever late for anything?’ I said, on the defensive.
I had my faults, but tardiness was not one of them. Actually, that wasn’t strictly true, I was late for absolutely everything else, but never, ever for a casting. My career had been, and would always be, my number-one priority – when I had an audition, nothing could stop me getting there. Once, I’d had to abandon a gridlocked Uber in Waterloo and sprint full-throttle to London Bridge. I nearly keeled over on arrival, but at least I’d been on time. Naturally, I hadn’t got the part; they were after a slick Jamie Dornan type, not some heaving, sweaty mess, but still, you couldn’t win them all.
‘Did you get the opening scenes I sent?’
I pinched the top of my nose. ‘Not yet. I missed the delivery and now my neighbour can’t find them.’
I knew Chad was rolling his eyes. He pretty much did that every time I spoke to him, so it was nothing new.
‘Well, make sure you get them. I went to great lengths to secure them for you, I’ll have you know.’
‘Sure.’
Did he really need to say that? Since I’d been the one asking if I could get hold of the scenes that came before the one I was reading so that I could put my lines in context, didn’t he think I’d do everything I could to get hold of the bloody things? And as far as great lengths go, he’d probably just snapped at his permanently-anxious assistant to sort it out, anyway.
‘Wear something that gives an impression of the character,’ instructed Chad.
‘Yeah, sure, I thought I’d wear the—’
‘Are you off page?’
‘Um, not quite. Not yet.’
Chad sighed. ‘They’re seeing some big names for this, Jack, remember that.’
I cleared my throat. ‘Like who? Can you say?’
Chad reeled off an intimidating list of actors who were up for the same role.
