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Fuck. I wished I hadn’t bothered asking.
‘Great,’ I said, swallowing hard. ‘I’m on it, Chad. Got a good feeling about this.’
Chad, who’d heard it all before, ended the call without so much as a goodbye and I went into the lounge and flopped onto the sofa in my boxers, feeling all kinds of exhausted. It might have been the eight-hour shift at the pub I’d just done, or the fact I’d been up working on the script until one in the morning. But, most likely, it was because I got like this when I had a casting for a job I desperately wanted. I could actually physically feel the pressure of it building up inside my brain. I put everything I had into every role I went for, obviously, for financial reasons if nothing else, even if it was a crappy commercial for dog food, or that multivitamin ad I did where they’d sprayed me bright orange from head to toe. But this? This was different. This was big time. Netflix. Twelve-episode drama. Recurring role. I’d have money for the first time in my life if I got this job, more money that I’d know what to do with. I’d be in a quality TV series with a brilliant script that could even win awards if it was as good on screen as it looked on the page. I could meet Chad’s eye without feeling like a massive failure. And I could chirpily inform my parents that, actually, they’d been wrong about me all along and that – ta-da! – I wasn’t the complete fuck-up they thought I was.
I put my hands behind my head, looking up at the ceiling, mesmerised by the way the bulb was swinging backwards and forwards inside its shade. My upstairs neighbour – presumed female, although I’d never actually met her – was dancing around to her Ed Sheeran album again, the jolly piping of ‘Galway Girl’ filtering through the floorboards. I’d always hated that song with a passion, especially the stupid lyrics about having ‘Jamie as a chaser, Jack for the fun’. I already felt like a laughing stock half the time, without smug Sheeran drumming it into me, too.
After a while, I took my script out to the kitchen, deciding I ought to eat despite feeling a bit sick after Chad’s call. I’d have an easy dinner, then I’d run my lines a few more times, and then I’d let it go. Trust the work and all that. Focus on staying calm more than anything, because although being nervous could give you the energy required to deliver a decent performance, what was not helpful was the sort of debilitating, nausea-inducing variety of nerves I’d had on occasion. Like at my drama school showcase when I’d known Chad was coming specifically to see me. It worked out all right in the end, I supposed, given that Chad had taken me on, but the lead-up to it had been most unpleasant and I’d constantly been on the verge of throwing up for about a week beforehand. I shook the memory away.
I opened the kitchen cupboards, my eyes flicking left and right across shelves bearing items as diverse as Batchelors bacon-flavoured Super Noodles and Waitrose sliced artichoke hearts, trying to work out what – if anything – I fancied or, more importantly, what I could actually conjure up with this mishmash. Eventually giving into the lure of comfort food, I pulled out a tin of baked beans and poured them into a saucepan, turning the ring up to maximum because I was impatient like that.
I laid my script out next to me on the worktop, resting my elbows on the fake-granite surface and mumbling dialogue under my breath, only pausing to glance at the page if I couldn’t remember what came next, which appeared to be happening with disturbing regularity. I sighed, telling myself that it would go in eventually. So what if it took me ten times longer than everyone else to learn stuff? As long as I got there in the end, nobody would be any the wiser, would they?
I practised my lines over and over again while my beans bubbled away on the hob. I bet Rebecca was serving up something pretentious and fussy across the hall. She looked like someone who hosted sophisticated, soulless dinner parties and got an ego boost out of impressing her guests with her culinary skills. She probably had a three-course gourmet meal on the go. I reckoned that was her style. Starter, main and dessert. She wouldn’t be making beans on toast, that was for sure, because her smarmy American boyfriend would probably run a mile if she did. And heaven forbid if he spotted a pack of Super Noodles!
I was just about to pop some sourdough in the toaster when I remembered I’d left the water running and legged it into the bathroom. If there had been any hot water in the first place, there wasn’t going to be now, was there? At least I hadn’t left the bloody plug in and flooded the place.
