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Con
Thegymwascrowded,as it always was at this time of night. The office jockeys were riding in with their pale faces and top-of-the-range gear, sweating away on the equipment with stern expressions and loud music pumping through their headphones. Muscleheads showed off their physiques with grunts and bulging veins. Then there was the usual crowd of people who seemed to have nowhere else to go with their screechy voices and stupid conversations that I’d rather not be part of. The gym bunnies. Sculpted girls with ponytails flapping against their backs, everyone flaunting their insane fitness.
Was I being judgemental? I suppose so. I didn’t want to stand out or be part of any of this. But despite my obvious dislike of this fine establishment, the fact was the gym was good for me. It calmed my head after a hard day’s work and was both productive and healthy for my body. Also, it was in my contract to keep my skin and bones looking exactly like this. Con Telford was expected to maintain his physical appearance. Con Telford needed to look like this…thisfool.
OK, yes, I was judgmental, mostly because of who I’d become and why I was here, and I was well and truly aware of the absolute fact that I was not special. In any way. I was a kid from the suburbs who’d somehow slipped into acting and had a big break. And now I was filming the sixth season of the show that screamed my name and face from massive adverts on the side of London’s buses and billboards along the motorway. That stupid expression on my airbrushed face greeted me wherever I went. My female co-star and I would be gracing the giant billboard in Piccadilly Circus before the next season aired. But for all of that, it was also the show that paid my meagre bills.
Bills. I had to laugh out loud at myself again. I currently resided in a Premier Inn budget hotel on an industrial estate. The glamour was real, I could tell you that. I got picked up by my driver at the arse-crack of dawn each morning, only to spend an hour sitting around by the catering trolley waiting for hair and make-up, then costume. When I’d eventually be called, I’d already have eaten my weight in croissants and usually finished another book on my Kindle. The same routine every day. It would take another hour for the set to get ready and for my co-stars to get their shit together. I ate more croissants than were strictly good for my diet and read a stupid number of books—my mum always joked I could have gained a PhD in some exciting subject if I read textbooks instead of sci-fi novels. She was right, and that kind of made me antsy.
I was a successful actor, which was a total fluke. Success in this line of work was as rare as sparkling unicorns. Trust me. I was lucky, and I knew full well that my career could stall in an instant. I might end up back at Mum’s old house next week, who knew? Nothing was stable and certain in the acting world, and I of all people should be looking at getting myself a degree. A fallback option. My co-star Caroline was studying to become a solicitor, dragging her textbooks around on set. There was a whole Twitter community dedicated to finding her textbooks lying around in the previous seasons. It had become a thing. Caroline was a mess at the best of times, but viral Twitter threads were an important part of the show’s social media, and her books had become part of the set and were deliberately planted by the props department.
Social media was weird. I tended to leave all that to my agent. Officially, I had perfectly curated social media. Unofficially, I went under the radar as the old me—the one who’d once existed before Con Telford had become a household name. I should probably have got myself a cool, snazzy stage name and have saved my mum from the hordes of fans that had sometimes hung out in her front garden early on in my career. Not that she’d minded, and the fans had usually been nice. Screaming and wanting photos, but yeah. Nice.
The way my thoughts spun while I was doing bench presses and grunting out loud like a wild animal was why the gym was good for me. I could actually hear myself think and not have to worry too much. Nobody knew me in this gym complex. It was too big for me to run into the same people, and I’d managed to keep myself fairly anonymous here with not even a hint of recognition from the reception staff as I flashed my membership card through the automated gates. Nor did I get a friendly goodbye as I tapped myself out. The showers were private and the towels were clean and fluffy, and the best thing was that it was directly opposite the dive of a hotel I currently called home. The area didn’t just pride itself on a hotel and some massive industrial buildings. It also hosted a parade of takeaway shops and a snazzy newbuild apartment estate—the kind of estate that hosted mums with prams in the daytime and bored kids up to no good in the evenings—but it suited me. It was anonymous and grey and let me blend into my surroundings without any fuss. I liked that.
I tried to zone out from the music pumping through the air and made my way over to the running machines. This was another good part of the evening because I could work on my lines in peace and quiet. I had them pretty much memorised from the ride back from set earlier, but running and mouthing words was nothing that stood out, and the machine overlooked huge glass windows so I could even practise my facial expressions, all while running like an idiot. It usually made me smile, and nobody took notice anyway. I put my headphones on, silencing my surroundings, established a comfortable pace and rehearsed.
“The autopsy will give us the answers we need.”
I paused, waiting for Caroline’s line, then turned my head to the right and waved my arms. “I don’t have all the answers, Inspector!”
I did. Well, my character always did. He was a cocky little shit. I wasn’t. Caroline’s lines thundered through my head as she accused Powell of having slept with another witness.
The lines made little sense, but that wasn’t my problem. After editing and cutting and pasting the scenes together, things would, as usual, pan out into another award-winning thriller of an episode, where Detective Powell would have been naked at least once, showing off his impressive physique to some five-second extra cast as his bedmate for the night. Or the day. Detective Cass Powell was well-known for not having any preference for what time of day his dick needed servicing. But he would solve the crime and the perpetrators would receive their punishment, and all would be well in the world of the multi-award-winning world ofWhite Noise, starring Connor Telford as the incredible Detective Cass Powell.
He didn’t seem very incredible to me, and I of all people should know him. The scriptwriters wrote his lines, of course, and the wardrobe team dressed him. I’d had zero control over my hair for the past five years, but those things didn’t bother me much. I blew the life into his lungs, over and over again, trying to understand the man who shagged everything that moved, had a daughter he rarely saw and solved crimes for breakfast. Well, I struggled a little bit with the daughter since they had changed the actor who played her every season, and I couldn’t even remember who was playing her this time around. Some kid with ambitions surrounded by a showbiz mum and a herd of chaperones to ensure she didn’t trip on a lighting wire mid-shoot.
Still, I loved being Cass Powell. I loved who I became on set—someone completely different from the grey-washed Con Telford currently mouthing along to a script while running on a treadmill.
“To the left! Target at six o’clock!” I turned my imaginary gun hard right, trying to keep my pace steady.
My fall from the treadmill was not a gracious one. I’d had enough stunt training to know exactly how to fall in a controlled manner, but I was caught totally off guard by the sweat-drenched skin I’d smacked my arm into. Apparently, the left cheek of the dude who was shouting at me—hurling abuse, no doubt—as he grabbed the front of my T-shirt, roughly hoisted me off the ground and propped me on wobbly Bambi legs while I tried to grasp what was going on. I dragged my headphones from over my ears so I could hear what he was saying.
“You OK?” he asked, clutching the red patch on his face where I had backhand-slapped him with the full force of my wrist. I knew because of the throbbing pain thundering through my bones.
“I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to touch you. I was—”
“Yeah, doing your lines. I know. You do it every night. It’s kind of freaky to watch.”
“Ehhr, do I know you?” I went straight on the defensive, racking my brain. Had I seen this dude before? Stalkers were nothing new, and I’d had my fair share of creeps, but I was pretty sure I’d never laid eyes on him before.
“No. I’m so sorry if I interrupted anything. I won’t disturb you again.”
“You, didn’t disturb anything…” I said, but the guy was already walking away, which was a normal reaction. Not that I made a habit of smacking random people in the face during my workouts. I rubbed my wrist, trying to see where he’d gone.
I should apologise. I should have checked if he was OK. I’d whacked him, and that mark had looked sore.
I didn’t like upsetting people. I’d done enough media training to know that things like this could easily end up on the front page of the tabloids with some well-constructed headline screamingFamous Actor Assaults Gym Goer!followed by the inevitable lawsuit, and the next thing I knew I’d be down at the Job Centre begging for a minimum-wage job somewhere. The life of an actor was a fragile one.
Yeah, that headline probably wouldn’t sell quite as many copies as I imagined; I wasn’tthatfamous. I’d never done a Hollywood movie, nor had I ever been sued by anyone, but I was, underneath it all, a decent human being, and I’d hit someone. And he’d just walked away.
Problem was, I couldn’t even remember what he’d looked like. Dark hair? Red T-shirt? I’d been a little shocked myself, and now I was struggling to even remember what I’d said…
I’d have to find him and apologise, wouldn’t I? It was the decent thing to do.
But as I looked around, he was nowhere to be found.
Matt
