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There were reasons I lived on my own. Especially since Con Telford was now snoring, hugging both my favourite pillows in his arms.
He looked pale, but he looked peaceful.
I finally summoned up the courage to carefully slide into my side of the bed. Well, Con Telford was sleeping on my side of the bed with all my pillows. I grabbed a lumpy sofa cushion and tried to get comfortable.
It was going to be a long night.
Next thing I knew, my alarm was going off and the bed next to me was empty and cold. It was six-fifteen, and he wasn’t here. I sat up in bed, staring at the room in disbelief.
He was gone without a trace, and I did wonder if it had all been some cruel, horrible, stupid dream.
Con
Myheadwasalittle foggy, and I struggled to stand for more than a few minutes, but these things didn’t matter when there were hundreds of thousands of pounds at stake if we didn’t wrap this season on time.
I knew that, and the production team and the set manager and the director and everyone else within earshot had reminded me of my responsibility when it came to safeguarding the budget and schedule and all the other big words that had been thrown at me this morning while my body was struggling to function.
I’d been seen by the on-set medic, who’d muttered about the damn Norovirus and some kind of twenty-four-hour bug that had swept through the set like wildfire. No wonder I’d gone down with it since everyone around me seemed to have been out at some point in the past week.
I wasn’t hungry and didn’t dare eat anything, but I was shaky and slow, so I sipped water, the bottle rattling in my nervous hands, before being caked in make-up to ensure I looked alive and assure people I was only playing dead. I might as well have been dead, as we were filming the aftermath of the car crash, and I spent most of my time in a hospital bed on a side set masquerading as an intensive care unit. People got themselves hurt in this series, and we’d used the same hospital-corner set since season one with the same rickety bed. The only thing that changed was the colour of the curtains and whomever they’d dragged in and dressed up as a nurse. Today’s extra was a bloke in his fifties who actually looked like a proper nurse. There would be a female nurse too—a recurring cast member who I would try to kiss at some point. Cass Powell had no shame and still had game, even if this wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last that he was tucked up in this bed, looking ready to be claimed by the Grim Reaper. So, while I did understand the producer and director’s concern, I could probably have won more awards for my realistic acting of a man dying seeing as I was half dead for real.
Still, at least they’d all stopped shouting at me. They were now readjusting the light so the set would go from daylight to nighttime and poor Cass Powell could receive a heart-wrenching visit from his daughter.
We’d rehearsed it already, and I was lying here like a lemon with my on-screen daughter perched on the floor with her iPad. Normally, I would have struck up a conversation, but I was too tired. I was also a little preoccupied with thinking about…
Matt. Bloody Matt. The guy who had flung himself into my life. Or, should I say, he flung himself into my wrist and God knows how that had happened. I had a lot of questions because I remembered the things he’d said, and he was gay and now I had spent two nights sleeping with him.
Yes, that made no sense in my head either.
The thing was…
I took a deep breath. I was lying here talking to myself and I wasn’t even ashamed to admit it. Someone needed to have a word with me before I went totally nuts.
I wasn’t gay or bi or pan or demi or anything like that. I’d been groomed into this character and built a very successful brand playing the part of a man who didn’t exist. I’d always been careful not to blur the lines into my real life.
Who was I kidding here? My real life didn’t exist either. I lived in hotel rooms, and when I didn’t…
I was playing house with a man called Matt Winston.
I groaned in frustration and tugged at the hospital sheets.
“Are you really sick? Not just acting?” The little girl on the floor peered up at me in concern.
“I’m OK,” I assured her. We weren’t even filming, and there were at least ten people laughing at me. The cameraman above my head dangled from his harness and shot me evils as I once again shifted uncomfortably on the bed.
“Do you want a break?” the AD asked begrudgingly as she drew up next to me with a clipboard. “We’re doing well timewise. We shot this scene twice with Hamish, but…” She grimaced.
She didn’t have to say it. I knew. I’d fucked up twelve hours of incredibly valuable production time, and I would have to shoot off a grovelling email to Hamish to thank him for getting up at some ungodly hour to pretend once again to be me.
Hamish had a real job. It was just his luck that he kind of looked like my twin from a distance. Up close, he was some normal bloke, and I bet he was getting tired of getting dragged in wheneverWhite Noisedecided I was too expensive to keep on set, often being replaced with minimum notice by Hamish.
All Cass Powell’s costumes existed in at least two versions—one in my size, one in Hamish’s size, one for the stunt double and sometimes even more.
I was expendable, I knew that. I also knew that two new characters were being introduced in the last two episodes, and the rumour mill was rife. Caroline and I had had our heyday, and new blood would be needed to keep the viewing public interested. There was not much more they could do with our storylines. Well, apart from killing us off.
I shuddered again, feeling suddenly cold.
“And positions!” the AD called, fanning the clapboard in my face.
