The Road to Her (2 page)

I looked from Susie to Kevin and back again, adrenaline beginning to fizz inside me.

“It sounds awesome!” I looked back at Susie and then tried, unsuccessfully, to sneak a glimpse at what was written on her sheet of paper.

“So are you up for it?” Kevin finally asked. “You think you can handle the pressure?”

“Up for it?” I said. “My God, yeah, I’m up for it!” I tried to contain my excitement. “And, yes, I can totally handle the pressure.”

I was more than keen to be involved in the process right from the off as well. I was protective of Jasmine. Of course I was. I’d grown up with her, so it was important she got the right girl, and it was important that the writers did the whole story perfectly. I loved Jasmine and I loved the show.
Portobello Road
had given me a good life for the last eight years; it had given me money, and perhaps while it hadn’t given me as much fame as it had some of the other cast members, it had given me security and many loyal and fantastic friends and colleagues. I was very lucky. It had also given me the opportunity to move from my parents’ home in the countryside and buy myself a small but fabulous modern apartment overlooking the Thames. I was so privileged and I knew it; there weren’t many twenty-year-olds out there that could afford their own place, let alone one in the centre of London.

Yes, I loved
PR,
I loved Jasmine, and right now I totally loved Kevin and Susie.

“Excellent!” Susie reached over and pulled out a small pile of papers from a blue file and absent-mindedly flicked through them. “Now we know you’re happy to go ahead, we’ll contact some agents and get some auditions going for the part of Casey,” she said, putting the papers back into the file. “Then get whoever we choose to do a screen test with you, okay?”

“We’ll get the ball rolling this afternoon if you’re okay with that.” Kevin gathered his papers together and stood up to leave.

“I’m more than okay with that,” I said, already thinking ahead to how fabulous it was all going to be.

*

The next week passed by in a flurry of the usual routines, during which I didn’t hear any more about the new plotline. Instead, my days mainly consisted of hours passed in the green room and canteen at the
PR
studios, which were located in a large complex around five miles outside of London, where I would learn my lines and chat with my co-stars while I waited to be called on set. This was usually followed by a few brief scenes shot with my on-screen family, particularly my on-screen mum, a lovely, vivacious, and totally scatty actress called Bella Hamilton, who was currently Soaps’ Favourite Mother, according to
Just Soap
magazine.

But it was shortly after lunchtime—ten days after I’d first heard about my new storyline and just as I was packing my things together, ready to leave again for the day—when Susie came into the green room with a file under her arm and a look of importance on her face.

“So we chose our Casey last week,” she said, sitting next to me on the sofa and taking a piece of paper from her file. “She had her audition on Thursday and we’re really pleased with her.”

I put my bag to one side, interested. My scenes over the last few weeks with Bella had been fun enough, but the thought of now doing something completely different was more than appealing.

“We interviewed four actresses altogether.” Susie shuffled herself back on the sofa and crossed one leg over the other. “Elise was, by far, the best of them all.”

“Elise?”

“Elise Manford,” Susie said. “Seems very nice. I think you’ll like her.”

“I hope so,” I said, suddenly nervous.

“We’d like you to do a screen test with her this afternoon, make sure the chemistry’s there,” Susie said. “We’re very keen for you to be involved in every stage of the process.”

Elise Manford.
I said her name to myself, racking my brains as to whether I’d ever heard of her before. I hadn’t.

“Be back at three, can you?” Susie asked.

“Sure,” I said, glancing at the piece of paper still in her hand.

“Have a read of this,” Susie said, handing me the papers, “so that you’re not coming in completely blind this afternoon.”

I took the script, an excited tightness building in my chest at the thought of what might be written in it.

“It’s a short sample scene between Jasmine and Casey, nothing too long, just about five minutes’ worth,” Susie said, hauling herself up from the sofa.

I glanced at it and saw that the scene had been split fifty-fifty between Jasmine and Casey so that we each had around twenty lines each. It looked like meaty stuff at first glance, an argument or a fight, something for us both to get our teeth into. Seeing it reaffirmed that this was really going to happen caused a brief moment of panic that I wouldn’t be up to not just this scene, but the whole story.

I sighed, annoyed with myself. I was being ridiculous, I knew. Okay, so I’m not academically gifted, I’m never going to be an astrophysicist or an Olympic sportswoman or discover a cure for some deadly disease. But one thing I’m sure about is I can act, and I have an unstinting confidence in my abilities as an actress. Of course I could do the story justice. I was only daunted, perhaps, by the prospect of doing a good job on this particular storyline. I wasn’t fazed by the storyline itself—why would I be? Unlike Jasmine, I was happy with my sexuality and knew exactly what I wanted from life. I’d had a girlfriend once, you see. It was a while ago when I was at school, studying part-time at the same time as acting, and she had been my first and only girlfriend, but I’d loved her and she’d been The One. At the time, at least.

Grace. That was her name. We were together for around eighteen months, towards the end of my time at school. And we were a proper item, not just experimenting. We were madly in love. We’d pass by each other in the corridor exchanging knowing looks, linking hands briefly as we walked by. We’d go to one another’s homes, telling our parents we were studying in our rooms, but of course studying was the last thing on our minds. It was all very secretive and clandestine because we were both so far back in the closet we’d shut it, locked the door, and thrown the key away. It’s how we both wanted it. Her, because she didn’t want her parents to find out. Me, because, I don’t know…because I figured it was no one else’s business. Okay, so a small part of me also didn’t want the press to find out and bandy my personal life around in the papers because I was only sixteen and I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle it. But the main reason was because Grace and I were special. She was my adorable little secret and I wanted her to stay that way.

Anyway, I needn’t have worried about getting found out because, despite us apparently being madly in love with each other, Grace eventually dumped me. So that little problem was soon sorted. She went to Spain for three weeks as part of her Spanish language qualification, staying in a small town just outside Madrid with a local family. And then somehow managed to fall in love with the daughter of the family (yes, within three weeks) and decided to return to Madrid and move into an apartment with her new love the minute her exams were over.

I know. You couldn’t make it up, could you?

The one thing I was grateful to her for—and still am—is that she never outed me to anyone. Not to my family, my friends, the press, no one. Her parents found out about her a couple of years later, but to her credit she never told a soul about us. And for that I was always grateful. It could have been so easy for her to go to the papers and do a kiss and tell, but nearly four years on, still no one knows about us.

So Grace was my first and only girl. I never heard from her again after she moved to Madrid, and I’ve never got over her. Crazy, hey? She left me over two years ago and I still can’t move on because she’s all I think about, all I want. Knowing I can never have her sometimes near kills me, and I’d do anything—
anything—
to have her back in my life again right now.

I’ve flirted with girls in clubs since, and even a few guys as well, but nothing has ever really happened, and certainly nothing has ever matched up to the feelings I had with Grace. I knew I needed to accept the fact she was never coming back and that I had to get on with my life, as hard as that was.

So instead of looking for my next Grace, I concentrated on doing the best job I could in
Portobello Road
, and I guess it paid off in the long run because now, here I was, holding in my hands probably just about the most exciting-looking script I’d seen in years, on the verge of becoming a major player in one of the soap’s biggest-ever stories.

Of course, the fact I liked girls in real life and that the
PR
people had decided to make Jasmine gay was pure coincidence. But that had to make my job easier, right?

I couldn’t wait to get started…

Chapter Two

I jumped when I heard a voice behind me and jerked my head up, looking far more startled than I should have done. I was in the green room, waiting for “Casey” to arrive so we could do our screen test together. I’d read the script through thoroughly, wanting to do a great job and impress everyone immediately, and now, knowing I’d learnt my lines, I slumped on the sofa, idly surfing the net on my phone and thinking about what to have for dinner later.

“Hey,” the newcomer said, lifting her chin in greeting.

“Hey,” I replied, putting my phone down.

“So we’re reading together later,” she said, walking towards me and extending her hand. “I’m Elise.”

“Holly.” I sprang up from the sofa and shook her hand.

We stood and looked at each other for a moment, each of us assessing the other in those brief seconds. Elise had an air of superconfidence about her, filling the room with her presence the second she walked in. She was taller than me and, I figured, older than me. Slightly slimmer, too. She was dressed in what looked like designer jeans and a battered leather jacket—the sort you’d pay a fortune for—with an equally battered brown leather messenger bag strung across her shoulders. She had dark blond hair, cropped short against her suntanned face; with her fine bone structure and expressive dark blue, almond-shaped eyes, the haircut worked really well. Better than it ever would have done on me, anyway. It looked a classy cut—the kind done at a hideously overinflated price in the centre of London, not just down at your local suburban salon.

“It’s been a while since I had a screen test in England,” Elise said. I was struck at just how nice her teeth were, too—expensive looking, just like the designer jeans, leather jacket, and haircut. “I’m kind of nervous.”

“Oh?” I absent-mindedly reached down for the script, which was on the table next to me.

“Yeah,” Elise went on. “I’ve just come back from LA, you see?”

“I see,” I said, figuring that was where the tan was from. “What were you doing there?”

“This and that.” Elise smiled, revealing deep dimples in her cheeks. “Interviews, auditions, pilots. Same old.”

For some, maybe
,
I thought, making a mental note to Google her later and find out just exactly what “this and that” really meant.

“Right,” I said, nodding. “How long were you there for?”

“About fifteen months or so,” Elise replied.

“And now you’re back here,” I confirmed.

“Yup.” She walked past me and sat down on the sofa, in the place where I’d been sitting just before. “Susie’ll be here any minute,” she said. “Shall we familiarise ourselves with what we’re going to be reading before she comes?”

“Sure.”

She delved into her bag and pulled out a piece of paper, shifting along slightly as I came to sit on the sofa, too, angling my knees so I was facing her more. “They just gave me this now,” she said, waving the piece of paper at me. “Haven’t had a chance to look at it yet.”

“Me, neither,” I lied, not wanting her to know that I’d just spent the last half an hour scrutinizing it to death.

“So you play Jasmine, uh, Jasmine Hunter, yes?” Elise peered down at the papers. “And I’m going to play someone called Casey Fletcher.”

She seemed to be talking more to herself than to me, so I stayed quiet.

She traced her finger down the paper, her lips moving silently as she read her lines to herself, occasionally frowning, sometimes smiling.

“Wow, this is heavy stuff!” She looked up and grinned, peering at me through her fringe, which had flopped down over her eyes.

“They did tell you in the audition why your character was being brought in, didn’t they?” I asked, puzzled by her reaction to the sample script.

“They told me my character will be a…what was it they called it?” Elise took a pen out of her bag and started underlining parts of her script. “A
distraction
. That’s it. Casey will be a distraction to Jasmine.” She looked up at me.

“To begin with,” I said. “Then it gets serious.”

“Then it gets serious, yes.” Elise arched one perfectly plucked eyebrow.

“It’s going to be so exciting for Jasmine,” I said, holding my script limply in my hands. “It’s about time she had some fun, I think!”

“You’ve been in the programme long, then?” Elise asked, underlining something else on the paperwork on her lap.

I briefly wondered why she hadn’t bothered to find out more about me before our screen test together. I’d have thought she would have wanted to come fully prepared, but perhaps that wasn’t her style.

“Eight years,” I replied. “Been in it since I was twelve.”

“Double wow!” Elise’s head snapped up in surprise.

“Sorry?”

“Wow that you’ve been in it so long, and wow that you’re twenty!”

“You think I look older?”

“Younger.” Elise’s eyes scanned me up and down, immediately making me uncomfortable.

“Oh.”

“You seem younger, too.” Elise shrugged. “No offence meant.”

“None taken,” I lied, wondering just why she would think to say something like that, bearing in mind she’d only just met me. “How old are you, then?”

“Nineteen.”

Elise was nineteen! I’d imagined her to be four or five years older, I’m not sure why. Maybe it was the positive, assured attitude she had, and the nice teeth and make-up and designer gear. Or perhaps it was because she’d been to America, I don’t know. The furthest away I’d ever been in my twenty years was Morocco, and even then my parents wouldn’t let me go until they knew the names and addresses of every—and, my God, I mean
every
—single person that came with me. I suddenly felt very immature and naive.