The Road to Her (3 page)

“I don’t really think eight years is that long to be in a soap, to be honest. Not over here, anyway. Michael Adams has played James Morris in
Portobello Road
for over twenty-one years,” I said uncertainly. “And he seems to be doing all right for himself.”

Elise nodded. “I’m sure it’s not long to some, but I can’t imagine staying that long in one thing.” She crossed her long and expensively clad legs. “I have so many other things I’m going to do.”

I opened my mouth to answer her, but just at that moment, the door to the green room swung open and Susie breezed in, bringing with her the smell of freshly made coffee from the canteen next door.

“Hiya, you two!” She practically bounded over to the sofa. “Great that you’ve met each other already.”

I shot a glance over to Elise but she wasn’t looking at me.

“Ready to roll?” Susie rubbed her hands together excitedly and motioned for us to both follow her.

I hopped up and followed her to the door like an obedient spaniel, casting a look back over my shoulder to see Elise slowly pack her bag up and rise to her feet. She tweaked at her fringe, tucking a few stray hairs back behind her ear, smoothed her hands down her jeans, and sauntered over to where I was still standing, holding the door open for her.

“Thanks, Eight-Year.” She winked as she passed me in the doorway and followed Susie down to another room just off one of the main sets.

Feeling slightly miffed at the Eight-Year quip, I followed them both down the corridor, finally entering the room, too. I nodded at Graham,
Portobello Road
’s casting director, sitting on a cream sofa in the corner, glasses perched on the end of his nose.

“Girls, welcome.” He rose and gestured for me and Elise to stand on a marker in the centre of the room, just in front of a camera.

“You’ve met and had a chance to get to know each other a little, I hope?” he asked, sitting back down on the sofa.

Elise and I nodded in unison.

“Okay, so we’d like you to read through the scripts you’ve been given.” Graham waved a hand at a pile of papers he now had on his lap. “Just to make sure you gel, you know?” He raised his hand to the cameraman, waiting patiently behind a camera, to indicate that we were ready to go.

I looked across at Elise and jerked my head, indicating that I was ready when she was. This was something new for me, and I fluttered inside. I’d had screen tests before, but usually with other members of my character’s family present, too. This was different. This was just me and her, and that huge, overbearing sense of responsibility hit me in the guts again the minute I heard Elise read her first line.

And she was good. Boy, was she good! As she read her lines, I could see looks of approval passing between Graham and Susie, as if their initial decision to conditionally offer her the part was absolutely the right one. I read really well, too, even if I do say so myself. It was as if Elise was bringing the best out of me. Either that or the quality of the sample script and the whole excitement of my new storyline were giving me a renewed verve.

Whatever it was, the room positively crackled with atmosphere, the hushed silence around us punctuated by our voices, which both echoed round the near-empty studio. They’d thrown us both into the deep end with an argument scenario where Elise and I had to row with each other over a boy, and it was damn good stuff. It was packed with one-liners and quick-fire reposts, and I was psyched at how totally in the zone I was when I was reading it.

Elise was incredible; just as I’d felt her strong presence in the green room earlier, now the whole set was feeling it, too. A runner, passing through on his way to who knows where, stopped in his tracks and stood to the side of the set, listening to her, watching her, mesmerised. I could sense Graham and Susie sitting, engrossed, as Elise spoke her lines, and the more intense she became, the more passionate and powerful my delivery was, too.

If this was an indication of the sort of stuff I’d be required to do as Jasmine, then I couldn’t wait to get filming properly.

*

“Whoa!” Susie sprang to her feet and walked quickly over to me and Elise, her hands stretched out in front of her. “You…two…were…
amazing
!” She placed a hand on each of our arms and beamed at us.

We’d just finished our screen test after five or so minutes of absolutely spellbindingly solid acting from the pair of us—a scene where no one interrupted us, no one had to prompt us, and no one asked us to read lines again. It was, in short, the perfect single take.

I was elated. It had been the most exciting thing I’d acted out since a one-to-one scene I’d done with my “mother,” Bella, six months earlier. That had been good, but this was a hundred times better.

Graham and Susie seemed to think so, too, judging by the looks on their faces. Of course they were elated—Elise would be perfect for the show. She was everything
Portobello Road
was constantly aiming to be: smart, sassy, and confident.

Graham slowly took his glasses off and placed them in his shirt pocket, then got to his feet and slow-clapped Elise and me, while Susie remained rooted to the spot in front of us both, her hands still on our arms.

“Did you feel it, girls?” he asked, coming to stand next to Susie. “I hope so because, my goodness, Susie and I felt it!”

“I loved it, yeah,” I said, turning to Elise and raising my eyebrows. “Would we use this script in filming? Because I thought it was amazing stuff.”

“We’d use something similar, yes,” Susie said. “We wanted to keep the sample as close as possible to what we’d use in the soap itself, to see how you’d both play it.”

“Then I can’t wait!” Elise said. “If the part is still offered to me, of course.” She glanced at Graham.

“Elise, my dear, if I didn’t offer you the part after that screen test, I think Susie would take me outside and shoot me right now.” Graham rolled his eyes. “I thought you were outstanding.”

“You both were,” Susie piped in.

“Holly, meet Jasmine’s new love interest, Casey Fletcher.” Graham walked back to his chair and picked up a file. “In the meantime, here’s your scripts for your first scenes together.” He wandered back to us, handing us each a blue plastic folder.

“And we’ll see you both bright and early Monday morning,” Susie said, making for the door. “I can’t wait,” she added, holding the door open and allowing Graham to pass her before leaving the room herself.

I remained standing in the middle of the room as the camera was wheeled away and off to another part of the studio.

“So how was it for you?” I asked Elise when everyone else had left us.

“It was good, yeah,” Elise replied. “You read well.”

“So did you,” I said truthfully.

Elise shrugged. “I guess,” she said airily, walking away.

“Neat writing, huh?” I called to Elise as she wandered over and collected her jacket from the back of a chair.

“Very.” She glanced back over her shoulder.

“You excited?” I asked, still holding my script in my hand.

“Yuh-huh,” Elise said, shrugging her jacket on and running her hand through her hair.

She reached down and picked up her bag, hauling it over her shoulders. “Anyway, I’m outta here.” Elise pulled her mobile from her bag and ran her thumb over the front of it, reading something on the screen. “See you Monday, I guess,” she said, lifting the phone to her ear and sauntering from the room, one hand in her jeans pocket, leaving me standing there, feeling deflated after all the intensity and excitement that had gone on before.

Chapter Three

I was pretty gutted at Elise’s actions after our screen test, if I’m honest. I was absolutely buzzing from the whole thing, but her muted reaction, shrugging it off and strolling from the room like she’d just finished reading the daily paper after her coffee break, had stung. I was cross with her for diluting the atmosphere when I’d been so keyed up about it all, even if she hadn’t meant to.

Her indifference had thrown me, when I—and Graham and Susie—had thought the whole screen test had been outstanding. Before it, I’d been so excited about the storyline, but now I was feeling apprehensive about what Monday would bring. We were going to film our initial scenes together when Jasmine meets Casey for the very first time at university, and it niggled away at me over the weekend as to whether Elise would be more enthusiastic off-camera when the time came.

As it turned out—to my relief—she was more animated when we got together again on that Monday. I’d spent the entire weekend reading my script over and over, pacing up and down my apartment, reading my lines aloud, varying how I said them each time. I felt like a kid about to start at a new school—excited, but nervous at the same time.

And Elise was as brilliant as she’d been three days before. We successfully filmed our first scenes together by lunchtime, and it was as though we’d been acting together all our lives. She was effortless in her delivery of her lines, and if she was nervous on her first day of filming, she sure as hell didn’t show it. I thought that we bounced off each other perfectly, just as we’d done before, and I couldn’t help but keep getting a thrill of excitement, knowing that we would get to film more scenes like these—and better ones still—in the months ahead.

Kevin had told me that morning that Elise had been offered a twelve-month contract for the show, with a view to extending if she proved a hit with the viewers. He told me, in a tapping-his-nose kind of way, that he and Susie were confident she’d be a sure-fire hit. They both thought she was awesome and would be a real addition to
PR.

I had to agree, and I told Elise as much that same morning.

“Thanks, yeah, that’s a neat thing to say,” she said as we wrapped for the day, our very first scenes together in the bag.

We walked down the corridor to our respective dressing rooms. I shared with Bella—and had done for the last three years—and Elise had been allocated a room further down the corridor from mine, sharing with one of the slightly lesser-known actresses on the show. I wished we’d been allocated a room together, though. I figured it would make learning our lines easier and more fun if we were, but The Powers That Be had seen fit to keep us separate.

“You must be pleased, too,” I said, “to get the contract signed and sorted.”

Elise nodded.

“Kevin told me this morning,” I added hastily.

“Yeah, we signed it last Friday after the screen test,” Elise replied. She paused. “Listen, you want to come to my room after you’ve changed?” She jerked her head towards her door down the corridor. “We can go over tomorrow’s lines.”

Perhaps it was the cute way she jerked her chin, or just how she’d been standing, bag hitched over one shoulder, a hand buried deep in her pocket, looking cool and self-assured. I don’t know. But the second she looked at me and asked me to her room, an image of Grace flooded my mind, instantly flustering me.

“Your room?” I mumbled. “Yeah, sure.”

I left her briefly and went off to change from Jasmine’s on-set clothes back into my own, and then headed straight down to Elise. I found her already changed and lounging in a small leather chair, idly flicking through a fashion magazine. Her room was neater than mine, but that wasn’t a surprise. Bella wasn’t the tidiest of people, and it was a frequent source of irritation to me how she was unable to remove empty polystyrene cups from her dressing table or piles of magazines from the soft upholstered sofa that we had in there.

Elise’s room was like an oasis of calm and tidiness in comparison. I immediately liked being there.

“So, how long have you been back in England?” I asked as I sat down on the sofa, trying to ignore the sight of her long, jean-clad legs dangling over the side of her chair.

“A few months,” Elise said. “I came back just after Christmas.”

She wore a loose-fitting top, casual but expensive looking, the colours of which really suited her, and a string of long beads hanging perfectly down the front. Her faded jeans seemed to cling to her legs, and her feet were just socked, the pair of boots she’d been wearing just before, during our filming, discarded on the floor next to her. Added to all this were numerous cloth bracelets and bangles on her wrist, which looked lovely against her still-bronzed skin. Her fantastic LA tan, which suited her so well would, I thought, soon be a thing of the past.

“London weather’s not quite what you’ve been used to, huh?” I asked, thinking about the colour of her arms.

“Not really, no.”

“How was it? LA, I mean,” I asked. “I’ve never been.”

“It was okay, yeah,” she said.

We didn’t speak for a second, and I started racking my brains for something to say to her or ask her. I’d finally gotten round to Googling Elise over the weekend—of course I had! Are you telling me you wouldn’t have done the same thing?!—but it hadn’t told me that much, which was annoying. All I’d managed to find out was that she’d been acting since she was fifteen, had done some youth theatre, a few adverts on TV, and that she’d left the UK for the States a week after her eighteenth birthday. I couldn’t find any websites that would tell me anything of her time in LA other than that she’d tried her hand at the pilot season, so I figured it hadn’t been a successful time there. That would at least explain why she’d come home after only fifteen months.

“I’ve never been,” I said.

“You said,” Elise replied, the hint of a smile on her face.

“And, you, uh, you’re getting on okay with everything here?” I asked, flustered by her nice smile. “It’s kind of straight into it here, hardly any rehearsals, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Elise looked down at her bag as she heard her phone beep, then slowly leant over to retrieve it.

“I guess it can be a bit strange coming back and starting on a new show, so I understand if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all.”

“Yeah, I’m getting on okay,” she said pleasantly, looking briefly at her phone, and then putting it back in her bag. “And I’m not overwhelmed, no.”

Why was she making me ramble on? My eyes were pulled towards her legs again, so I immediately glanced around her room, looking at some photos pinned to her mirror and the few Good Luck cards still scattered around her table.