Lucy Holliday 2-Book Collection: A Night In with Audrey Hepburn and A Night In with Marilyn Monroe. Lucy Holliday
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from my mum/agent’s point of view – invisible.
‘Well, you’re not being any help,’ Cass retorts, ignoring my plea and starting to undertake her very favourite activity – posing for selfies with her mobile phone camera – while I decide that the best way to avoid Mum for a bit longer is to leave Cass to it and go and find myself a bacon roll instead.
After all, I tell myself, as I lumber off the catering bus in my Warty Alien feet, it’s not as if I need to worry about tummy bloat while I swelter away inside my layers of concealing latex, is it? And anyway, the bacon rolls are exceptionally delicious, and made to order by lovely Olly Walker, who’s been one of my best friends ever since I met him, donkey’s years ago, at that godawful Sound of Music audition in Wimbledon. He runs the on-location catering van, so I can go and have a chat with him while simultaneously waiting to be called by the assistant director to deliver my line, and – most important of all – avoiding my mother.
*
Olly is not currently at his catering van. He wasn’t there when I fetched my first bacon roll before going to Wardrobe at eight this morning either, so when I reach the head of the queue, I ask his sous chef, Jesse, if he’s all right.
‘Hasn’t he called you?’ Jesse asks, squirting ketchup onto three waiting rolls he’s just finishing off for Liz, the production assistant (pretty, blonde, and Dillon-ready in a crop top and skin-tight jeans, so I can only assume the bacon rolls are actually for some hungry electricians or cameramen, or something, and not for her to snarf down herself).
‘No. Well, he might have done. I’ve left my phone in my bag.’ I don’t add: because, although I’m twenty-nine years old, I’m still avoiding my mother.
‘He’s gone in his van to the studios. Mentioned something about doing a furniture run. First to Woking and then to you and your new flat?’
This, really, should be making me a bit less stressed about the whole Mum-and-my-Big-Break situation: the fact that I don’t have to go back to her house after work this evening and have her harangue me about my career over the kitchen table. Tonight, if she wants to harangue me, she can do it over the phone while I relax at my very own kitchen table in my very own flat!
It’s not much – it’s really, really not much, just a tiny one-bed above a parade of shops on Colliers Wood High Street; I’ve seen hip-hop producers’ downstairs loos, on MTV Cribs, that are at least three times the size – but I’m going to make it cosy, and homely, and lovely.
Of course, a slight barrier to this, up until a couple of days ago, was that I’ve managed to reach my ripe old age without actually acquiring the basics you need to make a flat look cosy and homely.
I don’t mean cashmere throws and Venetian glass lamps and Victorian writing desks. I mean – and this is a bit embarrassing to admit – a sofa, a table, and a double bed.
I was bemoaning this fact to Olly when he came round to Mum’s in his van the night before last to pick up my boxes full of clothes, books and other bits and bobs, and that’s when he told me about the Pinewood props store. Pinewood Studios, which is where the majority of The Time Guardians gets filmed, is home to an enormous treasure trove (well, a giant corrugated-steel warehouse) of old furniture that’s been used, over the years, to dress the sets of countless films and TV shows. Lots of it is pretty ropey, some of it is surprisingly lovely, and none of it is really used any more. Olly knows about this treasure trove because his Uncle Brian – not his actual uncle, just an old friend of his former-actress mother’s – is the security guard there. Oh, and because Olly’s former-actress mother, who now runs an amateur dramatic society in Woking, is always getting him to raid the props storeroom to bring her set dressing for their productions. Anyway, on Olly’s advice I popped round there when we were shooting at Pinewood yesterday, and managed to put aside a handful of surprisingly lovely things to furnish my flat.
I thought I was going to head back there tonight, with Olly in his van, and pick up the stuff before heading all the way back to Colliers Wood to collect my keys, but obviously it must fit Olly’s schedule better to go to Pinewood himself this morning.
‘Thanks, Jesse. Oh, and I’ll have one just like those, please,’ I add, pointing at the row of bacon rolls he’s wrapping in greaseproof paper to hand over to Liz.
‘You’re kidding,’ Liz says. ‘You can’t seriously be planning on eating a greasy bacon roll.’
Which is a bit personal, isn’t it? I mean, Liz and I have chatted in the ladies’ loos at the studios before, but that’s about it. I wouldn’t have thought we were anywhere near friendly enough for her to—
‘Vanessa,’ she says, in a hushed, reverential (OK, terrified) tone, ‘will literally kill you if she sees you eating so much as a Polo mint while you’re wearing that costume.’
‘This costume?’ I ask, glancing down at my alien head, because I can’t believe a bit of dripped ketchup is going to make the thing look that much worse.
‘It’s one of the most expensive costumes we rent,’ she says, rather piously, as if the money is coming out of her personal bank account and leaving her unable to pay her gas bill. ‘If Vanessa finds out there’s so much as a single, solitary stain on that latex …’
‘OK, forget the bacon roll,’ I tell Jesse. ‘I’ll just have a coffee and a muffin.’
‘A blueberry muffin?’ gasps Liz. ‘Filled with sticky, purple-staining berries?’
‘Fine! Just the coffee, then.’
Which is not going to hit the spot in any way. I mean, I was up at 5 a.m. this morning, in Wardrobe at 7, and I’ve been sweating out vital calories inside this horrible costume ever since.
I think I’ve got a half-eaten packet of peanut M&Ms in my bag, though. I can go and retrieve it from where I think I left it, back on the catering bus, and see if there’s a message on my phone from Olly at the same time.
The bloody costume slows me right down, though. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried walking anywhere while wearing half a stone’s worth of baggy latex, but it’s not the most enjoyable way to get about.
Honestly, on days like today, I seriously wonder what the hell I’m doing pursuing a career in acting. Though, to be entirely fair to the Warty Alien costume, there’s scarcely a day goes by when that thought doesn’t occur. I’m only stuck in the bloody job because of a childhood spent following Cass from audition to audition, during which time I utterly failed to gain any decent qualifications – or other career ideas – of my own.
Well, that and the fact that I’ve always had a bit of a fixation with the movies, and I’ve spent far too long kidding myself that grunting about as a non-speaking extra on iffy British TV shows is halfway to the Old Hollywood magic I’ve long been seduced by.
Far too long, because I don’t think any of my Hollywood heroines ever had to schlump around the arse-end of King’s Cross in latex warts on a boiling June morning …
‘Cheer up,’ a fellow alien says, passing me by on its way out of the Wardrobe trailer nearby. ‘It might never happen.’
‘Easy for you to say. You’ve lucked out.’ I mean this because it – he, I guess, from the voice inside his alien head – is nowhere near as grotesquely attired as I am. His is more like a spacesuit: Guantanamo-orange canvas with a matching orange plastic bubble helmet. No latex, no warts, no problem. ‘But thanks for the moral support. It’s nice when us extras stick together for a change.’
‘You’re welcome. I mean we have to, don’t we, with these arsehole lead actors swanning around the place?’
I snort. ‘When they can even be bothered to turn up, of course.’
‘Oh?’
‘We’re all waiting for his Lord Chief Arsehole to decide whether we’re worthy of his time or not. Dillon O’Hara,