Not Without You. Harriet Evans
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has the lunches to scout out the next hot project, and Tommy – well, he’s everything else. He has fewer clients, and I’m his priority at all times – I can call him day or night. He reads all my scripts and has a say in everything I do, but he also brings me business outside of the films. He takes care of the stylists and the journalists and the studios who want three extra days’ publicity off me, the airline that wants a fee in cash to stop me being papped on the way out of the plane, and the gay star who has his staff audition girlfriends for a million-dollar fee. Oh, yes, those stories are true.
I look out of the window and shiver involuntarily. The air con is on max; it’s freezing in here, and yet I’m still sweating in my pink silk dress.
‘I want to do that Shakespeare movie,’ I say. He growls.
‘Not this again. I’m telling ya, Artie’s right. For once! The guy is right. It ain’t for you.’
I take a deep breath. ‘Look, they reworked the script pretty quickly. We had the wrong version anyway. I met with Tammy Gutenberg, the writer. She only put in the crappy romp-through-history bit with Jane Austen and Nelson because the studio she was attached to made her. The new draft is great. Really great.’
One of the reasons why I don’t want to commit to anything yet is because of Tammy’s sending me this new draft. I read it and loved it. I loved how smart and funny and moving it was, how it deals with Shakespeare in an interesting way without making you feel dumb, how the modern story about Annie, the girl who works at the museum who is also young Anne Hathaway when she goes back to the past, is interesting and sparky, how it pokes fun at tourists without being mean. And the stuff after she bangs her head and wakes up in Shakespeare’s time … it shouldn’t work, but she pulls it off. It’s done totally confidently, so you buy it without knowing whether it’s real or not. Anne Hathaway and Shakespeare are a really lovely couple, and the scenes with the older, solitary, Anne Hathaway musing on their relationship and her life after her husband’s death are beautiful. A plum part for an older actress. And there’s a delicious bit at the end in the present day and Annie’s just woken up and is struggling to answer some punctilious question from an American tourist and Alec Mitford playing a modern-day bloke walks through the door of the museum and says, ‘Hello, I’m the new manager,’ and their eyes meet and he smiles like he knows he’s met her before …
I’m not questioning how two hot people come to be working at a tiny museum in the depths of the English countryside. When I mentioned it to Tammy, over lunch at Chateau Marmont, she laughed and said, ‘You need some suspension of disbelief in a film. Come on, Sophie. You ever seen ET? Exactly.’
I adored Tammy; she bowled me over, in fact. I’d forgotten there are people like this who work in movies. Lots of people probably, but you get past a point where you ever meet them. One, she remembered everything about our time back in Venice Beach – I was obsessed with frappe lattes (I know – so 2005). Two, she was really funny about all the guys we hung out with – I slept with way more of them than I should have, including Sara’s ex, Bryan the hairdresser guy, but she also reminded me about Jules the performance artist who lived on the beach and played the banjo, and Troy who was basically a high-school frat boy who thought he wanted to be an actor because he was, in the words of Zoolander, really, really ridiculously good-looking but basically had meat for brains.
‘Whatever happened to him?’ I’d asked Tammy.
‘He went to work at Goldman.’ She’d rolled her eyes, stuck her tongue in her cheek, and that’s when I realised I loved her.
The other thing I loved about her was that she ate her food. She ordered chicken and lentils and had a pudding. Didn’t talk about it, just ate it. And had a glass of wine.
‘I don’t understand why you can’t commit to this,’ she’d said. ‘It’s not a big deal. It’s not Ingmar Bergman. It’s just a romcom – it’s what you do.’
Afterwards I left and drove home, and I didn’t know the answer. It was so simple. This is the kind of movie I’m good at; why am I not doing it? Because other people have vested interests in me and the money I can make them, that’s why.
‘You met a writer?’
‘It’s not that big a deal, Tommy.’ I pat my hot face.
‘It is for you. You don’t like that stuff. Let me deal with the producers and the writers.’ Tommy’s jaw works even faster. ‘Who the fuck is she anyway?’
‘I knew her back in the day,’ I say. ‘Listen, Tommy, I want to do this movie. I’m serious. You and Artie’ll just have to find a way to fit it in after The Bachelorette Party.’
‘I looked into it, you know I did. The timings don’t work. It’s being filmed in England. This summer. You—’
‘The schedule is fluid while they wait for the last piece of funding to fall into place,’ I interrupt him. ‘And—’ I’m saving the best for last. ‘Alec Mitford is confirmed as Shakespeare. So there.’
Alec Mitford is box office gold at the moment. His last film, with Meryl Streep and Judi Dench, was number one for five weeks, knocked some comic book off the top. He’s a professional Englishman who plays smooth cool posh guys, although I happen to know he grew up in Swindon not far from me.
Oh, Alec. Actually … I knew him back in London, the summer I moved down when I got the job on South Street People. We had a … thing. He still makes me blush.
Tommy can’t help but look impressed. ‘OK then. Well, that’s something. Alec Mitford, huh? So that’s what you’ve been working on, these last few weeks.’
‘Sure.’ I shrug, like that’s the explanation for it all, and I look into the mirror next to me, pretending to fiddle with one of the (loaned) diamond drop earrings that flash and dazzle even in the dim inside light. I don’t tell him about the emails I’ve been sending about Eve Noel. Tina has found her UK agent, a tiny agency that barely has a website. They won’t confirm anything about her. They just say they represent her. I’ve written them three emails now. I’ll wear them down, I know I will. But Tommy does not need to know that, nor Artie; this is not part of their plan for me. Besides, I like the secrecy in my life at the moment. I don’t tell Tommy about George, either, the fact that I sneak over to his house every other night, and what we’ve been doing. I’m not sure I like thinking about it too much during the daytime, but for these last few weeks of hiatus while all I’ve had on my mind is my weight, and who’s been sending me these white roses, it’s good to forget all about it at night.
Two more white roses have arrived, you see. Both taped to the gate. Each one a week apart, after the first one. The CCTV didn’t cover the actual gate, just the path down to it. It’s been changed but we can’t see who put them there. I’m trying to play it down. I’ve told myself it’s just an over-enthusiastic fan. Someone a little bit too keen.
It’s strange though, I know it’s more than that. I just do.
There’s a loud banging and I jump. Someone knocking on the window, a guy in black with an earpiece. I wriggle in my pink dress, putting my fingers in my armpits. Tommy looks at me suspiciously. ‘You get them Botoxed?’ he says. ‘We don’t want slime.’
‘Relax,’ I say.
‘Sophie,’ says T.J., his voice a robotic static through the speaker. ‘I have a message from Ashley. Patrick Drew’s car is just ahead of ours. She says he’ll escort you up the carpet.’
‘I’ll see you the other side,’ Tommy says, putting down his BlackBerry and staring at me intently. ‘We’ll talk about this. All of this.’ He waggles his fingers at me, then reaches into his pocket for another piece of gum. ‘Get out there and make nice. Enjoy Patrick. He’s cute.’
I pull at my fringe, nod, and turn to Tommy. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll all be fine,’ I say.
The rushing sound is louder; the door is opened, and I step out onto the pavement, one glittering, designer-clad foot at a time, from