Waiting for Callback (17 page)

Subject:
Open Outcry
and
Straker
(working title) projects

Attachments:
Agreement.doc; outline.doc; character scenes.doc; map.jpeg

Dear Julia,

Further to our telephone conversation today, here are the documents on the
Open Outcry
project (16 April, location marked on map). Call me if there is
anything more you or Elektra need to know. It will certainly be a fun way to round off the Easter hols!

Nothing concrete to report on
Straker
I’m afraid. The casting team have confirmed that they did receive the additional scenes we put on tape in the
office at the end of March and so all we can do is wait. There’s a lot of
waiting
in this business. (But great job on OmniNut!)

Kind regards etc.

Stella

P.S. Your planned getaway in Scotland sounds wonderful! I need a technology detox myself!

I literally had to doorstep Moss to see her. I got it: between her mum trying to get her trained up to perfection and having to be available at every possible free moment in
case Torr wanted to meet up, she was really, really
busy
. But a) I had news for her and b) I’d miss her when I was dragged off to my midge-infested, rain-bogged holiday destination in
darkest Scotland.

‘Come up!’ she yelled when Haruka (wearing a particularly fine bee costume) let me in so I did, then picked my way through the heaps of discarded clothes on the floor and curled up
beside Moss on the island of the bed. It was the only place to sit. Also beds are lovely.

‘Help me, Elektra!’

Moss was better than me at fashion, but she was clearly too stressed to think straight.

‘Date with Torr?’ I asked, pointing at a top that would display enough cleavage to be interesting, but not so much that her mum would make her change.

‘I think so.’

‘Now? Here?’

Moss looked pointedly at the row of stuffed animals lined up under the window. ‘No, Elektra, not here.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t actually know yet,’ said Moss, toying with her phone. ‘He hasn’t replied since he suggested it earlier. So I started getting ready straight after school,
but then I felt like a freak so I got un-ready again and now I need to start over.’

She was currently wearing sweat pants with
I’m Not Normal
written across the bum.

‘Mossy? Are you wearing red lipstick?’

She looked embarrassed. ‘A bit.’

‘I thought we’d already established we were never going to be sophisticated enough to wear red lipstick?’

‘I’m allowed to make my own call on that.’

‘Sure.’
Ouch
. ‘It’s been ages,’ I said.

‘What?’ she asked, trying to choose between two pairs of identical skinny jeans.

‘You and Torr.’ And it really had. Anything over a fortnight was considered practically an engagement at our school. ‘You’re like Flissy and James. That’ll be you
on the gymnastics bench at the next social.’ Flissy and James were still together, but there was a possibility that this was because he didn’t know enough words to break up with
her.

Moss laughed (and it wasn’t a sarcastic laugh which was worrying).

‘I can’t believe you’re legitimately dating.’

‘We’re not. We haven’t had the “exclusive” conversation so I still don’t know what it really
is
.’

‘Torr hasn’t got time to fit in anyone else. You’ve been to see two films with subtitles in the last week. It’s weird.’

‘Nothing weird about that,’ she said defensively.

‘There is if you’re somebody who hates pretty much all films except
Mean Girls
and
Love Actually
.’

She shrugged. ‘Torr wanted to see them.’

‘Torr wanted’ was fast becoming one of her favourite phrases.

‘But, I mean, I really liked them as well.’

‘Seriously? Even the Swedish one with the “original” sound score and no happy characters?’ I’d read the reviews: they were not good.

She shrugged again. ‘Obviously not as good as
Mean Girls
.’

‘To be fair, few films are,’ I said.

‘Torr didn’t want to go on his own,’ she said.

That was actually quite cute. ‘Do you want an Utterly Nutterly nut?’ I asked her, changing the subject. They’d sent me a big pack as a thank you.

She looked doubtful. ‘What are they like?’

‘Like normal nuts, but with a delicious caramel coating.’

‘Yeah, I can read that on the packet. What are they actually like?’

‘I’m not a huge fan.’

They were really, really disgusting. It’s a good job I hadn’t tasted them before the voice-over session. I’d have had to really engage my acting skills then. Poor
Squirrelina.

Moss kept checking her phone and then putting it down a little further away. She was not chill about the date thing.

‘Are you definitely still seeing Torr today?’ I asked after a bit. This was killing me. I was usually up for any amount of relationship analysis, but I was bursting with news and I
couldn’t find the right moment with Moss being so distracted.

‘He’s just working out what he’s doing.’

Her phone buzzed. She grabbed it and read the message. Her shoulders drooped. ‘Oh, right. I think he’s got something on now.’

‘Classic guy.’

‘He’s not. You don’t know him. And, no offence, but you’re not exactly an expert. He’s just really busy with family stuff.’

‘Wow, OK.’ But she looked upset as well as defensive and I didn’t like that. ‘Look, let’s ditch the Nutterlys, crack out the crisps and watch some
Gossip
Girl
. Who needs a real guy when you’ve got Chuck Bass?’ A line of reasoning that had always worked in the past.

Ten minutes into the episode (and despite excellent distraction efforts from Chuck and Blair) I couldn’t wait any longer. ‘You know that casting where I turned up and nothing
happened and I
despaired
?’

‘Which one?’ asked Moss.

‘The one I was super happy about because I missed the simultaneous equations test.’

‘I thought that was just an excuse because you hadn’t prepped for it.’

‘Well, I hadn’t, but no it wasn’t. It was an audition. An audition for a part. A part . . .’ I paused for dramatic effect. ‘A part for which I am
apparently
perfect
.
Perfect
. How many times can I repeat that without sounding tragic?’

‘At least once more,’ said Moss, which was particularly generous under the circumstances.

‘Me. Perfect.’ I let out a tiny sigh of satisfaction. ‘OK, it’s a
very
small part, but it’s in a proper
film
and I don’t have any words, but . .
.’

‘But it’s
massive
,’ she said, which was the right thing to say, and then she let me tell her all about it with repetitions and deviations and lots of stopping to gasp at
the sheer amazingness of it all (admittedly, she kept checking her phone, but that was OK).

The film was called
Open Outcry.
It was a psychological thriller set in buzzing, rich, immoral, modern-day London – one of the bad financier/ good detective genre. The bad
financier, the good detective and his super-hot, much-younger love interest were all being played by really famous actors: Daniel Craig, David Tennant and some new girl actor fresh out of RADA
called Lucrezia (OK, she wasn’t famous – yet – but she was cool enough to have Lucrezia as a stage name). Yep, a
James Bond
, a
Doctor Who
and a girl with great hair
were my
co-stars
(I said that quite a few times: my
co-stars
). I was only in one scene as one of a bunch of schoolchildren crossing a street, but I was singled out by tripping in
front of a car only to be pulled out of the way by the evil (but disturbingly sexy) financier who’s en route to destroying the world. In just a few moments, I would set him up as a complex
character, gain him temporary audience sympathy and generally endow the plot with depth and subtlety – pretty pivotal stuff. No actual lines, but it did call for an expression of
deep
emotion to be captured in a close-up shot. Actually, forget all of that; what mattered was that I would have a scene with Daniel Craig.

‘I’m going to get
touched
by James Bond!’

‘That sounds wrong.’

‘Status currency. I’ll be famous – boys will want to touch the girl who’s been touched by James Bond.’

‘That sounds wrong too,’ said Moss. ‘Hah, Flissy will ask you to join her crew.’

‘They say fame has a downside. I won’t tell her. It gets better.’

‘Better than Daniel Craig?’

‘Yep. Guess who’s playing one of the schoolchildren?’

‘That’s not the hardest question you’ve ever asked me. Archie, right?’

I nodded. ‘And we had a
real-life
conversation.’ Sort of. Archie had been talking about the film to another boy in our ACT class and I’d been sitting nearby and Archie
had kind of included me – well, he’d spoken quite loudly (which he hadn’t needed to because I’d been listening in anyway) and smiled at me. Then he’d come up to me and
asked if it was true that I’d been cast as ‘The Schoolgirl’ in
Open Outcry
and I’d modestly said I had and he’d said, ‘Cool.’ I was going to tell
Moss all about this major change in our relationship, but her phone buzzed.

‘Torr?’ I asked, which was a redundant question because she was doing that thing where you look at your phone with
exactly
the same expression as if whoever’s contacting
you were right there (which on this occasion was making me feel a bit uncomfortable).

‘Actually, I think Torr might be free for a bit right now.’

Ah.

Ten minutes of emergency styling and I left her to it.

• Easter holidays – not even a bit distracted by ten days in a location in Scotland so remote there was no Wi-Fi. Absolutely zero to report on
anything. Basically, it was like I didn’t exist.

• Time spent fantasizing about Daniel Craig: 73.2 per cent.