And, as my world spins again, I feel my cheeks move in a smile to match his, but it’s not my smile.
My hammering heart is not my heart.
I don’t think about that though.
I don’t consider anything I do.
Because I’m in.
I’m finally in.
Hello, Clarence.
I’m all Iris, now.
I have no sense of the scene passing.
I don’t think of it as a scene.
Caught up in the heady, giddy joy of this miracle that isn’t mine, but feels completely like it is, I live rather than act this reunion with Nick, who’s Robbie, and could go on doing it with him for hours.
But we don’t have hours.
We have a minute.
Just a minute before Ana calls, ‘Cut,’ wrenching us out of it.
It’s too short.
As I jolt back to reality, I’m left with a certain sense of having been forced from a conversation that was far from over.
I’m still looking at Nick, who’s back by the set door, which he was just about to leave through.
See you in the morning, was what I was meant to have said to him.
‘Don’t do anything stupid now, will you?’ is what actually came out.
So, we’ll have to clear that with Imogen, too.
No one seems to mind, though.
Nick’s grinning at me. And I’ve just heard Ana telling Naomi to circle what we’ve done, so know she must be pleased too.
We won’t go another time.
We really have done this in a single take.
Bam.
Filling my cheeks with air and letting it go, I look around at the crew, who appear pretty jubilant themselves: some of the Americans exchanging celebratory high-fives; a couple of Brits running to an awkward one. My legs feel weak, like I’ve stepped from a keeling ship back onto solid ground. I swallow, fighting to reorientate myself in reality. It’s not a completely unfamiliar struggle; this is hardly the first time I’ve felt the lines blur on set. I’ve spoken in scores of interviews about how consumed I can become by my character whilst filming. It’s what Mum’s taken to calling my escape route,a fresh golden ticket to a different mind, a different world, which isn’t entirely unfair. But it’s also at least fifty per cent bullshit.
Because I’ve neveractuallyleft behind who I am before, however much I might have wanted to.
Not like I just did.
So,god, has my need to escape become so intense that my mind is now quite genuinely giving in, giving way, and setting me loose?
Isthatwhat all these illusions, thesehallucinations, have been about?
