Naomi, the assistant director, is the first to pounce, jogging through the drizzle from a nearby trailer to hand us both updated call sheets for the morning. Emma Jameson – who’s playing Iris’s best friend, Section Officer Clare Holmes – now can’t work tomorrow, so we’re pushing my first scene with herout, and starting instead with a later one, between Nick and Felix.
‘You get a lie-in, Claude,’ says Naomi.
I nod, even though I doubt I’ll sleep, and shrug on my puffer. It’s biting, much colder than it was in London. To my left, on the opposite side of the house to the set, sheep graze in fenced-off fields. Their musty scent carries on the icy breeze, and, as I breathe it in, I’m hit by another wave of familiarity. A memory too, of myself running among woolly coats in frost-crisped grass. And a voice – my gran’s? – calling for me to slow down.You’ll start a stampede.Briefly, I replay it, then I shelve it, because it makes me sad, and it’s not the time for that.
‘Why isn’t Emma working?’ I ask Naomi.
‘She’s got gastro.’
‘What?’ I frown. ‘Since when?’
‘She took a turn at lunchtime. But she’s sleeping it off, and I need you to leave her to it. No one’s allowed in breathing distance.’
‘Is gastro airborne?’ asks Nick.
‘Maybe. Probably. I don’t want anyone taking any chances.’ Removing her glasses, Naomi rubs her eyes. ‘We’re all hoping it’s a twenty-four-hour thing, obviously.’
‘For Emma’s sake,’ I say. ‘Obviously.’
‘Yes,’ she says, and has the good grace to smile. ‘Obviously.’
Jeff, the location manager, joins us, waterproofed from top to toe in a cagoule and rain pants, his posse of lackeys trailing. He directs them to fetch our luggage, park Nick’s car, and hands me two card keys.
‘This is for your trailer,’ he says, ‘and this is for your room.’
‘Wardrobe needs Nick,’ yells a runner, running. ‘Adjustments for tomorrow … ’
Then, ‘Oh good, you’re here,’ comes Ana’s voice, makingus all turn as she appears from the house, jogging down its wide front steps. She holds a clipboard over her cropped curls, and is wearing a cosy get-up of an oversized fluffy jumper, leggings and Ugg boots. It could almost make her look quite comfortable.Mumsy. I expect the extras congregated at the catering truck have all been fooled. Never mind. They’ll realise soon enough she’s an utter badass.
‘All well, Claude?’ she asks, in a tight, braced tone that I can only bear to give one answer to.
‘Great, Ana,’ I say. ‘Really great.’
‘Right,’ she replies, and I know she hasn’t been fooled. Of course she hasn’t. She’s Ana.
‘Nick.’ She claps her hands, much as Mum might to Stewart. ‘Wardrobe. Go. Claude, come with me. There’s something I wanna show you.’
And, as Nick goes, throwing me a frown that lets me know he hasn’t appreciated Ana’s clap, I also do as instructed, following Ana up the steps she’s just come down.
The middle one is a different height to the rest. Ana trips, then rights herself.
‘Damn thing keeps getting me,’ she says.
It doesn’t get me, though.
Even as Ana stumbles, I tap my toe to its edge, skipping over it without consideration.
Then we reach Doverley’s front door.
‘Ready to see something amazing?’ Ana says, flashing me a smile.
‘Always,’ I reply.
‘So come right this way, Ms Baxter.’ Grabbing a hold of the door’s brass handle, she pushes it wide. ‘I’m about to blow your mind.’
Chapter Two
Iwas twenty when I met Ana. She was still assisting back then, and we were working together here in England, on an adaptation ofThe Go-Between. Felix was with us too – he was Ted Burgess to my Marian Maudsley – and for both of us, it was our big break. I was a nervous wreck, utterly in awe of the director, as well as most of the cast, and if it hadn’t been for Felix and Ana, I’m not sure I could have got through it. But Felix and I had hit it off during auditions – one-upping each other with our sorry tales of failed call-backs, and bit-parts in budget advertisements – and, on set, he made me laugh, all the time; even when I was about to vomit with anxiety in the lead-up to our closed-set scenes. Ana, meanwhile, took me under her wing, sitting with me in make-up, attending my every take, and getting me into rushes each morning so that I could watch the scenes I’d shot the day before and see that I wasn’t, in fact, making an idiot of myself. Thanks to her, I began to believe in myself.Trustmyself. In the end, I wound up getting nominated for an Oscar for that movie, and winning a BAFTA. Felix won a BAFTA too, and Ana scooped both awards as part of the Best Picture team.
