He gave himself two seconds to feel crap, then shifted his energy and got up from the sofa, just as his hairdresser, Georgie, came in the door, ready to prep him for the next shot.
‘Right, I’m back. And, Moira, I just want you to know that I’m parking myself in your canteen for the rest of my pregnancy. That lovely woman who works there…’
‘Netta.’
‘Yep, that’s her. My mum’s doing her hair, but before she started, she gave me a cup of soup and then sneaked me some of her home-made empire biscuits. I’ve asked her to marry me. Lachlan won’t mind.’
Despite feeling like the emoji with the exploding head, that made Ollie smile. Georgie’s skill as a hairdresser was the reason that he’d plucked her from the salon in his mum’s home village of Weirbridge, but her ability to make him laugh was the reason that she’d become one of his closest friends over the last six months on location. He’d loved every minute of his time with her, and he’d miss their early morning starts and the laughs they’d had every day on set, but he absolutely respected her choice to prioritise her life over her career. It struck him that Georgie had made exactly the same decision that he was wrestling with. The only difference was that she didn’t have hundreds of people depending on her. But could he really live the rest of his life for everyone else? The irony was that the utter misery that had descended on him for the last couple of hours with the prospect of no longer having Stevie, had unequivocally convinced him what he should do – but all that was for nothing if she didn’t want him.
Fuck. What a shitshow.
But now wasn’t the time to give in to it.
He stood up, stripped off his T-shirt and tossed it on top of his kitbag on the floor.
‘That’s the effect I have on him, Calvin,’ Georgie joked, moving her pregnant self over to behind the office chair that often doubled as a salon seat. ‘First sign of my smiley face and he gets his kit off.’
‘It’s like a superpower,’ Calvin bantered back, as he pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen. ‘No contact from Netflix about season two either. I know they said tomorrow at the earliest, but I put calls in anyway. Bloody hell, our lives are in way too many other people’s hands. I’ll need to up my Gaviscon if this carries on. The stress of it is giving me heartburn.’
Georgie pulled a hairdryer and a few sprays out of her bag of trusty tricks and got to work while Ollie sat shirtless in the chair.
‘I know you hate it,’ she told him, ‘but I’m going to do a bit of translucent powder too because it’s hotter than a blowtorch in a sauna out there today. It’s our one-day Glasgow summer and it’s a belter. I don’t think there’s a man in the city that still has his top on.’
They all knew she was referring to the iconic stereotype of ‘Taps Aff’, which, if it were to be described in a Glaswegian dictionary of slang, would be something like…
‘The phenomenon of toplessness that affects Scottish men at the first sign of sun and compels them to remove their upper-body clothing. Can also be used to describe a warm day, i.e. “bloody hell, it’s taps aff weather oot there today”. Usually followed by an epidemic of sunburn and a spectacular upturn in sales of aloe vera and other forms of after-sun lotion.’
She was dabbing his forehead with a big brush, when she paused. ‘Ollie. Are you sure you’re okay? You’ve got a stress line between your eyebrows that wasn’t there yesterday.’
Ollie could feel both his mum and Calvin’s gaze on him, waiting for his answer. He could tell Georgie. She was one hundred per cent loyal and trustworthy. But she also adored Stevie and he didn’t want to upset her. Plus, there wasn’t time with the rest of this evening being planned down to the last minute.
‘I’m fine, don’t worry.’ Acting class 101. He just had to hope he’d pulled it off, but the flinch of scepticism that crossed her face suggested otherwise. However, she didn’t push it, and he was grateful for that.
‘Glad to hear it. Right, there you go – pretty as ever,’ she announced, as she stood back and let him get out of the chair.
He kissed her on the cheek. ‘Thanks, pal.’
‘You’re very welcome. I’m away for another empire biscuit. Do you think Netta will let me move in with her, or will I have to offer her a relocation package to London?’
Her oblivious humour brought his tension levels down a couple of notches, but probably not enough to get rid of the newly arrived stress line.
As Georgie left, he took a white, long-sleeved linen shirt from the hanger on the back of the door and pulled it on, rolling up the sleeves to make it look more casual but still chic. Or, at least, that was what Stevie had told him when she’d suggested wearing it.
Stevie. He needed her to be here. Needed to hear her voice.
‘Come on then, troops,’ his mum said, professional as ever. ‘The public awaits. Calvin, we’ll just pretend they’re here for us too so that our egos don’t shrivel and die.’
‘Best plan I’ve heard all day,’ Calvin agreed, spraying something that smelled incredible into the air in front of him and then walking through it.
‘You good, son?’ his mum checked.
‘Good enough to go get this done.’ He knew his mum would get that. She’d been a performer since she was a teenager, so she knew all about putting a smile on and getting out there to face the people who’d come to see you. She was the woman who’d gone into labour with him while on stage at a miners’ social club, as she was belting out ‘I Will Survive’ in between two games of bingo.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, squeezing her hand.
The route had been well planned. They went out of the fire exit on the side of the former church, walked along a short, ad-hoc corridor that had been constructed from tarpaulins this morning by the stage team, emerging at the front of the building. When the waiting press and the documentary camera crew spotted them, they immediately started filming, and as soon as the crowd registered Ollie’s presence, the cheers and screams started.
The first person that reached him was a woman wearing a press pass and holding up an iPhone with a photo light attached to the top, obviously filming.
