‘Wooden?’
‘You were stiff,’ she says. ‘You’re awkward on your own. Nowhere to hide.’
‘I know what wooden means.’
She throws her hands up. ‘You asked for my honest opinion.’
‘I never said honest.’
She puts her hand on his arm. Seb looks down at the hand, then back up at her. She doesn’t move the hand. He doesn’t ask her to.
‘It needs a bit of finessing,’ she says. ‘You’ve got the talent, the emotion. You just need someone to help you channel it.’
He raises a dark eyebrow. ‘Let me guess,’ he says. ‘That person is you?’
‘It could be.’
The bus passes the market stalls on Leather Lane, the jewellers on Hatton Garden, then breaks out across the main road. The next stop is the commuter’s, so he picks up his bag from the seat next to him, half stands.
Seb’s face is serious again. He scans their surroundings. ‘Clara. Aren’t you supposed to be at work?’
‘I have fifteen minutes left of my lunch break,’ she says. ‘And I intend to make them count.’
‘You’re miles away,’ he says.
‘I’m right where I’m supposed to be.’
Seb looks at her. If he isn’t quite won over, he at least seems less angry than when she first arrived. ‘You’re not scared of anything, are you?’
‘I am,’ she says, and her voice sounds suddenly sincere. ‘I’m scared I blew it.’
Farringdon Road
A bevy of people rise from their seats, including the commuter, rucksack slung over one shoulder, carried with the crowd towards the stairs and the station beyond. He pauses briefly, wanting to know if the couple will reach a resolution. But Clara is moving, too, because Seb insists, because he’s practically pushing her out into the aisle and towards the stairs.
‘You need to get back,’ he says. Then, with another sigh, another shake of his head, ‘You have my number.’
Clara seems to take this as a win. She speaks fast as she’s carried away, too. ‘I’ll call,’ she says. ‘This time. I promise.’
‘You’re going to get fired!’ Seb shouts back.
‘It was worth it.’
a jogger
It’s a warm day on Hampstead Heath. The sunbathers face the panorama of the city, arranged in rows like they’re seated for a show. And he’s providing it, this young man with the rolled-up cigarette behind his ear and the dark hair that keeps falling over his face, the one who seems like he’d rather be doing anything else.
‘Do we have to do this in public?’ he says.
‘Confidence,’ says the young woman sitting on the ground in front of him. ‘If you can’t act in front of an audience, you can’t act.’
The jogger has cramp, and he’s paused to stretch out his smarting leg. He rests his heel on the arm of a bench and begins to count down from thirty, watching the young man as he does so. He’s holding a script, this actor, dressed more like a stagehand in black jeans and a black T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The young woman is sitting on the grass in denim shorts and a linen shirt, arms wrapped around her bare legs, men’s sunglasses perched on her head. She has her own tattered script on the ground in front of her, covered in doodles and annotations.
Twenty-four. Twenty-three. Twenty-two.
‘This is ridiculous,’ the young man says, glancing at the amused onlookers to their left and right.
‘You can say anything,’ she says. ‘But unless it’s your lines, you’re not going anywhere.’
