Sunrise Over Pebble Bay

by Della Galton

  ‘I’ve made a point of it. But enough about Mr B. I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.’

  ‘Me too,’ she replied softly.

  Olivia’s audition was at 2 p.m. at the Bristol studio and, as usual, she had allowed so much time, she was there early. It was strange, but she was much more relaxed than she’d been when she’d gone for the Casualty audition. She had driven there which helped. She always felt much more confident driving than taking the train because trains had an irritatingly unnerving habit of being delayed due to signal faults or leaves on the line or a dozen other problems out of her control.

  It also helped that she hadn’t spent the previous night panicking about cakes, she thought, as she arrived at the building, signed in and was directed to the studio where they were holding the auditions.

  She felt much more relaxed through the audition too. It was as if there was some part of her that was no longer desperate to get this role. Maybe because there was a part of her that was worried that if she did get the part, she’d be away when Ruby’s baby was born and she didn’t really want to be.

  Or maybe it was down to the pep talk Clarice had given her when she’d called yesterday.

  ‘This is the perfect part for you. They’re very keen. In fact, one of the casting crew actually saw you playing Gertrude, at Brownsea last year. He was impressed. So you’re already off the start line. Good luck.’

  Knowing that she’d been – if not headhunted – at least asked for, gave Olivia a quiet confidence. She gave the audition her all, but she didn’t over play it. They’d thrown in a bit of a wild card and had asked her to act out a scene where the character she was portraying had to comfort someone who’d just had some really bad news about a relative who’d been in an accident.

  Olivia’s mind flicked back to the moment when she’d walked into her aunt’s back bedroom. Aunt Dawn on her knees by her injured birds. Aunt Dawn’s tear-stained face as she’d turned. Her guilt at leaving the hens alone at the wrong moment and the cracks in her voice when she’d said she felt responsible for what had happened. Olivia did not have to dig deep to portray the compassion she’d felt. As she spoke to the ‘imaginary patient’, her voice was gentle but fiercely supportive. ‘This is not your fault. You are not to blame. I promise you that. It is one of those awful things that just happens. There was nothing you could have done to prevent it.’

  All actors draw from their own lives. Just as all writers, artists and composers do – it’s how it works. You draw the pain from your life and you channel it into your art and, in doing so, not only do you get others to identify with you because they have felt the same pain, but you also feel a cathartic relief yourself. It’s a universal process – it has probably existed since the dawn of humanity when two cavemen first connected over a fire in an earthen pit.

  What comes from the heart goes to the heart. If you believe it, if you really feel it, then your audience will believe it and feel it too. It was what she’d been taught at drama school.

  And she had a feeling it had paid off today because when she came to the end of the audition, there was a stillness in the room. The kind of stillness that she knew meant they had been hanging on to her every word.

  ‘Thank you, Olivia. We’ll be in touch.’ It was the same parting shot as always. But they were all smiling.

  Olivia left the studio still feeling the same calmness that she’d felt throughout the audition. She bought a meal deal from a newsagent – she’d been too nervous to have lunch beforehand – and she took it back to her van, which was on the top floor of a municipal car park.

  As she ate the cheese salad sandwich, she thought about what a strange life being a performer was. A roller coaster full of big ups and crashing downs. The ups were adrenaline-fuelled, exciting rushes, that exultant feeling when you got a part. The downs were gut-wrenching disappointments.

  Running Amazing Cakes was much simpler. She felt much more on an even keel when she was baking, delivering, talking to clients and all of the essential accoutrements that surrounded it.

  If she were to pack in acting and have a baby, she’d have a totally different life to the one she had now. She knew she would miss it badly. Maybe that was the reason she’d struggled when Ruby had asked her what she’d choose if the options were motherhood or fame.

  Her phone, which was still on silent from the audition, suddenly buzzed in her lap. She glanced at the screen. It was Clarice.

  This was it. Olivia’s heart banged against her chest. They’d made that decision bloody fast. Or maybe her agent was phoning to tell her she’d left her jacket at the studio. That had happened once. Her hopes had soared to the sky and then been crushed underfoot again in a matter of seconds.

  ‘Olivia.’ Her agent’s voice was triumphant. ‘They loved you. You’ve got the part.’

  ‘What?’ There was a big bit of her that was so shocked she couldn’t move.

  Clarice repeated herself impatiently with more emphasis on the ‘loved you’ bit this time.

  ‘Thank you,’ Olivia said, feeling the whoosh in her ears as the roller coaster climbed steeply upwards, higher and higher. ‘Oh my God. I’ve really got it.’

  ‘You’ve really got it. Well done.’ Clarice sounded as pleased as if she’d got the part herself. ‘I’ll email you the details, contracts, et cetera, but I thought you’d want to know as soon as possible. You’re not driving, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m sitting in my van.’ She barely heard the rest of the conversation. But she knew that wouldn’t matter. It would all be in an email. Clarice was highly efficient. All she could think about was that she would always remember this moment. The moment when she got her first huge break. And wasn’t it a shame that she was sitting at the top of a multistorey car park looking at the most uninspiring of views – a concrete pillar which had been graffitied with the word ‘fuck’ in black paint. Although, actually, right now, that did seem quite apt.

  After the call from Clarice, Olivia phoned Phil and told him her news.

  ‘Congratulations. You are bloody amazing.’ He couldn’t have sounded more thrilled.

  ‘Is this a bad time to talk?’ she asked.

  ‘No. of course it isn’t. In fact, I’m on my way across to the lighthouse. I just took a call from a guest who left an hour ago. She thinks she left her engagement ring on the sink in the bathroom. I thought, as it was such a nice day, that I’d head over myself and check. So tell me more. What did they say?’

  She filled him in and at the end of it, he said, ‘Where are you anyway? What can you see?’

  She laughed, high on adrenaline. ‘It’s not very inspiring. I can see a steering wheel and an empty sandwich wrapper on the passenger seat and through the window I can see a concrete building full of cars. Directly in front of me, there’s a big concrete pillar which has the word “fuck” written on it in big black letters.’

  ‘Sounds pretty apt to me. Is there an exclamation mark?’

  ‘Yes, there is.’

  ‘Well, that’s a memory that’s going to stick in your mind.’ He chuckled.

  ‘That’s exactly what I was thinking.’

  ‘So are you on your way back?’

  ‘I am in a minute. Tell me what you can see?’

  ‘Well… if you hang on just another minute…’ He sounded out of breath. He must be climbing the spiral staircase of the lighthouse, which in Olivia’s memory went up and up and up. ‘Right, I’m there. I can see a circular room with huge, floor-to-ceiling windows. A room that once held the great light that warned sailors not to come too close to the rocks.’

  ‘I can visualise it perfectly.’

  ‘I have an almost panoramic view.’ He hesitated and Olivia imagined him moving across to the window. There’s the English Channel, which is dark blue and quite choppy today, although there are one or two boats out there.’

  ‘What else? What colour’s the sky?’

  ‘The sky is mostly blue too, with patches of cloud, but the patches are
moving fast and you can see the shadows of them on the surrounding hills.’ He was into his stride now. ‘I can see hikers on the coast path and dogs – and in the further distance I can see fields of yellow rapeseed.’

  ‘Brilliant.’

  But he wasn’t finished. ‘I’m looking back at the sea now. And in the distance, I can see the dark blue line of the horizon where the sky meets the water. I used to think that was the edge of forever when I was a kid.’

  ‘I used to think it went to Africa,’ Olivia said. ‘Because I used to have this book all about Africa and when I asked our parents where Africa was, they said it was across the sea. For ages, I thought they meant just the other side of this sea. I was desperately disappointed when I found out it was just France over there. It’s amazing isn’t it – the fantastic images we conjure up in our imagination.’

  ‘It is.’

  Are you going to check for the ring?’

  ‘I’ve already checked. It was on the sink. It’s now safe in my pocket.’

  ‘Great.’

  Phil was silent for a second and fleetingly she thought she’d lost the signal.

  Then she heard him breathing and realised he was still there.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘Tell me what you’re thinking.’

  ‘It’ll sound mad.’

  ‘Tell me anyway.’

  ‘OK.’ She heard him take a deep breath. ‘I was wondering if a beautiful girl who’s heading off to the big city with a rucksack of dreams on her shoulders would still want to know the maître d’ she left behind when she came back all famous and successful.’

  Olivia caught her breath. ‘I think that the beautiful girl may well be a lot more enamoured with the maître d’ than he seems to think,’ she said softly.

  ‘That’s good to hear,’ Phil replied. ‘Because the maître d’ is pretty smitten with the beautiful girl too.’

  ‘We should talk about these things,’ Olivia said then. ‘But not on the phone.’

  ‘I agree.’ He’d gone back to matter of fact. ‘I’d better go and let the owner of this ring know that it’s safe and sound then. And you’d better get out of that car park before you run up a massive parking bill.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘Drive safely, honey.’

  They said their goodbyes and Olivia started the engine of the van. It was amazing what miracles could take place in a Bristol city-centre multistorey car park.

  25

  Olivia started the drive home on cloud ninety-nine, which was ten times higher than cloud nine but dipped dramatically when her van broke down halfway there. It didn’t stop completely but lost most of its power and wouldn’t go more than about eighteen mph. She managed to limp it to the next service station.

  She called the RAC, who promised she’d be a priority because she was a woman on her own but who also warned that they were having a spectacularly busy day and would try to get to her within two hours.

  Olivia wasn’t too worried. She had a toilet and also a shop where she could purchase her tea, if necessary, although hopefully she wouldn’t be waiting that long. She also had a phone, albeit one that only had forty-five per cent charge left, so it wasn’t going to last indefinitely. This was the most annoying bit. She was itching to tell everyone she knew about her success. Aunt Dawn, Ruby and her parents were top of the list. But she didn’t want to run her phone down too much, so she decided to wait. She also wanted to keep Phil informed because she’d planned to call by his house and celebrate.

  The time stretched from two hours to three and then four with the RAC sending her text updates. In the end, the recovery truck didn’t pull in until 8 p.m. and Olivia didn’t think she’d ever been more pleased to see anyone.

  It took him a further fifteen minutes of tests to tell her that she had an electrical fault which he couldn’t fix on the spot so would take her and the van home. It was dusk by the time the van was safely on the low-loader and she was sitting up front with the driver, whose name was Benjamin Cox.

  He was a similar age to her father, quite talkative, and every so often his chatter was interspersed by another apology and his dismay that she’d been kept waiting so long. He himself, he said, had done a record number of calls that day. Now he had finally got to her, he bent over backwards to help, and not only would he take her home but he agreed to drop her van off at her local garage en route.

  ‘There’s not a lot of point in you paying another tow truck to come out tomorrow,’ he’d said kindly. ‘And your van isn’t going anywhere under its own steam until it’s been fixed. It needs a crank sensor. It’s probably a part they’ve got in stock, so it shouldn’t be long. It’s just unlucky that I don’t have one on the truck. They don’t let us carry much, these days.’

  Olivia thanked him profusely and left a message on the garage’s answerphone to tell them what her van was doing on their forecourt. Then she posted the key through the door with a note in an envelope, also helpfully produced by Benjamin Cox.

  He drove her back to number five and they parted on good terms. She’d even told him about Nightingales – she hadn’t been able to contain herself - and he’d said he didn’t watch it, but he thought his wife did and that they’d look out for her.

  It wasn’t quite the same as telling her family, but it was better than nothing.

  By the time she finally unlocked her front door, it was nearly 10 p.m. She considered phoning everyone now, but it was late. Ruby had been having early nights lately, blaming the baby for tiring her out, and Mum and Dad weren’t nightbirds either. Aunt Dawn was the only one who was likely to be up late. And she’d be tired too – emotionally anyway, after the chicken tragedy with the fox.

  Olivia decided reluctantly that it would be better to wait until the following morning and then tell everyone together.

  She was sad that she hadn’t had the chance to see Phil; she’d finally sent him a message to say she wasn’t going to make it to his because of the van, but the memory of their conversation felt like a nugget of gold. They would have a proper chance to catch up on Sunday. They had planned a whole uninterrupted twenty-four hours together. They would have plenty of time for talking then. Olivia couldn’t wait.

  The next two days passed in a flurry of activity. The garage called and said her van would be ready late Saturday, which was a relief as she needed it for work. Olivia phoned the client who was expecting a cake delivery and explained the situation and he agreed to come over and collect it himself. This was handy as it saved her an hour and a half.

  Her family were over the moon when they heard her news. She’d been quite worried about telling Ruby because of the dates of filming, but Ruby assuaged her fears. ‘Don’t be daft. Mum will be here anyway – just in case I change my mind at the last minute about having a birthing partner, which I can assure you I won’t.’ She paused. ‘Besides, you won’t be filming 24/7, will you? And Bristol’s only a couple of hours away. It’s not like getting in and out of London.’

  All of this was true.

  Olivia decided to stop worrying and look forward to Sunday. Diving in the sea was very weather-dependent, but even though it was forecast to be fine, she and Phil had a backup plan just in case it changed.

  On Sunday, when she woke up and looked out of her bedroom window, the sky was achingly blue and the sun felt warm through the glass. It felt like summer and the forecasters had promised a scorching bank holiday Monday.

  The dive boat didn’t leave the quay until nine thirty, but Phil was picking her up at eight thirty so they could allow for any hold-ups. Timewise, she was barely ten minutes from where they were meeting the boat, but dive kit was too heavy to carry that far.

  They both had drysuits and stab jackets but had arranged to hire the heavy bottles and weight belts from the dive skipper. Dive bottles had to be tested every three years and hers had been well overdue.

  Phil arrived on time.

  ‘It’s a fantastic day out there,’ he said, bending to kiss her. ‘I’m really loo
king forward to this. Are you?’

  ‘I am, although I’m a little bit nervous. It’s been ages since I dived.’

  ‘Me too. But we’re not going deep. Today is just about rediscovering the sport and deciding whether we like it enough to go again.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ she said.

  ‘Do you remember all the hand signals?’ he asked her.

  ‘I think so. It’s thumbs up if you want to go up. And finger and thumb together for OK?’ she demonstrated.

  ‘Exactly.’ He held out his hand in front of him, palm facing the floor, and tilted it back and forth. ‘This is the signal for, “I’m not sure.” So if I ask you if you’re OK and you do this, I’ll know to wait until you are sure.’

  ‘Yep. I remember that one.’

  ‘And this one…’ Phil did the cut-throat motion at his neck, followed by the thumbs up signal, ‘means that I’ve got no air and I need to go up.’

  ‘Absolutely. But that’s not going to happen.’

  ‘No. We won’t be diving for that long. Forty-five minutes tops, Dan, the skipper, said. We’re doing a drift dive across the Shambles, which is a sandbank off Portland. Nice easy conditions. It’s going to be fun.’

  The dive boat, which was called The Katherine – Phil thought she was named after the skipper’s daughter – was moored up at the opposite side of the quay to Vintage Views, but it still wasn’t more than a few hundred metres away.

  There was a little heap of dive gear on the quay. Four air cylinders stood in a row. Next to them was a pile of dive bags, which Olivia knew would contain wetsuits, or maybe drysuits, like she and Phil would be wearing, which didn’t allow any water in at all. Only the hardiest divers wore wetsuits in the English Channel at this time of year. Despite the air temperature, May was one of the coldest times of the year. The sea took a long time to cool down and an equally long time to warm back up again. Hence it was actually a lot warmer in December than it was in May.