‘It’s been really lovely,’ Gemma had said.
‘Yes,’ Adam had replied. ‘I had a great evening.’
Kay had scrunched up her apron in excited hands as she’d listened. Would it happen? Would there be a good-night kiss? She almost gave her presence away by the gasp that left her when Adam inclined his head towards Gemma and kissed her. Okay, so it was only on the cheek but it was still a move in the right direction. Lips followed cheeks, didn’t they?
Gemma had knocked tentatively on the kitchen door and Kay had grabbed a pot and a tea towel in order to look as if she’d been totally preoccupied and hadn’t had a moment to hang around in gooseberry mode.
‘Thank you so much,’ she’d said.
Kay had turned round and feigned a look of surprise. ‘Did you have a nice evening?’
‘It was lovely,’ Gemma said.
‘My pleasure!’ Kay said. ‘You got on all right?’ She tried to make the question sound casual as she picked up a glass and dried it.
Gemma nodded.
‘He’s a very special person, isn’t he?’ Kay said and she was answered with a look of the tenderest affection and she knew that all her instincts had been right.
One of the things Kay hadn’t thought about when she’d decided to open a bed and breakfast was how very early in the morning she’d have to get up – especially when she had a film crew staying. The office job she’d held for years had been a short walk away from her home and she’d never had to get up early. But the early-morning views out over the harbour and sea were worth it. The Cobb wall would be in shadow and the gulls would be hovering around the harbour, their white wings bright in the morning light.
As she stood yawning in the kitchen, cracking eggs into a bowl before scrambling them, she couldn’t help smiling at the thought of Oli Wade Owen sitting in her dining room. When Kay had taken the coffee through, she couldn’t help noticing how dishevelled his blond hair had looked and how heavy his eyelids were. He’d looked half-asleep and didn’t look a bit like a hero.
She stirred the eggs around the pan, the creamy yellowness making her smile.
‘Good morning!’ a voice suddenly said from the doorway.
Kay jumped and spun around. It was Oli.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘You – erm – startled me.’
‘Just wondered how you were getting on.’
‘Me?’
He nodded. ‘Need a hand? I’m pretty good in the kitchen,’ he said. ‘Well, I can open a mean can.’
Kay grinned. ‘It’s all under control,’ she said, her scrambling spoon in her hand.
‘I was thinking about you last night,’ Oli said.
Kay’s mouth dropped open. ‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Wondering about what you said – about the portrait.’
‘Oh!’ she said. ‘The portrait.’
‘I mean, I’m happy to sit for you – if you’d like that.’
‘I’d love that,’ Kay said, perhaps with a little too much enthusiasm. ‘I mean, great.’
‘How’s about tonight, then? I’ll give the pub a miss, how’s that?’
Kay smiled and nodded and stared into the blue eyes that were crinkling with merriment at the edges.
‘What’s that smell?’ he suddenly asked, his nose wrinkling.
‘Oh, no!’ Kay screamed, turning around. She’d left the heat on and the scrambled eggs were now a shrivelled, dry mass of black at the bottom of the pan.
‘I’d better leave you to it,’ Oli said, holding his hands up as he sneaked out of the kitchen.
Kay turned the gas off and stared at the blackened contents but she couldn’t help smiling. She was going to sketch Oli. He was going to sit for her. That meant he’d be alone with her.
For absolutely ages.
‘So it looks like another wet day,’ Teresa said at the breakfast table, ‘although we should get a morning’s sunshine first.’
Gemma poured herself another coffee to help her get through the day ahead.
‘The light should be right for the big Cobb scene at least.’
Beth nodded. It was going to be her big day and she was ready for it. She’d been going on about it all morning.
‘If it wasn’t for Louisa Musgrove, the story of Persuasion just wouldn’t exist,’ she’d told Gemma as they’d come downstairs together. ‘She really is the pivotal character in the whole plot and far more appealing than dreary Anne who never has anything remotely interesting to say. No, I think Captain Wentworth should have stayed in Lyme and married Louisa. You know he wants to. She throws herself into everything with such – such—’
‘Lack of thought,’ Gemma said quietly.
‘Pardon?’
‘Nothing.’
Beth sighed. ‘Louisa is the forgotten heroine of English literature,’ she went on. ‘I’m really very surprised that she hasn’t got more lines. I must have a word with that screen-writer person. What’s his name?’
‘Adam.’
‘Right. I think he’ll see sense when I explain things to him. I was thinking that there should be a scene between Louisa and Wentworth when she’s recovering in bed. It could be very romantic. I think it would work really well.’
Gemma hadn’t bothered to reply. Whatever she said would have been ignored unless it fanned Beth’s own opinion, but how ridiculous she was to think that she could rewrite Jane Austen to suit her own selfish needs.
Beth clearly wasn’t going to let the subject drop, though. At the breakfast table, Gemma had watched as Beth had whispered in Teresa’s ear and couldn’t stop a tiny smile from playing around her lips at Teresa’s expression.
‘What?’ the director said, almost choking on her coffee.
‘Don’t you think that would make more sense?’ Beth said, fluttering her eyelashes.
‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,’ Teresa said, scraping her chair back and standing up. ‘If you’re not happy with the role as it is—’ Teresa continued threateningly.
‘Oh, I’m happy,’ Beth said, knowing when she was defeated.
‘Good,’ Teresa said. ‘Then I’ll see everyone at the Cobb in twenty minutes.’
Once she’d left the room, Beth tutted. ‘You have to wonder with some directors,’ she said. ‘They really have no insight at all.’
Chapter Seventeen
It was time, Gemma thought – time for, perhaps, the most famous scene in Persuasion: the scene where Louisa Musgrove insists on jumping from the Cobb steps into the arms of Captain Wentworth but instead flings herself from its heights before he is ready and lands on the hard ground beneath. Everyone knew it was a key scene to get right and that the fans would be watching very carefully. All the main actors were there and Beth Jenkins knew that the scene was all about her and was prancing around like a prima donna.
‘This dress is too tight!’ she complained. ‘How am I meant to launch myself into Oli’s arms when I can barely breathe?’
The costume girl rushed forward and disappeared behind Beth.
‘And my hair?’
‘What’s wrong with your hair?’ the girl dared to ask.
‘I don’t know – it feels uncomfortable. Fix it.’
The girl, who’d finished fiddling with Beth’s dress, now examined the wig Beth was wearing. ‘It’s just the same as it’s always been,’ she said.
‘Well, then it’s always been on wrong. Do something!’ Beth all but screamed. ‘I can’t have wrong hair, can I?’
Gemma caught Oli’s eye and he winked at her before rolling his eyes at Beth’s performance. Gemma smiled back. If only she had the courage to go up and speak to him, but what would she say? He didn’t want to talk to her. No matter how tender and intimate the scenes they would share together as Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, they were unlikely to make the same connection in real life.
If only it was as easy with Oli as it was with Adam, Gemma couldn’t help thinking. Why did things never work out like that? Why did one always fall
for the one who wouldn’t even notice if you stopped breathing?
Deciding to make the most of her surroundings, Gemma walked a little along the Cobb as everybody fussed around Beth. Lyme Regis really was a very pretty town and it was easy to see why it had been attracting tourists since Jane Austen’s time. Its harbour was full of colourful boats, its rows of bay-fronted cottages and candy-coloured beach huts looked jolly and welcoming even in the most unpromising of weather and she loved the wooded cliff which rose up behind the town, wishing she could pack a rucksack and lose herself in the famous Undercliff.
It was one of the curses of filming that one never had much time to see anything – not if you were in most of the scenes as Gemma was. There was usually a lot of hanging around but never quite enough time to go off and see something interesting. That’s why Gemma always had her knitting nearby – she hated wasting time and her knitting projects filled it beautifully.
Gemma stopped walking and looked out at a stretch of grey-blue sea towards the hills that lined the coast. Somebody had told her the name of the big one – Golden Cap – and it was pyramid-like in shape. The rest of the cliffs undulated along the coast like sleeping dinosaurs, making Gemma remember that it was known as the Jurassic Coast. She’d love to walk along them with the sea-tossed wind in her hair and no thoughts about scripts and lines, but she wasn’t being paid to take off into the hills, was she? And what would her mother say if she knew how often her daughter thought about running away? She was lucky to get this role – she’d worked damned hard to get it so why wasn’t she happy now she was here? Why did she keep thinking about abandoning it all? So many of her friends from drama school would kill to get this role and yet it only seemed to fill her with dread.
‘I’m in the wrong job,’ she said to herself. It wasn’t the first time she’d thought that but it only seemed to be dawning on her now. Here she was, the lead character in an adaptation of a book she adored, starring opposite a man she’d had a crush on for years and she still wasn’t happy.
She leaned up against the cold Cobb wall and gazed out to sea. Her whole life had been invested in acting. Right from the age of three when her mother had taken her to that audition for the soap commercial. She hadn’t got it; she’d cried through the whole audition process. Maybe she should have taken that as an omen but her mother hadn’t given up. There’d been a whole string of auditions after that and Gemma had – at the age of six – been chosen as the face of Sparks Knighton – a very upmarket version of Mothercare. She’d been photographed in denim, gingham, cords and florals and her image had been blown up larger than life and placed in stores, magazines and on the sides of buses. Her mother had been so proud but Gemma had been mortified. People were pointing at her and she didn’t like being pointed at. So what on earth had propelled her towards acting? Well, her mother had encouraged her, of course, and she must have inherited some of her mother’s acting genes because she’d been accepted into drama school without any fuss at all and had done well too. But there’d always been that niggling feeling that it wasn’t quite right for her. She knew that stage fright and first-night nerves were the norm – they were what drove a performance and gave an actor that edge but Gemma had felt it all the time, even in the tiniest of groups when she had nothing more to do than walk through a scene and say a couple of lines.
She’d asked her mother about it once and she’d shaken her head. ‘You’ve just got to get on with it,’ she’d said. ‘What else are you going to do?’
And that was the crux of it really. What else was there for Gemma to do? Acting was the only thing she’d ever known and it seemed too late to change things now.
She started walking back before Teresa sent a search party out for her and, as she neared the cast and crew again, she heard Beth’s voice ringing out across the harbour.
‘It’s still itching me!’ she cried. ‘Honestly, what do you make these wigs out of – steel wool?’
Gemma rolled her eyes.
‘She’s a case is that one,’ a male voice suddenly said.
Gemma turned round to come face to face with a man with smiling eyes and thick dark hair. It was the same man who’d been eyeing up her bosom the other day.
‘That Beth,’ he said, nodding towards her.
‘Oh, yes,’ Gemma said.
‘There’s always one,’ he said. ‘In my experience.’
‘One what?’
‘Case,’ he said. ‘On every film set, you can guarantee you’ll always get one headcase.’
Gemma grinned and then wondered if she should. Surely there should be some sort of solidarity between actresses but she didn’t feel any kinship with Beth and couldn’t help agreeing with the man.
‘I think she just likes all the attention,’ Gemma said. ‘Like most actresses?’ the man said. It was a question but his eyes glittered as if it might be a naughty statement.
‘We’re not all the same, you know,’ Gemma said.
‘I hope not,’ he said. ‘You’re a quiet one, aren’t you?’
Gemma’s eyes narrowed, not sure how to respond to such a question.
‘I mean, I’ve seen a lot of quiet actors too. They’re perfect to work with. They come on set, do their bit – no fuss, no grief.’
‘I hope I’m not the sort to cause grief,’ Gemma said sincerely.
The man shook his head. ‘Absolutely not! Just the opposite, I’d say.’
She smiled at him and then wondered who on earth he was.
‘Oh,’ he said, as if realising himself, ‘I’m Rob.’
‘Gemma,’ she said.
‘I know,’ he said and gave a little smile. ‘We keep missing each other, don’t we?’
‘Do we?’
He nodded. ‘Our timing never seems quite right,’ he said. ‘I’ve been trying to speak to you.’
‘You have?’ she said, remembering the times their eyes had met across the bar and their brief encounter by the Cobb wall the other day.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Did you know this is our second film together?’
‘Really? You were on Into the Night?’
‘Yep.’
‘I didn’t know, I’m sorry.’
‘That’s okay,’ he said. ‘I tend to blend into the background.’
‘What is it you do?’
‘I help take care of the lights. You could say that – wherever I go – I just light the place up.’
Gemma smiled and, as his eyes crinkled in merriment, she couldn’t help thinking that that was exactly what he did.
As Adam parked his car, he couldn’t help thinking of what Nana Craig had told him before he’d left. He’d got up early to get her shopping before heading into Lyme for the filming, dropping it off at her cottage. Like most retired people, Nana Craig was up at first light even though she had nothing to get up for. She was out tending her garden when Adam arrived, bending over her pots and plants in a manner that alarmed Adam.
‘Should you really be doing that, Nana?’ Adam asked as he walked up the little path.
‘I don’t like the look of those black spots,’ Nana Craig said. ‘Look!’
Adam bent to look. ‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know but it looks like trouble to me. I’ll have to pull them up.’
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ he said. ‘Leave them for me. I’ve told you before to leave the gardening to me.’
Nana Craig tutted in annoyance. ‘If you stop me gardening, you might as well shoot me where I stand.’
‘Come on and get this shopping inside before the ice cream melts down my leg,’ Adam said, not really wanting to get into the whole gardening argument so early in the morning.
‘Raspberry ripple?’ she asked as they walked into the kitchen.
‘No. Er, mint and chocolate.’
His nan pulled a face.
‘Of course raspberry ripple!’
Her smile returned. ‘Time for some now?’
‘It’s not even nine o’clock!’
‘O
h, yes,’ Nana Craig said.
‘Anyway, I’ve got to get to Lyme for today’s shoot – they’re trying for the Cobb scene. Do you want to come along?’
Nana Craig shook her head. ‘Not for me, dear. Lyme’s always so busy these days. Besides, I wouldn’t want to get in the way.’
‘You won’t get in the way,’ Adam said.
‘But you’ll be with that nice girl.’
Adam frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
Nana Craig flapped her hands. ‘You know – that nice girl who was here.’
‘Kay? Well, she might be on the set.’
‘So you should be talking to her not looking after your old nan.’
Adam shook his head. ‘She’s not got eyes for me, I’m afraid. If she’s on the set, there’s only one person she’ll be interested in.’
‘Then it’s your job to make her interested in you, isn’t it?’ Nana Craig said.
Adam helped put the shopping away, packing the raspberry ripple ice cream into the tiny freezer and placing all the jars in the cupboards, loosening all the lids first so his nana wouldn’t struggle with them when he wasn’t around.
‘And how am I going to do that?’ Adam asked, leaping back as a bright red wave of beetroot juice flooded over a jar lid.
Nana Craig shoved her hands in the pockets of her primrose and violet cardigan. ‘Do you like her?’
‘Of course I like her.’
‘How much?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘How much do you like her?’
‘A lot!’ Adam said. ‘I like her a lot.’
‘Well, then. You’ll find a way. Men usually do, although you sometimes take your time about things, I have to say. Only don’t take so long about it that somebody gets there before you do.’
Adam’s eyes widened in surprise at her words. ‘I’m just saying,’ Nana Craig said.
The Perfect Hero Page 11
