Lucy Holliday 2-Book Collection: A Night In with Audrey Hepburn and A Night In with Marilyn Monroe. Lucy Holliday

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      Of course, a slight barrier to this, up until a couple of days ago, was that I’ve managed to reach my ripe old age without actually acquiring the basics you need to make a flat look cosy and homely.

      I don’t mean cashmere throws and Venetian glass lamps and Victorian writing desks. I mean – and this is a bit embarrassing to admit – a sofa, a table, and a double bed.

      I was bemoaning this fact to Olly when he came round to Mum’s in his van the night before last to pick up my boxes full of clothes, books and other bits and bobs, and that’s when he told me about the Pinewood props store. Pinewood Studios, which is where the majority of The Time Guardians gets filmed, is home to an enormous treasure trove (well, a giant corrugated-steel warehouse) of old furniture that’s been used, over the years, to dress the sets of countless films and TV shows. Lots of it is pretty ropey, some of it is surprisingly lovely, and none of it is really used any more. Olly knows about this treasure trove because his Uncle Brian – not his actual uncle, just an old friend of his former-actress mother’s – is the security guard there. Oh, and because Olly’s former-actress mother, who now runs an amateur dramatic society in Woking, is always getting him to raid the props storeroom to bring her set dressing for their productions. Anyway, on Olly’s advice I popped round there when we were shooting at Pinewood yesterday, and managed to put aside a handful of surprisingly lovely things to furnish my flat.

      I thought I was going to head back there tonight, with Olly in his van, and pick up the stuff before heading all the way back to Colliers Wood to collect my keys, but obviously it must fit Olly’s schedule better to go to Pinewood himself this morning.

      ‘Thanks, Jesse. Oh, and I’ll have one just like those, please,’ I add, pointing at the row of bacon rolls he’s wrapping in greaseproof paper to hand over to Liz.

      ‘You’re kidding,’ Liz says. ‘You can’t seriously be planning on eating a greasy bacon roll.’

      Which is a bit personal, isn’t it? I mean, Liz and I have chatted in the ladies’ loos at the studios before, but that’s about it. I wouldn’t have thought we were anywhere near friendly enough for her to—

      ‘Vanessa,’ she says, in a hushed, reverential (OK, terrified) tone, ‘will literally kill you if she sees you eating so much as a Polo mint while you’re wearing that costume.’

      ‘This costume?’ I ask, glancing down at my alien head, because I can’t believe a bit of dripped ketchup is going to make the thing look that much worse.

      ‘It’s one of the most expensive costumes we rent,’ she says, rather piously, as if the money is coming out of her personal bank account and leaving her unable to pay her gas bill. ‘If Vanessa finds out there’s so much as a single, solitary stain on that latex …’

      ‘OK, forget the bacon roll,’ I tell Jesse. ‘I’ll just have a coffee and a muffin.’

      ‘A blueberry muffin?’ gasps Liz. ‘Filled with sticky, purple-staining berries?’

      ‘Fine! Just the coffee, then.’

      Which is not going to hit the spot in any way. I mean, I was up at 5 a.m. this morning, in Wardrobe at 7, and I’ve been sweating out vital calories inside this horrible costume ever since.

      I think I’ve got a half-eaten packet of peanut M&Ms in my bag, though. I can go and retrieve it from where I think I left it, back on the catering bus, and see if there’s a message on my phone from Olly at the same time.

      The bloody costume slows me right down, though. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried walking anywhere while wearing half a stone’s worth of baggy latex, but it’s not the most enjoyable way to get about.

      Honestly, on days like today, I seriously wonder what the hell I’m doing pursuing a career in acting. Though, to be entirely fair to the Warty Alien costume, there’s scarcely a day goes by when that thought doesn’t occur. I’m only stuck in the bloody job because of a childhood spent following Cass from audition to audition, during which time I utterly failed to gain any decent qualifications – or other career ideas – of my own.

      Well, that and the fact that I’ve always had a bit of a fixation with the movies, and I’ve spent far too long kidding myself that grunting about as a non-speaking extra on iffy British TV shows is halfway to the Old Hollywood magic I’ve long been seduced by.

      Far too long, because I don’t think any of my Hollywood heroines ever had to schlump around the arse-end of King’s Cross in latex warts on a boiling June morning …

      ‘Cheer up,’ a fellow alien says, passing me by on its way out of the Wardrobe trailer nearby. ‘It might never happen.’

      ‘Easy for you to say. You’ve lucked out.’ I mean this because it – he, I guess, from the voice inside his alien head – is nowhere near as grotesquely attired as I am. His is more like a spacesuit: Guantanamo-orange canvas with a matching orange plastic bubble helmet. No latex, no warts, no problem. ‘But thanks for the moral support. It’s nice when us extras stick together for a change.’

      ‘You’re welcome. I mean we have to, don’t we, with these arsehole lead actors swanning around the place?’

      I snort. ‘When they can even be bothered to turn up, of course.’

      ‘Oh?’

      ‘We’re all waiting for his Lord Chief Arsehole to decide whether we’re worthy of his time or not. Dillon O’Hara, I mean,’ I add, for clarification of the ‘Lord Chief Arsehole’ bit.

      ‘Really? Because I heard he was only called for eleven a.m. So in fact, if he turns up in the next half-hour or so, he’ll actually be early.’

      ‘Bollocks,’ I snort. ‘He’s late because celebrities like him love to be late. It’s their favourite way of proving to people what a big shot they are.’

      ‘Be fair to the poor guy,’ the alien extra says. ‘Maybe he got stuck in traffic.’

      ‘If there’s anything at all he got stuck in, it’s more likely to be some leggy supermodel.’

      And then I stop talking.

      Because the alien extra is taking off his helmet, and it turns out that he’s not an extra at all.

      It’s Dillon O’Hara.

      ‘That was fun,’ he says, a wide grin spreading over his face. His accent is Irish now, instead of the English one he – I now realize – has been putting on for the last couple of minutes. ‘I felt a bit like a prince in a fairy tale. You know, the kind who disguises himself as a peasant in order to mingle with the real peasants and find out what they truly think about him.’

      I’m mortified.

      But at the same time, I have to say, I’m outraged. Because not only has he just quite deliberately set me up, he’s also – I’m fairly sure – just pretty much called me a peasant.

      ‘I didn’t mean to imply,’ he says, as if he’s read my mind, ‘that I think you’re a peasant.’

      ‘I should bloody well hope not.’

      ‘But then, to be fair to me, you did just call me СКАЧАТЬ