Christmas at the Little Clock House on the Green. Eve Devon

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      Really and truly?

      ‘I know this wasn’t what either of us was expecting to hear,’ Penny said, her usual nasal tone enhanced now that it was laced with sympathy.

      ‘It’s fine,’ Emma whispered, too shocked to process how very much not fine it was as Failure danced onto the stage of her heart and took a flourishing bow.

      ‘I’m just as pissed as you, Pinto Bean. You were perfect for that part.’

      She’d really thought so too.

      Damn it.

      Slowly she looked around her at the rows of exceedingly bendy people all having contorted their bodies into crouching poses with minimum effort.

      She didn’t do minimum effort. She did maximum effort.

      And still came up short, it seemed.

      Bitter disappointment and a strange sense of embarrassment became besties, holding hands as they rushed through her veins, stealing her energy. Stealing her joy.

      She held her bag out in front of her like it was poor Yorick’s skull and stared accusingly down at it. So much for being lucky.

      With her phone still pinned to her ear, she pulled herself upright, shoved her feet into her shoes and then fled the yoga studio with its mirrors shamelessly reflecting her dazed expression for everyone to see.

      Outside, as she made her way back to the sanctuary of her apartment, the bright sunshine, gentle breeze and ridiculously cheerful Christmas music from one of the Prius’ in the endless parade of traffic combined to mock her for daring to assume it had finally been her turn to get the big-break.

      ‘Did they say why?’ Emma asked, picking up her pace, eager to escape the feeling that she was being followed by one of those giant arrows with stupidly over-sized light-bulbs illuminating the words ‘Not Good Enough’.

      ‘Only that someone unexpected expressed interest and after reviewing her tapes, they decided to go with her.’

      ‘Tell me it’s a name, at least.’

      ‘Oh, A-lister, for sure,’ Penny stated in solidarity.

      Emma let herself into the apartment she shared with two other actresses, her smile perilously close to wobbling.

      ‘Take a couple of days then come see me,’ Penny instructed. ‘Keep the faith, okay? There’s always traditional pilot season coming up.’

      Emma supposed it was. If you discounted that it was October and that the month that signalled the start of the season was at the beginning of a whole different year to this one. Tossing her keys onto the sofa, she wandered over to stare at the fridge, aka the shrine where she and her flatmates stuck scribbled notes to each other.

       Em, I got that audition and Jacinta’s on set all day otherwise we’d be here to celebrate with you. Moo Shu Pork and a bottle of cheap bubbles inside. Congrats! Lily xx

      Emma sniffed.

      ‘Lima Bean? Are you crying? There’s no crying in baseball,’ Penny said, channelling her best Tom Hanks.

      Emma opened the fridge and stared at the celebratory feast wondering how many other beans Penny could call her and with her appetite no longer amounting to a hill of them she shut the door and turned around to head into her room.

      ‘I don’t think I can do another pilot season, Pen.’ People probably thought it was easy to play a corpse. It wasn’t like you could get a note that you were too wooden. But do you know how hard it was to lay on concrete, caked in fake blood, staring into the distance unmoving/not breathing while the actress that actually had lines kept pausing to ask what her motivation was?

      It was hard.

      Especially when the actress asking about her motivation was playing a zombie!

      Needless to say that pilot hadn’t been picked up.

      ‘Of course you can do another pilot season, Jelly Bean. This is how we do. You’re an actress. Says so on your ID, right?’

      Ha!

      Nope.

      Actually, it didn’t.

      Under the heading of occupation she tended to go with what paid her regular wages.

      Bartender.

      That’s what she wrote on any form that needed her to state her occupation.

      Said it all, Emma thought, unable to even summon the energy to cry.

      With her spirit whimpering: my moxie, my moxie, my kingdom for my moxie, she shucked her bag off her shoulder, pushed open her bedroom door, pulled back her duvet, and tired beyond all reason, climbed in to bed.

      Muttering a quiet, ‘Bye Penny,’ she hung up and closed her eyes on the day that sucked harder than a sucker fish in charge of sucking clean all the Sea Life aquariums in all the world.

       Chapter 3

       Pity and Pitiful

       Emma

      Emma had no idea how long she slept for, but she awoke to a dark room and the remnants of a weird dream about fifty-seven varieties of bean auditioning for the lead part at Bar Brand – the bar she’d been working at for three years.

      Pushing herself upright she reached for her phone.

      Five missed calls.

      None of the numbers belonged to Penny, so she guessed she knew what she could do with the absurd hope the actress the studio had decided to go with had caught a sudden case of really bad numb-tongue.

      She texted her flatmates to tell them she hadn’t got the part, but that she was okay (greatest piece of text-acting ever, right there) and that neither needed to rush back because celebrating had been replaced with one of the greatest comforts known to woman: a long soak in the tub and a re-run of Pride and Prejudice.

      If she dragged her armchair over to the bathroom door, piled up all her books and set up her laptop at the right angle, she could watch Darcy-Colin emerging from the lake, while she submerged her aching heart in the bath.

      The next message turned out to be from her mother. With a curious detachment that belied the usual trepidation she felt when listening to messages her mother left, she got up and padded out to the kitchen to open the fridge. Her mother was on a cruise with – actually Emma didn’t want to think about what number boyfriend this was. She knew she quite liked this one though. For a start, he was age-appropriate. Fingers crossed he’d last the distance, or at least the length of the cruise, because no way could she deal with her mother having nothing else to focus on but her and how she Had Not Got The Part she might СКАЧАТЬ