Sins of Sarah (3 page)

'Be good and don't open the door to anyone but Caroline!' Diana added other strictures, and she groaned at the stream of instructions with the weary boredom of a know-it-all adolescent. Nick laughed indulgently at Charlotte's resigned face.

'You do look very handsome in a DJ, Daddy,' she said adoringly. 'Not old at all!'

CHAPTER 2

In the club at the television studios, the Do or Dare party were on their second bottle of champagne - reckoned to be the best bargain around - and were just getting into their noisy stride. They were a young group - the only one over twenty-six was Paddy Brennan, their director/producer, an old hand in his fifties who looked after his 'children' with a benevolent fatherly air.

Retreating to the club after transmission was a regular winding down habit, and Sarah thought suddenly how much she would miss everyone if she didn't renew her contract. Paddy wanted her to stay, and had already offered her a considerable rise to do so, and he and Peter Lyngard, her co-presenter, made a very polished duo, the best the programme had had in its two years, they complemented each other - both blonde and athletic young people, his cheeky style a perfect foil for Sarah's easygoing charm. They had an enormous following of young fans, who followed their supposed off-screen romance avidly.

Now they were laughing and teasing her, because the tannoy had just called her to the phone. It was a familiar joke amongst the club regulars that actors got themselves noticed by being paged in the club bar.

'It's far too early, Sarah,' joked the researcher. 'All the important people are still at their desks!' Sarah took it all in her stride, as she usually did, and meandered across to the desk, with the swinging walk of the dancer she was, to take her call.

'Who was it?' Peter teased as she came back with a stunned look on her face. 'Hollywood?

' 'Not quite! It was Oscar. Nick Grey wants to see me tomorrow. He wants me to audition for Home Leave the film Harriet Barrington was going to do!' After the discussion a few days previously, she could hardly believe it had actually happened.

'Well, well, there's nothing like starting at the top!' Peter, though completely without any ambition, was just a little jealous. 'He's certainly the best director this country has.'

'I did some commercials for NGA before I came here,' said Paddy's assistant, and shuddered. 'He's a vicious bastard when he gets going!'

'Very good-looking, though,' sighed another of the girls.

'But old - and married,' said Sarah firmly. 'However, guess who the male lead is going to be?' She paused for dramatic effect. 'Only James Willoughby!'

'Fastest trouser-dropper in the business!' Peter said sourly, painfully aware of Sarah's excitement.

'What a way to go, though!' laughed Polly. 'He's been married twice, hasn't he? Wasn't he married to Tamzin Carpenter at one time?' Sarah let the gossip float over her and struggled not to let her excitement show too much, she could see that Peter was not taking the news too well. But at last, despite her misgivings, she could see a light at the end of her particular tunnel of boredom. Choosing her moment carefully, she got to her feet.

'I think I'd better go,' she said, forgetting her resolve to go out that evening in her new excitement. 'They're sending me a script to read, and if I drink much more I won't be fit to drive home let alone learn any of it!' They all hugged her for luck. Sarah firmly told Peter she was going home alone, and almost floated out of the building to her car. Singing loudly to the radio, she sailed fearlessly around Shepherds Bush and down through Holland Park,, hardly aware of other traffic on the wet roads, anxious to get home to see what the script would be like.

Yes, the doorman had her package. 'Just come, miss.' He gazed at her with his usual wistful admiration. 'The boy said it was important.'

'Could be my future!' Sarah told him gaily. 'I'll let you know tomorrow.' And, clutching the precious bundle, she ran up the stairs to her second floor flat - too impatient to wait for the lift.

A few minutes later she was curled up on the sofa, shoes kicked off, with a carton of yoghurt and a glass of mineral water. Caroline's friendly note was clipped to the top page, confirming her eleven o'clock appointment and asking her to prepare two scenes for her audition.

Home Leave was a tense, exciting story about an Edwardian family, and she read with growing delight.

Abigail, the heiress daughter of the family, was in love with the young, local doctor, but was forced to marry someone else chosen by her bullying father. It ended on the battlefields of World War One, with Abigail reunited with her doctor.

It was a wonderful part, and by far the biggest in the film, Harriet Barrington must be really cursing that she couldn't do it, Sarah thought, gleefully turning page after page of glorious dialogue. Surely there had to be a catch.

Then she found it, just as she had predicted.

She stopped reading in horror. They couldn't really be asking her to do love scenes like that - but Nick Grey had not only written them he had surpassed himself! She was quite adamant that she couldn't cope with exposing that amount of her flesh in front of a film crew - even for him. She had heard enough jokes and stories about nude scenes, even working in children's television, and knew all about the unused clips of them that were shown at Christmas parties within the industry. In a fury, she dialled Oscar's home number and demanded of him whether he had read his copy of the script.

'I skimmed it quickly,' he admitted, annoyed to be interrupted in the middle of a dinner party.

'I couldn't do those sex scenes. They're awful. I've never done them, I won't do them! I'm not doing them for Nick Grey, great part or not!'

'Sarah, dear,' he tried to calm her, 'This is not your average British film director. This is the best. Whatever the script says, it is hardly going to be pornographic. Nick can be explicit, I agree, but he is a professional; he would never go too far. He has a reputation to consider, after all. You'll be fine - he'll handle it beautifully.'

'I don't care how professional he is; I'm not doing it!' Sarah shouted at him. 'It may be the part of the century, but tell them tomorrow that I'm sorry but the answer is no!'

'Like hell I will!' Oscar rejoined. 'You, young lady, will be at Nick's offices tomorrow with me at your elbow. You are not turning down a chance like this just because of a few hours of exposing your body to the camera. You did that shampoo commercial, remember, and the ice-cream one, and I don't remember you making a fuss about that.'

'I did have some clothes on for those,' Sarah objected.

'They probably suggested far more than these scenes will,' Oscar said firmly. 'Now, do as you're told for once! Wear a skirt and your hair loose. Abigail may have her moments, but she's meant to be a lady.' '

'You could've fooled me!'

'Oh, and another thing - don't wear high heels. James Willoughby is just about six foot; you don't need to be on eye-level with him.'

'I'm five foot eight, Oscar,' she reminded him. 'Not six foot.'

'No more than an inch of heel,' Oscar reminded her. 'Now let me get back to my dinner - tomorrow at eleven!' Sarah slammed the phone down in a filthy temper and swore furiously at it, and at Oscar. Almost in tears, she stamped around the flat.

Reading the scenes again didn't help.

It would be just her luck to get the part, she thought furiously, when it was the last thing she wanted. Sarah Campbell worked hard on her body to keep it looking good but she was paranoid about displaying it naked - even to Peter, who complained bitterly and frequently about her refusal to go to bed with him. But Oscar had been her agent since he had seen her in a RADA production and she knew she was very lucky to have a good one like him.

No way would she go against his wishes - and he knew it.

With a sigh of defeat, she went back to the script to prepare the scenes that Caroline had asked her to do, and tried to work on a way out of it - maybe they wouldn't want her at all ...

* * *

For the sake of peace. Nick made a tremendous effort to be sociable at the kind of event he rarely found very interesting. With an Oxford degree himself, he was the intellectual equal of most of their table, but he had never been able to get excited over some of the more obscure topics academics happily spent hours discussing.

Luckily, he found himself seated next to the young American wife of Diana's immediate superior at the college, and she quickly had him laughing and joking. A pretty girl, with a delicate, elfin face, her dark hair cut wispily short, she was lively and full of fun, and, being a second wife, was relatively unknown to the rest of the group.

Madeleine had spent most of her working life as a secretary in Los Angeles, a city Nick knew and loved and indeed had a home in. Her father, he soon discovered, was an executive at NBC, so she knew the film and TV world well, and they were soon exchanging Hollywood gossip.

At last, when they were finally free to go. Nick hastened Diana into her coat, much to the amusement of the others. 'I assume it's the tape that you're rushing back for?' she asked sarcastically as they walked out to the car.

'Too right it is,' he said. 'There's a lot of money riding on getting that part re-cast, and Charlie and I will lose a great deal of it if I don't cast it soon.'

'Well, in that case, we'd better hurry!' Impatient as he was, he still exchanged his dress suit for a terry-cloth robe before he went to the study and dropped the DVD into the recorder - formal suits were Nick's idea of punishment, and had been since his Canterbury school-days. He leant back in the comfort of the leather armchair and poured himself a glass of his favourite malt as Sarah Campbell's image came up on the screen.

There were about twenty minutes of an enormous variety of work, including several commercials, most of which he realized he knew well - good production company bosses always knew what the competition was doing - and he kicked himself again. One that he particularly liked, and hadn't seen before, was an American shampoo job, where she was swimming underwater then rising from the sea clad in a very brief bikini, leaving him in no doubt about the slim waist and full, firm breasts that the swinging curtain of golden-brown hair failed to hide as it swung around her shoulders.

But, even more important to Nick, that was also a scene from a modem police drama. Sarah played the victim of some attack, being questioned fairly aggressively. The camera stayed relentlessly on her face, watching her crumble and finally weep under the barrage of questions. It was one take and her performance was superb, her air of vulnerability collapsing into panic as the questions grew nastier.

He played it back with a sense of relief that she really could act, and then he ran through the rest of the DVD.

When Diana came in he was staring incredulously at a montage of her Do or Dare stunts.

'How the hell can she do all that and not have muscles like a wrestler?' she demanded, laughing. 'It's hardly fair! I suppose she can act as well?'

'Watch this!' He quickly found the police drama.

'She's a better actress than Harriet, that's for sure,' she commented at last. 'Are you happy now?' 'Better than I was,' he admitted. 'Just pray she really is right for it. I need the luck!'

CHAPTER 3

Neither composite nor DVD had really prepared him for his first sight of Sarah Campbell. For a few seconds he simply froze as she walked into his office. Her swinging, easy walk and the confident set of her shoulders made her appear taller than the five feet eight her composite claimed, and said immediately that she was used to the world staring at her open-mouthed, as James Willoughby and Chris Howard, his line producer, were doing at that moment.

She wore a silk shirt and a longish wrap-around black skirt that clung to her dancer's body as she moved, her hair was in a long golden-brown plait, falling over one shoulder. Her whole appearance radiated a wholesome innocence, her wide hazel eyes holding his as they had in the magazine photograph as he, too, stared, noticing as she came closer the creamy clear skin that owed nothing to make-up, with just a light dusting of gold freckles.

Pulling himself together, he rose to his feet, and Sarah found the hand she offered clasped in his firm grip. Nick was astonished to find her hand trembling in his. She was actress enough to present an untroubled exterior.

'I'm Nick Grey.' He smiled at her, and Sarah relaxed. 'Thank you for coming at such short notice, Sarah.' Sarah thought she should be thanking him as she was introduced to James and Chris, and Nick held a chair for her. Relieved, he suddenly noticed she was wearing fairly high-heeled shoes - Sarah's 'anti' gesture to Oscar. He had already made her change from her habitual jeans into a skirt when he had collected her, as he had demanded the night before.

They sat in comfortable chairs around a low table to which Jane brought coffee. Nick didn't believe in interviewing from behind a desk, unless he wanted to intimidate the interviewee. Now he sought to put the girl at her ease, and was sensitive to her nervousness as he explained the plot of Home Leave and the filming schedule he planned for it, giving her chance to relax in their company.

'OK . . .' He paused. 'I'd like to hear a little about you, Sarah,' he said, putting her firmly on the spot, and she smiled suddenly at his challenge.