Undeniable (9 page)

He thought it over for a moment. ‘We could go and laugh at people being dicks. And there’s free food.’

So here we are.

We haven’t talked about the kiss. Or sleeping in his bed.

I’m wearing my green skater dress, jazzed up with my gold heels. It’s a dress that keeps the boobs under control. They went a bit wild the other day when I was wearing a strappy top
and had to run around and find some extras who had gone missing. One of the cameramen kept making comments it.

I take a breath and try to look more awake. To be honest the last thing I wanted to do was come out after spending all day doing things like making lots of half-eaten Pot Noodles – so that
a scene with Tom and Priya arguing while he eats one could be shot lots of times – and holding a branch out of shot for
an hour
.

I emailed Mia to ask if she thought it would be a good idea to make up a fake name for the evening, but she said not to. I said it would be good in case I did anything awful and then
they’d be looking for someone else, but she pointed out that there would probably be people from my work there who would know me anyway. She does spoil my fun sometimes.

Granny said that the mingling and free drinks were all part of the fun. She put the emphasis on ‘free drinks’.

Spencer turns to me as we go in the door. ‘So if it’s awful, we leave?’ He holds out his hand to make the bargain.

I go to shake it and then stop. ‘Not until after I’ve found the canapés.’

He nods. ‘Deal.’ We shake on it, and his touch is electric-jolt time again.

As I scan the room, I realise that none of the other actors from
The Halls
are here. I suppose they’ve already made it and don’t need to come to things like this. Except I do
spot the angry skull man who produces the show. His name is Colin, but I think Angry Skull suits him better. I’ll definitely need to avoid him.

Looking out of the windows is actually okay if you pretend that the view is just a picture and we are not really hundreds of metres in the air. It’s amazing – miles and miles of
twinkling lights.

Spencer swipes a couple of champagne glasses from a tray near the door and hands me one. In the meantime, a woman with a round face and pointy nose has approached us. She tells us eagerly, and a
bit spittily, that we need to put on nametags and points us to a table with labels and pens on it. The temptation is too much. I look at Spencer.

‘I have to do it,’ I tell him as I scribble my chosen name onto a label.

Spencer leans over to read it and laughs. ‘And who will I be?’ he says.

I take another label. ‘You can be called Storm and your job is Clown.’

It is hilarious watching people’s eyes flick down to our nametags as they walk past us. So far we have mingled only with each other. The event isn’t that busy, with it being the
holidays, and most people seem to be students. They must have come up specially for this, judging by the expressions of desperation as they search the room for anyone who might be important.

Then Spencer and I are approached by a girl who is quite wide-eyed and is doing a smile that is so big it must be hurting her face. Her nametag says
Helen
and underneath she’s
written
actress, writer, director, performance pot
. I am assuming that is supposed to be
poet
but she ran out of room.

‘Storm.’ She puts her hand on Spencer’s chest as she reads his name badge. ‘That’s a serious name for a clown.’

‘He’s not very funny,’ I cut in.

‘I aim to invert the idea of a clown by trying not to make people laugh, but to make them weep,’ Spencer says, completely deadpan.

She nods. ‘That’s really interesting.’

She is gazing at him a bit too adoringly for my liking. So I chomp down on a cocktail sausage with deliberate force. She starts a little and turns to me.

‘So you’re . . . Cornelia Beard.’

I nod.

‘And you work as a “fluffer”. What’s that like?’

‘Very stimulating,’ I say.

Spencer snorts into his drink.

‘What exactly do you do?’ says Helen, her smile slipping slightly, but still alarmingly big.

‘I . . . Oh, I can’t do it! It’s a joke,’ I tell her. ‘I’m actually a runner.’

‘Oh,’ says Helen. The smile has dropped.

‘Yeah, it’s—’

But she’s gone. Apparently being a runner isn’t very impressive to a performance pot. I turn to the side to see that Spencer has been ambushed by a man in a suit. I sidle up and tune
in to the conversation. Spencer has his arms crossed, covering his nametag.

They are talking about a filmmaker who is controversial, apparently, and they keep using the word ‘zeitgeist’.

‘Are you familiar with his work?’ the man is saying.

‘Oh yeah, yeah,’ says Spencer, ‘it’s fascinating.’

‘And you?’ the suit man asks me.

‘No,’ I say. ‘What’s it like?’

‘The last piece was a silent short film of a performer, naked, with feathers and bells tied to his genitals. You watch as he slowly drowns in air. It was . . . incredible. Really
encapsulated the circus of our lives.’

‘That sounds awful,’ I tell him.

Spencer’s eyes go wide and the man jolts in surprise at me.

‘I’m sorry,’ I add, ‘I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that I prefer stories with characters. And relationships. And words. And clothes.’

‘Your taste is clearly more for the commercial,’ says the man icily. He turns back to Spencer and they continue their discussion. Their conversation is so boring I want to poke my
own eyes out.

I spot a friendly-looking waitress with a tray of canapés and make my escape. I chat to Anya, the waitress, for a while and she lets me have three mini Beef Wellingtons. She tells me
about her husband and son in Poland and that she only sees them every six months. I feel silly remembering the time Max and I said we couldn’t possibly go to different unis and only see each
other every couple of weeks. I tell her that I am supposed to be networking in order to start my wonderful career in television, but I am not very good at it. She says not to worry as she has
waitressed at lots of these things and most of the people are mentally deficient.

I look over at Spencer again and now he is talking to a smart-looking woman with a severe bob haircut. He’s got rid of his nametag. I am wondering if I should go over and instigate our
get-out plan of tapping him on the shoulder and saying, ‘We have to be there for eight, you know,’ – like we are off to some other important event. I realise I may only be
thinking of doing that because he looks so engrossed in conversation with the woman. Then Anya gives me a nudge.

Angry Skull is making a beeline for me. There’s a thump in my stomach as I remember my nametag, so I cover it with my hand, even though it does look a lot like I’m holding my
boob.

‘Hello, Gabi.’

‘Hi Angry— hiangry . . .
Hungry
. Are you . . . hungry?’

His skull eyes narrow. ‘No.’ He’s twirling a cocktail stick in his fingers, a bit like he might be going to stab me with it. ‘I’ve been hearing good things about
you.’

‘Oh, I . . . What?’

‘Yes. Nina, the location manager, is a fan. She says you’re well organised and gave them a lot of help getting the set ready.’

‘I made friends with a tall man with a ladder,’ I tell him to prove it.

‘What’s your end game?’ He is pointing the cocktail stick at me now.

That’s not an easy question. I have no idea what he wants to hear.

‘Um, I don’t know. I just like being here really.’ That’s probably not very impressive, but it’s true. ‘I like being involved with something that entertains
people like me and makes them happy.’

‘And what is it that you like so much about it?’

‘Oh my God, just
everything
. It’s those couples that everyone loves so much that they make up names for them, you know, like Tiya or HarJen or Mabi. Except not that last one.
Or characters you fancy so much you make a montage of topless pictures of them and upload it to YouTube.’

He is about to reply, but I am on a roll. May as well get it all out now.

‘Or knowing that sometimes the best bit of a storyline is something absolutely
heartbreaking
happening, because if you are really devastated by it, then you know you must really
care. You know, like when Jas’s dad died.’

I pause. I think I’m done. Oh no, there’s more.

‘Or it is the way that the most uplifting moments are timed just perfectly, like the bit where Greg’s rugby team all walk into the bar to back him up against that bully and everyone
was like
yes
! It would be amazing knowing you were making that stuff happen.’

He looks a little startled. I probably got a bit carried away. I hadn’t really thought about all that stuff until I said it. I mean, obviously I was super excited to come and do the
internship when Granny mentioned it, working on my absolute favourite TV show, but a lot of it was wanting to get away. Mia was going to be in France. I would have been at Radleigh full-time for
the summer and I was sick of everyone whispering behind my back and then giving me pitying looks while they told me how well I was doing. I wanted to escape really, and be somewhere where no one
knew me. But now I’m here, I’m actually thinking that this could be something I’d be good at.

‘I might be able to find you some more interesting things to do,’ he says finally.

My eyes go wide and I look at him. Maybe I can ask to meet some of the writers? I could bring my story ideas with me and show them and just tell them to ignore the spelling.

‘Do you think I could—’ I start.

I feel a tap on my shoulder.

‘We need to be there by eight, you know,’ says Spencer.

I feel uneasy about leaving so quickly. But Angry Skull did say he would see me tomorrow, so hopefully he meant what he said about the interesting things. It probably would
have been better to talk to him more, but I had about a millionth of a second to decide. It was clear Spencer was leaving and I didn’t really want to be in a room of weird people on my own.
Also, it was what Spencer and I agreed.

As I am thinking that and we are walking out of the lobby of the building, I look over at him and he looks back quizzically with his crooked eyebrows. A happy buzz goes through me.

‘Who was that woman?’ My voice comes out a bit sing-song. I think I am a bit high on the fact that Spencer has left a party to hang out with me. And possibly a bit tipsy from the
champagne. I should calm down.

‘She is an—’

‘Great!’ Oops, I reacted too soon.

‘—agent for loads of reality TV stars,’ he says, fiddling with his screwed-up nametag. ‘People who are famous for doing nothing. Completely opposite to why I want to go
into acting.’

‘What was she saying?’

‘Some bollocks about my look being “hot and edgy and now”and that she could get me lots of adverts or something.’

‘Oh my God! Are you going to do it?’

‘Nah.’ He laughs. ‘Anyway, let’s go have an adventure.’

I text Granny and say that the networking evening is dragging on. I thought that was probably better than saying I was wandering the streets of London.

The road we go down is completely deserted, with grand, old-fashioned stone buildings on either side and lit-up skyscrapers rising up behind them. It’s so quiet, Spencer says, because all
the bankers are inside making their money, even this late in the evening. Then we arrive at a huge junction. There’s another old building with pillars at the front that looks like a temple
and we take the steps down to Monument Underground.

Coming out of Embankment, we walk up a busy pedestrianised street along the side of Charing Cross. Spencer takes out his phone and checks the time.

‘Still open,’ he says.

I look at him questioningly but he’s not giving anything away.

He leads us past the station and towards Trafalgar Square. I notice he’s untucked his shirt and rolled the sleeves up. The fountains look quite cool, sparkling in the lights as the sky
starts to darken into evening.

‘Are we going to the gallery thing?’ I ask.

‘Nearly,’ is all he tells me.

We are veering to the right of the main National Gallery building and towards an entrance that definitely looks familiar. As we go in and up an escalator, I realise that Granny and Grandpa took
us on these when we went inside the National Gallery. It’s the one with all the portraits of the kings and queens. I really liked it, but Millie kept making fun of me for being a geek so I
kicked her right by the portrait of Queen Elizabeth and we got taken out.

‘Oh my God, I love this place!’ My voice comes out really loud and echoes a lot. The people in front of us on the escalator turn round and glare, but Spencer just laughs.

‘ME TOO!’ he shouts.

He says there’s an exhibition on, so we skip past the main galleries, which is a shame because I remember liking the portraits and wondering what the people were like in real life and who
they had affairs with.

The exhibition Spencer wants to see is called Behind the Scenes and it is photos of actors in rehearsal or right before they go on stage.

We are there for ages as he spots his favourite actors or photos from plays he’s seen. Some of them I recognise (the ones who’ve been in
Harry Potter
films, but Spencer
doesn’t sound very impressed when I say that) and some of the older ones Granny has told me about, like Laurence Olivier, who apparently was ‘bloody gorgeous’ in real life.

We come back out into Trafalgar Square when the gallery closes and we sit up on the side of the fountain for a while, looking back at the gallery building. It’s dark now and the building
is lit up, making it look even more massive.

Spencer is talking about how we should go and see some theatre and comedy and how he’s really annoyed with himself that he hasn’t been for ages. I love the way he frowns and gestures
with his hands while he’s talking, like he really cares about it. He’s much more interesting than when he’s saying things about zeitgeists and people with feathers on their
genitals.